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Arrest in Caridi FBI Investigation
skillio writes "The FBI arrested one Russell Sprague in Illinois on Thursday in connection with the previously reported Carmine Caridi dvd screener leak investigation. Given the FBI's figure of up to 60 screeners a year provided by Caridi, and Sprague's clearly sophisticated setup, one can't help but wonder if this will prove to be the main, if not sole, source of these dvd screener leaks. Caridi has yet to be charged, but after he's admitted to supplying Sprague with screeners for the last 3-5 years, I highly doubt his innocence will remain unchallenged for very long."
I doubt that he would be the only person doing screeners. There's probably about 2-5 people per movie, as you'll get different weirdnesses (such as blured out text) in the same movie, depending on the release group.
If the guy committed a crime, what's wrong with putting him in prison?
From the article: "The search of Sprague's residence Thursday turned up DVD copies of 11 films...
According to the FBI, Sprague admitted receiving screeners from Caridi and said that he used the software program Copy Guard Breaker to copy the VHS tapes to DVD and then returned the original VHS tapes and two VHS copies of each to Caridi.
Sprague said that he'd made as many as six duplicate copies of each DVD and distributed them to family and friends. He supplied copies to another friend in exchange for using a FedEx shipping account, the FBI said."
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
The accused biog here
Let me rephrase: no mention of "DVD screeners," because they no longer exist -- the Academy sends out VHS tapes now to combat piracy, for all the good it did them.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
That's because most people are sleeping most soundly causing the least impact on surrounding residents and reducing the likelihood of resistance.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
it is moderately well known that data above and beyond SMTPE timecode is frequently embedded in lines 18 through, I think it is 27, in your average NTSC video frame. if you have an older TV with horizontal hold controls, roll the picture down a little and watch the black line dance above the picture.
this is, among other things, how Panasonic VCRs can automatically set their clocks when you switch them to the local PBS channel.
all you have to do is put a dupe serial number in that retrace bar's timespace, between the horizontal sync pulses, and you've tagged the tape with a unique number.
it's a little harder to blur these out, because you have to replace the information or you break picture sync, putting an ugly hook in the top of the picture.
ain't worth my time to chase it further, but bet on the serials being there... and if MPAA is truly paranoid and in league with the shadows, the name of the intended recipient of the screener. if they use some sort of argument like, "it takes a month to cut these tape copies," bet big on it.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?