Slashdot Mirror
Theaters vs. Camcorders, Round 27
ackthpt writes "CNN is reporting two people, one in Los Angeles and one in Canada, were caught recording The Day After Tomorrow in cinemas, while a third got away. No mention if night-vision goggles, as previously mentioned, were of assistance." Reader azmatsci writes "Tuesday Sony was issued a patent for technology that will attempt to block camcorder recordings in movie theaters. Funny to me because I just came up with the same idea and discovered it while doing a patent search. Only problem with the idea is it will only block camcorders that use CCD recorders, which are sensitive to IR light. Another jamming idea which probably work for all camcorders can be found here."
As they'd just stick an IR filtering lens on the thing. Problem solved. Cheaply too.
The thing with varying the framerate to introduce distortions sounds cool, but probably overly expensive for the limited scope of the actual problem itself.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I don't know how effective the sony method would be. It seems like a dedicated person could filter the IR. I know that they do this in astronomy when using a CCD to look at stars and in high end photography:
high end photography using filter astronomy using hot mirror
have a blocking filter that will defeat this technique. Surely camcorders will have it as well...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
The DMCA starts with the word Digital and refers only to methods of copyrights protecting digital works. Most movies in theaters, although originally created using digital equipment, are shown as analog and as such are not covered by the DMCA.
They are, however, covered by traditional copyright law.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Modern digital handheld camcorders can use extended exposure to essentially mimic the human eye's perception, making the frame timing rather useless unless you alter it so much that it looks bad to the eye too. technology simply advances too fast, they wont be successful til they stop the gear from getting in front of the screen in the first place. Add that to the fact that camera rips certainly arent the only source of leaks, this technology will be rather pointless eh? find a cure for cancer or something!
there arent any screeners available for that movie yet, its mislabed. but all a telesync is is a cam with an external audio source (ie the handicapped seat). but you are right in that the people recording usually are in on it with the projectionist. these people arent the same people who leak the stuff on the internet, these people are in the business and sell the copies on the street. the people who release on the internet just pick up the copies off the street and release them.
Can you say "waste of time and money"? Who is going to choose a camcorder copy of a film over actually seeing it?
There's a huge flea market in the no-mans-land between Dallas and Grand Prairie, Texas, where you can buy just about anything you want. A friend of my daughter brought over "Freaky Friday" and "Freddy vs. Jason" the week they hit theaters -- she told me her mom bought them there. The image was grainy, the soundtrack muted, and of course there were no DVD extras -- you put it in and it started playing.
The problem, in this case at least, isn't us geeks. Our bittorrents and mp3s and such are an entirely different issue. The camcorder copies go straight to the underground economy, sold off the back of a truck at a flea market where if you don't habla el lingo, you'd better watch yourself. And the folks buying these goods often don't know the difference between pirated and legal: they're just buying it, just like they'll buy fake Nike shoes at the next stall.
That's the problem they're trying to solve. They're not trying to bust geeks, they're trying to bust criminals who will sell pirated copies of movies for hard cash.
By the way, my daughter and her friend both got informed, in detail, about what piracy is. My daughter now tells her friends "No, you can't borrow my CD to burn a copy, 'cause my dad won't let me." That's good enough for now.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I hope the next time an idea like this starts to shine like a bright strobelight in its inventor's mind, at least they'll have a look at some hardly known websites like these:
Oh, man, if you skipped Love Actually, you really missed out.
Yeah, the world is full of crummy movies. But I've seen literally dozens of movies that made me extremely happy, from Branagh's Henry V to South Park (that is, great literature and lowbrow silliness).
Shrek also ruled.
You don't know what you're talking about. The DMCA is an act that made substantial changes to copyright law, and it affects all copyrights. There are not special copyrights for digital vs. analog works, and there is only one set of copyright laws in the US: Title 17 of the US Code.
The DMCA starts with the word Digital
True...
and refers only to methods of copyrights protecting digital works.
FALSE!
The DMCA does *NOT* restrict itself to digital. For example there does exist analog encryption. Circumventing analog encryption is just as criminal as circumventing digital encryption. Distributing analog decyption devices is just as criminal as distributing digital decryption devices.
About the only part of the DMCA that is restricted to digital materials is the internet notice and takedown proceedures, and that is not actually a legale restriction, it is merely an implicit restriction because there do not exist any analog materials on the internet.
If someone were to make internet hardware that could carry analog data (rather difficult, but not impossible), then the internet notice and takedown proceedures *would* apply to analog materials as well.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Several DVDs we've gotten through Netflix have several minutes of trailers you can't skip. All they let you do is hold down the fast forward. I think Universal was the company that set up their DVDs that way.
I bitched about this stuff yesterday in my blog.
I'll still take DVDs over going to the movies, but the DVD experience could be better.
I never saw the flick, but I was under the impression it was subaural, not subliminal, in Josie.
fs
The word "piracy" has been used for at least two centuries to refer to copyright violation in addition to the nautical meaning. This sense of "pirate" is some new attempt to defame the practice.
Here's the entry from Webster's 1828 dictionary: