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."
I am not sure what the best solution would be. It's very hard to stop piracy on these types of thigns because of how many hands they cross when being produced. Most movies created these days require outside influence for CGI enhancements. From there it gets shown to have the music soundtrack added.. Include test audiences (and those that screen it for them), previews to movie theater employees and you have so many leaks along the chain you sometimes don't know where to start. This also isn't all inclusive of the movie industry either... The music industry suffers the same fate, albeit the music is a lot easier to take than a full-length movie.
Hmmm.
Maybe i won't have a popular opinion on this, but i'm happy they were caught.
I love all our priveleges and i dig our open source OSes and software, but i don't feel everything should be free.
Let the slashdot hypocracy follow:
do() || do_not();
In terms of putting UV projectors behind the screen or off to the side, cant you just get a UV filter and put it over the lens, to filter out all the ultra violet light?
And in terms of messing with the projection rate. All of the things they seek to exploit stem from the fact that the human eye doesn't see descrete frames, it sort of blurs them togethor. Couldn't the people using the camcorders decrease the shutter speed to accomplish basically the same thing?
paul reinheimer
"Aaaah, my pacemaker!"
Do I have to say more?
Can you say "waste of time and money"? Who is going to choose a camcorder copy of a film over actually seeing it? That's right - those who weren't going to see it in the first place anyway.
If I can't at least check out the film beforehand i'm probably not going to pay at the box office either. Hollywood has pretty much set themselves up for this, with all the crappy movies they let out the door yearly.
I'll wait for the DVD and rent. They get minimum $$ out of my pocket, which is my goal. Most of the sheeple don't have the willpower to do so, sadly. Things might change if they did.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I would imagine that a pirate can pay said person to get the film. However, you bring up an interesting point... Where does the pirate get his money from? Surely not if he's going to release the film on the Internet. Does he sell them? And, if so, perhaps the person that buys turns around and floods the Internet with it?
Hmmm.
Tonight, at the Sony Metreon in SF: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in IMAX . Now that's the way to see the movie.
While the plot (and especially dialog) of the movie was pretty poor, the visuals were absolutely awesome. It's one of those movies that you just watch because it looks pretty and sort of turn your brain off.
Great so they can jack up the ticket prices even higher to pay for the "jamming" camcorders for the very very small percentage of theaters or people that try to record that way?
Wait wait hold the fucking press, cinema recordings are crap, infact they are so crap i actually don't think i could ever bring myself to watch one. If someone gets ripped off buying one then thats their problem, piracy (ie selling for profit) is bad and we have police that go around stopping it, but the only purpose of filming off the screen and putting it on the net is so that people can see the film before it comes out in their country.
Who the hell cares if someone watches a film before it comes out in their country? better yet, who the hell cares enough to stick nightvision in cinemas and go to all the trouble to try and stop cameras from working (which is just an up-hill battle that will go through round after round of expensive research and cheap ways to circumnavigate it).
And giving out serious charges and prision time for this is just total fucking bullshit on the highest level. I can understand listening to an mp3 instead of a CD, i can understand watching a divx instead of a DVD, but if someone actually seriously wants to watch a poor quality cinema video then they're either too cheap to even go to the cinema (so dont bother chasing them) or they are total fanatics who need to see star-wars the very second it comes out and who will likely go and see it in the cinema about 20 times aswell.
I believe in stopping things at the source but this just takes the piss, chuck people out if they have cameras but dont do this to your customers because some of us arnt sheep who will take your bullshit excuses and give you their money just like they take bushes bull shit excuses and wave their flags around or take blunketts crap as he says "duuhhhh i think we should have id cards because they help fight terrorists" or listen to the fucking criminal israeli government as they say "yeah that vanunu is evil, kidnap is ok", some of us don't give jack about jay-lo's failing career or ben afflecks right to have 3 jets, the cinema industry is just becoming shitty like all the other industries and soon they are going to wake up either to a society of sheep who will buy their DRM or a society of people who say fuck you and boycott every
ok im going to sit down now.
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Assuming 'Intent' must be proven, maybe a quick ransac^H^H^H^H^H^Hsearch of their homes by the gest^H^H^H^Hauthorities could turn up a system and evidence of previous nefarious activity. I'm sure somewhere beyond the usual warning 'Use of recording devices is forbidden, yada yada yada' there are some teeth to back the warning up.
I also doubt 'Fair Use' has a twig to lean on here..."Hey, I was just capturing it in case I missed a part and wanted to rewind and see it again *during* the movie."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's an interesting idea--and I applaud your dedication to finding a solution here--but the flaw in your design is that it essentially requires voluntary compliance on the part of the pirates. And, frankly, there's no reason to expect them to comply.
In fact, it's rather like the evil bit in TCP/IP packets, which is almost never used by viruses and worms. Yes, it's a GREAT idea, and would make firewalls a lot easier to maintain, but the criminals have no incentive to actually USE it.
Well, the problem would be that it's trivially easy to put an IR filter in front of the lens?
But ya, Cams suck. I watched a few to see what they looked like, and the quality is poor, the audio sucks, etc.
If you've got a kickass 5.1 surround system with a DLP projection system, there's no reason to waste your time with "copies from theatres" anyway.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Relative to what? Taking a crap on celluloid?
Do ya think that maybe the MPAA had a little influence on this reporter?
WWJD? JWRTFA!
Well, part of that is simply due to inflation and the increased proliferation of theaters, as well as the greater volume of movies released (let's be honest, the more movies you release, the greater the chance you have of hitting a blockbuster - the movie industry certainly doesn't rely on any other factor to ensure quality).
No, it sounds terrible. Like those CDs that had high-pitched audio to prevent copying, and ended up eating people's speakers.
They claim they got the inspiration by noticing that computer monitors and TVs film poorly and have lines progressing down the screen (because the camera is filming faster than the screen can refresh, and is catching it in mid-frame. The image on your screen is being redrawn 60-85 times per second, depending on what your refresh rate is.) Except I know several people who experience physical pain given a low-enough refresh rate. Even 60-65 Hz can make them cringe. If they're introducing artifacts at regular intervals into a movie, I could easily imagine this affecting a whole bunch of people who would then be unable to attend movies. That would be poor. (Though pissing off your audience seems to work for the RIAA, so who knows?)
Really, it would be a lot less effort to start smaller. All pre-release copies of a movie (maybe even all prints, but then 1-to-1 mappings become harder) should get their own watermark. Something small, that's only in a few frames, like a cue dot. Barely noticeable unless you're looking for it. And then when a movie gets released on the 'net, look for the watermark, and then go find the person who leaked it, and force them to watch Gigli or From Justin to Kelly over and over with their eyes forced open like in A Clockwork Orange. I imagine movie piracy would decrease by at least 50%, if not more, if the screeners, projectionists, etc were all held responsible. The average joe with a camcorder can't do a TeleSync. Besides, nobody wants to download movies filmed with a camcorder. They're shaky, the cameraman is often eating popcorn or slurping soda, or talking, or whatever.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Jeez bud, settle down will ya? I don't carry a cell phone myself, so don't think I'm one of your nemesises, but a ring could easily just be an honest mistake. If you had the very same visceral reaction to someone actually answering the phone and talking in the theater, I'd be a little more understanding. As long as they realize the mistake and turn it off immediately, what's the big deal? Take a chill pill dude.
Much worse is the fellow who brings his children and allows them to talk throughout the movie. A guy with a little girl allowed her to completely ruin LOTR III for me. That's deliberately inconsiderate and rude, and it makes me pretty angry, but I didn't do anything about it. She kept asking questions, because she didn't understand everything that was going on and sometimes she couldn't make out the dialogue. I felt sorry for her, plus I figure he knows it's rude, my telling him isn't going to fix anything. I also have a real aversion to being a snitch.
Anyway, I got off my point, but it is that a ringing phone is likely just an accident, not a deliberate slight. Learn to lighten up a little bit, life's too short to go around peeved at everything and tilting at windmills. You'll live longer if you do. It's a proven fact.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
Number one, it's copyright infringement, not theft. Look up theft in the dictonary, if the difference still isn't apparant, I'll explain it to you. More important, however, I should be allowed to take my personal property in with me. While the act of taping a movie may be illegal, simply having a cam corder should not be. I should basically be allowed to have any item that isn't already illegal with me, and not have it be illegal just because this happens to be a movie theatre.
This goes double because the day soon approches when things like PDAs will be able to record movies. They have cameras on them now, flash cards are getting bigger, and soon the technology to capture motion video will be on them. That would then make them illegal. So you are telling me that a PDA, which most people that have them carry everywhere, should suddenly be a felony to carry in a theatre? That's bullshit, and a really bad precident for laws.