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."
What kind of provisions does the MPAA have, most likely under the DMCA, to prosecute people who are caught recording movies in the theaters? Will these people go to jail, or just get a slap on the wrist?
They should be fined just out of poor taste.
D
Interesting idea - crank up those IR emitters enough, and people will get hot, and need to go buy more drinks. Maybe the big soda companies have a stake in this too?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
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();
I do not know too much about camera filters, but I have heard of ones to block IR. Would that not make the system pointless?
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.
Or the movie companies could require the theaters to do what they did in cryptonomicon: put really big magnets in the doorways, so that all of the camcorders are destroyed. They could even post a sign about it to avoid being sued.
Help! I'm being repressed!
Keep releasing bad movies no one wants to bootleg.
Instead of trying to prevent copying, cinemas should just force all viewers to strip naked before entering. As an added benefit, if the movie is boring, the audience can devise their own entertainment.
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
(And here's an amusing summary/parody of the thing for those who are up for a little MST3K style ribbing at it.)
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
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.
Didn't you see that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry becomes a bootlegger and then George decides to try it? It's for the chicks, of course.
Here's an idea: Security metal detectors! Homeland security will happily oversee who has what when entering the theatre. This will also reduce terror.
Tickets will now read "seating at 6.45. Movie starts at 7.00. Please be here two hours prior to the show due to security measures."
And this must work, since I haven't seen people recording movies on airplanes.
When filming a movie, get a buddy to sit with you with a camcorder as well. Activate the night vision on the camcorder, and scan for the evil anti-piracy guys using night vision. When you spot one of them, and they spot you, activate your camcorder's 1000 candle spotlight and aim at guy, and run for it.
Hmmm... this sounds like a really good Splinter Cell mod. Splinter Cell: Theaters VS Camcorders.
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
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.
Damn those Linux programmers, if we just had Windows virus/worm writers to worry about, the world would be a much safer place.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
make me want to make a fake camcorder out of a block of wood and some paint and see if I can get arrested...
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Sony, in addition to film and audio distribution, also make camcorders. How much you want to bet that they are simply going to integrate into their camcorders some kind of wireless "switch", and sell transmitters to the theaters? They could then license this technology to all the other camcorder manufacturers (or if the problem is big enough, give it away?). You might say "Well, I will just bypass it, like with mod chips" - if integrated at some low chip level, without external antennas (or using the "ground" plane as an antenna) - and more powerful transmitter (to make up for the embeddedness) - it would probably be damn near impossible to bypass it (although nothing is a "sure thing")...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
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!
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.
I just sumbitted a patent for this jamming device.
We'll see how it goes. In tests so far it's been 100% effective.
"...doing light-saber battles..."
"I see your Schwartz is as big as mine..."
Which one of you got away? Was it extremely difficult to escape the grasp of buttery fingered, 8.25/hr ushers?
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
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
Days after the initial implementation of this procedure, movie ticket sales have fallen to nearly $0, proof that piracy is responsible for reduced MPAA profits. The MPAA is going to begin suing individuals while lobbying the government to pass more stringent laws regarding movies, because the Constitution states that the MPAA has a God-given right to eternal perpetually increasing profits, and the government has a duty to guarantee that those profits increase by a satisfactory amount each year.