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."
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.
(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.
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...
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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!
"...doing light-saber battles..."
"I see your Schwartz is as big as mine..."
Which brings up the fact that there are new laws in CA and I guess other states/countries or whatever that explictly say somthing to the affect that "Its against the law to break the copyright law with a camcorder in a movie theater" or the equivalent in legal speak. I'm sure I'm with most /.ers being against very silly specific laws like this, especially when there are broader laws that already exist and cover the crime.
I also think that if I were the MPAA I would go after the people distributing the copies in black market vs trying to get them in the theater, since a) many screeners and whatnot are leaked from studios anyway and do not use camcorders, and b) that is where the $$$ is and c) there are more people selling copies vs recording copies and when you put heat on the sellers then they wont sell and then people wont record.
Plus, it is an easier conviction with existing laws to go after the sellers when they have X numbers of blatently illegal copies of a movie vs. the guy that might be filming the movie for his dying daughter that cannot get out of the house and really would love to see the 3rd Harry Potter movie before she dies.
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
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.