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Movie Studios Unveil New Anti-Piracy Lab
PaulusMagnus writes "According to the BBC Walt Disney, Sony, Paramount, Warner Bros, Universal and 20th Century Fox have formed a new organisation called the Motion Picture Laboratories. They've also given them a nice tidy sum of US$30m to play with to develop new technologies to combat piracy." From the article: "There are thousands of new concepts floating around the hi-tech community about how to develop tools to fight piracy ... Researching and developing these technologies now will help save the major studios and other motion picture producers and distributors money in the future."
Price your movie tickets within the reach of NORMAL FAMILIES!
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
...and not one penny for good movies!
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
I thought the best "technology" was to make a decent product. Then people would likely feel more inclined to actually pay for it, rather than waste their $$$ on a turd.
Jory
This just means you can kiss all your "fair use" rights goodbye. No mater what they try, it will certainly hobble my fair use rights to make copies of my disks so the kids cannot ruin the originals....
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Judging from this summer's releases, the studio's have obviously found the perfect solution, only release material nobody would want to copy. So far, it appears to be working. No wonder cinema and DVD sales have fallen off so much.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Seriously, how many pirated copies of TOP movies actually make their way into the world via cameras? I mean, most the cam caps I have seen are horrible, poor audio and poor video, nothing I want to watch, especially on an HDTV. The GOOD copies come from screener versions of the movies. Heck some even have the, if you are watching this call...
Also with new digital equipment at theaters I am starting to wonder if some people working these booths haven't found some new way to offload the movies and possibly make copies that way. It just seems that there are too many HIGH quality rips coming out to possibly be the result of geeks with cameras.
Finally, while ticket prices are arguably high, I do not believe the real problem is ticket prices so much as nothing people are wanting to see. Actually I am more annoyed with the theater to dvd turn around time. I would honestly prefer this get as short as 3 months even on GOOD movies. Once again the digital formats available make this transition a lot more feasible, and most the extras are filmed during production or shortly post-prod anyway. So the three months release time should be enough to clean them up and release great DVDs....
If only the intelligent and tech-saavy people were running these industries nowadays and not the old fossils who developed the industry into what it is...
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I've got a way for them to stop piracy. It's called not overpricing your product. I used to pirate a lot of movies, then I discovered Zip.Ca, where I could rent 15 movies a month for $25. I could rent more, but I can't watch them that fast. If they would drop the price on CDs, I wouldn't pirate those either. I think the biggest reason for pirating is the cost of getting stuff the legal way. $10+ to see a movie in theatres, $80 for a concert, $20 for a dvd or cd. If they don't lower their prices, people will continue to pirate, no matter how much they try and stop it.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The brightest minds in the world being paid to create copywrite protection is NO MATCH for the brilliant mind in some Norweigan country who is MOTIVATED to crack that protection.
It's always a losing game. Maybe think about offering better choices and making it more CONVIENIENT to get music? Oh what do I know... I'm just a consumer!
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
They can spend all they want. As long as the movie is viewable in some form, it can be captured. Even if they were to come out with the ultimate gee-whiz uncrackable encryption, all it takes is somebody to rig up their hdtv setup with a high def camcorder, and it's all over. It's not even a fair fight, because it's one that absolutely impossible for them to win... kinda like trying to keep people from snagging a picture off the 'net. No matter what you do to try and protect it, there are ways around it.
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of SMART?
Have we not seen since the days of VCR's and tapes and CD's that things are NOT changing? No matter what, there is always going to be someone trying to circumvent the technology, and someone is going to succeed. I'm compare this with terrorism:
To think that we can stop terrorism is complete hogwash. We may kill a ton of bad apples, but there's always gonna be atleast one more guy that thinks he's saving the world from the "infidels" by blowing himself up in public.
Rather than fight the technology, work with it and in a more positive direction. Don't just try to keep finding "patches". The day piracy ends will be the same day Windows FINAL, Completely Patched Edition comes out.
Now, I'm off to combat childhood obesity and global warming!
I remember when it didn't used to be a crime to watch a movie.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
A simple guide for movie executives.
1. Release films worldwide at the same time.
2. Stop policing movie theatres with security guards and confiscating mobile phones as potential "recording equipment" and creating customer antipathy.
3. Release films to DVD within a month of their theatre release.
4. Stop putting region coding and anti-copying measures on DVDs.
And finally, the most important:
5. Stop your own employees from stealing and duplicating your films and selling them to criminal organisations for mass duplication.
My thoughts exactly! Most of the movies out there I won't even bother to download simply because they aren't even worth the time getting. So if it's not worthwhile for me to get for free, then why would I pay for it.
Don't be rediculous
Sigh. Pedantry is lame, but rediculous has been a particularly virulent misspelling. ridiculous. If I can stop just one person from perpetuating this, then this post will be worth it.
Unlike this "$30 million dollars to piss in the public's faces" lab
To use some of their own lame terminology, I want the magic of the movies to continue. I want them to spend $300 million on the next hyper-realistic super-imaginary world, and I'm willing to be one of those few stupid people to see it in a theatre, or to buy it or rent it on DVD. If the investment needs protecting to be financially viable in the future, then they should go nuts. If it thwarts you and your false-moral belief that you have some sort of God given right to free Olsen twins movies, well that's too bad for you.
If it thwarts you and your false-moral belief that you have some sort of God given right to free Olsen twins movies,
I'm not sure what you're talking about. I've never downloaded a movie in my life, or even considered doing so. I'm just saying, if you're willing to pay the prices the MPAA are demanding to watch the absolute trash they've been putting out lately and get insulted with 20 minutes of commercials in the process, you are an idiot.
There's one thing that the individuals/groups who break copy protection are funded with in abundance, something that the entire music industry can never have, and that they can never beat...
Love.
(No, I'm not a Hollywood writer, I'm serious. Love for what they do, not for the Female Lead. Time and time again, we see how love outmatches the almighty dollar. Screw movies! Real life can teach us everything we need to know, like how fire hurts.)
"If Coca-Cola accidentally created 100 million cans of faulty Coke, you know for sure the entire 100 million cans would be dropped in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, without a second thought and irrespective of what that did to the year's profits. What do we do with a crappy movie? We double its advertising budget and hope for a big opening weekend. What have we done for the audience as they walk out of the cinema? We've alienated them. We've sold audiences a piece of junk; we just took twelve dollars away from a couple and we think we've done ourselves no long-term damage."--- David Puttnam, movie producer (from GQ magazine, April 1987)
Circumcision is child abuse.
These movie piracy articles always have the same themes -- stop p2p, stop camcorders in theaters. The fact that 80% of pirated movies are leaked by industry insiders (New Scientist) is NEVER mentioned. They've got the public convinced that movie piracy consists of techno-geeks sneaking hidden cameras into theaters and posting the files on p2p networks. Never mind that those camcorder versions are crap. The high quality copies everybody wants are made directly from the originals by people within the movie industry. It's the same mentality as blaming terrorists for every problem.
...it's not what's causing them to lose money. They're losing money because they're making movies no one wants to see. They don't seem to understand that word gets around about bad movies and we're not such undiscriminating cattle that we'll shell out $9.50 just for the heck of it.
I just saw AVP: Aliens vs. Predator for the first time on cable. On the one hand I'm glad I knew to wait for cable (you can usually tell if a movie is dog sh*t from the trailer), but I'm also sorry I wasted two hours last night watching it. It's bad enough that it was crap -- but it's such a blatant attempt to sucker in the fanboys that it's just sickening.
As I think about this, I think there needs to be a Godwin's Movie Law:
When a movie is compared to Aliens in an effort to sell it, it is immediately relegated to the category 'Dog Sh*t' and should not be watched on any medium, ever (even free ones).
Translation: if moviemakers can't make their Sci-Fi film stand on its own and have to try to ride the popularity of Aliens to sell it, then you already know everything you need to know about it: it's crap.
And here are some of my personal movie laws:
- Do not watch a movie based on a video game, ever. It is not worth watching. If you know someone who actually paid to watch one, slap him with a large trout for being such a sucker.
- Do not star in any of the above movies -- it will wreck your career. People sometimes confuse bad writing with bad acting. Don't walk away from such a movie, RUN.
- CGI is no substitute for talent (yes, George, I'm talking to YOU)
I'm sorry. It's puerile, I'll grant you, and the sort of humour that most of us should give up on at about the age of fourteen, but... that sentence cracked me up like nothing else.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
For most of the 30's and 40's Hollywood ground out tons of films. The actors made good enough livings to live well and party frequently but nothing like today. Same thing for directors, actors, etc. etc. An actor might be in 7 movies a year.
Movies were cheap- a buck or two by today's standards. As a result (and because there was no TV)- people saw them regularly.
Today the people who make movies are all compensated at ridiculous levels- we make 160 million dollar movies which would be $30 million dollar movies if not for these salaries. On top of that they make us sit through 20 minutes of commercials if we want a good seat for a new movie.
Increasingly- you can turn out a quality film for under a million dollars. No film to buy, computers are cheaper, a glut of people in many countries that want to be actors who -can- act, writers who can write, and who are willing to do it for living wages- not 20 million a picture.
The end is coming for hollywood- they just don't realize it yet.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
There's one big idea I'll bet is on the lab's list of things not to research: "Make movies people want to watch, and distribute them the way customers want to get them at prices customers want to pay.".
Ran into a perfect example of this concept in operation yesterday. Heard a song on a commercial that I liked. The company had a link to the site that had the song.
I would've had to download their special player and set up an account, just to download one song. Screw that, there's no way. If I could've gone somewhere and downloaded a high res copy for .50-.75 cents that would play on my Linux box, I would have done it. But all the hoops I'd have to go through, forget it.
Getting tough didn't work, getting tougher isn't going to work any better.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
well sure thats your opinion i guess. Personally, I have never seen a well done movie that cost millions of dollars. maybe they exsist, but i am in mind that there is no correlation (except maybe an inverse one) between money and greatness. thats not what its about though. what you say, "i want the magic of movies to continue", is bizzare to me. do you some how believe that people will stop using film as a medium for art because someone isnt there to pay the bills? Especially with ease of distribution using the internet, viral marketing using the internet, and things like donations and micropayments. What it will succeded in doing however is kill the "for profit" movie. the movie that is dreamed up by executives in an office. the movie written, filmed and distributed with always the aim of making money. duce bigalo 2 is not art. its a symptom of the sickness of society and the willingness for corporations to do whatever it takes to extract money from people.
People need to make movies because they love making movies. you cant buy magic, and that is the point im opposing in your post. hope you dont invalidate it because i misspelled something, but i know thats just the way some people cope with ideas they do not like.
oh and lastly, i would not have experienced the amazing film lackawana blues without the miracle of file sharing. I would be very surprised with the director, if upon hearing that his movie had changed me, remarked something to the aeffect of, 'yeah but i didnt get no bank off that freeloader so fuck em'
thats not why artists make movies
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
2. Stop policing movie theatres with security guards and confiscating mobile phones as potential "recording equipment" and creating customer antipathy.
There's a legitimate reason to require customers on the theater's private property to deposit all phones in lockers: If it's in a locker, it can't ring or "chainsaw ring" in the screening rooms.
If it can be viewed, then it can be pirated.
Words matter. When you call this stuff anti-piracy you're already surrendering the high ground to MPAA.
Please, if you're going to talk about this stuff, why not 'so-called anti-piracy', which is true, or, better yet, 'anti-fair-use'
thanks
ron