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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."
They actually think they can stop piracy
Technoli
I don't know... I think "One Night in Mary Kate and Ashley" would probably be the #1 pirated movie ever.
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. "
All the while, DVD Jon sits in his laboratory funded only with chips and soda. Score: DVD Jon: 2 MPAA: 0
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."
$8 discount, $15 regular showing. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about a comparison between different cultures. I'm talking about basic pricing philosophy. Back when I was growing up, we had a third-run theater that continually waited until the end of the blockbuster weekends before they'd get copies of movies. They'd charge $2.50/ticket- and kept doing that well into the 1990s. $10 for a family of 4 to see some third-run film; and you can bet we didn't have people with camcorders sneaking in. (Last I heard, they went up to $3.50 but started throwing in the popcorn for free). Not to mention the old drive-ins that would charge by the carload instead of individually.
The point is that the MPAA wants to make all of their investment and profits up front- where if they'd go for volume pricing instead, and roll prices back a few years, they'd have NO problem with piracy at all.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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.
"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.
why is it again that you're expecting to pay decades-old admission prices?
Because they're recycling the same decades-old plots and story lines.
You have actually hit on one of the open secrets of technology, porn is A. an early adopter and B. a driving force behind large amounts of technology and marketing strategems. I often baffle my friends when I tell them that, besides the obvious reasons, when I go to a gentlemans club or adult boutique (yes yes I am a dirty old man, I admit it) its to see what new tech there is or get ideas for various marketing plans I am involved in. For the doubters I invite them along on my next trip and point out certain things then tell them to watch for it over the next 6 to 12 months. They are amazed when those ideas filter to the mainstream.
If Hollywood would adopt some of the business model of the porn industry they would see a marked improvement in profits. And its not like the quality of acting or writing is all that high above porn anyway...
Honor is like virtue, if you must tell people that you have it then chances are you don't.
I slept with Mary Kate and Ashley before they were famous.