Slashdot Mirror
Disney Encrypting Screener DVDs to Prevent Piracy
Sascha J. writes "Disney is continuing their war against piracy. To their Oscar reviewers they now send out special encrypted DVDs, which can be played only on a DVD player of the "Cinea" series. From the article: "The DVD players are encoded with recipients' names, and screeners sent to those people are specifically encrypted so they can be seen only on those particular DVD players." Yet, Disney is alone on this. Sony and Universal Pictures said they won't follow that step."
Just put a big, slightly visible watermark across the entire screen of the name of the guy you sent the DVD to. Like, just a 4% opaque "EBERT AND ROPER" diaganal across the screen. Then when it's turned to video, it'll either have to be blurred out, and thur ruin the film, or you've caught the guy whol let it out of his hands... How hard is it people!?
I would believe they would make more profit if they used the money they use for developing copy protection for actually creating better content. These protections never work anyway..
This is really funny. Disney is basically saying that the academy is the biggest problem in the whole movie copying/pirating thing. Can this be seen as anything but a cheap shot at the Academy? Sure they're thwarting piracy. How easy is it to get your hands on one of these bad boys to begin with? If I put my mind to it I think I could figure out who one person is who would actually get one of these DVDs and that's because my brother taught the guy golf lessons a few years back. (I got to see Titanic on VHS when it was still in the theaters and I'm glad I didn't have to pay to see that steaming pile.) The odds of actually knowing who would have one of these and actually be able to get your hands on it is just about impossible. All I can figure is that there is either A. an extremely unlikely chance of stealing a delivery of a DVD and pirating it, or B. the people that are intended to receive them are considered by Disney to be entirely untrustworthy. Disney has to send them or risk not getting any awards, so instead they blow a load of money to make themselves look like a bunch of paranoid idiots. I think I'll go out on a limb and say that Disney isn't going to earn any more awards for future movies. I guess on the bright side Disney isn't really trying to win any awards for the movies they put out lately.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
Dude, they arn't talking about regular DVDs. They are talking about 'Screeners' These are DVDs of the movies that are nomiated for an Oscar. The members of the acadamy then watch them and vote. Most of the movies have NOT been released on DVD yet.
The trouble they have with these is that people leak them. When their movie is released on the internet 2 months before the DVD is available to buy it can really hurt them. So they have been playing with stuff like digital watermards and stuff JUST for the screeners.
Now I'm with most slashdotters when it comes to fair-use. I don't want my damn DVDs encrypted or copy protected. Not because I want to steal them but because I may want to back them up or put them on my computer. Anyway I'm with the studio's when it comes to the screeners. They have sent pre-release versions of thier product to a limited set of reviewers and they don't deserve to have their movies released prematurely onto the internets.
You state that losing the menus is the most important failing of recoridng from the output. While I admit that it may be considered a failing for some personally I quite like it when the menus are stipped off. It makes a DVD simplicity itself. You put the disk in teh drive... that's it. The film just plays. It's really quite relaxing in fact.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
That's true, but it may also put the dampener on the groups if the individuals recieving the screeners are more reluctant to supply them/rips in case they do get fingered.
If a rip was easily tracable back to me if the group stuffed up stripping out the watermark (or just lied about intending to do it), I'd think long and hard about taking the risk.
It's official. Most of you are morons.