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Spielberg Bitten by DVD Encryption
diodesign writes "The Guardian newspaper has reported that 5000 DVD based preview copies of Spielberg's 'Munich' sent to reviewers in the UK can't be played due to the copy protection system involved. Human error at the laboratory where the DVDs were encrypted lead to the wrong region code being set, plus the reviewers use special players from Dolby that prevent the pirating of 'screeners'. An ironic twist in the on-going battle of DRM and media vs. consumers."
They don't have laws such as the DMCA making it a crime to sell region free players, you ca walk into Tescos (a supermarket chain) and buy a region free DVD player with your milk and other groceries.
This is more a problem of quality control at the manufacturing plant. It's like those Barbies that got shipped out with G.I. Joe voice boxes a few years ago. The people who were supposed to view these aren't even going to notice. They'll likely get new copies in a week or two and watch them without even having one thought of shaking their fists at the MPAA.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
go over to the lab and club them with his oscar.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
it was region encoded wrong, Munich is in Germany, not in the UK.
At least it wasn't Jaws.
Prove it.
"Someone pushed the wrong button," she said. "It was a case of rotten bad luck."
I sure wish I could blame pushing the wrong button on bad luck. Unfortunately, I live in the real world and have to live with the consequences of my negligence.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
The DVDs can only (supposedly) be played on "the limited edition DVD players issued last year to Bafta members. Developed by Cinea, a subsidiary of Dolby, the players permit their owners to view encrypted DVD screeners .... Munich screeners were encoded for region one, which allows them to be played in the US and Canada, rather than region two, which incorporates most of Europe".
Why on Earth they region-encoded them on top of the special encryption is a question Steve may well be asking.
The post has completely missed the significant point with this story. It's not so much that the dvds were unviewable, it's that because the reviewers couldn't see the film, the film itself is ineligible for the main official UK film awards.
Oh, well - they'll just have to download the torrent, I guess.
... is obviously not in a state of humor this morning.
Infuriate left and right
He did replace the guns with fucking walkee-talkees in the re-release of ET. Fuck him right in the ear for that. I decided to ignore his work form then on. Especially considering that today the police are MORE likely to be packing weapons then back in the 80's. Because of the terrorists, you know. Shit man...in 2005, ET would be in Abu Graihb awaiting a trial that will never come.
Blar.
If only we lived in a world where they included that information in the article, and there was some sort of reference that could allow us to read that article...
"Developed by Cinea, a subsidiary of Dolby, the players permit their owners to view encrypted DVD "screeners", but prevent the creation of pirate copies."
But the preview DVD sent to the academy's members is unplayable on machines used in the UK. As a result the majority of Bafta's 5,000 voters will not have seen the film, due to be released in Britain on January 27, and can hardly be expected to recommend it for acclaim.
As has been known for years, academy members simply don't watch many of the movies they select. It's a huge farce. I'll bet that even though they didn't get the movie within a reasonable time, many vote for it anyway.
The Academy Awards are a grandiose pat on the back, given by the industry to itself. Why we care, I'm not sure.
This has almost nothing to do with the DRM battle between media and consumers. These people aren't consumers. These are screener copies used in the awards process. I have absolutely no problem with whatever kinds of DRM they want to use on screener copies, as these have already been found to be a genuine source of piracy. This is EXACTLY the kind of target that the media companies should pursue. The only problem is that they goofed on their first attempt at using some of their new strategies. Other than that, nothing to see here.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
I never really understood the whole region-lock thing anyway. It just seems to be 100% greed. I can understand them using CSS to encrypt the DVDs to prevent copying since that directly eats into their profits, but why should they care where you watch the DVD? If I want to buy anime directly from Japan why should I need a region-free DVD player to view it? Same goes for people in Europe buying the "American" version of a movie. Has region-locking ever been held up in court in the USA anyway? What law would they use to support it? It's not copy protection so the DMCA doesn't apply.
Who cares if the people making the nominations don't get to see the movie, since when are these awards handed out for the content anyway? The movie will get nominated anyway because of the buzz, and Spielberg.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
The deadline is comming up very soon for the reviewers. Tomorrow? Does this mean that if Munich is nominated, it's a scam, since no-one was able to watch it!?!
\couldn't get me to watch that piece of crap if you paid me.
\\slashdot needs for fark "slashies"
Cam = As it sounds - a handy-cam job by someone who manages to sneak a video camera into the theatre
TS (Telesync) = Shot from the projection booth with a decent camera taking the audio feed straight from the source.
VHS Screener = VHS Quality awards screener, usually with watermarking, B&W scenes or missing audio, getting less and less common these days
TC (Telecine) = Produced by digitally scanning a physical film print, again with an audio feed straight from the souce.
DVD Screener = DVD Quality awards screener. Same content as VHS screeners but much better quality
DVD Rip = Usually ripped from retail DVDs, sometimes from pre-release disks
DVD-R = Often an untouched copy of the retail DVD, sometimes they will have extra features removed to get the size down enough for a DVD5
HDTV = Ripped from a 720p or 1080i/p HDTV feed, usually pure TS (Transport Stream) format which can either be played back directly or encoded by the user as they see fit.
I never really understood the whole region-lock thing anyway. It just seems to be 100% greed.
It is 100% greed. DVD could be more expensive in Europe than in the US, even with the postage and custom (saying could, because it depends on the country). MPAA members want to be able to sell the same product for different prices depending on region. So, for a western European, buying from the US might be cheaper than buying locally. For a northern American, it could be cheaper to buy from Asia than to buy locally. They really want the public to pay as much as possible for a given product, and not the world average.
Also, they usually get local distributors to sell their DVDs. These would go away, they fear, if everybody buys DVDs from another country.
To be honest, I don't think they should fear the last point. Most people in Norway would prefer to have DVDs with Norwegian subtitles, so they probably wouldn't order from the US anyways (since those DVDs aren't subtitled in Norwegian).
Je ne parle pas francais.
why are they even bothering to region code them?
Because they werent suppose to!The S-View system requires a fully authored standard DVD-Video project as input, with only a few restrictions:
1. Leave 200 MB free space on the disc (on Layer 0 of a dual layer title).
2. Do not enable CSS.
3. Do not set Region code.
4. Do not set parental levels.
5. Author the main feature as one continuous VTS, in MPEG 2.
6. Do not author angles.
7. Add a "Cinea Audio Track" as the last audio track for the title. "Cinea Audio Track" is a placeholder for watermarking data that the Cinea system generates. The content of this track is not important (the facility can use a track supplied by Cinea, or can generate their own). We can provide a Dolby Digital 128 kHz file (containing an audio test tone) 120 minutes in length, which is to be authored as the last audio under the entire feature.
http://www.cinea.com/fews.html
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I always thought that Regional distinctions were wrong, and illegitimate. Even if you want to "protect your IP" and prevent people from copying your product, there is no legitimate reason to prevent someone from buying something in one country and viewing it in another. People can be called upon to move because of work or family. They can bring a present to a family member abroad... maybe because things are cheaper at home. There are so many legitimate reasons for the movies to have to be played in other markets than their destination markets that that kind of protection should plainly be illegal. On the other hand, here we have a beautiful example of karmic retribution. Maybe there is intelligent design after all.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
The reason is pretty simple, though equally it's pretty rubbish.
Movie studios sell the distribution rights for a film to multiple companies, including CD soundtrack producers, toy companies, and DVD distributors, giving each one limited rights in what they can do, including what parts of the world they can sell the finished product.
The DVD distribution company then decides on things like the price they'll sell it to wholesalers at, what extras to include, the packaging design, does all the retail hand-holding, local marketing (if it's a major film the studio will still play a part in all this), and is responsible for the DVD manufacture and shipping out to the wholesalers.
The theory goes that if there wasn't region encoding, the distribution companies wouldn't be willing to pay as much for their monopoly rights to distribute a film in a region, as everyone would buy the version with the extras and packaging they wanted at the cheapest price they could find wherever it came from in the world, rather than pay full retail price in their local country for the version their distributor has decided to produce.
If they're using specially encrypted DVDs meant to only be played back on specially-made DVD players, why are they even bothering to region code them? This just reeks of stupidity...
Hi, I see you're new to the film industry...
It's amazing how often the popular press gets confused by the technical details.
And it's amazing how often Slashdot and its elitist readers do an even worse job. For example, in this case:
1) The bozo who submitted the article was the one who got the technical details confused. If you RTFA, they actually get it correct.
2) The Slashdot editors, not caring about accuracy, posted a summary which they saw as a button pusher and traffic gem. $$ trumps facts
3) You, the typical Slashdot reader, didn't read the RTFA, and posted a general rant about stupidity and included the mandatory karma whoring Wikipedia link
4) The mods, following the chain, gave your nice little culmination of ignorance a Score:5, Insightful
So to summarize, the press got the story and technology straight. It wasn't until it made it to Slashdot that the story was misunderstood and politicised at every level.
Interesting, ain't it?
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
The submitter and I have very different criteria for "ironic twist". A Cask of Amontillado this is not. Hell, it isn't even up to M. Night Shyamalan standards.
Seriously, every time I reread the submission I find something else wrong. This has nothing to do with encryption, consumers, or copy protection. Region codes serve only one "useful" purpose: preventing the import/export of legit discs. The lab mistakenly put in a "1" instead of a "2", so the disc wouldn't play. This is a non-event. This is not a stunning blow against the media pigopolists. No points were made. No wars were won. No minds were blown.
Rename the headline to "Lab fucks up; switches 2s with 1s. Almost nobody affected" or I will start submitting a new article for every DVD-R I coaster.
Million Dollar Baby didn't get a single one, even though it won tons of Acadamy Awards. Why? The precisely stated reason was that the distributor chose to not send Screener copies to the Bafta members and therefore it wasn't seen by them- not seen equates to NO nominations at least with the UK version of the Acadamy Awards.
It's going to hurt Spielberg very little in the long run, but it's still very annoying to him all the same- and it's over paranoia about "piracy"...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
That, my friends, is quality ownage.
> The question still stands though, what is the basis for a law making region-free players
> (somewhat) illegal?
There doesn't have to be a logical reason for making something illegal. Alcohol was legal, then illegal, then legal. Most drugs are now illegal. It's illegal for Tescos (a UK supermarket) to buy Levi's jeans abroad (more cheaply than can be sourcd here) and sell them in the UK (they lost a big court case over that - it was treated as if they'd sold counterfeit clothing). As long as you're in a position of power you can make the laws.
As someone once said - "Politics* is the shadow cast on society by big business"
*(and therefore law, a consequence of politics/policy)
IANAL...
The question still stands though, what is the basis for a law making region-free players (somewhat) illegal? A company choosing to use regions for business purposes is a far cry from a legitimate federal law.
The algorithms for doing pretty much anything with DVD's (encoding, decoding, copy protecting, manufacturing, etc.) are patented. Because they're patented, you can't make a legal DVD player without permission from the inventors. You also can't say your machine plays DVD's because you don't have a trademark license.
When you go to the inventors for a license, one of the things you sign off on in the contract is (presumably) that you will lock your player so it only plays discs for the appropriate region.
My guesses as to why region-free players are so common:
1. It's cheaper for the company to manufacture generic players that have the region code set in firmware.
2. The companies manufacturing the players do business in countries that could care less about U.S. IP laws.