Slashdot Mirror
Audio Watermarks Could Pinpoint Film Pirates By Seat
Slatterz points out a brief mention at PC Authority of a story at Torrent freak about using watermarking embedded in movies' soundtracks to reveal the exact location of camera-wielding bootleggers in a theater; the inventors (here's an abstract of their paper) claim it's accurate to within 44 centimeters.
And once it's publicized, is it really all that hard to throw a couple of wireless microphones out there under others' seats to "mix things up?" It would work if no one knew about it, but once it's out...
Pretty much a moot idea.
For this to be useful, the theatre would have to identify who's in which seat, which means
a. showing ID when you buy tickets (and retaining the seating data for weeks or months)
b. assigned seating.
It's almost as if they don't want people to go to the movie theatre any more.
If you don't know who sat in which seat on what showing on what date, knowing which seat a video was shot from isn't going to help you.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I've always wondered why the movie studios care about catching these people. These bootlegs are the worst quality you can find and anyone who would knowingly buy them would never be a customer anyway.
Am I going to get treated like I do by the airlines every time I want to watch a movie?
In order for this to track us at all, we'd need an ID to buy a ticket, need to show ID to get into the theater, have assigned seats, and they would have to change the audio slightly on every showing.
Maybe I'll just stay home and download them instead...
Check out my sysadmin blog!
If you know what seat they are in days after they filmed it and released it, what good does it really do you? Ive never seen a theater with assigned seating before.
This might be useful for tracking down unauthorized recordings obtained during pre-release screenings.
Even if they did they so what? They will still not know in which cinema or exactly when the film was recorded. I fail to see how knowing where the pirate sat will help. In fact if they look at the distortion of the image they can presumably already figure out the angle.
Infrared photograph of everyone in the theatre. Mark my words, this is coming. For "security" reasons, to fight terrorism, etc
That would be counter-productive and would drive away customers from an already troubled industry.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
A lot of people are pointing out some of the obvious technical flaws here: microphone placement, ID/seat assignments, poor quality CAMs suck, etc. etc.
The even more significant issue would be that such a scheme would have serious widespread implementation to be relevant. Which is never, ever going to happen. Cinema's are franchises, it's not like a software update that can be installed everywhere "instantly" fast (within a week for frequently updated systems, years for others...). This system would be difficult to set up effectively in one cinema, let alone a chain of them, let alone an entire city with competing networks, let alone many cities, let alone a whole nation, let alone bigger than that...etc.
This is like the "news" about video watermarks supposedly to be embedded in the films so that the specific theatre/time could be traced. This is like the IR projected from the screen that will make your camera unable to record properly.
None of this could conceivably ever, ever make it past a few experimental test runs in a few random places.
So why is this news? More WAR-ON-DRUGS style propaganda. That is to say disinformation... or more accurately: Utter B.S. that relies entirely on widespread ignorance and a subservient media to not be laughed out of the room. This is like the stories about people injecting Opium (sounds almost plausible except that Opium is a solid) and LSD making people think they can fly off buildings, Reefer Madness etc.
As much as I enjoy wild nerdy speculation about wireless microphones and other espionage imaginings (for financially irrelevant CAMs no less) we should call it what it is: sheer nonsense.
My next question is this: I assume that this is a real company making this "technology" that is important only for its semi-believable bluster. So how do we get in on such a gravy train? I want to write Science Fiction propaganda news articles too!
Stupidity is its own reward.
That would be counter-productive and would drive away customers from an already troubled industry.
That argument never stopped RIAA and MPAA before.
The real issue (apart from the problems in actually tracking all users and treating them like criminals) is whether there might not be more constructive ways for the movie industry to spend their money?
One brilliant idea might be to give scriptwriters the money to write better scripts that are actually worth the cost of the ticket.
Or maybe theater owners try to IMPROVE the theater going experience. There are many things to complain about in a regular trip to the movies. Most are age old complaints like inconsiderate fellow moviegoers that like chatting. Others are newer like getting frisked when going to an early screening of a movie.
Treat customers like criminals and they will behave that way.
Make going to a movie theater worth the price of admission. Make it as easy as possible to go and as cheap as possible while keeping the quality of the experience as high as possible.
There will be some trade-offs, but such is life.
Just don't model the experience on the airlines models. Remember that people are almost at a point where they would rather swim across the Atlantic than use the bloody airlines.
Dude, those are leaked DVD screeners. It's pretty easy to get free movies if you're involved in the periphery of the industry. I have like 50 legitimate DVD screeners right next to me.
You raise a valid point there. I also went through that progression: Movie watching (DVD/Theaters) -> Pirate Movies -> Almost no movies
I also know a lot of people who pretty much stopped watching movies these days.
It is really sad. Between all the DRM bullshit (including those warning screens that you "can't" skip), and the overall quality of movies (or lack of), it is simply not worth anymore. I mean, what are the odds a random movie will be good ? 0.1% ?
morcego
Why I don't watch cam rips. It gives me headaches. Waste of time anyway. For a good movie it's worth watching in theater just for the awesome sound system and giant screen. But then again, MPAA isn't interested in making money only from "good" movies. They want people to pay for shit too.
If this isnt an example of total insanity on behalf of intellectual property interests, I don't know what is. Going this far to catch cammers? im thinking straight jackets and ambulances for all of IP business interests that have completely lost track of all reality.
Even with assigned seating, is there some difference in the identification code that not only shows what theatre the movie is tagged to, but also the time of the showing/recording?
What are they going to do, pull every record for a month and question those who sat around 5-A?