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DRM Flub Prevented 3D Showings of Avatar In Germany
Fraggy_the_undead writes "According to German IT news site heise.de, yesterday several 3D showings of Avatar couldn't take place (German; Google translation to English), because the movies were DRM protected such that there had to be a key per copy of the film, per film projector, and per movie server in the theater. The key supplier, by the name Deluxe, was apparently unable to provide a sufficient number of valid keys in time. Moviegoers were offered to get a refund or view an analogue 2D showing instead."
Just keep trying to micromanage everything, you DRM-loving assholes. Best-laid plans of mice and men ...
Maybe now some of the rank & file will begin to understand the evils of pervasive DRM, even if only in Germany.
Ha-ha! - Nelson Muntz
It's a good thing that they allow us to manage our rights like this.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
In Germany, DRM does you!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Somehow, I believe the studio will twist this story to sound more like "See! Piracy is causing us to lose money!"
This despite them putting in the DRM, and despite them generating $10B revenue in 2009.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
Once again the pirates solve a problem that shouldn't be there in the first place: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=avatar+keygen
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
I'm sure someone planned to bring in a cellphone with a 3D camera and release a barely-watchable 30-second clip of some of the less important dialogue.
DRM prevents piracy again! Yes!!!! Huzzah for DRM!
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Well, at least the movie remained safe from those evil pirates!
James Cameron was right when he said Avatar is the FUTURE of movies to come: DRM'd to the crippling point.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
With organization like that it's no wonder they lost.
I don't want to be the one modded to hell and back for saying it, but isn't this an issue with the company not purchasing the proper licenses in the appropriate amount of time rather than an issue with DRM?
I understand this wouldn't exist if there were no DRM, but then the theater would still not have paid for the rights to show the movie. I'm just unclear on how that makes this a noteworthy "DRM is bad" case.
Do not see this movie.
love is just extroverted narcissism
All these content companies clinging so tightly to their precious DRM. They think that they're protecting their income stream, but I think they're really just pissing it away.
Eventually people are going to get fed up with having to navigate the endless tangles of DRM, and will decide it's just not worth the hassle just to see the latest crappy movie or hear the latest crappy over-compressed music album.
I'm already there. I don't bother with any media that requires me to fuss with DRM just to view/listen to it, or to exercise my fair use rights (backup copies, etc). If that means I have to completely stop buying movies/music/software/ebooks/etc, then I'm perfectly fine with that. I won't miss it. There's enough free stuff out there that's just as good, if not better.
I accidentally the DRM keys for the movie... is this bad?
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
An isolated failure with no particularly big consequences. The story tries to make DRM look bad, but really, is this the first time a critical demo went bad at an embarrassing moment?
Hate on DRM all you want for all the evils it might contain. I do. But this is a nothing story.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
We don't have boats and guns you insensitive clod!
How is Avvatar formed?
You must first bend air. Then you must buy "Air Bender" sneakers with a #22 on them.
This should been a welcomed effect of DRM. Everyone is basically saying "pretty pictures, but the story sucks", and at almost 3 hours long I'd hate to be stuck in the cinema wading through that.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
non 3d Digital movies have the same DRM and with out the drm also some needed to do is have make a copy of that 150gb HDD to have a very High PQ copy of the movie.
Diese DRM nicht for the gefingerpoken
Insert sufficiently witty sig here.
hole.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
DRM 'manages' the restrictions when playing a recording - in fact DRM often violates the rights of a consumer (e.g. when preventing making backup copies while the legal system grants consumers the right to make a backup copy).
Moviegoers were offered to get a refund or view an analogue 2D showing instead.
And only because it would be illegal if they didn't offer the customer any form of compensation. It's not as if they care enough about their business to make sure things are done right.
When you go to the cinema, this is exactly the sort of crap you are supporting.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Just pay. We don't give a damn if you watch it.
And that would be the following commentary: http://www.tk421.net/gallery/sounds/haha.wav
As usual, license management screws up. Of the many things that can go wrong, it's licensing is necessarily the most likely. It's the only part of the system that assures failure at the slightest hint of an irregularity BY DESIGN. At it's best, it's more brittle than bad code that never checks for errors.
Why the hell does the parent deserve a troll mod?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It says the format is jpeg2000? that can't be correct?
While watching the latest Batman movie the screen went dark and stayed that way for about 20 minutes. Speaking to the attendants afterward, they said their projectors had lost the internet link which authorized the movies to be shown. All projectors in the cineplex went down since all were digital (theatre was in Riverside, CA).
Both work.
DRM unnecessarily increases complexity.
Complexity increases unnecessary points of failure.
DRM is unnecessary and increases cost of failure.
I thought about that, but I wanted to make my meaning clear.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
He makes a good point. QUICK, mod him down so he can become more powerful. (lol)
I saw in in full 3D and THX glory yesterday.
But instead, kumbaya-singing treehugger overkill in smurf land prevented me from enjoying what was otherwise an extremely impressive piece of film.
Q: How do you know that there is waayyyy too much of something in a movie?
A: If even the main character in the freakin movie complains about it about a quarter in, but it doesn’t stop anyway, until the end.
One definitely sees that it’s the late realization of the dream of a 13 year old Cameron (which it is, according to Sigourney Weaver). In a way it’s like Star Wars Episode I. With parts of the most bombastic Star Wars in-between.
But I’d say the FX/VR is a whole new league. (Maybe because of the 3D and actors acting an an augmented reality suit.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
As an IT admin in a medium sized movie theater chain, I can assure you, this happens ALL THE TIME. We face DRM key problems on a weekly basis. They won't issue keys very far ahead of time, especially for a massive release like Avatar.
And sometimes, often in fact, the keys don't work. Sometimes its just a simple matter of training the employee how to transfer it to the projector. Sometimes the key is just wrong. Sometimes it works for 2d, but not 3d. Sometimes they issue a key, but it doesn't last for the entire run of the movie, so suddenly from one showing to the next, the projector just stops playing the movie.
I can't even count the number of times we've had auditoriums full of people, and are waiting for an email to show up in the next ten minutes, or we get to tell 300 extremely angry people to go home.
The distribution process works for the most part, but has *zero* contingencies. If the network to a theater is not working tonight between 6pm and Midnight, they will not be showing Avatar on a digital projector. But hey, everyone knows, the internet would never just stop working for a few hours, right? Tech support will answer, and won't put you on hold for 45 minutes, right? Not like there could be 4,000 other locations facing key problems simultaneously?
Many posters do not seem to understand that theatrical exhibition rights are defined by contract and do not have fair use or other user friendly rights that one should expect in a consumer transaction. This is first run content from a very high quality digital master. You bet your ass it's locked up, and tight. Deluxe is one of several companies that deliver thousands of keys a week. Most delivery problems are PEBKAC, including not checking your stuff and alerting the key provider to problems with reasonable lead time.
Avatar? Huh?!? Who the hell wants to see some 2 hour flick based on a forum user pic? Only other idea as bad was that Costner flop based on a metallic athletic supporter, Brass Jock or something like that it was named.
The only people that don't know that are the movie studios apparently.
It seems all my local theaters only offer 3-D viewings at the jacked-up price (for glasses).
While I know that 3-D adds to the experience, for some movies, I'm getting tired of having to pay an extra $4 for the glasses *each time* - then being asked to "recycle" them afterward. Let me pay a slightly higher price - once - for, possibly nicer, glasses and reuse them. In addition, if the movie is only offered in 3-D, the glasses should be free. </rant>
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
There's no need to fetishize archaic technology.
Your industry seems to have shifted a lot of work to Canada. I'm guessing they didn't do that just to meet the friendly Canadians. I think they did that to take advantage of cheaper labor at all levels of production and editing. It wouldn't surprise me if this includes information technology support.
Digital Citizen
That sounds overbroad and anti-social to me. Let me explain by way of a few hypothetical scenarios:
All of these scenarios keep communities thriving and involve interaction among fellows. All of these scenarios are fair and just, after all you got paid for your work. But DRM tries to stop all of these scenarios from occurring. This notion of stopping people from experiencing the work because they didn't pay is abhorrent to civil society.
Digital Citizen
And for all of this DRM, someone still probably snuck in with a video camera and recorded that.
...there are sheeple out there that still think the likes of the RIAA actually care about whether or not you get to enjoy your content whether you purchase it or not...or even how many times you purchase it.
It's particularly ironic when one feels schadenfreude over yet another DRM disaster in the country that came up with the word.
Did I buy enough Microsoft Client Access Licenses? Did I buy enough Oracle licenses for my upgraded machine with more cores? Did I buy the correct licenses for commercial use of this software? Is this DVD for a zone my player isn't licensed for?
Slight correction: The Oracle RDBMS has never had software enforcement of licenses. The free for development version is the exact same bits as the production version and there's no license codes to enter or activation required. You're legally required to purchase licenses for production deployments (unless you use the limited free Oracle XE version) but there's no DRM that would ever prevent you from starting your database and accessing your data.
Also, Oracle secure content-management products use certificates generated or provided by a customer, not by Oracle or some other mandatory outside authority.
Ummm... in English, please?
I see this happen all the time, just not usually with something as high profile as a new movie release.
Usually its some CAD/CAM or engineering package secured by some vendor customized variation on FlexLM. Every time they buy a new seat, rev the version, or a product comes up for renewal, we can expect an extended service outage while the vendor tries to issue a valid set of keys. More often than not, the first set they issue doesn't work, the support group isn't authorized to issue keys, and the group/individual that can issue keys doesn't work on days that end in Y, or only during banking hours in india.
Which is why watermarking is inherently a better solution. Watermarking enables rights owners to identify pirates after the fact instead of restricting the rights of all users by default. It's reactive instead of paranoid. If an insider duplicates a distribution it WILL be tracked back to the theater and probably the guilty party, if sufficient records are kept.
The usual argument I hear against watermarking is that it damages the content. For one, I think the technologies are getting better. Second, is that really such a terrible price to pay to avoid restrictive and authoritarian DRM technologies? Let's face it, the concept of IP is not going to go away, barring some kind of worldwide economic revolution. If we can give companies ways of tracking and enforcing their intellectual rights WITHOUT trying to restrict the use of the media, surely that's the best possible solution.
Any movie seen on a digital projector nowadays has DRM, it's just the way it is. Also, for those of you arguing that this would not happen with film, it still could of happened. Usually when these big money making movies come out, they deliver the film only hours before the first showing. So if the delivery driver got stuck in traffic, it wouldn't have played. Even if they would have received the film, it wouldn't guarantee that it would have been working properly. The film could of had all sorts of discolorations or some moron could have sent 2 of the same real. Big blockbusters on film also come with their own DRM called a padlock on the can. The studio will call you hours before and give you the combination to open it just in time to play it. If anything, the digital DRM allows for more time to make sure it can run correctly on the first show. They can send you the hard drive with the movie a week in advance and just make the key not active untill whatever time they want. What they should do though is make the keys active abit before the first showing so that you don't get caught with your pants down if the key doesn't work.
We had a major upgrade to our cinema a few years ago, The Arts Council paid $10m for a building upgrade, two new cinemas and some spankingly nice removable hard drive driven HD projectors.
Turns out the projectors need a telephone connection to some place in London to get permission to screen films from the hard drives.
We used to have staff screenings so that we would know about the films on show in the cinema - not any more. We can only project when Central Control says we can.
Want to prepare your own hard disk for use in the projector, $500 a minute please for Central Control to encrypt it for use with *YOUR* projector.
The do have DVI inputs and analogue so it's not quite as bad as it could be.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I can't help but smile when I see stories like these. It just reinforces the idea that DRM is bad for everyone.
maybe next time i'll read the comment before posting a scathing reply ;)
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