Movie Piracy Blackmail Plot Fails In India, Six Arrested (torrentfreak.com)

An anonymous reader quote's TorrentFreak's report about "a plot against Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, a record-breaking movie taking India by storm." Someone posing as a "film anti-piracy activist" told the company that a pirated copy of the movie had been obtained and if a ransom wasn't paid, a leak onto the Internet would be inevitable... Following the call Arka Mediaworks immediately involved the police, who advised the company to engage the 'kidnappers' in dialog to obtain proof that they had the movie in question. That was delivered in the form of a high-definition sample of the movie, a move that was to mark the beginning of the end for those attempting to extort Arka Mediaworks. It's unclear whether those who sent the sample were aware, but the movie was forensically or otherwise marked, something which allowed police and investigators to track the copy back to a specific theater... shortly after the owner of the theater was arrested by police. This was followed by the arrest of the person who allegedly called Arka Mediaworks with the ransom demand. From there, police were led to other co-conspirators. In total, six arrests were made, with two of the men already known to police.
TorrentFreak calls the ransoming of movies "a worrying trend in 2017" that's "damaging the image of piracy further, if that was even possible."

Comments

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys were messing things up for honorable, old fashioned media pirates.

They did the needful for the film maker

[Anonymous Coward]

But still have not fixed my microsoft pc they called about.
Fix my pc, dears!

Re:They did the needful for the film maker

[Anonymous Coward]

It amuses me whenever you introverted sex-starved Slashdot nerds make a racist stereotypical joke against Indians as call center goofs when the reality is that the average Indian call center employee is way more extroverted than you and gets laid a *lot*.

Right now when you pimpled Slashdot nerds are posting your posts alone from your basement, the very Indian call center employees you are making fun of are happily fucking away their latest hot girlfriends.
American nerds, know this that Indian cities are a hot pot of endless sex for the youth these days. They care two hoots about what you Moorlocks from the other end of the planet think of them. They are busy fucking!

Re:They did the needful for the film maker

[Anonymous Coward]

Goodness Pajeet, do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

Re: They did the needful for the film maker

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been to India. It's fucking disgusting. You shit and piss openly in the streets, even in your "advanced" metropolitan areas.

And sex? 62% of Indians have a sexually transmitted disease... Gross!

Heh.

[Black Parrot]

Pirates giving piracy a bad name.

"worrying ... damaging the image of piracy"

[ScentCone]

Hilarious. An entity built around ripping off other people's work is worried that someone ripping off someone else's work might make ripping off people's work look bad.

Re:"worrying ... damaging the image of piracy"

[Anonymous Coward]

Movie pirates are strange, I can't think of when the last movie came out that I would even accept if given to me for free. They're basically stealing someones trash.

Re:"worrying ... damaging the image of piracy"

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't think of when the last movie came out that I would even accept if given to me for free.

I feel the same way about most films. It seems like better than 90% of them are escapist drivel and nonsense. Every once and a while something decent will emerge, but that too is happening less and less often these days. We live in consequential times with an escalating cycle of war, disease, inequality and environmental destruction. If we're not careful, the species will soon be extinct. Stephen Hawking gives us 100 years to figure it out or perish. Honestly, I don't think we have even that much time left. In light of these pervasive problems, spending even an hour or two on low quality escapist fantasy feels increasingly out of step with reality. Am I the only one who feels this way?

Re:"worrying ... damaging the image of piracy"

[Kjella]

Movie pirates are strange, I can't think of when the last movie came out that I would even accept if given to me for free. They're basically stealing someones trash.

So you're calling most people's taste trash because it doesn't align with yours, classy. I like my sci-fi/fantasy drivel, I just don't pretend that the Force or warp drives is objectively better than romantic comedies, Bond movies or whatever. The worst kind... well, okay not really the worst kind of people I get are wine-sipping intellectuals that have decided that their obscure art movies is the pinnacle of culture and everyone else is simply not sophisticated enough to appreciate it. No, it's just your fucking weird niche taste and you're not better than any of the rest of us.

Re:"worrying ... damaging the image of piracy"

[BarbaraHudson]

Wait a year or two and most of them come on TV. The pros include frequent bathroom and snack breaks, no noisy people with their phones, no being ripped off at the concession stands, the best seats in the house, pets allowed, no having to find a babysitter, no sticky floors from spilled pop, you control the volume, and if half-way through you get bored, you won't be thinking about the money you wasted watching a turkey - just change the channel or go walk the dog or something because the only sunk cost you have invested in the movie is your time.

Re:"worrying ... damaging the image of piracy"

[drinkypoo]

Just the fuel to and from the theater costs five to ten bucks. Let's say you smuggle in snacks, but you bought them somewhere else. There's another five to ten bucks. Even if you are a total cheapskate bastard like me you're already hilariously close to the cost of just buying the damned movie when it hits disc, and you're at least at if not beyond the cost of streaming it even if you have to pay-per-view on Amazon or something. Maybe this is the comparison to DVD and not Blu-Ray, but I'll go ahead and take the resolution hit to gain all of the benefits you mentioned.

Re:"worrying ... damaging the image of piracy"

[BarbaraHudson]

I figure that with the ole'Mark 1 Eyeball, 1080p or 1080i is more than enough. Heck, the way the cataracts and retinas are going lately, it's overkill on a 50" screen from 6 feet away. I guess it gets easier to be cheap as you get older. Blu-ray and 4k would be a total waste :-)

Re:"worrying ... damaging the image of piracy"

[nasch]

Not to nit pick, but at $3 a gallon, if you get 20 mpg the theater would have to be over 16 miles away for gas to cost $5. If I lived that far from the closest theater I don't think the cost of popcorn is what would keep me away.

Re:"worrying ... damaging the image of piracy"

[drinkypoo]

Not to nit pick, but at $3 a gallon, if you get 20 mpg the theater would have to be over 16 miles away for gas to cost $5.

It is.

If I lived that far from the closest theater I don't think the cost of popcorn is what would keep me away.

What? You wouldn't drive for 20 minutes to go to a movie? In most places, traffic will bump any trip up to at least 20 minutes.

Re:"worrying ... damaging the image of piracy"

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's say you smuggle in snacks, but you bought them somewhere else. There's another five to ten bucks.

is it not possible to go ninety minutes without stuffing junk food into your word hole?

Re:"worrying ... damaging the image of piracy"

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's just your fucking weird niche taste and you're not better than any of the rest of us.

Careful, now. Your prejudice and arrogance are both showing. Neither is doing you any good.

Re:"worrying ... damaging the image of piracy"

[gsslay]

In what way "strange"?

Someone's trash is worth precisely what others are willing to pay for it. Fortunately, for them, the movie industry is not reliant on your valuation and millions of others will pay for it. So their "trash" is worth billions. That sounds like something worth stealing, which is immoral but not at all strange.

Re:"worrying ... damaging the image of piracy"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well. It would be nice if sci-fi and fantasy drivel were actually sci-fi and fantasy. Not an action movie disguised as sci-fi or fantasy.

I just give those movies a pass today, since I don't like CG-filled action flicks.

Yarr

[Anonymous Coward]

The only good pirate is the jailed pirate. Yarr.

Typical Indian IT work - shoddy, ends in failure

[Anonymous Coward]

What did you expect when you outsourced your piracy?

piracy no for fan = bad piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

remember web movie "the scene"? real enthusiasts is long gone? new piracy only for profit?

Re:piracy no for fan = bad piracy

[sims 2]

Oh I liked that one. They stopped after 2 seasons tho.

lessons learned

[supernova87a]

I guess this is why you always make your ransom videos on a really shitty old video camera that can't be traced back to anyone...

Re:lessons learned

[Kjella]

I guess this is why you always make your ransom videos on a really shitty old video camera that can't be traced back to anyone...

It would have to be a pretty terrible camera, these forensic watermarks are designed to be recognized on camcorder copies. They'd probably still find the cinema, but the fact that they had access to the digital copy proved it was an inside job by someone with access to the digital distribution system.

Re:lessons learned

[dwywit]

That's the part that puzzles me. You can't, without some pretty sophisticated hardware, intercept a DCI-compliant stream. It's encrypted all the way into the projector, and if you open an inspection hatch on the projector, it goes dead until a tech arrives to re-certify it - and no, they won't give you the codes over the phone.

So I guess this film wasn't delivered to the cinema in encrypted form. The distributors must have been trying to save some money, or the distribution system in India isn't set up for encrypted films.

Why would you go all the way with a digital delivery system and *not* secure the last phase?

Re:lessons learned

[BarbaraHudson]

It's like the analog hole for music - just point an hd camera at the screen from a great position (after all, it's an inside job) and you've got your screener.

Unfortunately, that doesn't hide the watermarking, which can be things like an extra duped frame followed by a dropped frame. Easy enough to alter during transmission of the video to the theatre, since it's done before encryption and transmission.

Sure, you can detect the altered frames by comparing different copies from different theatres, but who's going to do that when the goal is to be the first to release a pirated copy?

Re:lessons learned

[dwywit]

Speaking from experience (projectionist, not pirate), pointing any camera at the screen from the projection room is:

1. Difficult for pirates. It's going to have almost unusable audio. The noise from the projector's cooling fans makes dialogue almost incomprehensible, and low-level subtle sound FX are right out. I suppose the usual glass-shattering shrieks from a bollywood musical would survive. Ditto server noise, if it's a one-screen cinema and the server is in the same room. You'd need to intercept the audio feed from the server to the amps, and that gets a bit complicated with a multi-channel surround-sound mix. Plain old L+R stereo would be easier. You could also have someone in the auditorium recording audio separately, to be muxed later.

2. Difficult for enforcement. It's not going to guarantee a frame-for-frame copy. What's going to make the camera synchronise with the projector, or even guarantee the same frame rate? That would make frame comparisons difficult if not impossible.

An identifier in the metadata runs the risk of a skilled operator being able to remove it, so it needs to be a "visible" thing - perhaps an artifact that looks normal, but can be changed subtly for each copy - perhaps a shadow, or a single frame that has its overall brightness levels reduced below a selected threshold, or play around with RGB values in the deep shadows. Easy to detect programatically - run your ransomed copy through a detector regime, and then you have your source.

Re:lessons learned

[BarbaraHudson]

1. Tap into the audio instead of using the microphone on the camera.
2. Doesn't have to be exact to work. Even if you get half the previous frame and half the next, it's still detectable.

Re:lessons learned

[dwywit]

You make it sound so simple. Up to seven separate sound channels, just "tap into the audio". How many handycams have 7.1 or even 5.1 recording? So you'll need a separate sound recorder, and mux it all later.

Of course it's possible, just not likely.

Re:lessons learned

[BarbaraHudson]

You don't need 7 channels of audio for a same screener. It's not like people are demanding absolute fidelity in a pirated product. Just look at all the awful ones out there that people still download and waste their time watching. Easier to just wait for it to come on TV if you want it for free.

Re:lessons learned

[dwywit]

I was trying to make the point that "tapping into the audio" from a DCP isn't as simple as it sounds. It's not like you can plug in an "AUX" cord somewhere. Soundtracks for a DCP are supplied as a separate WAV file for each speaker, left front, right front, left rear, right rear, centre, sub, and sometimes a separate channel for dialogue. Tapping into the audio means having to capture and re-mux all those channels somehow. If you miss the centre or dialogue channel, your copy will only be useful to lip-readers.

If the cinema manager and/or staff were involved, I suspect they had a clandestine microphone in the auditorium to capture audio.

Sure hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure hope the owner of the theater place was actually involved in the scam, and it wasn't just employees running around behind his back. (The summary kinda makes it sound like they got the sample of the film then went off and arrested the guy.)

Tank you! Come again!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is what they say, I hear.

And yet online

[DrYak]

And yet, even if the police managed to arrest these blackmailers,
the movie will still hit the torrent and streaming sites over the next few weeks anyway.

Re:And yet online

[BarbaraHudson]

And yet, because it's possible to digitally mark every single copy released to theaters, it's impossible to hide the source of the leak. So, the more often they leak, the more often the message gets sent that if you leak it, you will be caught. It's not rocket science.

Do you really think people will continue to be willing to leak movies when it's an almost-guaranteed jail term in an Indian jail just to get some cred for leaking a movie? Did you know it's possible to rape someone of either sex to death? The worst Indian jails are just as bad as the worst jails in other countries.

Copyright violation

[PPH]

They stole that plot directly from here

No such ransom was or will ever be paid

[ffkom]

These "movie ransom" stories are weird - I wonder whether these stories are "based on true events" (of incredibly stupid criminals) or whether they are made up PR-stories from movie studios to draw attention (and maybe also a little compassion).

Of course, even the dumbest studio accountant knows that it does not have any significant impact on his revenue whether unlicensed copies of his movie are "out there" some weeks sooner or later. People will certainly not make a decision for or against watching the movie "unpaid" based on whether that is possible a little sooner or later.

These ransom schemes, if they actually exist, are 100% certain to fail.

Re:No such ransom was or will ever be paid

[Anonymous Coward]

The police in India must have advanced significantly, or the studio does have access to the few competent cops in the country. I find it unbelievable that the police in India where even able to understand what crime was being committed.

Re: No such ransom was or will ever be paid

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Dead bloated bodies float down the Ganges every day and no cop bats an eye. When a cop doesn't even care enough to poke the remains with a stick and see if it's still twitching, copyright enforcement would reasonably be expected to be lax.

Re: No such ransom was or will ever be paid

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Dead bloated bodies float down the Ganges every day and no cop bats an eye.

They're already dead. What are the police going to do? Charge them with pollution? Swimming without a license? Being soggy?

Re: No such ransom was or will ever be paid

[yes-but-no]

In any advanced society, the cops work for the rich. What's surprising here? bahubali2 grossed 1k crores INR.. sure the cops saw the "rewards" they will get. Their service is not there if you don't have a bank-balance. Isn't it true in all places?

Re:No such ransom was or will ever be paid

[Anonymous Coward]

I generally assume corporations just have access to an entirely separate police system than the rest of us.

Re:No such ransom was or will ever be paid

[Anonymous Coward]

or whether they are made up PR-stories from movie studios to draw attention (and maybe also a little compassion).

Like the claims that North Korea hacked Sony because they were angry about "The Interview"? Yeah, totally not an attempt to drum up business for a crappy movie that was likely to bomb while distracted attention from what turned out to be an inside job anyway.

watermarks

[D,Petkow]

The copy protection watermarks usually are developed and instituted either by the companies responsible for the film (like Kodak for instance) or the prints (Deluxe, Technicolor).
Each vendor has a different method, some more effective than others.
Philips apparently has been doing some work in this field as they have a relatively newer pirate leak tracking system called “Cinefence”. CineFence watermarks are believed to be harder to erase by pirates, and contain the time, place and date of the recorded movie. Interestingly enough the Digital Cinema System Specification requires some sort of watermarking in their processes.

Are you seriously telling me

[Maritz]

That I can't torrent Baahubali 2: The Conclusion? Fuck right off!