Good point about 25 fps on the pirate video although given the English track it might have originated stateside all the same. When I've played with transferring 16mm using a 1-tube stripe filter camera flicker was present but only faintly. What results did people get with that device with the mirror and the tiny rear projection screen?

Getting back to the point of this thread though, if someone actually wants to "videotape the screen" at a cinema to make themselves a bootleg, just head on down to your local DLP cinema with any camcorder, point and shoot. You'll walk away with one hell of a damned nice copy. DLP is pirate-friendly. Just another reason to do away with it.

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Industry Urges Students on Piracy
Saturday October 12 1:33 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Film and recording industry advocates are appealing to universities nationwide to help crack down on Internet-based piracy, which costs the entertainment world billions of dollars in lost revenues every year.

In a letter sent to more than 2,300 colleges, entertainment industry leaders called on the universities to educate students against pirating music and movies over broadband Internet lines available on most campuses.

"We're simply trying to appeal to the universities for their help in making students aware of Internet theft," Jack Valenti, the president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, said Friday. Valenti was one of four signatories on the letter.

"Students need to know that just because everyone is doing it doesn't make it right," he added.

In addition to educating students that piracy is tantamount to "electronic shoplifting," the industry trade groups called on the universities to implement penalties on violators.

Most universities offer high-speed Internet connections in dorm rooms and computer labs, which some students use illegally to share or swap MP3 files and some film files. Peer-to-peer technology now allows computer users to tap into one another's hard drives and share files.

Using 56K, or dial-up connections, films can take up to 12 hours to download, Valenti said. By comparison, high-speed connections allow feature films to be downloaded to a computer in minutes.

Universities have been targeted because they are a common source of high-speed connections in the United States, where only 13 million homes have high-speed Internet access.

The exchange of copyrighted files is not only a violation of federal law, it consumes valuable academic resources, the letter signatories said.

"Stealing is stealing is stealing, whether it's done with sleight of hand by sticking something in a pocket or it's done with the click of a mouse," the letter's authors said.

Ever since the music-swapping software Napster emerged in the late 1990s, students have been using enormous swaths of university bandwidth intended for the exchange of research data and other academic-oriented files.

Quoting the Chronicle of Higher Education, the letter's authors said one university discovered that at least 75 percent of its available bandwidth had been used by students and people outside the university while exchanging files using peer-to-peer technology.

Songwriters Guild of America President Rick Carnes warned that copyright violations threaten the future of the recording arts in the United States.

"Copyright encourages the promotion of new arts in our culture," said Carnes, who has written songs for Garth Brooks and Reba McEntire. "Without those copyright protections, the future of the arts is threatened."

The letter also was signed by Hilary Rosen and Edward Murphy, the presidents, respectively, of the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Music Publishers' Association.
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Here are my questions/corrections:

Internet piracy is a relatively new thing, no more than about five years old. If I am not mistaken, the Motion Picture Industry had a record box office year last year, and is on-track for another one this year. Where are these "billions of dollars" lost? Certainly not in the home video market as DVDs are flying off the shelves...

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which some students use illegally to share or swap MP3 files

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By comparison, high-speed connections allow feature films to be downloaded to a computer in minutes.

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"Copyright encourages the promotion of new arts in our culture,"

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I wonder exactly how the Universities will "educate" students on the horrors of internet file-swapping. Hopefully not the same way that Jr. High Schools educate kids in sex. "See how much fun it can be? Now don't do it!"

After about ten minutes, he packed up and left. Of course only to be pulled over by the police that were waiting for him.

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I wonder if it is possible to put some kind of sequential serial number or specific watermark on DVD screener discs

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It is possible, but there are a number of limitations. Obviously, if the disk is indivually marked in some way then it will have to individually cut/pressed, which could increase costs. Unfortuneately recordable DVD formats (that are compatible with home DVD players) have a lower capacity limit than standard DVDs, and some films may have to be spread accross more than one disk (esp. if higher quality soundtracks are to be used).

The second problem is that the video files are often (substantially) further compressed for distribution on the internet, and so any marking system will have to be resistant to this level of modification.

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I don't know about the consumer 24P camera, but the Sony HDCAM model does record at 24P natively and the playback deck can output at 24P. We had this equipment at a film festival where I helped out recently and we really should have tried recording a filmed image (with the permission of the filmmaker, of course) if someone had thought about it.

We found that old vidicon tube cameras were infrared sensitive - if you flooded the area with infrared light, the cameras would "see" a perfectly lit picture, even in the dark. This became invaluable for the stage manager of live stage shows where props and actors needed to be in place on the stage before the curtain could go up. With a few infrared lamps lighting the stage, even in a blackout (of white light), the stage manager could see a stage that looked fully "lit' on the monitor and could check places before he called "curtain go."

This same principle could be used to watch audiences and check for the camcorder pirates. It also wouldn't hurt to use it to keep an eye out for roudy patrons as well. Disruptive patrons is one of the top reasons given why people, especially the older age groups, would rather wait to see pictures at home.

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I wonder if it is possible to put some kind of sequential serial number or specific watermark on DVD screener discs

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I thought they already did this with screener VHS tapes. My friend was a manager at a video store, and whenever they recieved screener tapes, every 15 minutes or so a message would scroll at the bottom, ("...if you have rented or purchased this cassette, please call 1-800-NO-COPYS...") and afterwards a 4 to 6 digit number would appear in the upper-right corner of the screen for a while.

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