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Topic: D Cinema Projector Heist

Gordon McLeod
Film God

Posts: 9532
From: Toronto Ontario Canada
Registered: Jun 99

posted 02-07-2015 12:05 PM

Actually we bought a bunch of those NECs from the insurance company as they recovered most of them and we also got the insurance company to order NEC to warrant them as in the end they insurance company had "bought them" by paying for the loss and as such owned them
The only thing they didnt warrant after a letter from the insurers lawyer was the enigma as it had been unpowered for a year

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Steve Kraus
Film God

Posts: 4094
From: Chicago, IL, USA
Registered: May 2000

posted 02-07-2015 12:17 PM

Couldn't the stolen projectors be set up with legitimately purchased servers (or IMB's)?

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Justin Hamaker
Film God

Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004

posted 02-07-2015 04:15 PM

quote: Brad Miller
So nobody thinks they will try and sell to some unsuspecting people and then once the deal is done simply vanish, leaving the buyers with no way to play encrypted DCPs?

I'm wondering what kind of cost the unsuspecting buyer would have to pay to legitimize the equipment.

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Ian Freer
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 135
From: Wellington, New Zealand
Registered: Oct 2003

posted 02-07-2015 04:34 PM

quote: Steve Kraus
Couldn't the stolen projectors be set up with legitimately purchased servers (or IMB's)?

Theoretically, in the first instance, when the site submits their DCRF forms to 'register' the equipment with the distributors, the projectors' serial numbers will be picked up at this point if Barco have passed on that info to Deluxe/Technicolor etc (although this may not be the case for smaller KDM issuers).
So even with a new, legit Server, the projectors should still be able to be 'found' and that screen black-listed or authorities notified etc...

Secondly, (someone please correct me if I'm wrong), it is my understanding that future iteration of KDM's (i.e. full DCI KDM) will eventually include PJ serials/certificates as well as the Server's, (and potentially other ancillary equipment too), so if/when that gets implemented the PJ's will again be no use for encrypted content.

Ian

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 02-07-2015 04:48 PM

It's not really the serial numbers that get listed in the KDM's Trusted Device List (TDL), but rather the certificates of those devices.

But yeah, it should be rather easy to correlate those certificates to serials.

Up until now, no major studio has gone so far as to require equipment like projectors and potentially even stuff like sound processors to be added to that list.

quote: Justin Hamaker
I'm wondering what kind of cost the unsuspecting buyer would have to pay to legitimize the equipment.

Worst case? I guess you'll have to buy the same equipment over again. Depending on how you got it, you could hold your supplier responsible for it off course.

In many jurisdictions you could also be held accountable for it, if you could reasonably have known the deal itself was fishy. Buying a brand new projector for a fraction of the market price for example, should raise a few eyebrows.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 02-07-2015 08:05 PM

Not sure about the law here, but in the UK "receiving stolen goods" is definitely an offense. In theory, ignorance is no defense, but in practice the Crown Prosecution Service won't press charges unless they're convinced that either you did so deliberately or could reasonably have been expected to know that your purchase was unlikely to be legit.

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Justin Hamaker
Film God

Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004

posted 02-07-2015 09:45 PM

Leo, that's more or less the standard in the US - at least in California.

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Steve Matz
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 672
From: Billings, Montana, USA
Registered: Sep 2003

posted 02-07-2015 10:08 PM

Sell them to NORTH KOREA; They don't care if it's stolen or Not. They even had the same Printing Machines the US Mint had several years back and were printing almost Perfect U.S. 100 dollar bills. Only got detected through S.N.'s being used over multible times... [Confused]

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 02-08-2015 08:35 AM

quote: Leo Enticknap
Not sure about the law here, but in the UK "receiving stolen goods" is definitely an offense. In theory, ignorance is no defense, but in practice the Crown Prosecution Service won't press charges unless they're convinced that either you did so deliberately or could reasonably have been expected to know that your purchase was unlikely to be legit.

Even if they do not press charges against you, usually you will lose the stolen equipment though and the only way to get compensation for it is by claiming it from those who sold it to you. Depending on how legitimate they are and how deep into trouble they are already, it's often, unfortunately, a lost cause.

If you encounter a too-good-to-be-true deal, you should check with the manufacturer if possible, if this is a tarnished item. I once was offered a bunch of digital projectors (non-DCI equipment in this case) that were way to cheap, they turned out to be not-for-resale demo items, removed from someones lab.

quote: Steve Matz
They even had the same Printing Machines the US Mint had several years back and were printing almost Perfect U.S. 100 dollar bills. Only got detected through S.N.'s being used over multible times...

For a currency so universally used, it's rather surprising they only recently started to outfit dollar bills with somewhat modern security features. It's almost as if they were oblivious to the massive amounts of counterfeited money already in circulation.

Also, I guess when there is one entity that would be able to print almost perfectly looking counterfeit money of almost any kind, it's a rogue state themselves. They can easily put the people that put the security features into their own money on the job, so they know what to look for and how to produce it on a mass scale. Reusing serial numbers somehow sounds like a rather foolish mistake. Sure, you probably won't be able to avoid S/N collisions with money already out there, but at least you should be able to ensure your own batches are unique...

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