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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: WB and Fox are watching you!
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Paul G. Thompson
The Weenie Man
Posts: 4718
From: Mount Vernon WA USA
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted 04-28-2003 01:34 PM
There is a way to foil piracy on DPL presentations. I posted that somewhere in these forums, but I annot recall where made the post. The article I was referring to will work...but the source admitted that technology will come along to compromise it.
I located the article: It was in another thread, but I don't know how to "point" to it. So, I'll attach it to this post.
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Here's something from the Local Seattle Rag that might prove interesting.
Hollywood comes up with a high-tech way to foil movie pirates
By GARY GENTILE
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES -- Hollywood sends enforcers with night-vision goggles into movie theaters and puts metal detectors outside advance screening rooms, but still the industry can't stop pirates from recording films and selling illegal copies before their theatrical debuts.
The problem is that the pirates are adopting ever more sophisticated technology, using tiny camcorders in purses and digital recorders about the size of a fountain pen.
Some hand-held computers "have an attachment that can record up to 122 minutes," said Jeffrey Godsick, executive vice president of marketing at 20th Century Fox. "Well, that's a whole movie in many cases. You can take the attachment and run it through a small hole in a tie or a shirt."
This is big business. The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that studios lose more than $3 billion a year from piracy in various forms. So the movie industry is trying to fight back with a high-tech solution of its own.
Cinea LLC, which created an encryption system for DVDs, and Sarnoff, a technology research firm, are developing a system to modulate the light cast on a movie screen to create a flicker or other patterns that would be picked up by recording devices, making the resulting images unwatchable. The disruptive flickers would be unseen by the human eye in the movie theater.
The "forensic watermark" system is designed to be used with digital projectors, which show movies stored on computer discs rather than traditional 35mm film. Only a few theaters have digital projectors, although most are expected to go digital by the end of the decade.
The research is funded by a $2 million grant from the Advanced Technology Program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government agency.
The technology takes advantage of the fact that the human eye and camcorders see the world differently. For example, a computer screen constantly refreshes an image, creating bars that travel across the screen. A camcorder picks up those bars, but not the naked eye.
Researchers are mindful that creating too rapid a flicker could trigger seizures in some people. They also discovered that using the flicker to write words across the image, such as "Copy," is not disruptive enough.
"It turns out that text isn't that annoying," said Robert Schumann, Cinea's chief executive. "Also, if it's just a static image, it's easier for the pirates to take out."
This technology would be a major improvement over the industry's current measures of trying to block pirate recorders, including night-vision goggles and metal detectors. Some of the piracy is an inside job: A pirate bribes a projectionist to set up a tripod in the projection booth.
"It is a system that will not stop camcording," said Ken Jacobsen, director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association of America. "The best we can do is try to keep it out of the marketplace before a full domestic release."
Still, the industry knows that whatever technological gains are made over pirates will eventually be thwarted, requiring even more sophisticated countermeasures.
"There is a lot of money in piracy," Jacobsen said, "so it is worth people's efforts to try and defeat security."
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Charles Everett
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1470
From: New Jersey
Registered: May 2001
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posted 05-08-2003 06:18 PM
Related story from AP via The Hollywood Reporter (today):
quote:
A Hollywood man was indicted on federal charges for allegedly using camcorders to tape prerelease screenings of major motion pictures to create pirate films for sale. Johnny Ray Gasca, 33, is believed to be the first person indicted on federal charges in such circumstances, Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Johnson said Wednesday. The indictment issued Tuesday alleges criminal copyright infringement, interstate communication of a threat, possession of false identification and witness retaliation. If convicted on all charges, Gasca could face up to 28 years in prison. Prosecutors said Gasca used sophisticated equipment, including a camera attached to a belt, to tape movies ranging from "The Core" to "8 Mile." He allegedly gained entry to test screenings and previews held for the media. Gasca has an extensive criminal history that includes 89 arrests and a conviction for attempted murder, prosecutors said. He has been held without bail since his arrest last month. FBI agents who searched Gasca's home found nearly a dozen VHS recorders, video editing equipment and other devices they believe he used to create pirate films. Prosecutors said Gasca wrote in a diary that he was earning between $1,000 and $4,500 a week from his activities. Prosecutors allege that Gasca threatened to shoot his mail carrier because the search warrant showed that she gave information to the FBI. In one instance, he told a movie studio employee that he worked for the Motion Picture Association of America after being caught illegally taping a film, prosecutors said.
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 05-09-2003 10:33 AM
Gee, the industry looses only 3 BILLION dollars a year? Last time I heard Jack Vallenti tell it, they were loosing over 5 billion. I think the 3 billion figure was the one he was throwing out when the MPAA was trying to stop Sony and Toshiba from manufacturing VCRs because they were being used to make illegal copies of movies from TV, which cost the industry....yup, you guessed it .... 3 billion dollars a year. Seems like the real cost of bootleg copies is a number about as accurate and easily come by as the real loss numbers at Enron. It is difficult to know the exact loss figure, but it is hard to imagine that the barely watchable, camera-pointed-at-the-screen bootleg copies that are sold curb-side for $3, are a threat to blockbusters that cost x million to make and then earn x to the tenth power million in the first weekend. No really popular multi-million dollar hit is brought to the brink of bankrupcy because of bootleg activity, Mr. Vallenti's inflated loss figures notwithstanding.
And let's face it, no one is bootlegging films that are not big money making hits. Besides, the copies that look really good and which could actually be considered a real rather than an imagined economic threat,typically come from Academy Members' audition tapes that are give out before the Oscars. Curiously, you don't hear Mr. Valenti railing against the Academy members as potential bootleggers the way the MPAA implies all projectionists are, painting images of every projectionist setting up tripods in their booths. The FBI isn't using night-vision technology to peer into the actors' and directors' Beverly Hills screening rooms to find out who copying their audition tapes or selling them on ebay. Fox wants the right to go into any projection booth to see what's going on, but they don't seem to want an acounting of what the Academy members do with their audition tapes and DVDs.
And personally, I think it is pretty obscene that our government, with its seriously increasing national debt and with cutbacks of all manner of services, is willing to hand out grants of millions of dollars to protect a huge, wealthy industry -- an industry that clearly has the resources to finance its own anti-piracy Research and Develpment. I thought welfare was a bad thing?! Evidently not when it is corporate welfare. But you can be sure there are no million dollar government grants being given out to you or me to help us find high-tech ways to make a better security system to foil car thieves so our cars won't get stolen. Perhaps that million dollar grant money would have been better spent if the FBI used it for better surveillance of its own double agents to prevent them from selling classified information to the Chinese government for the last 12 years.
But I must say, as cynical as I am about this, it's still nice to know that Kodak is above pilfering handouts from the government.
Frank
PS I still want to know: How old is Jack (it's a cancer in the belly of the industry) Vallenti?
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