Latest movie anti-piracy scheme

[zzyzzx]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18443-2002Oct12.html

Battling Bootleggers With Distortion
Monday, October 14, 2002; Page E05

When the lights go down in a movie theater showing a sneak preview, camcorders sometimes come out. These digital pirates record surreptitiously, moviemakers say, and quickly duplicate and sell bootleg copies of the film overseas and on the street, sometimes before a movie is officially released.

The motion picture industry says it loses about $3 billion per year from piracy, and this low-tech technique is among the most widespread. But the nine employees of Herndon-based Cinea Inc. think they have cracked the case on how to prevent these bootlegs from making it to market.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology's Advanced Technology Program thinks Cinea is on to something, too. Last week the institute awarded a $2 million grant to help accelerate the work.

Rob Schumann, Cinea's founder and chief executive, said it took three years for his team to figure out how to capitalize on the notion that video recorders view images produced on film differently than the human eye. The emission of light often causes a distortion in the recorded image that is not visible to the average moviegoer.

"Your eye just sees motion, not a sequence of still images. Camcorders take discrete images of the world. It's actually a much more accurate version," Schumann said. "But if you take a camcorder and point it at a monitor, you'll see bars across the monitor."

Cinea's project intensifies the distortion, making films recorded by camcorder so marred that they become worthless. Those who pay for legitimate copies, Schumann said, would see no difference.

The company's executives estimate this could cut film piracy loss in half. Richard Taylor, a spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America, said it was impossible to say how much of the industry's loss actually stems from camcorder-based theft. Movie pirates also obtain copies of films by tapping satellite feeds, breaking into film labs and bribing studio employees.

"There are people who are determined to make profit or do damage to the film industry through piracy. If a major release comes out on a Friday and by midnight Friday it's up on the Internet, people may not go to the film or rent or purchase a copy of it later," Taylor said.

Taylor was not familiar with Cinea, but said his organization is working with the consumer electronics and information technology industry to devise protection.

Cinea has a small-scale version of the technology to prove the concept and will use the federal grant to develop and test a working model over the next two years. The project is expected to cost $2.3 million. The federal program generally splits the cost of development almost equally with the company, but it is contributing most of the money for Cinea's two-year project. In January Cinea landed a $2 million round of venture funding led by Monumental Venture Partners LLC of Tysons Corner.

Schumann set out to solve the camcorder problem after Divx, a DVD encryption project he worked on for five years, was dumped by its main backer, Circuit City Stores Inc., in 1999.

Many other attempts to create secure encryption for films have failed because of either hackers who figure out how to crack the code or opposition to proposals to create industry-wide standards.

"I recognized there was still a tremendous need for video security," Schumann said. "This is the anti-camcorder piece, which has been a problem for quite a period of time. The quality of camcorders gets better and better. The real economic piracy, the true lost revenue to the studios, occurs primarily with people going to first-run movies in the [United] States and shipping copies to Asia."

Michael Newman, a spokesman for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said its awards go to projects that are often too risky for general investors but have the potential for broad economic benefits. A total of 40 awards, worth $101.6 million in all, were given out last week.

Schumann hopes the film industry contacts he made while working on Divx will bring Cinea to the attention of major studio companies. The reception so far has been positive, he said.

Taylor, of the motion picture association, believes anything that can cut down on piracy losses should be fully explored.

"The bottom line is that the loss of revenue harms legitimate consumers. It drives up the price for lost sales or rentals, and then you start talking about jobs being lost. If the chain of economic recouping is shattered, you can imagine the damage done," he said.

[SteveDVD]

That actually sounds like it would work...

[bigmicka]

till someone designs a filter to attach to your vid cam to get around it. lol

[MOVIEGEEK]

This story reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Kramer talks Jerry into filming a movie and messed it up and Kramers hoodlum friend thought it was the best he had seen.
Quality is in the eye of the beholder.

[pacmania_2001]

I'm with Bigmicka on this one, it seems that it could easily be beaten by some sort of filtering device on the camera.

Also if the way of doing it is reliant on the cinema than it shouldnt stop most releases as the employee could just ignore the instructions to do it. Also with the number of releases being ripped today by organised, professional bootleggers in China and burnt to DVD before being reripped by the release groups that most people know of I dont see how it could be stopped as they usually bribe the cinema owner or steal a print of the film.

[vitualis]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that in some countries in Asia (??Malaysia) there are already "anti-camcorder" technologies with the screening of films. AND, there are people who have already overcome this...

Regards.

[Craig Tucker]

Most of the cam copies I have seen are'nt worth watching anyway. I would rather not see a film, than watch a terrible copy of one. I wait till I can get a good copy so I can actually enjoy the film.

Craig

[zzyzzx]

I would still have to think that there are really very few of these camcorder movie copies out there. And if there really are they get replaced with better copies after theh movie is obtained from some other better source.

[EaBa]

I would still have to think that there are really very few of these camcorder movie copies out there. And if there really are they get replaced with better copies after theh movie is obtained from some other better source.

Are you kidding me? Most new releases are done through a digital cam. It isn't usually for a month after the release that a screener/workprint comes out.

[zzyzzx]

I would still have to think that there are really very few of these camcorder movie copies out there. And if there really are they get replaced with better copies after theh movie is obtained from some other better source.

Are you kidding me? Most new releases are done through a digital cam. It isn't usually for a month after the release that a screener/workprint comes out.

I've only seen one camcorder copy. I'd think most people who downloaded a camcorder copy wold download a DVD rip once it becomes available if they still liked the movie.

[EaBa]

True, I always get the best copy available, but when the movie first comes out, you are stuck with a crappy old telesync or cam.

[pacmania_2001]

Basically a movie is released like this:

Cam / Telesync / Telecine / Screener / DVD Rip

Cam is a movie that is shot by a camcorder in the cinema with the cinema noise being audible (i.e laughing).

Telesync (TS) is also shot in the cinema but by usually a better camera and a tripod device. Also the sound is taken from a different source so the cinema noise is not audible. Telesyncs are the most common form today that the movie will first be released in however a lot of TS's today are just Cam's mislabeled.

A Telecine is taken from the reel and is usually very good quality. These are usually rare and the process normally goes straight from TS-Screener.

Screeners are taken from sources such as critics tape and are generally VHS quality. These come out about a month or so later.

DVD Rip is the last stage of a movie being released. Normally coming in SVCD these are the highest quality and can either be taken from a retail DVD or an advance DVD copy taken from say a video store or production house. Normally appear about a month before the official DVD is released