Camcorder Jamming Devices Announced

Adam Carrington writes "I'm definitely not behind things like DRM, but Virginia-based Cinea has an idea that I do support... jamming camcorders in movie theaters. CNET has some interesting details on how they plan on going about it. They even throw an unrelated jab at Microsoft." This might be the technology that drives the stake in analog projection.

Re:What about lasers blinding cameras?

[aridhol]

And how would you use these without also blinding your audience?

Two problems with this

[Charlton Heston]

One problem is that there are a lot of different CCD chips out there. Certainly there are some that have a lot of "lag" that would not be affected as much by this.

The other problem is that these artifacts could be cleaned up with digital processing. With giant hard drives and fast processors, all that is needed is an app to do it.

It took about...

[f97tosc]

3 days after the US release until Epsiode 1 VCDs where widespread in South East Asia. The producers must have taken the very first flight out after the first showing, and then started large-scale dupliation immediately.

Some friends of mine - Star Wars fans - were backpacking at that very time. They wanted to wait until they could see the movie in a proper theater but found this almost impossible as every other bar/ restaurant/ hotel was showing the movie...

Tor

Unfortunately

[wiredog]

Jamming cell phones in a theater/restaurant/library/etc is illegal. Violates FCC regulations.

Macrovision?

[c.derby]

"The company "will modify the timing and modulation of the light used to create the displayed image such that frame-based capture by recording devices is distorted,"

This is basically how macrovision works for VCRs.

$3 Billion and 50% cut in piracy

[burgburgburg]

According to their grant, the movie industry loses $3 billion a year to piracy and that Cinea's system will cut piracy by 50%. Considering that most piracy comes from insiders and not the theater camcorder person, how did Cinea come up with 50%? Was it through market research? Nope: It's "our own estimate." Well, that makes me feel better.

Instead of Jamming them...

[RebelTycoon]

WHY don't they look for them? Cams aren't the smallest of shapes, a little enforcement of theatre policies would go a long way.

Also, who says flickering monitors don't cause eye damage? Just because we can't easily see it doesn't mean our brain doesn't.

Stop fscking with my eyes!

Re:Why embed the signal into the picture at all?

[Speare]

Camcorders are much more sensitive to infrared light than the human eye... why not just mount some infrared strobes in the front of the theater, aimed out at the audience? The people won't notice it, but the camcorders would effectively be blinded.

That was my first thought too. Mount an infrared projector behind the screen writing various patterns and anti-piracy images. Sucks to bring home a video with "DAMN YE, PIRATE, ARRR!" written in huge letters all over the best scenes.

But the issue isn't the public recording in the public theaters, it's the employees and publicity hacks who set up a tripod in an empty theater, or better yet, rip it off the proofing screen in a projection room, or better yet, just rip the DVD press copy.

The movie industry's worst enemy is itself: it has inserted so many middlemen that it can't trust. Those middlemen have no fealty, they just want to make a buck. With every move to eliminate the middlemen, the middlemen find new ways of keeping involved.

Re:Don't forget...

[oldmacdonald]

I really don't understand why people hated the DIVX thing so much. People are perfectly happy to rent a videotape for $3 and have to return it in a day or so, why not get a DIVX DVD for $3 and simply NOT have to return it?

Now, if legislation like the DMCA is used to keep you from trying to crack the thing, _that_ is bad, but DMCA didn't even exist when Circuit City was pushing DIVX.

The one bad thing I remember thinking at the time was that one was in danger of buying a DVD player that couldn't play DIVX and being left out, or buying one that could and paying extra for something which might (and did) become completely useless.

Great news!

[gpinzone]

Now with all the amatures with handhelds out of business, we can now get professional rips of new movies by organized crime syndicates! No longer will we have to sit through grainy VHS camcorder copies of Hollywoods latest tripe. The mafia (asian and otherwise) will now have a viable buisiness model for peddling their illegal wares. Throw in P2P networks as a method of distribution for the geeks and we can't loose! Thank goodness for copy protection!

Re:Instead of Jamming them...

[UrGeek]

Because the modern megaplex has too many rooms for individual attention. Go to the first showing of a movie sometime, on a slow day. You will be surprise how often the projector is set wrong. Then you will be angered at how long it will take for them to notice this. It will only be AFTER one of the patrons complain. Recently, this happened and after they fixed the focus, I had to complain a second time because the registration was not fixed!

They don't want people to have to do anything. They want machines.

The key to success...

[TheTomcat]

is this paragraph:
"There's a difference in the way a camcorder and the human eye see the world," Schumann said. "We've figured out some ways to exploit that. The trick is to make sure there is no negative impact on the viewing experience for the audience."

I would completely quit going to see movies at the theatre for $10 a show if they start to flicker to avoid copying. I'm already ticked off that most theatres are run by 17 year olds who can't focus properly.

S

Seziure inducing?

[Dubber]

I wonder if this "technology" is going to exacerbate the propensity for seziures in epileptics?
Refresh rates (on some monitors & televisions) already have this effect and I know a few folks who've narrowly missed having seziures during quick back and forth scene changes in some film theatres.
Sure, sucks to be the epileptic, but it sucks even more to be the one trusted to protect them from themselves while in a crwoded theatre watching a movie in what used to appear to be a mostly safe theatre environment.

Love the math

[TheTomcat]

I love their math:
"According to Cinea's grant abstract, the motion picture industry loses some $3 billion a year due to piracy, including the sale of illegal copies made using camcorders in theaters."

I bet this is how that was calculated:
- Seeing a show costs $10.
- "Pirate" tapes sold on the street: 18.75 million
- Said tapes viewed by 4 distinct people
- each viewer sees the movie four times.

So:
18,750,000 tapes
* 4 viewers
-------------
75,000,000
* 4 views per viewer
-------------
300,000,000 views total
* 10 dollars to see the movie, legit
-------------
3,000,000,000 dollars "lost" to piracy

Give me a break.

S

Against this for medical reasons

[moc.tfosorcimgllib]

What about people with epilepsy?

It doesn't matter if it's visible to the human eye or not. If adding extra frames that degrade the quality of the film causes a strobe-light effect of any sort, you can set off some serious seizures.

I hope they do a lot of research with this before implementing it.

DIVX threatened the new DVD format.

[ZorinLynx]

I didn't hate DIVX because it let you "rent" discs and throw them away. I hated it because it was potentially affecting the library of movies available on regular DVD. When DIVX came out, DVD was just starting to become popular. It really had the potential to totally make or break the success of DVD as a format.

Disney, for instance, was one company planning DIVX-exclusive releases. Even if you bought the "DIVX-gold" releases, which theoretically you could play forever, they still had the right to revoke your ability to view that disc at any time.

I don't want studios to have that much control over something after I buy it. This is the same reason why DRM is evil and should not be supported in any way. DVD's region coding and copy protection are nothing when compared to the evils of DRM. Period. EOF.

why does no one see other uses for this tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Camera jammers could be very dangerous in the hands of, say, law enforcement. For example, what if the Rodney King Beaters were able to fire up their camera jammer before they worked him over? Or Daley turned it on before his goons went hog wild on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago?

Why isn't anyone asking The Real Question:

[Breakfast Pants]

WHY IN THE HELL IS NIST FUNDING THIS? Why wouldn't the production companies themselves fund something like this. What does this have to do with national standards of measurement? What the hell is going on.. this is straight out corporate welfare, I'll bet NIST gets no part of the patent rights whatsoever.

You will LOVE this movie!

[soupmaster]

"show lines that are invisible to the naked eye. Rather than produce accidental disturbances, he said, Cinea plans to create specific disturbances that it can control"

This smells more of subliminal advertising, than copyright protection...

If everyone is drinking Sprite and wearing Nike shoes 10 years from now, we'll know I was right.

$3Billion

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Has any studio actually put the $3Billion in "piracy losses" into their annual statement?

If not, they should shut the fuck up, or prove the statement.

Re:Great for Kazaa!!

[micahmicahmicah]

I believe that would be, Measure, Counter-Measure. Why haven't they done it already? How can you ask that? I have made a bootleg using my Sony IP5 Camcorder of Spiderman - just to see how it would turn out. The quality was great. However my arm was killing me by the end of the movie. With a proper digital camcorder or a decent capture setup, a bootleg can be of very good quality, barring the washed out colors which plague nearly all bootlegs. As for this new protection - I'd say it's a good guess that using a slightly slow shutter setting would circumvent it. I've already used this on my camera to record from Macrovision protected sources. It's also a great way to capture from TV's and Monitors @ C.E.S. so that you don't get the resulting scanlines. If you were insinuating that there are no better ways. ( when you said "So, why exactly aren't they using the 'better ways' already?" ) You're wrong, there are already better ways, most high quality rips are leaked during post production. Jaxon X, and both American Pie films were leaked with "Insert Credits Here" at the end and a timecode running the full length of the film. Piracy will never die. Any attempts made at stopping it only result in the inevitable reverse engineering of such. In the end, you can view it as a good thing. This saves me money by allowing me to decide which films I am willing to pay for. This also creates countless jobs for those clever people who continue to re-invent security measures. By learning to circumvent such measures, we all become a little smarter.

Not "digital" copies at all

[timeOday]

The camcorder-jamming project comes as directors, including "Star Wars" legend George Lucas, are creating movies designed for digital projection that aim to provide sharper and more astounding visual effects than traditional film. But the technology has raised concerns that audience members might eventually create high-quality copies of movies using handheld video cameras smuggled into theaters.

The fact that the camcorder and the projector are both digial is irrelevant. It is not a digital copy because movie screens reflect photons, not bits. The projecter is a D/A converter and the camcorder is a A/D converter.

I'm not being pedantic. The reason this matters is because camcorder copies are crap and not worth watching. And this company is claiming that stopping camcorder bootlegs would bring the industry an extra $1.5e9 per year, yeah right.

They should worry about the REAL digital copies, leaked by insiders and mass-produced in the far east. (Well, they ARE worried about those, but this camcorder stuff is a joke).

Infrared, anybody?

[AyeRoxor!]

I learned back in my teens that camcorders' photosensors display remote control patterns as bright white light. I don't know, but I imagine that this is still true for modern cameras, to a degree. To do otherwise would be to ultra-refine photosensors to only capture visible wavelength, for no legitimate purpose. How difficult would it be to set up UV "floodlights" on the edges and corners of a movie theater's screen? Like remote controls, it's beyond the range of human sight, and that would sure fsck up any recorded image.

Oh yeah, and I hereby claim first thought on this subject 10/11/02 at 13:56 EST. :)

Blind people with digital implants

[grummerX]

How will this affect formerly blind people with the new digital cortical implants [slashdot.org]? I'd be quite annoyed if I spent all that money on regaining my sight only to have the theaters jam my implants.

I see a disabilities suit in the making...

--grummerX