MPAA Ruins Own Films As Anti-Piracy Measure

WCityMike writes "Steve Kraus, a Chicago film projectionist, noted in this week's Movie Answer Man column that movie studios are quite purposefully putting 'large reddish brown spots that flash in the middle of the picture, usually placed in a light area' in order to ruin computer-compressed pirated copies of films. Among recent films that feature these spots are 'Ali,' 'Behind Enemy Lines,' '28 Days Later,' 'Freddy vs. Jason' and 'Underworld.' (I guess they had to destroy the movies in order to save them ... )"

brown spots?

[blake8087]

i don't understand why they don't flash something more useful - like a serial number - so that they can identify where and when the illegal copy was made.

Why not pink or blue spots?

[dkoudijs]

I mean if they keep adding stuff like this, people will start to notice, and not buy moives at all. Which I think is where like 50% of there profit comes from. Sorry guys but I have tons of simpsons episodes on my hardrive, but I still buy the DVD because it looks nicer. Don't mess with the format.

edit the frames?

[happyfrogcow]

I'm sure it couldn't be that hard to edit the "ruined" frames, no? Final Cut Pro anyone?

Neo Ranga...

[cgranade]

The anime series Neo Ranga was converted from a low quality analog format to make the DVDs, and they have so many artifacts that when encoded in DivX, DivX ;), 3ivX or XviD, many large brown spots arise which completely ruin the rips. Better copy-protection than anything I've ever seen...

This was never the intention at all

[91degrees]

It's actually based on a simply principle that people expect to see typical amounts of red, green and blue in the world. Over time, if the balance in a certain area is offset, the subconcious realises and looks for a pattern in the ionformation.

The Kodak system simply spreads a subliminal message across the length of the film, to convince you that you have enjoyed it. Simple psychology.

Re:someone had to say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's a simple plan: make movies so bad no one will want to copy them. " ...Or even watch them.

Honestly, I feel some movies are SOOOO bad as to have STOLEN my time. Too bad we can't go after the movie studios for false advertising. I guess if you compress all the good parts of a movie into a 3min "preview", then even the shittiest of movies can look like Oscar nominees.

Filter it out

[Roger_Wilco]

Unless these spots are particularly difficult to identify, someone need only write a filter to detect them and fill in the offending space, possibly with the average of the previous and next frame.

Hidden Persuaders

[handy_vandal]

that movie studios are quite purposefully putting 'large reddish brown spots that flash in the middle of the picture, usually placed in a light area' in order to ruin computer-compressed pirated copies of films

Next step: replace the 'large reddish brown spots' with large reddish brown ads for Coca-Cola ....

Eh?

[MarvinIsANerd]

in order to ruin computer-compressed pirated copies of films

WTF? These supersized cap codes have nothing to do with *ruining* copies of the film. Rather they are used to *identify* the person responsible for leaking the film. These films go to the projection houses long before their release dates and are often seen on the internet often before opening day. So obviously some houses have evil employees capturing the movie into computer video formats and leaking them via P2P networks. All the MPAA has to do is download and look at a pirated movie and look for the cap codes and bam, they have ID'ed the projection house responsible for leaking the film. These cap codes have been in film forever - but only recently have they been enlarged enough so that they show up in low resolution computer encoded video.

Seems easy to remove

[earthforce_1]

How hard would it be to have software process the film, look for large swaths of colours approximately matching the splotches, and remove them? Seems almost trivial image processing to me, although there is a lot of data to crank through.

Add value...

[bpd1069]

What the movie industry SHOULD be doing, instead of pissing in the wind, is add value to the movie experience. I personally don't go see a movie in the theatre unless it is a 'Spectacular' movie. One where the experience of seeing it on a Big screen cannot be duplicated by any other means and actually plays and integral part of the film.

They should invest, partner, encourage more theatres like the IMAX franchise. As I understand the Matrix has done very well in those venues and cannot be duplicated in any other environment.

Give the movie goer a REASON to see the movie in a theatre, make us CHOOSE the theatre instead of our living room/computer monitor/etc.

There will always be individuals who would not pay to see a particular movie in a theatre, this is something that cannot be changed (and should not show up on any studio's bottom line). These are the same people who would rather pirate them to just be up on the popular culture of the day.

Make Better Movies, make us WANT to go to the theatre, make us excited enough to go, otherwise they will destroy themselves fighting a trend that will never cease to move forward.

Re:brown spots?

[Skyshadow]

The trouble is that you just can't mass produce DVDs and include this sort of serialization... DVDs that you buy in the stores are pressed (instead of burned), so by definition they all end up having the same image.

I would imagine that the next gen of video recording format (whatever replaces DVD) will have built-in rights management a la Windows registration. This might be a Good Thing from a pure "rights" point of view: if you could, say, allow a certain player to play only certain titles (to which it has a license), you'd be able to allow backup copies and even concievably control fair use (albiet in a terrifically annoying Big Brother fashion). That's why they're fighting the DeCSS so hard -- if they lose control of the player, they effectively lose control of the whole ball of wax -- anybody could build a player or player software which disregards the rights management.

Eventually, though, I'm confident they'll work out a way to restrict digital copies well enough that only a very few dedicated people will still be able to produce them, at which point it's not really a problem (from the MPAA/RIAA's standpoint) anymore. This only works when it's easy, after all...

See an independent film today

[plcurechax]

Goodness, just stop putting with with the bad plots, where the story is second to the selection of actors. Stop putting up with canned endings, and weak story lines, where you know the entire plot by watching a 30 second ad.

Go to something like the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse [picturehou...emas.co.uk] or the Acadia Cinema Cooperative [acadiacinemacoop.ca], or one of the many in London [rj93.com].

You like Linux or *BSD, because the other OSes aren't good enough for you, why not demand high quality cinema?

Re:What's next?

[ctxspy]

I wish i had mod-points....These fucking people are idiots.

FIGHT CLUB.. did anyone see the movie FIGHT CLUB!!

Main character splices bits of raunchy shit into the movies, people get freaked out when they see it, but aren't sure it was really there because it flashes too quickly.

ITS A FRIEKIN REFERENCE TO A MOVIE!

Yep, Rundown had it.

[pjrc]

We saw The Rundown last weekend, and I noticed a big redish brown spot about 1/2 hour into the film. Seemed like the edge was a bright yellow. I figured it was probably just a defect in the film or something wrong with the projector.

We enjoyed the film. Robin (girlfriend) thought it was really funny. Robin's sister went with us, and she also liked it.

Yes, it's a dirty trick if it's really intentional, but that little ugly spot lasting only a fraction of a second is hardly what I'd call "destroy the movies in order to save them".

Re:New anti-piracy ads at the movies

[endrek]

whats worse is that it really doesn't affect joe shmoe set worker. They don't get paid royalties. Only the big rich actors and directors. The little guy gets paid to work and when the movie is done filming, he's done. What happens to it in theaters and after has NOTHING to do with him. He's already working on something new. So those ads seem like blatent lies to me.

Re:Hmmmmm

[Zeal17]

When I go to see a movie in the theatre, I pay more for the 'experience' then the actual movie. Why would you ruin a potentially great movie like "Return of the King" by watching some crappy DIVX-over-compressed copy of it?

The dot is not intended to break compression,

[Jammer@CMH]

it is intended to allow the studios to determine which movie house (or which projector?) the pirated copy came from.

So the solution is not to perform a multipass scan to work around the dots, but to remove the dota altogether.

Here is a film ruined by the MPAA

[nexusone]

If you read down past the red dot question on the suntimes movie answer man.
You will see a story about a movie taht was ruined by the MPAA.

Here is the question and answer:

Q. I have heard that Fox Searchlight will release Berto-lucci's "The Dreamers" as an R-rated film, instead of unrated or NC-17. If Fox knows that the audience for the film will be adults, and that educated adults will not want to see a compromised version of a movie by a great director, then why are they releasing it as an R? Why not have it be like "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and release it as unrated?

Gary Rancier, Brooklyn, N.Y.

A. The NC-17 rating is unworkable, thanks to Blockbuster, which refuses to stock such films, and the MPAA, which refuses to create an A (for "adult") category that would stand between the R rating and actual pornography. The movie could and should go out unrated.

If Fox Searchlight does not want audiences to see the movie that Bertolucci made, then they should do the decent thing and give up distribution rights to a company prepared to stand behind its films. To buy a film and then cut it because of the MPAA rating amounts to vandalism.

why include it on prints?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the fact that most of the pirated copies of movies are ripped from DVD's sent to screeners and reviewers, why would they need to include this on the printed versions sent to theaters? Why not just add a frame or two to the DVD versions?

Why do ugly watermarking?

[Thagg]

There are any number of ways to watermark films without compromising quality. I'm really quite surprised that studios would mark the films with huge brown dots instead of doing something subtle, for two reasons.

It degrades the movie-going experience, nobody wants that.

It is so obvious the pirates could edit it out.

Simple techniques to watermark films would be to add a tiny amount of flicker to the whole frame for a sequence, or to use techniques similar to the (failed) SMDI system to watermark the audio. I really expected more sophistication from the studios than big brown dots. At least at this point, the sophistication of the pirates is not great -- and identifying them through subtle, persistent watermarks could make a difference.

thad

Re:Okay, so now they know. Now what?

[31415926535897]

Let's pretend I sneak a video camera (yes, I know it's more technical, trying to make a point) in my local theater and record the film, then run home, encode it and upload it to the world.

The movie company then downloads the film, see's the spots and tracks it to my theater. Now what? Are they going to shake down the theater owners, untill they install security and metal detectors?

How does this really prevent anything <snip>

That's not the point of the spot system. The whole purpose of the MPAA doing this is to ruin the MPEG compression so that you won't want to upload it to the web. A movie will go from being 1.5 GB to >3GB if the spots are left in the movie.

You won't see the spots because they will only be in one or two frames (which might be illegal in some contries) every few seconds, but when your encoder tries to compress the movie, it will have to create an I-Frame (completely uncompressed) because the frame with a spot in it is sufficiently different from the frame before it that the compression won't save any space. So you will get three I-Frames in a row where you would have only one and two compressed frames.

So yes, you could still get the film videoed and on the web, but with your ADSL or cable modem, it will take signifigantly longer to upload, and likewise much longer to download (thus deterring "piracy").

is anyone demanding their money back?

[The Lynxpro]

Funny, I don't recall seeing any language on the ticket stub indicating I'd be subjected to anti-piracy measures that might distract from the presentation itself. And I do remember seeing those weird red dots during "Underworld." What next? Are we going to see an equivalent to a *broadcast flag* at the bottom of the films next?

CAM's vs. Red Splotches

[Civil_Disobedient]

I can't imagine the red splotches could be any worse than the occasional bad CAM version of some 0-day films available on the 'net. When will the industry learn that I'm not going to pay to see this crap. Never. I would rather watch a crappy CAM with people coughing and standing up and a lousy audio feed than shell out $12 before I know the movie is worth it. All the industry is doing is screwing the people who shelled out the cash to watch their "blockbusters" and eat over-priced popcorn.

Regardless, the DVD will be error-free, which means the worst-case scenario is that I have to wait 5 months before getting a crispy XVID DVD rip. Ooh, that's tough love.

Oh, and Mr. MPAA Man, we geeks have this wonderful little open-source program called VirtualDub that makes removing bad frames from videos dead-easy. Just so you know.

RTFA

[angryelephant]

The article doesn't say anything about the red dots being used to mess with encryption schemes. It is a method being used to track pirated rips back to individual leaked screeners. From what I know of video compression, taking a screener which has this "CapCode" on it would tend to make the spots more noticeable, however it is my opinion that this is more of a side effect than the main purpose in putting these in.

Re:solution?

[vrwarp]

and the people with pacemakers?

This would be very bad.

[ZorinLynx]

Remember DIVX? It was the same idea.

Sorry, I will not buy into a format that requires that some central service authorize my media before I can watch the movie. That central service may go down (again, like DIVX) or suddenly decide.. "Hmm, we're going to re-release _The Lion King_. Let'd disable everyone's copies so they're forced to see it in the theater!"

No thanks. Once I buy media, I want to be able to watch it whenever I want. I urge everyone to avoid formats that require any sort of "authorization" for this reason. If no one buys it, it will fail.

Re:Yet another reason...

[BigBir3d]

They're being amazingly stupid by adding even more annoyances.

Don't forget skyrocketing ticket prices (I paid $9.75 per ticket Saturday night), 20 minutes of adverts and previews, and then the cr@pola movie starts.

Movies only need to look as far as the music industry to see what happens when prices rise, choices lower, and tastes merge. I think they forgot that this is an "art." Now, it's merely a business.

Too bad for us.

Re:brown spots?

[ThisIsFred]

Something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. There is no way to completely read protect the data but still allow MPAA-sanctioned viewers to display it. If it can be displayed, it can be captured. If not directly from the data, then from a dummy video device driver. If not from that, then from a modified video card. If not from there, then from the signal on the video cable. Even though it's a lower-quality copy, it's still a copy.

So I guess the only alternative (since now home-viewing is officially MPAA-sanctioned) is to ruin the movie image.

Eventually, if this trend continues, you'll only be able to watch a rental on a leased MPAA-sanctioned video player. Considering how much DRM is going to cost us in developer time, I'd rather just take my chances at the movie theater, it'll probably be cheaper in the long run. I was going to build up my DVD collection once things settled down (just like my Laserdisc collection), but if I have to put up with purposely-tained prints, and formats that change once every four years, screw it. I'll spend my money elsewhere.

Re:someone had to say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I feel some movies are SOOOO bad as to have STOLEN my time.

Jesus Fucking Christ you are a spoiled brat. Wake up! Not every single movie you will ever see will knock you off your feet. What's next, will you sue soda companies because you didn't feel like you were getting a blowjob every time you take a sip? I swear to God, every time I read Slashdot I feel like I'm surrounded by kindergarteners.

Uh, no...

[Kjella]

No normal capture device captures natively in DivX. So you apply filter to the original stream (whatever that is) as you save the stream in DivX. (original -> filter -> divx encoder) No extra intermediate step is needed. All you need is a smart enough filter, but it shouldn't be that hard to identify automatically (would be a variation of motion detection identifying "flashing" dots.)

Kjella

Guess what? It's not "pirates" that are stealing

[JustAnotherReader]

From the article:

A recent news story says studios may even be discouraged from distributing advance DVDs of their Oscar contenders to academy members, because some of these movies quickly find their way to the Web.

So guess what, it's not us consumers (the ones who are paying the theater ticket prices and rental fees) who are doing the pirating. It's their own people.

Maybe the studios should police their own people rather than give us even poorer quality films and blame us for having to do it.

Re:someone had to say it...

[mattACK]

Yes, it does. I already spend a large chunk of my income on movies in the theater and at home, to say nothing of my electronics to view them how I like to. I am _the_ target audience: I have disposable income and I dig movies. THAT AUDIENCE IS MOVING ON. Not following that market isn't capitalism, it's stupidity.

Re:someone had to say it...

[SirSlud]

I know that most people seem to hate critics (western anti-elitest attitudes and all that.) But, still, I'm amazed people manage to find themselves having paid money for movies they felt were so bad that they actually stole their time.

Thats like figuring out if you should by a Ford by asking a salesguy at a Ford dealership. Figuring out which movies you should see should be done by using independant sources (reviews, friends) .. I really don't have much sympathy for folks who end up not liking movies that had wicked-awesome previews. What on earth do you expect? Previews are probably some of the best examples around of how advertising is essentially the art of manipulation.

Franchise whores (ie: "I know the movie will suck, but I'm an XYZ fan so I have to see it") and people who have stigmas against film critics (ie, the entire profession, not an individual film critic .. you have to find the critics that represent your tastes before they are worth much) must share part of the responsibility. If you believe, even in the slightest, in supply and demand, the quality of movies coming out is a good indication of the the quality of the demand. People don't know what to look for and refuse to vette their interests against film critics, so the studios can afford to keep pumping out crap so long as its backed by a preview with cutting edge effects and several rounds through focus group testing.

Like the manipulative, abusive boyfriend, people keep clinging to this (attractive, albiet) fantasy that the studios are trying to correct their recent track record of abusing or ignoring the minds of the people who pay for the tickets. But they arn't .. they know that currently, they're better off spending their time to secure franchise rights and developing wicked looking previews than actually making a good movie. Like any industry that has become more about the name than the quality of the product, the hollywood movie machine has become better at advertising and market manipulation than it is at producing decent movies.

My test? If the 'summary' of the movie contains pre-existing characters/franchises/brands, or hinges on one plot device, asume its bad until multiple discrete, independant sources suggest otherwise. Don't even bother with the preview; they're fun to watch, but a ludicrous way of determining which movie will contain an additional 157 minutes of quality cinema.

Extensive use of Pro Tools cutting-pasting

[Overly Critical Guy]

It's interesting you mention the disjointed nature of the songs. Bob Rock was going around mentioning how they recorded the songs and then went and twisted all the bits and pieces around in Pro Tools. He was trying to say it was some sort of art movement.

All it really means is that Metallica have gotten even lazier in the studio and can't even play their own parts good enough for an album. So it's now some "garage art" movement.

Re:someone had to say it...

[sjames]

Jesus Fucking Christ you are a spoiled brat. Wake up!

Continuing with your soda analogy, you buy a soda. If it's the best soda you've ever tasted, great. If it's just OK and quenches thirst, fair enough. If when tasting it you are inspired to compare it to a mixture of dog shit, underarm perspiration, and athelete's foot fungus (even though you've never tasted those) and it leaves you feeling as if you are dessicating on the desert sand, you should demand your money back.

Not every movie can be the greatest movie experiance you've ever had, some will be just moderatly entertaining or a 'nice try'. Some, however, rise to new heights of worthlessness and never should have seen the light oif day.

Given how little the ads have to do with the movie these days, demanding your money back is the only remaining form of consumer feedback left other than giving up on movies alltogether.

Re:edit the frames?

[gagol]

You can export the frames of the 2 seconds (between two cuts)

Then reimport the edited frames and replace only the required edited sequence

only need couple of megabytes !!!
Video production can be cheap on megabytes if you know what you do !