October 25, 2005
Encrypted Screener DVDs
The funny thing about this little movie piracy thing that the film industry is always crying about, is that most of the good pirated copies of films come from movie industry people who get screener dvd copies of films and then pass them around (like this story on a SAG member found guilty of pirating his screener copy of Million Dollar Baby).
But it looks like the industry is finally doing something smart about this problem. Disney is going to be the first company to distribute encrypted DVDs that will only play on certain machines that Academy members will have. The good folks over at ABC News give us this:
Cinea, a division of Dolby Laboratories, distributed 12,000 machines last year, but it was too late for the studios to produce the encrypted discs. Most studios instead distributed unencrypted DVDs or specially watermarked VHS tape copies of their films.Meh... you know me. Usually I like to rant about how stupid the industry is most of the time... but from where I'm sitting this looks like a pretty good move. It's simple, effective, and if it works will take away the vast majority of the higher quality bootlegs out of circulation without going after and suing little teenagers.
Posted by John Campea at October 25, 2005 10:56 AM
Comments
Posted by: Rynndar ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](../../../../nav-commenters.gif)
at October 25, 2005 01:07 PM
That is actually a pretty good idea. Sounds like the ENIGMA machines the Nazis used for encryted messages for communicating to U-boats lol.
Posted by: Terry Letourneau at October 25, 2005 05:15 PM
In england we already have this, my boss is a member of bafta( a bit like the british oscars) and they recieve movie screeners each year prior to voting, and they all have a special 'bafta' player to watch them on, and I think it works both ways, the discs are specialy encrypted so you can only play them on the player, but also you can't watch any other movies on the player either...
Posted by: Tom Hartshorn at October 26, 2005 03:22 AM
This might work well in theory but we all know the reality..
At the end of the day if someone WANTS to copy ANY digital media
they can simply interrupt the chain on the way to the monitor
and record the playback.
There is still nothing finite to stop these people.
Sure, they've made it less easy, but still far from
impossible dont you think?
A waste of resources if you ask me.
What they could do is action higher stakes of punishment,
should their watermarked copy pop up somewhere.