Nabbing (some) camcorders
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Spider-Man 3 photo courtesy of Sony Pictures |
The movie industry's assault on piracy in theaters has intensified in the past couple of years, and the most quantifiable result is a dramatic increase in the number of people stopped in the act of filming a movie. This morning, the MPAA and NATO (the National Association of Theatre Owners, not the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) announced (download release here) that workers and customers at multiplexes around the world had stopped 31 attempts to record Spider-Man 3 in its opening weeks. Three people have been arrested in connection with the nine incidents in the U.S. (and a fourth is expected to be charged, according to NATO's Patrick Corcoran), and 15 arrests have been made in other countries (10 of them in Malaysia, home of a vibrant counterfeit DVD industry). That's a whopping number of incidents and arrests; I could find reports of only one arrest in connection with camcording Spider-Man 2, although I vaguely recall that there may have been two or three efforts foiled.
One reason for the increase in U.S. arrests is that Congress made it a violation of federal law two years ago to make an unauthorized recording of a movie in a theater. Many states (including California) also have enacted laws against "camming" in recent years, and NATO started offering rewards to theater workers who stop pirates in the act. Sony also went to unusual lengths to stop cammers, including hiring extra security guards for Spidey 3's pre-release screenings and premieres.
MPAA CEO Dan Glickman said the anti-camming efforts "helped give Spider-Man 3 a fair shot at its record-setting opening." No question that Spidey 3 had a great opening weekend -- $151 million in the U.S. and Canada, and $382 million worldwide. But pirates still managed to circulate several camcorded versions of the film online as the pic was hitting U.S. theaters, with one of those versions making onto DVDs that Sony found in Chicago and New York on opening weekend. Ouch. One cam evidently shot in Russia got fairly good reviews at a site that tracks online movie bootlegs.
IMHO, cases like this make it hard to divine the precise relationship between online piracy and Hollywood's revenue. These days, the first wave of online piracy is sustained by only one or two cams; once a release group has beaten the rest of the pack to a movie, the competition shifts to the next title (and, later, to be the first to release a bootleg of the DVD). So a single decent cam of Spidey 3 getting onto the Net was enough to feed the movie piracy scene. Nevertheless, the movie is well on its way to shattering box-office records. Maybe the number would be even higher if there were no cammed versions available -- perhaps some people who would have gone to the multiplex changed their minds after watching the bootleg. And maybe fewer people will buy the DVD because they've downloaded a comparatively low-quality copy for free. Or maybe the movie's stars, story and marketing, combined with a paucity of competition and a huge number of screens, have produced a juggernaut. Camming shouldn't be tolerated -- there's just no justification for it. And there's no question that the crackdown will help the industry. The question is, how much?
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What we need is some bright tech type to invent something to fool the auto-focus or auto exposure of a cam-corder into messing up its settings. Like maybe really bright infra-red and ultra-violet LEDs being pulsed at random rates around the screen? Some work with cam-corder makes might be needed but a couple million dollars of R&D should do it.
Offer $1,000 to free lance "bounty hunters" if they find a cammer in a theater and report it so the perp is nailed during the performance. If they announce the reward on screen at the beginning of the film I am sure that every third person there will be phoning it in on their cell if they see a cam-corder operating in the theater. First to call gets the money. After all, why would people tolerate it after they paid to see the film. Offer the reward in every country too. As part of the condition for the film to even be played at all.
And when it is verified on night vision goggles, stop the film and really annoy everyone in the theater while the perp is hauled away. People won't tolerate camming for long after that.
And the film prints need to be watermarked on random frames, individually. So that when a cammed copy comes out, the particular theater can be identified and that theater owner notified that if they fail to do the above do catch cammers, they won't get any more first releases.
Isn't some of this stuff obvious? OK, I am an engineer, and I figure out stuff for a living but its not that hard. I live in LA too and get benefit from the movie industry being here too.
Posted by: Dan Fraser | May 18, 2007 at 12:55 PM
A couple of years ago, I wrote about a number of firms who were trying to perfect camcorder-detection technology for theaters to install. The MPAA had a bake-off of sorts, and I watched one session where studio engineering types tried to beat the detector with elaborately crafted recording devices. That suggested to me that the search a perfect solution was going to defeat what seemed to be good solutions, and given that the technologies never got deployed, that's probably what happened. That an the expense of outfitting all the multiplexes.
As for camcorder defeating technology, there was some effort to do that through digitally projected films. Cinea was involved, if I remember correctly, but I don't know how that ended up. Rather than trying to stop camcorders from working, I think the industry is going to focus instead on stopping their recordings from being turned into bootlegged DVDs. There's an effort underway to create watermarks that will prevent new DVD players (and especially high-def models) from playing discs made from camcorded movies. Those watermarks would be inserted in films sent to theaters as well as home-video releases. That effort requires far-reaching collaboration among studios, consumer-electronics companies and computer manufacturers, which is one reason it hasn't happened yet.
Posted by: Jon Healey | May 18, 2007 at 01:08 PM
I don't think you can prevent a determined individual from using a camcorder in a movie theatre. The industry complains about lost revenue due to piracy. I believe anyone that will buy a bootlegged version of a movie probably wouldn't have paid full price to see the movie anyway. I think the movie industry is doing the right thing by marketing movies as a event that can't be replicated. Lastly, if a movie is good enough surely those people with bootlegged copies will upgrade to legitimate versions.
Posted by: RayDeluxx | May 20, 2007 at 09:22 AM
You may be right -- the folks who post comments on the pirated movie sites certainly seem like avid fans who often go to the theater to see films. I've long believed that DVD rips are a bigger problem for the industry than camcorded films. On the other hand, when I was in Melbourne a few years ago (the piracy capital of Australia), I went to a few swap meets where the demand for cams was unreal. So it may be that cams are a perfectly acceptable substitute for the multiplex or the legit DVD in some markets.
Posted by: Jon Healey | May 20, 2007 at 01:49 PM
IMHO this isn't going to end until we have day and date home video release. What if one could only buy the DVD at the theater (on the way out after seeing the film) for the first month, after which it'd be available everywhere and at a lower price? The theaters would get a new revenue stream, and attention would shift from camming the movie in the theater to ripping the DVD at home later :-)
Another scenario is that home video takes over and becomes the primary distribution medium, and films that do well in home video get a chance at a theatrical run later, probably a special edition. It's hard to get people excited about direct-to-video, though. Studios have to realize that anything that goes into a display buffer or onto a screen can be pirated. One might be able to reduce the incidence, but not eliminate it entirely. A DVD with full software protection and a barely working volume can be pirated simply by camming it at home off the screen, and that goes for HD, too. Maybe watermarking would be effective here, but one could always use an older camera/recorder.
I never understood the objection to DAT audio tape back when it was an issue. Since when did pirates care about quality? And what would've stopped anyone from simply using an old 2-track Ampex to make the copy? A step that would've improved many an early audio CD. I've resisted buying too much music online because of the poor sound quality and DRM restrictions. Apple/EMI's proposal to sell better quality unprotected songs at a higher price is actually something I can get behind.
Here's a simple though easily defeated idea: after the film starts, run the IR codes for Stop, in versions for all known machines. That at least represents an intelligence test, which many may fail :-) The best protection is to sell a good product at a realistic price for the intended market, and release it in a timely fashion. Rural people in China or Africa are _not_ going to pay $20 bucks for a DVD. They simply don't have that much money. Recent steps by at least one studio to align prices to local conditions is a step forward.
Posted by: Tim Sassoon | May 26, 2007 at 06:41 PM