New Technology Invented to Bust Piracy
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Movie pirates have pushed Hollywood executives
to try their hand at being sneaky.
Frustrated by the rise of unauthorized copies of films being sold, studios
are now considering spy cameras and other high-tech ways to catch criminals
wielding camcorders, reports The Wall Street Journal.
PirateEye is a hidden-camera system that methodically scans blocks of
audience seats in theaters for video recording devices. The gadget was
developed by a defense contractor who had created SpyFinder, a government
product that detects hidden surveillance cameras.
The PirateEye camera indicates potential camcorder lenses on a computer
screen with red dots, which a technician observes remotely. A determination
is then made to see if the situation warrants closer investigation.
Naturally, this spyware has raised some eyebrows over privacy issues.
"People currently don't expect to be watched when they go to the movies,"
says Chris Hoofnagle, associate director of the Electronic Privacy
Information Center in Washington. "It's a little bit '1984'-ish."
Camcorder jamming is another option to foil moviegoing miscreants. The idea
involves modulating the film's projected light to appear normally to the
audience, but to look distorted once recorded. The technique depends on the
use of digital projection in movie theaters though, which still isn't
widespread.
A different take on busting pirates allows the unauthorized copy to be
made, but invisibly stamps the copies with an embedded audio signal with
the date, time and location of screening. These copies then can be traced
back to the theater where the recording was made. Although watermarking
would allow studios to determine if specific theaters are targeted by
pirates more than other, it wouldn't necessarily lead to apprehending the
guilty party.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences used watermarking on their
screener videos this past year to curtail piracy. In one case, copies
carrying the invisible marks led to the arrest of a Chicago-area man who
had copied Oscar-nominated movies intended only for Academy use.
So far, however, many of these piracy-busting techniques are expensive or
difficult to implement. The simplest and cheapest solution proposed by the
Motion Picture Association of America involves theater employees who, for a
monetary reward, can report audience members in the act of illegally
recording films.
The MPAA reports that illegal copying by moviegoers with camcorders in
theaters of newly released films constitutes the most costly source of
piracy. Studios have lost an estimated $3 billion to pirates annually.
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