Audio Watermarks Could Pinpoint Film Pirates By Seat 336
Slatterz points out a brief mention at PC Authority of a story at Torrent freak about using watermarking embedded in movies' soundtracks to reveal the exact location of camera-wielding bootleggers in a theater; the inventors (here's an abstract of their paper) claim it's accurate to within 44 centimeters.
Oh Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much a moot idea.
Another reason not to go to the theatre (Score:5, Insightful)
For this to be useful, the theatre would have to identify who's in which seat, which means
a. showing ID when you buy tickets (and retaining the seating data for weeks or months)
b. assigned seating.
It's almost as if they don't want people to go to the movie theatre any more.
so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't know who sat in which seat on what showing on what date, knowing which seat a video was shot from isn't going to help you.
why? (Score:5, Insightful)
This bodes well (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I going to get treated like I do by the airlines every time I want to watch a movie?
In order for this to track us at all, we'd need an ID to buy a ticket, need to show ID to get into the theater, have assigned seats, and they would have to change the audio slightly on every showing.
Maybe I'll just stay home and download them instead...
Re:Oh Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
And is the MPAA going to start requiring theaters to record exactly where each of its customers are sitting at each screening of every movie that might be pirated?
Re:What good does this do? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you know what seat they are in days after they filmed it and released it, what good does it really do you? Ive never seen a theater with assigned seating before.
This might be useful for tracking down unauthorized recordings obtained during pre-release screenings.
Useless Information (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:so what? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's another variable as well.. what theater.. of which there is no standard design.
And even if they somehow manage to determine who was sitting in that seat, in that theater, at that time, on that date.. Id imagine any lawyer worth a damn would get someone off by forcing a plaintiff to prove things like that the projector was calibrated, and the method used for calibrating.
Re:Useless Information (Score:4, Insightful)
They will still not know in which cinema or exactly when the film was recorded.
They will if the watermarking equipment creates a unique signature with each playback.
Re:Next step - CCTV (Score:3, Insightful)
Infrared photograph of everyone in the theatre. Mark my words, this is coming. For "security" reasons, to fight terrorism, etc
That would be counter-productive and would drive away customers from an already troubled industry.
Re:so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Movie theatre tickets are not even assigned by seats like a sporting event. Theatre owners probably sell 80-90% of their tickets as cash transactions, no ID, no credit card. But even if you paid for seat with a credit card, in which case they would know who they sold they ticket to, the seats aren't assigned -- you could sit anywhere in the theatre so they can know where you sat, but not who sat there or even which movie theatre the movie was shot in.
And if they did start requiring IDs and assigning seats, well, let's just say movie theatres won't be getting my business anyway. I won't put up with that when I can purchase the movie and own my own copy for what it costs to go to movie theatre these days.
Besides, most pirated movies aren't shot with digicam these days, they're pirated from DVDs, BDs, etc.
Re:so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't know who sat in which seat on what showing on what date, knowing which seat a video was shot from isn't going to help you.
And you have just pointed out step 2 in their plan to ruin the movie theater experience, or stop piracy, whichever comes first.
Don't be shocked once metal detectors, checking in your cell phone at the lobby to get back after the movie, and numbered on ticket seating.
Of course, when nearly anyone wants to put up with that crap, the loss in sales to their annoying practices will be blamed on even more piracy.
Good riddance to them
What this "news" story means? (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of people are pointing out some of the obvious technical flaws here: microphone placement, ID/seat assignments, poor quality CAMs suck, etc. etc.
The even more significant issue would be that such a scheme would have serious widespread implementation to be relevant. Which is never, ever going to happen. Cinema's are franchises, it's not like a software update that can be installed everywhere "instantly" fast (within a week for frequently updated systems, years for others...). This system would be difficult to set up effectively in one cinema, let alone a chain of them, let alone an entire city with competing networks, let alone many cities, let alone a whole nation, let alone bigger than that...etc.
This is like the "news" about video watermarks supposedly to be embedded in the films so that the specific theatre/time could be traced. This is like the IR projected from the screen that will make your camera unable to record properly.
None of this could conceivably ever, ever make it past a few experimental test runs in a few random places.
So why is this news? More WAR-ON-DRUGS style propaganda. That is to say disinformation... or more accurately: Utter B.S. that relies entirely on widespread ignorance and a subservient media to not be laughed out of the room. This is like the stories about people injecting Opium (sounds almost plausible except that Opium is a solid) and LSD making people think they can fly off buildings, Reefer Madness etc.
As much as I enjoy wild nerdy speculation about wireless microphones and other espionage imaginings (for financially irrelevant CAMs no less) we should call it what it is: sheer nonsense.
My next question is this: I assume that this is a real company making this "technology" that is important only for its semi-believable bluster. So how do we get in on such a gravy train? I want to write Science Fiction propaganda news articles too!
Previous step - DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be counter-productive and would drive away customers from an already troubled industry.
That argument never stopped RIAA and MPAA before.
The real issue (Score:2, Insightful)
One brilliant idea might be to give scriptwriters the money to write better scripts that are actually worth the cost of the ticket.
Or maybe theater owners try to IMPROVE the theater going experience. There are many things to complain about in a regular trip to the movies. Most are age old complaints like inconsiderate fellow moviegoers that like chatting. Others are newer like getting frisked when going to an early screening of a movie.
Treat customers like criminals and they will behave that way.
Make going to a movie theater worth the price of admission. Make it as easy as possible to go and as cheap as possible while keeping the quality of the experience as high as possible.
There will be some trade-offs, but such is life.
Just don't model the experience on the airlines models. Remember that people are almost at a point where they would rather swim across the Atlantic than use the bloody airlines.
Re:Another reason not to go to the theatre (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And who cares, anyway? (Score:1, Insightful)
Dude, those are leaked DVD screeners. It's pretty easy to get free movies if you're involved in the periphery of the industry. I have like 50 legitimate DVD screeners right next to me.
Re:Oh Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty soon, people will get used to a bright flash between the previews and the start of the film. Add to that an infrared video camera, and they can keep track of people changing seats during the movie.
Of course, the natural response of the wittier bootleggers will be to wear a Guy Fawkes mask to the theater. :-)
Re:so what? (Score:3, Insightful)
And you have just pointed out step 2 in their plan to ruin the movie theater experience, or stop piracy, whichever comes first.
Don't be shocked once metal detectors, checking in your cell phone at the lobby to get back after the movie, and numbered on ticket seating.
Of course, when nearly anyone wants to put up with that crap, the loss in sales to their annoying practices will be blamed on even more piracy.
Good riddance to them
Doing that sort of thing would just make people who don't ordinarily pirate movies anyway just stop coming to the theatre and start pirating just to avoid all that stuff.
Re:so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
And some more variables:
Audio quality of the recording device (low, mono, parity, etc)
Audio alignment, what happens of you offset the audio track post-recording even by 20ms, that could be like 10 seats away, you'd have to haul in like a 10x10 grid of people, analyze all their potential "devices", try and get 100 warrants for something so trivial.
Seems like a more accurate way would be to implant an assortment of detectors in each seat, scouting for magnetic interference or something, and even that would cause havoc in accuracy and false positives.
To me this stinks of pointless scare tactics which will only thwart off idiots. Option B: strip search everyone who enters, only consequence: 95% of people stop seeing movies in theaters, and just wait for someone to rip the DVD.
Re:Another reason not to go to the theatre (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they would rather just get the federal government to tax us all and send the $ direct to the MPAA.
Then sue anyone that is dumb enough to go see a movie.
Re:Another reason not to go to the theatre (Score:3, Insightful)
Or that when designing the accoustics of such a room you want to ensure that a person's seat position affects their "audio experience" as little as possible.
Re:What good does this do? (Score:3, Insightful)
You raise a valid point there. I also went through that progression: Movie watching (DVD/Theaters) -> Pirate Movies -> Almost no movies
I also know a lot of people who pretty much stopped watching movies these days.
It is really sad. Between all the DRM bullshit (including those warning screens that you "can't" skip), and the overall quality of movies (or lack of), it is simply not worth anymore. I mean, what are the odds a random movie will be good ? 0.1% ?
Re:And who cares, anyway? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Useless Information (Score:4, Insightful)
Now which theater did that camcorder copy come from?
Re:Another reason not to go to the theatre (Score:3, Insightful)
'Location: Inside projection booth, attached to sound system.'
Re:Another reason not to go to the theatre (Score:3, Insightful)
It's actually a sliding scale. The first 2-4 weeks a film is out the studios will keep upwards of 70% of all ticket sales. In the case of a hotly-anticipated film such as a new Batman or Bond, the percentage will go even higher to 80% or above.
What country does this? When I worked in a theater, we had to bid on films. The bid was a combination of percent of ticket sales (often over 100% for smaller houses) and the number of seats. This is why multiplexes get first run and single screen and twin cinemas get older films. They can't bid enough to get first run because they don't attract enough to fill the seats. Maybe the way films are bid on has changed in the last 15 years, but bidding over 100% of the ticket sales to fill the seats and sell popcorn happened quite often for popular films.
If something has changed, when did this happen?
If you thought IP was sane think again (Score:4, Insightful)
If this isnt an example of total insanity on behalf of intellectual property interests, I don't know what is. Going this far to catch cammers? im thinking straight jackets and ambulances for all of IP business interests that have completely lost track of all reality.
Assigned seating and times (Score:2, Insightful)
Even with assigned seating, is there some difference in the identification code that not only shows what theatre the movie is tagged to, but also the time of the showing/recording?
What are they going to do, pull every record for a month and question those who sat around 5-A?
Re:Useless Information (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Useless Information (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is ironic, since it's still useless because it provides the info well after the fact. What good does knowing where the bootlegger sat if you find the video online or at a flea-market a week later? The person isn't going to sit in the same seat every time. If they're really worried, just get the movie theater ushers to check the seats in the middle. (Which should be obvious.) Anyhow, in-theater bootlegs are considered bit ghetto-ish nowadays since much better can be had as a direct conversion from leaked or recently released digital media. (And those are likely to be from friends/family of the actual people that do movie reviews, or those folks doing janitorial or mailroom work at press-related offices. What, you think those press-release DVDs actually get destroyed?) Nobody really wants the in-theater copy with the commentary and noise of the people around the bootlegger or see someone in front getting up for popcorn. Such recordings are only for people desperate for a quick movie fix or for those without access (direct or indirectly via friends) to a good internet connection.
Re:Useless Information (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats just the first step.
Visible video watermark is easily removable *if* you take the time to do it. I didnt noticed "red dots" yet, so I'm assuming its fairly unobtrusive and one would need to watch the whole movie a couple of time very carefully to make sure you removed all the watermarks.
They are betting it will discourage enough people, or that somebody will be sloppy and get caught and made a good example of...
The next step for the pirates would be to have an automated process to detect and remove the marks.
Then the studios would try to produce more subtle marks, that are more difficult to detect and remove, and you would get into an race between the pirates and the studios...
But keep in mind that, assuming the studios can indeed come up with always better technologies, it will be much more risky for the pirates to know they are safe.
On the copy protection/DRM side, its always easy and safe for the hackers: They know when they succeeded. Where the studio never know where the next exploitable flaws in their system is going to be.
Now for watermark: the pirates will probably never really know if they succeeded in removing the watermarks because the studio will keep the technology and the detectors secrets until they have to publish them for court cases.
Obviously, it remains to be seen if any video/audio watermark system is robust enough to survive the basic trans-coding algorithm that are usually applied by the pirates, and also if they are robust enough to be admissible in courts.
But then again, if you knew that your dvds or camcorded movies were watermarked with information that could eventually be linked to you, would you take the effort and risk to share it on bittorrent ? If you were in it for the money, I'm sure you will take some risks, but if you were doing it just for the heck of it ?
I think thats what the studio are thinking: "If they think we have the technology to track them, or if its just good enough that we can catch just one of them and make an example of it, that will be a string deterrent..."
But all in all I would not be too worried...
Re:Useless Information (Score:1, Insightful)