DRM issues may disqualify Steven Spielberg from nomination

January 11, 2006

The Infamous DRM copy protection technology has caused quite a serious problem for Steven Spielberg due to the way his screener movie 'Munich' was sent to over 3,000 BAFTA (British Film Academy) members. In order to protect the screener from leaks and early piracy before the movie reaches the cinema, the DVD was encrypted such that it could only play on the proprietary DVD players supplied by Cinea.

The first problem arose when the discs got held up by UK customs, thus resulting in the deadline for the first round of voting being missed. Worse still, once the discs did finally arrive, they were unplayable since they were region locked to North America! This means that the majority of voters who could not watch the disc cannot vote for this film, which in turn may disqualify the movie from consideration.

This was not the first time this happened wrongly regioned encrypted discs had been sent out as Warner Bros had previously accidentally sent Region 1 (US) screener's to BAFTA members. Finally, as the Cinea supplied player meant that those sent screeners had to watch them only on this player, some decided to opt for the simple option of just watching screeners that could play on their existing DVD player, which meant that the encrypted discs were less watched. Thanks to punan, who used our news submit to let us know about the following news:

Steven Spielberg will most likely not get any nomination for the BAFTA (British Film Academy) awards for "Munich" because of a massive DRM cock-up. BAFTA's 3,000+ members were sent encrypted 'screener' DVDs that can only be played on special DVD players supplied by Cinea (www.cinea.com - a Dolby subsidiary). First the DVDs were held up by UK customs, thereby missing the first round voting deadline. But when they arrived, they would not play on any machine because they had been mastered for Region 1 (North America). As BAFTA members are cannot vote for films they have not seen and only a handful of preview screenings have been held, the film ought to be disqualified from consideration. I can't imagine Spielberg will be best pleased about this.

The full article can be read here.

It is already looking like that no matter what stage DRM is applied to content, it ends up being a recipe for disaster! First, it was the distribution medium, such as DVDs, downloadable content, etc. iTunes seems to do so well as the DRM does not have as strong restrictions as like Sony BMG's XCP protection for CDs. Then the entertainment industry tried getting it put on broadcast mediums, for example the infamous Broadcast Flag is a form of DRM. DRM currently seems to be holding up the next generation of optical discs, since it is still being finalised. Now, DRM is being used to protect screener movies, thus resulting in this current issue.

Source: Boing Boing