Hollywood alters movies to foil camcorder pirates

April 22, 2003

According to CNN.com, the
Hollywood studios are currently investigating methods to prevent people from
recording movies in movie theathers. Many movies have been appearing on the
internet that were recorderd in movie theathers and according to the movie
industry this piracy method is responsable for a loss of 3 billion dollar.
Strangely enough the industry only invests 2 million dollar in finding a
solution.

This
technology would be a major improvement over the industry's current
measures of trying to block pirate recorders, including night-vision
goggles and metal detectors. Some of the piracy is an inside job: A pirate
bribes a projectionist to set up a tripod in the projection booth.
"It is a system that will not stop camcording," said
Ken Jacobsen, director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion
Picture Association of America. "The best we can do is try to keep it out
of the marketplace before a full domestic release."

Still, the industry knows that whatever technological
gains are made over pirates will eventually be thwarted, requiring even
more sophisticated countermeasures.

They
are currently using some sort of watermarking technology that should prevent the
recorderd movie to be viewed, but they do not seem to have succeeded in finding
a way to watermark it in such a way that it really helps. Read the entire
article here.

Source: CNN.com