First 'piracy-protected' Academy-screener pirated

[RealTronic]

Well, so it was just a matter of time, we all knew that!

The first Academy-screener has been pirated and released on the net. It's "Pieces of April" from MGM/UA.

Yes, it was supposed to be 'piracy protected' due to new serial numbers and non-disclosure agreements etc etc. But of course the serial numbers were easily removed and the movie released.

GOOD JOB MPAA!!! YOUR SCREENER BAN REALLY WORKED ;-)

[origin]

well that is how it always goes. Copyright holders raise the bar of methods of protecting there copyrighted media. And then talented people in the scene have fun defeating what took them so much time to create. It was created by man it can be defeated by man. It is just a manner of time before the hurdle is cleared they can slow down the movement at best but never stop it!

l8

[Psilaxs]

It was created by man it can be defeated by man.

l8

While I subscribe to that theory most of the time, I would like to see someone break 512 bit encryption.

[Wolfie]

In the immortal words of Nelson:"Haa haaa!"

[Jelsoft]

Can you provide a link to this news?

If the news is true, I guess it is back to the drawing board for the MPAA!

[RealTronic]

Given the subject matter, I'd rather not publish a source for my information. However, I can guarantee it's true.

Here's some info from the people who released the movie:

Its here, and its gonna be great. The academy season has arived and
we are proud to open it with this great flick. Pieces of April opened
earlier this year on the sundance festival and was later shown at
the Toronto film festival. The last few months it has been shown in
a select amount of theaters across the country.
As a fun little present the nice people at the academy descided to add
a serial this year, it shows up alongside the standard academy screener
message. We blurred it every time it pops up so you have a clear and
undisturbed picture troughout most of the movie.

It's the first one, we are a little rusty, but expect more in the
comming weeks & months.
In the spirit in thanksgiving, this would be the pefect movie to watch
with your annoying relatives. enjoy!

[que-em]

While I subscribe to that theory most of the time, I would like to see someone break 512 bit encryption.

If it's made by Microsoft you don't even have to crack the encryption, just find a hole.

[WRFan]

I was going to download it, just to piss off MPAA a little, but it doesn't sound interesting. Sure, katie Holmes is in it, but the plot sounds boring. this is just a family movie for americans, cause europeans are not interested in thanxgiving, most of us don't even know what this means. every christmas hollywood releases some family xmas crap, every thanxgiving some crap about thanxgiving. just because it fits. but it doesn't fit from the european point of view, cause thanxgiving is not known in europe. so I'll pass. can't stand "family movies" anyway

[DudeAsInCool]

I believe in 'Fair Use', but I think downloading new films and video games before they have even been released, is not cool. The former is not piracy, but the latter is...even if you're only previewing it. Its stuff like this that gives P2P technology a bad name. Yes, all encryption can be broken, but so what. If you were an artist or a craftsman, and you just spent several years working on it, how would you like to have someone do this to your work? P.S. I was against the screening ban because it hurts the indie films.. Ripping off the film only supports the MPAA's argument that the screeners distribution leads to piracy.

[kiwibank]

ha, ha, fuckin` ha!!! lets all go to the movies for nothing.




KEEP THE INTERNET FREE
person-to-person, people-to-people, peer-to-peer, 'puter-to-'puter

p2pnet.net - Always first


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Stealing Movies - Part Deux
TheSherminator couldn't believe it - an article on Fox News, "That grabbed my attention enough to read the rest of it. I was mostly surprised just because it is a mass media outlet."

And he's right. It's a really nice piece of writing which makes its point clearly and with power.

So here's another of those rare occasions when we cut-and-paste an entire article so you can get the full, rich flavour.

Now read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Sony Chief Stringer Takes Stand in Oscar Battle

Tuesday, October 07, 2003
By Roger Friedman

You're reading about this tempest in a teapot concerning the Oscars and a new rule forbidding studios to send tapes or DVDs of films to the voters.

You're wondering: What's up with this? Who cares?

The big studios say it's to stop piracy. But you know better. And so do I.

When the edict came down from Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, it was swift and unexpected. In fact, Sir Howard Stringer, the head of Sony Entertainment in America, tells me that he was the last studio head the MPAA called.

He was furious about it when I ran into him at Lincoln Center on Friday night for the opening of the New York Film Festival. To underscore his position, Stringer was with his Sony Pictures Classics chief Michael Barker. SPC's Oscar chances could be damaged by the decision to ban "screeners."

"I am totally against the end of screeners," Stringer said. And he has good reason: He oversees Sony Pictures Classics, which has given us Oscar-bountiful independent movies by Pedro Almodóvar and Ang Lee as well as "Winged Migration."

These films would not have made it to the final cut if not for older Academy members being able to watch them at home.

"And I am pretty upset about the way this was done," Stringer added.

The seven major studios very quietly signed an agreement not to send out screeners this year, closing out everyone who they thought wanted to be part of the Oscars from the process. Stringer says Sony/Columbia had signed the letter before he knew what had happened.

Stringer is a rarity among the studio chiefs. He operates out of New York. He is not wedded to the Beverly Hills/Bel Air/Malibu way of life. His is not part of the permanent government in the American entertainment business.

But the other studio chiefs are. Just like their Emmy Award counterparts, the ones who fight against having HBO shows like "The Sopranos" steal the thunder from broadcast shows like "The West Wing," the West Coast movie business has had it with the East Coast making them look like fools every year at Oscar time.

You may have wondered why the Academy refuses to let even part of the Oscars be telecast from New York. Duh!

Everything about the DVD-screener debate can be summed up by looking at two years in Oscar history: 1986 and 1996. It's called a generational shift, and this is what happened.

First, 1986. Look at the best-picture nominees. Does anyone remember a Roland Joffé film called "The Mission" starring Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons?

A Warner Bros. release, "The Mission" got mostly terrible reviews. It cost a fortune to make, but it employed lots of Hollywood cast and crew. It was considered a prestige picture. It got a bunch of Oscar nominations.

It served a purpose as so many Hollywood epics had in prior years. It was like a piece of veal cordon bleu served with a cream sauce in a fancy French-like American restaurant. It was stuffed with cheese, so it was supposed to be good.

"The Mission" has since sunk to the bottom of the ocean of cinematic history like a stone.

Flash forward to 1996: The cheese is gone. To coin a phrase from a recent bestselling book, it's been moved.

In 1996, the Oscar-nominee list came from a bunch of indies, all from New York or places other than Hollywood. The days of "The Mission" were over.

"Fargo," "Shine," "The English Patient" and "Secrets and Lies" all came from the black lagoon of non-Hollywood. Only Columbia's "Jerry Maguire," starring Hollywood's No. 1 attraction, Tom Cruise, made the list. And it lost.

The following year, 1997, "Good Will Hunting," "The Full Monty" and "L.A. Confidential" (a Warners studio picture that was treated like an evil stepchild) almost toppled the ultimate big-studio picture, "Titanic."

In 1998, "Shakespeare in Love," "Life Is Beautiful," "Elizabeth" and "The Thin Red Line" (another studio film held at arm's length) trumped the West Coast sensibilities represented by "Saving Private Ryan."

The Hollywood establishment has been slowly losing ground for many years. Starting in 1989 with "My Left Foot," Miramax, i.e., indie films from New York, made alarming inroads at the Oscars.

Daniel Day-Lewis and Brenda Fricker actually won. Daniel Day-who? Brenda what? They weren't glamorous or well known. They were the kind of people who used to maybe get a supporting nomination. It was only the beginning.

By 1993, Anna Paquin — an 11-year-old from New Zealand — won best supporting actress in "The Piano." She accepted her award wearing what looked like a Dust Buster on her head.

This was probably the point at which Valenti knew there was a problem. The studio gate had been picked open.

Maybe it's not a conspiracy, but if people from another part of the country imperiled my livelihood, I'd do everything I could to stop them. Wouldn't you?

It's not just Miramax that threatens the Warner-Paramount-Universal-Columbia-Disney-20th way of life. Sony Pictures Classics, Fox Searchlight, Universal's Focus, Fine Line and a host of smaller firms (Lions Gate, ThinkFilms, Newmarket, Artisan, Strand, Cowboy, Magnolia) now churn out the films smart people want to see. The big guys have been relegated to manufacturing derided cinematic theme parks masquerading as films.

Valenti might have had a good point about piracy had he not followed his declaration with news that studios can't even distribute existing DVDs or tapes that are already in stores. Huh?

Right there he seemed to negate his whole anti-piracy platform. If a tape/disc is available in a retail store, how can sending it to someone for free make it vulnerable to massive fraudulent copying?

The answer is, it can't. Frankly, the whole piracy debate smells like a stalking horse anyway. Movies are still not downloadable the way music is. Valenti is acting as if there are huge lines to buy the kind of in-theatre videos Kramer wanted to make on "Seinfeld," with people's heads bobbing up in the picture, or with grainy, milky images.

So the move is on to cut off the independents and restore Hollywood power to its proper places. Valenti says that screening rooms will be doubled to accommodate Oscar voters, but the truth is that won't happen.

Both Los Angeles and New York lack the number of private screens necessary for this. In automobile-dependent L.A., older voters don't get around much at night anyway. It's the screeners that make it possible for them to see smaller films.

Get ready, I suppose, for studio fare like "The Italian Job" and "Matchstick Men" to be in the running for best picture. How about The Rock for best actor? Just hold on. Look at today's election. Anything is possible.

[DudeAsInCool]

The above writer makes a poor case for the pro-academy screeners. To suggest that people in Hollywood are against making important films is total bunk; the idea that a conspiracy exists by the west coast people to stifle the brilliant filmmakers from the East is ludicrous. Every Hollywood studio has a classics division and they are located in Hollywood, not NY.

[DwarfBaby]

While I subscribe to that theory most of the time, I would like to see someone break 512 bit encryption.

By the time you see a CD encrypted with 512 bit encryption, you will see a someone able to break it. 512 bit encryption simply cannot and will not happen either CD or DVD format, the reason being it will neither play on current players nor fit on current media nor will smaller bit encryption schemes.

[method]

Well.. if you posess the technology to allow playback of aforementioned 512bit-encrypted content you have the tools, access to the seed and access to the algorithms required.

On top of that, you can just rip from the playback device, no matter how crudely.

They won't be able to do much to stop us until they have TCA/TCP chips in monitors, TVs and speakers!!

(and even then, we can probably still access the unencrypted, clear-data with some basic electronics knowledge.)

I guess my point is: their actions to protect media are futile.

[Psilaxs]

By the time you see a CD encrypted with 512 bit encryption, you will see a someone able to break it. 512 bit encryption simply cannot and will not happen either CD or DVD format, the reason being it will neither play on current players nor fit on current media nor will smaller bit encryption schemes.

I Wasn't speaking of encrypted DVD's I meant just in general.

[Criminal_Sniper]

its not a matter of hardware
we can get mp3 players right?

they are trying to make it fit but it wont
why dont the artists all leave :)
i would have by now
got a few good producers and started a competition against them
they would crumble