p2pnet - rss feed: New MPAA anti-p2p agency
p2p news / p2pnet:- Six of the seven major Hollywood studios will jointly finance a multimillion-dollar research laboratory to “speed the development of new ways to foil movie pirates”.
Nonprofit (ahem) Motion Picture Laboratories “will begin operation later this year,” continues the New York Times. “According to Hollywood executives involved in its establishment, MovieLabs will have a budget of more than $30 million for its first two years. The idea arose out of Hollywood’s contention that the consumer electronics and information technology industries are not investing heavily or quickly enough in piracy-fighting technology.”
MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) boss Dan ‘Jedi’ Glickman is quoted as saying the new Wonder Organization will focus mainly on piracy prevention, “though it will be given some flexibility to expand its mission later”.
The idea isn’t to “research how to make certain types of movies; that’s not what we’re talking about here," he says. Rather, “Ways to jam camcorders being used inside movie theaters, or to project movies with flickering images that are invisible to the eye but will appear on unauthorized video recordings,” he says, according to the NYT.
The report doesn’t say which of the Not-So-Magificent-Seven (Walt Disney, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Universal City Studios and Warner Bros Entertainment) isn’t involved. But presumably, Sony is in and in that case, it’ll be able to provide invaluable input because it makes many of the products, easy-to-conceal handy camcorders, the studios are so upset about.
The story says other subjects of interest will include:
- Network management technologies to detect and block illegal file transfers on campus and business networks.
- Traffic analysis tools to detect illegal content sharing on peer-to-peer networks.
- Ways to prevent home and personal digital networks from being tapped into by unauthorized users, while not preventing consumers from sending a movie to more than one TV set without having to pay for it each time.
- Ways to link senders and receivers of movies transmitted over the Internet to geographic and political territories, to monitor the distribution of movies and prevent the violation of license agreements.
In a quote worthy of his predecessor, Jack Valenti, Glickman says consumer-electronics and information technology companies may not see “an immediate commercialization” because “We have different objectives here. That’s why the Pentagon set up Darpa (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) knowing that the companies wouldn’t do it on their own.”
Speaking of DARPA, John Poindexter isn’t doing much these days. Maybe the studios will be able to snag him to work under Glickman?
Definitely stay tuned.
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See:-
New York Times - Microsoft acquires ID management company Alacris, September 19, 2005
John Poindexter - Poindexter Rides Again - Part II
September 19th, 2005 at 8:08 pm
Some underpaid projectionist will allow a hacker to have a view of the technology being used. The hacker will experiment with countermeasures, and a solution will be found. As far as using traffic management tools to rat out p2p traffic, there is always wireless lans not connected to the interet that can be used to share files. The network management tools cannot monitor data that is not transmitted on that network.
September 19th, 2005 at 11:56 pm
Yah, let’s spend FIFTEEN MILLION a year coming up with “new ways to foil movie pirates” that will get hacked in no time.
That’s got to be a better idea than responding to the market with good products at prices low enough to make legit purchases attractive. That would NEVER work…
I spose 15 mil a year is chump change for “the studios” anyhoo. I bet their annual lobbying budget blows that away.
September 20th, 2005 at 12:12 am
Don’t these idiots ever learn?
I can’t see how they can do traffic analysis, unless the traffic runs through their networks. That would be invasion of privacy? data mining? spyware?. And a host of other law breaking activities surely?
As for the adding slight errors to the cam recordings, if it’s watchable, then it’s copyable
.
The real mandate for this company is probably to find the best ways to obtain evidence to procecute sharers. And determine where the greater number of users are operating.
We all need to publicize the relationship between the riaa/mpaa and their clients who they work for (EMI, Sony etc). That way when ever anyone considers these money grabbing nazi’s it will be synonymous with their clients. The mpaa/riaa was a good way of deflecting bad publicity of their activities away from the real culpruts - THEIR CLIENTS!
Once people start bad mouthing sony, EMI etc along with mpaa/riaa then we might see a change of attitude.
September 20th, 2005 at 1:24 am
here comes array’s of ifra-red lights, to a theater near you.
September 20th, 2005 at 9:57 pm
“Six of the seven major Hollywood studios will jointly finance a multimillion-dollar research laboratory to “speed the development of new ways to foil movie pirates”.
Heaven forbid they finance a multimillion-dollar research laboratory to speed the development of new ways to distribute their products at reasonable prices, and come away smelling like roses while making even more money than they ever made before by appealing to what the masses want. No, the big wigs in control of these operations feel they’ve been given a black eye and want payback. They take everything personally (the rich, famous, and spoiled often do due to an over inflated sense of self importance) and thus hand down directives from on high dictating the entire entertainment industry to wage a war against the very people they make their money from. It’s should be obvious by now that they will never win, but sadly they are too blinded by their hate and fear to see it. Look at governments. Have they ever succedded in holding down their people? They try but nothing lasts forever, and victims always eventually grow claws and teeth to fight back with. But it’s the industries money to waste I suppose, and the more the waste the faster they die (one would hope). Crying wolf sure seems to be a good way to make money these days. The tech companies that develop all these so called copy protection measures must be laughing all the way to the bank. Reminds me of Michael Moores film Bowling for Columbine actually, the part about how fear and consumerism are linked. Anyone who is a fan of Terry Gookind’s books will know what I mean when I say “Wizard’s First Rule”.
September 20th, 2005 at 11:13 pm
Heh, you said “do due”…