Camcorder piracy probe nets arrests

[Bantam]

FBI raids Wednesday led to the arrest of 13 members of an international movie-piracy ring suspected of being responsible for half of all camcorder copies of films available on the black market and on the Internet in the U.S., according to the MPAA.

It was estimated that the New York-area group is responsible for 25 percent of all camcorded copies of counterfeit movies worldwide.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062900232.html

bootleg-quality copies suck. thoughts on this article?

[tomdkat]

Peace...

[Bantam]

that's a ton of market-share those 13 dudes were running....

[Monrozombi]

whats a movie in NYC cost these days 12 bucks? To going to that many movies they must be making a mint ( i don't condone it, just stating) to have that much time and money to be sitting in movies. But i'm glad they got caught

[Bantam]

i'm just astounded at the market-share. 25% of the global market among 13 people? They are making money indeed.

[SilentBob]

I remember buying a bootleg of Titanic in NYC (on VHS) for $10. It was muddy looking but it did the job. They way they were caught is by using the red dots you see appear on screen every now and then with your film. Its a print code that is give to each print they send out. When we get our prints the tins they come in are all given a number. That number is on record with the print and its code. Eventually they can narrow down the people responsible for the bootlegs by staking out the theater a good majority of the bootlegs were coming from. Doesn't take long to eventually find them. Here in Canada a good chunk of the bootlegs have been narrowed to somehere in Quebec.

[Bantam]

how do these red dots work? im confused -- each film comes to the theater with these?

[1138]

Ah, the crap codes.

Yeah, every film you watch now will at some point in the film, have some random dots (usually red or yellowish I believe) apear on the screen some where. They're unique to each reel of film or some small subset. This way when a movie appears online, they're detectable and you can get an idea of where the taping of the film took place.

They annoy the hell out of me and really are just a spit in the bucket of pirating though IMO, so I'm not a big fan of them. Just another way for the studios to punish the honest people out there needlessly.

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by 1138

They annoy the hell out of me and really are just a spit in the bucket of pirating though IMO, so I'm not a big fan of them. Just another way for the studios to punish the honest people out there needlessly.

I dunno.. these sound like "cigarette burns" (term from Fight Club) that I often saw in movies in the theater that those I attended the movie with didn't see.

Peace...

[1138]

No, they're not quite like that. Plus, cigarette burns are necessary (in some cases) in order to make the film strip work. As much as they may annoy me, they're unavoidable sometimes and thus I can live with that.

The crap codes are splattered throughout the picture. Here's an example, though it's a rather generous one in that I've often seen much bigger and far more many dots on a film:

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by 1138

No, they're not quite like that. Plus, cigarette burns are necessary (in some cases) in order to make the film strip work. As much as they may annoy me, they're unavoidable sometimes and thus I can live with that.

The crap codes are splattered throughout the picture.

Your picture shows how they ARE like cigarette burns in that both appear briefly and will go unnoticed by most. It was stated above the codes/dots appear "every now and then" throughout the film, so they're not present all the time just as cigarette burns aren't present all the time. Obviously, cigarette burns serve a completely different purpose and I'm not saying the two serve the same or similar purposes BUT both appear at some point during the film and both disappear. Both are probably not readily seen but those watching the film, except for a few exceptions. I've seen cigarette burns but NOT until having seen Fight Club. If I had seen the cigarette burns in a movie before watching Fight Club, I would have thought they were just part of the film viewing experience and dismissed them. I imagine the same goes for these "crap codes".

Peace...

[1138]

Cigarette burns are always in the upper right corner so as to not obstrruct the pciture as much as possible. The crap codes are often spread pretty generously across the screen.

And cigarette burns aren't even that common anymore.

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by 1138

The crap codes are often spread pretty generously across the screen.

In the screenshot you posted, the "crap codes" were on the curtain and in a shade close to the curtain color vs being neon green on the actresses face. They obscure the codes to some degree to minimize their visibility and reduce the potential for distraction. It's not foolproof as people like you can see them but you're also able to see the cigarette burns. Personally, I haven't seen any "crap codes" in the last 10 movies I've seen in the theater, at least, which means they were either not present or not seen by me.

The cigarette burns are in the corner to obscure them from being seen and I've cigarette burns in the last 2-4 films I've seen in the theater.

In any event, the color codes seem more similar to cigarette burns than not in that they're probably not noticed by most movie viewers so I don't see them as being a big deal unless you see them all the time.

Peace...

[1138]

Like I said, it's often much worse than that.

[SilentBob]

Yeah the coding is usually a lot worse then what he has posted a screen of. They try to get them in the scenes that are kind of dark and then on some reels/films its in plain view all over the screen in a bright picture. Cigarette burns are still placed on all film versions of movies except IMAX because there is no way they can show the film without a platter system. Some older theaters still run with the need of the cigarette burns as movies without a platter system are run on 2 projectors. The projectionist looks out for the burn marks to get ready to fire up the 2nd projector to continue the film without the audience noticing. So they could throw 3-4 reels onto one big metal reel with them spliced/taped together to run then all at once and the 2nd projector more then likely to finish off the last bit of the movie.


My sister brings here Digital Camera to work sometimes so maybe she will let me borrow it and snap soem pictures of my booth area.

[Bantam]

how am i just finding out about this now? damn.

thanks for the info -- i had no freaking idea.