This post comes courtesy of a pointer from Michael. He pointed me in the direction of a Boing Boing entry about the screeners for the BAFTAs. Screeners, for those who don’t know, are the what the studios send out to the people who will cast a deciding vote in the big awards ceremonies (the Oscars, for example). They do this to ensure that all of the voters have a chance to see their movie and, hence, vote for it. Screeners have caused controversy in recent years because they’ve been showing up on illegal download sites, so the studios have been coming up with increasingly annoying ways to remind people that they should not give them out when they’re done and that they shouldn’t encourage piracy. Previously they have used a method that sees the movie stop briefly while the viewer is reminded not to pirate the film, talk about interrupting the flow. They seem to have shot themselves in the foot this year though as many of the voters were supplied with region 1 encoded discs, which won’t play in UK (region 2) machines, or the discs could only be played on a DVD player from Cinea, which was supplied with the discs.
Cinea, a division of Dolby, is focused on creating anti-piracy solutions that enable new revenue streams for our customers and significantly improve the profitability of studios, distributors, exhibitors and vendors.
Basically, it means that discs made with their system can only be played on machines they supply so studios can ensure they squeeze every dime of worth out of it. So, in order to review the films, voters had to plug in and hook up a completely new machine to enable them to do it, you can guess how many didn’t bother with that, as this quote from one of the BAFTA members suggests:
Regarding the special encrypted Cinea player that we were all sent, I never hooked it up and I wonder how many people did. About half of the screeners I received are encrypted for Cinea and the other half weren’t. I don’t have time to watch ALL the screeners I get anyway so naturally I just end up watching the ones that are easy to watch, that I can watch on my laptop or at a friend’s house. I have to believe that those movies that were sent out in the encrypted format were viewed FAR less than those that won’t.
One of the movies that is apparently suffering the most is Steve Spielberg’s Munich, which hasn’t been released in the UK yet so voters will have had few chances to see it.
Maybe the movie industry, indeed all the media industries, should be paying closer attention to this situation because it’s a microcosm of what’s happening to their customers. They’re so interested in protecting their intellectual property that they’re happy to make it hard for the people who consume it, which puts them on a losing streak. Just look at how many products at the technology fairs in recent years were aimed at allowing us easier access to our media wherever we are: MP3 players, portable video players, downloadable TV shows, online storage services, wireless PC-TV hook-ups, mobile phones with MP3 players and download services built-in, and the list goes on. Just look at how legitimate music downloads have blossomed, revitalising the singles market. The farce that is Digital Rights Management (DRM) isn’t working because it holds back legitimate users without even slowing down people looking to circumvent it, it’s a waste of time.
At least now it’s bitten them in the ass instead of the people who keep them in business: us.
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