DVD Screeners This Year Come With Special DVD Player

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the what-an-expensive-waste dept

The MPAA (complete with their new boss) need to get a little perspective. After last year’s screener debacle, this year, the MPAA has come up with a plan they believe is “fool proof.” Each Academy member won’t just be sent screener DVDs or tapes for viewing, but will be sent a complete special DVD player and all of the screener DVDs that will only play on that particular player. That same player will imprint a mark on the disc to track how many times it’s viewed, because apparently the MPAA is afraid that Academy members are holding every-two-hours, all-day-long screenings in their homes or something. Even worse, just in case some weird Academy member decides to try to videotape the movie off his or her TV using a video camera, the resulting video will include a watermark indicating whose screener it was. As you might imagine, this is going to cost a ridiculous amount of money — but is unlikely to actually stop the movies from getting online. In other words, for all that money, it’s not going to stop a single download. Of course, some of the money is being put up by Cinea, the company that apparently makes this technology (which they — stop laughing — claim is unhackable), is spending their own money on much of this year’s technology in an effort to make the industry use their technology in other parts of the movie making process. No matter how much they do this, however, it’s still not likely to stop movies from getting out there — though it will make movies more expensive.