Duplication thread, part 2

[Mark Suszko]

My stock answer to event video guys asking about anti-piracy is that anybody that wants to badly enough will pirate your work anyway, even if they have to resort to shooting it off an LCD with a camera. It may look horrible but they don’t care enough compared to the “savings”. Technological means can always be defeated by a determined pirate. The best you can hope for is to make the task difficult enough that they don’t find it profitable to waste their time on. Same as with theft-proofing a car or whatever.

With pirates, the decision to pirate a disk revolves around some simple cost/time math. If they can rip a copy and sell a lot of it for half of the standard cost of a legit copy, they will do so. Picking a number out of my, um, ear, let’s say they want to sell disks for twenty bucks that originally go for fifty. They’ll do that, if the title is popular enough. Now what if the original is 25 bucks? They may still go for it, re-selling the pirated dubs for ten. They still make a little profit there, if the title is really in demand. But what happens if the standard cost of the legit disk is ten bucks or less? Suddenly, few buyers want to go to the extra hassle of finding a pirate vendor to get a deep discount off a 10-dollar disk of iffy quality. The pirate would have to offer it for five to get any nibbles. At five per disk, minus a buck to a buck fifty for the blank media and the time to dub it, it no longer makes sense to the pirate to bother, he can put his time to better use stealing someone else’s product. People making casual dubs for sharing among family members will say, heck with it, they are cheap enough I can just buy more real ones. I used to copy my old 45’s to mp3 and it took me at least 25 minutes to do each record, now I just say to myself, itunes has it for 99 cents without scratches or pops, my time is worth more than that to me, just pay to download it.

You can defeat any technology, given time, but it is much harder to bet against human nature.

But Mark, how do I make any money off of ten-dollar discs?
Well, my answer is not perfect, but it goes like this: you charge an up-front fee that covers ALL your production costs, plus a little profit, and you don’t produce the product in the first place without pre-booking the minimum number of orders and getting the cash in hand, in advance. For something like school plays and recitals, you get the full amount up front from the organization and have the parents handle collecting reimbursements to the organization from their organization members later; in this way they rat each other out if one tries to pirate copies and distribute to others. I learned this from a recital I shot where one mom fronted me all the money to shoot and edit, then she rode herd over the other moms to get her money back from them, and you better believe she came down hard on anybody that even suggested making their own dubs for free. And I didn’t have to worry about collections.

Well ok, Mark, that might work for small-run event things. But I want to self-distribute something like a hunting and fishing doc to a wider audience, what then? And do you know you’re talking to yourself BTW? That’s wierd…

The other half of my flawed answer is, you offset the lower profits by accepting sponsorships or underwriting, and/or by including advertising on the DVD’s. Works for school yearbooks. In fact, if you can get a big-enough sponsorship deal, you wind up deliberately giving the DVDs away! And the advertiser WANTS that, wants the DVD “pirated” in that case, it only helps spread their advertising. You’ve made the program go viral. (This idea sponsored by the Army and Carl’s Junior).

Yes, there are a lot of fine details to work out in such a scheme. But it may be a workable distribution model for some programming.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Steve Wargo] “We had a really official sticker made that said “This program is protected by the Interpol Copy Protection System. We are not responsible for any damage to your VCR during any attempt to copy this program”. “

That is incredibly, absolutely, positively, one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever heard of. I LOVE it!

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

Read my Blog!

STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!

[Matt Townley]

I agree. The threatening sticker seems like a GREAT idea! I may have to try that or some variation on that. Love it.

[Matt Townley]

Bruce –

Adding CSS to a DVD is a two part process. As you mentioned, it must first be added to the DVD when it is authored. The encryption is then activated during the replication process by the manufacturer, who pays fees the fees to license it.

Typically speaking for most authoring software, adding the CSS feature requires that you output to a DLT and supply that to your replicator. There are a few different work arounds to this, but generally speaking, this is still the case. I would make sure that anyone that tells you they can add CSS to a DVD master REALLY knows that they are doing.

Matt

[Bruce Bennett]

Hi Matt,

Thank you for the clarification. I am not too up on the techno lingo and processes (I take the attitude “that’s what I pay my editors for”).

I believe my vendor created whatever masters/sources that the needed from my supplied materials/programs. I remember for the first supplied DVD was burned a certain way out of FCP in order for the CSS protection to be added by my vendor. For the second disc, we supplied that source material on an external hard drive. What GLMT did on their end wasn’t a concern to me – all I cared about were the prices, quality control and deliverables with copy protection.

Got me a few thousand duplicated sets with CSS protection, so I guess they do in fact, know what they are doing 🙂

Cheers!
Bruce

Bruce Bennett
Bennett Marketing & Media Production, LLC

[Matt Townley]

Steve,

I can send you a sample disc that is RVP protected. Feel free to email me your address and I’ll get a sample in the mail this afternoon.

I’m fairly new to COW so I’m not sure what the best-practice is concerning posting prices and advertising for oneself in the forums….so I will email you some information on Closed Captions and the copy-protection.

If anyone is interested in pricing I can email a rate sheet to anyone interested.

Thanks!

[Nick Griffin]

Matt-

I’m not the arbiter of the protocols of the COW, but I believe that you are acting entirely properly. As long as posts are not blatant commercialism they’re usually fine. You are correct to invite inquiry outside of the context of these posts rather than putting up a rate card. I for one will email you. I’ll also be adding sticker to my disks saying that copying them may result in permanent damage to the manhood of the pirate.

[Matt Townley]

I thought I would share this interesting article about the trial regarding CSS and Fair Use, etc. It’s a few days old, but seemed of relevance to this discussion.

https://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/press-removed-from-dvd-copying-trial/

[Hawke Taylore]

OK, I’m jumping back in here. I believe we should have an encryption method that is affordable and easy to use for all of us. However the encryptions are like locks, they are only there to keep the honest people honest. Having said that, we use a good tactic provided to us by the federal government. The FBI warning has been released to us in a generic form that we are allowed to use.
It says, “Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.” We use this with our own logo shadowed behind it.
Keep in mind that we are currently NOT allowed to use the FBI seal, at least not yet. if you would like to verify the use here is the link https://www.fbi.gov/ipr/
This has been a great deterrent for our customers for copying themselves. It is not the best but it does keep the honest people honest.

Hawke Taylore
Taylore Studios
Audio Visual Consortium

[Steve Wargo]

[Nick Griffin] “”Book of Wargo-isms.””

Thanks Nick. It’s actually called either “Wargonisms” (like organisnms) or “Wargasms” (like orgasms) and I’ve been working on it for a year. Probably another year to go. Remember, I’m an x-hard core biker and I have quite a few. One of then is the definition of “Quick Chick”.

Your copy will be free.

Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona
It’s a dry heat!

Sony HDCAM F-900 & HDW-2000/1 deck
5 Final Cut (not quite PRO) systems
Sony HVR-M25 HDV deck
2-Sony EX-1 HD .