Insert Audio Watermarks into DVD screening copies

[Noah Kadner]

You mean like you saying ‘copyright 2011’ every minute or so? Screeners hate that- really hate any sort of copy protection, unfortunately. Bottom line is forget about fighting piracy- that’s impossible. instead aim to sell the movie so much it doesn’t matter.

Noah

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[Eric Pautsch]

What Noah said….and no offense but only the studios have issues with piracy. An independent production is not loosing money to pirates.

[Matt Stoddart]

The main core of our business is the creation of DVD screeners for Independent Films Distributors to main stream TV programmes, this question comes up constantly, to date there is NO workable copy-code protection for DVD-R (burnt) screeners. I did get presented with one burnt disc that had a “strong” protection on it, but the major problem with that system was it could only be played on a computer, it couldn’t be played on your standard DVD player. (it took me 2 hours to crack it, YES I did have permission from Distibution company).
If the Major Distributor (Warners, Disney) couldn’t devise a copy protection system for their retail DVD that some 12 year old couldn’t crack in a day or two there is no hope for DVD screeners.
With all our screeners we create we put a visible “Property of…” every 10 minutes thoughout the film, anyways if the pirate do upload your programme it means that there is some interest in your film and you should have no problems in finding a distributor.

[Eric Pautsch]

Well put Matt! I only wish people would be pirating my productions! Ha!

[Malcolm Matusky]

So what is the answer to piracy? I’m not in a position to have any of my productions posted on “the pirate bay” and distributed for free, free does not cover my production costs.

Visual and audio “watermarks” do not disable piracy, they just show where the material was stolen from. Do any of the pay per view sites have a workable solution to this issue?

It seems from reading many “posts” on the subject that there is no way to keep a file encrypted and watchable at the same time for the consumer. I recently read that less than 0.05% of people pay voluntarily for material they watched on a pirate site, and that may be a generous estimate. There is no business model that can function with a 0.05% revenue structure and 99.05% free viewing.

I am not speaking to Hollywood blockbusters that recoup most of their money over a very short period of time, I am concerned with special interest video that needs years to sell enough copies to justify the production expense. Piracy is a big issue for this type of film, and was in the days of VHS cassettes because that’s how my films were put into insolvency by “fans” that just wanted to “share” with their friends; I have not made a special interest film since because the “business” model is always negative with rampant piracy.

Has anyone found a workable solution?

Malcolm
http://www.malcolmproductions.com