Combatting Piracy

Posted by Christine Miguel May 23, 2007

If you didn't already know, one of the 'known' groups of movie pirates aren't the ones with camcorders in Montreal theatres but actually from within the industry itself. In fact, when I receive an advanced screening DVD of title from a major distribution company- it's generally without artwork and had this disclaimer written on the DVD itself in bold black, (I believe) Times New Roman font.

SPECIAL SCREENING COPY.

PROMOTIONAL DVD ONLY. SALE OR RENTAL PROHIBITED.

I also sometimes recieve a letter along with the disc basically telling me that if I pirate this copy, it can be traced back to me and they will prosecute. On the back, it's sealed with a sticker that has the name of a post-production company based in Toronto. And just like a warning on vacuum sealed containers it states:

IF THIS SEAL IS BROKEN CALL

I never really thought too much of it until I came across an article in Playback - the Canadian Film and Television Industry Trade magazine stating that they recently arrested a "twenty-something in LA" for piracy.

Deluxe, a Toronto-based post-production company has developed a way to not only encode DVD screeners to be sent out - but actually have it traceable in a way where pirates are unable to detect them.

Quoting from the article:

"We have a department called Web Watch," says Dewolde proudly. "We have about 10 people here who scour the globe looking for the content that we watermark. We're into private server channels, Internet, newsgroups and the YouTubes."

So pirates out there beware:

"Can we find it and recover the code? To date, we've had 100% success and multiple prosecutions."