The marvels of intellectual property
Remember when they started infecting people's computers with rootkits?
I've avoided Sony products as best I can since then. I'm probably not aware of the full suite of Sony-owned brands and companies, but rootkit made it so I haven't had a piece of Sony branded merchandise in almost 20 years.
Same here! It's absolutely bonkers to me that everyone was just OK with that.
Oh fuck I’d forgotten about that.
I knew I hated Sony, but I’d totally forgotten about that.
1st Jan? Smells like an expired certificate somewhere in whatever chain of DRM bullshit they use.
these are already thin profit margins, and its incredibly event-sensitive, like holidays. this sounds financially painful
So, like usual, DRM only fucked the people trying to play by the rules.
Made even worse by Sony, the manufacturer, completely exiting that market. I wonder if/how Sony will fix this, are there even staff on hand there with the technical details for their projector's DRM anymore?
It speaks volumes about how silly DRM is when a massive game publisher like TakeTwo/Rockstar resorts to selling a pirated version of their own game 🤦♂️
The next time this happens those projectors may end up being $20000 bricks, and I'm not too sure how many independents will be able to afford dumping a quarter of a million to replace all their projector screens
I'm not too sure how many independents will be able to afford dumping a quarter of a million to replace all their projector screens
Don't worry, thanks to this amazing thing called capitalism a big chain will happily buy out those struggling independents at a fraction of their actual worth.
watch a literal half hour of ads and then maybe, if you're very lucky, you get to watch the movie you paid for.
Why show up on time? Most theaters have assigned seats now. Just show up 20 minutes after start time.
Pay attention boys and girls, this is also what they want to do with over the air broadcasts with the ATSC 3.0 format.
Remember that time when they've added rootkits to over 20 millions of audio cd's? You've guessed it, the installation was automatic, hidden and their software had vulnerabilities.
One of the programs would install and "phone home" with reports on the user's private listening habits, even if the user refused its end-user license agreement (EULA), while the other was not mentioned in the EULA at all. Both programs contained code from several pieces of copylefted free software in an apparent infringement of copyright.
Can you elaborate?
DRM but over the air, consumers hate it, investors love it, it'll make everything worse, it's the future!
Do investors really love it? Is there anyone as stupid as the group-think whole that believes that will stop even one act of piracy?
All these idiotic measures have clearly driven more people to piracy...
I doubt the investors are smart enough to understand the technology behind it. All they probably hear and fully understand is the part where they can potentially make more money in the long run.
So broadcast TV currently broadcasts on ATSC 1.0. You get an antenna and a box or TV that has a digital tuner and you're good. Industry is pushing for ATSC 3.0, which allows for DRM. So even though they are broadcasting on the public airwaves, they can decide you can't watch. It sets up the local broadcasters to be the new cable with ever increasing prices AND play king maker on devices by choosing which can and cannot produce tuners. In my area, 5 channels have ATSC 3.0, and 1 of them turned on DRM. Meaning I can't watch it because HDHomeRun devices aren't approved, likely because it has the ability to record. Luckily, that channel still broadcasts in ATSC 1.0, so I can still watch it for now. 3.0 isn't a fully adopted yet, but that can change in the future (2027?).
So at some point, it'll be impossible to get emergency broadcast alerts without a subscription to something, right? Like who's gonna turn on a TV or radio that they can't use in anticipation of some emergency they can't predict?
The way we murder DRM is by it affecting the business bottom line.
This might be an offense worthy of litigation if Sony is not sufficiently contrite.
It's telling how unfriendly the DRM is, that it doesn't inform the protectionist of problems until the minute the show starts.
Sony is a real dick.
DRM only affects paying customers. It plays no role in effectively combatting piracy.
Only good service and good pricing is effective against piracy.
I've built DCPs (Digital Cinema Package, the format that protectors use) and the DRM part is always so finicky. I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often.
Could you share some interesting insights?
I've never worked on this stuff but I've looked it up before. Essentially, theatres get a DCP but it's unplayable without a Key Delivery Message (KDM).
My understanding is that theatres order these and pay a fee for each one. The KDM is only valid to unlock a specific DCP, on a specific projector, on a specific date and time. It won't work if any of these checks are off meaning you can't check that it works until the theatre is filled with patrons who paid to see your movie, as the KDM will only decrypt the movie seconds before playtime. If there's some glitch, a theatre manager needs to call a hotline for a new KDM.
It's been over 10 years since I worked in a movie theater but this is the gist:
Hard Drives with the film are derived via FedEx and the films are encrypted with symmetric AES keys which are emailed to our theater. These keys allow us to play back the film for a window of time. Sometimes we're sent keys to unlock different times if a film gets an extended release.
Some studios (Disney being the worst) would send you keys late into the evening, requiring staff to stay late to test for the following day. Sometimes they'd send us the wrong keys and it would take a long time to get the correct keys emailed to us.
If only there was a technology that allowed theaters to play movies in an analogue manner that they were in 100% control of. That would be cool. Why hasn’t that ever been invented?
I also assume it's an expired certificate.
See, this is what happens when certificates are not renewed automatically.
The article says the projectos are discontinued. That's probably the reason no one is monitoring these certs.
Another glorious benefit of DRM.
"Sony is having trouble with their projectors"
Why not call it out for the bullshit that it is? "Sorry, but greedy bullshit capitalism has failed you as a customer. The lockouts they've put on their media to punish the honest users is doing its job once again to punish you. We sure hope this doesn't lead you to find alternative ways to enjoy media without all of the DRM lockouts and garbage to punish you."
Because if they wrote that down then they would never be able to put on another Sony movie ever again. They would be out of business in short order.
I'm looking forward to another Spiderman origin story. I wonder how he got his powers
I work at a movie theater and while we don't use Sony projectors, we were told to check all of our certificates to prevent this from happening. This sounds like a communication issue to me. Someone didn't do their job in time. Also in the article it says they wouldn't know if the film would work until it actually played. If that is either an outright lie or the equipment is designed horribly. On the projectors we use which are going on a decade old, the playlist won't even start if it can't verify that all of the content is playable and unlocked. We can see when our certificates expire as well so if all of these certificates expired at the beginning of the year. The theater should have already caught that and had the certificates reissued. Keeping in mind that this wasn't some sort of bug or glitch that nobody could have predicted, then disregard everything I said. DRM on movie theater. Projectors is an industry standard and all companies use it, not just Sony. Until the actual reason comes out, it's hard to say. If it's the certificates of the projectors themselves and not the movie keys which are two different things then yeah I could see how nobody knew what was going on. Especially if the projectors are discontinued. I do know that if our servers lose power and the CMOS battery goes dead, they will internally destroy themselves and never function again. This is to prevent piracy I assume.
I do know that if our servers lose power in the CMOS battery is dead and then they will internally destroy themselves and never function again. This is to prevent piracy I assume.
Holy shit, DRM needs to fuck off and die.
or the equipment os designed horribly
I find this entirely believable. There's a LOT of equipment out there designed for profit over user experience.
But you're right, it's not really worth speculating over.
Fuck them. Alamo Drafthouse is a bad company who got bought out by a hedge fund. They treated their employees like they're slaves. They used to make people clock out to clean the public bathrooms and theaters. Their justification "you get tips".
All the food is gross and handled by the most subservient drug addicts or drunks they can find.
They replaced a lot of experienced management with fresh grad students who had no culinary experience and the blame was shifted to the back of house staff.
If you ate at any of them you probably ate stuff that fell on the floor because since the wait staff is afraid of both the management and the customer they'd take it out on the cooks who give free floor seasoning to impatient people when accidents happen.
I saw a cook impale their foot with a knife, the manager make fun of them, they rinse the knife, sanitize it in dish, and they chop up mushrooms with it. I reported it to the health inspector and my car's windshield happened to get busted when the camera didn't work.
Uhh relevant username?
They created it specifically to post that.
Is there any reasonable level of IP protection/DRM which may be employed by movie studios?
Should all films have simultaneous worldwide cross-platform releases, never theater only? If not, it seems some kind of defenses on the high-quality digital files for theaters would be a rare case where DRM seems somewhat justifiable… assuming it’s robust (beyond mergers/closures of the provider), and consumers never have to think about it.
Would love to hear arguments both for and against any protection schemes for any film ever.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Sony is having issues with their projectors that is preventing us from being able to project movies at some of our theaters today.”
As New Year’s Day is a holiday, we somewhat understandably haven’t yet been able to reach Alamo or Sony spokespeople, and not every theater or every screening was affected.
That didn’t stop Alamo from blaming its Sony projectors for what at least one theater called a “nationwide” outage, however.
“Due to nation-wide technical difficulties with Sony, we aren’t able to play any titles today,” read part of a taped paper sign hanging inside a Woodbury, Minnesota location.
I’ve seen speculation on Reddit that it may have something to do with expired digital certificates used to unlock encrypted films, but we haven’t heard that from Alamo or Sony.
Sony reportedly exited the digital cinema projector business in 2020; all of the company’s existing models are listed as discontinued.
The original article contains 257 words, the summary contains 150 words. Saved 42%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I've seen very few leaks of digital prints intended to play in theaters on torrent sites. Either this DRM is unusually effective or pretty much unnecessary.
80% certain it's DRM to stop theatre owners from pirating it between each other and not to stop the public from having those copies
The staff commented "we can only know if it works when the movie starts", and this sentence is let me thinking "expensive royalties would be automatically paid every single time the play button is pressed"
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