this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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From the article:

When we went to our seats, the wait staff let us know that despite the fact that the previews were playing, we wouldn’t know until the movie actually started whether we could see the film or not. If it didn’t work, the screen would just turn black. Luckily, the film went through without a hitch.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

watch a literal half hour of ads and then maybe, if you're very lucky, you get to watch the movie you paid for.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Why show up on time? Most theaters have assigned seats now. Just show up 20 minutes after start time.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Curious about something, maybe you know since you work at a theater. I seem to remember hearing that a theater has to pay royalties each time they show a movie and that newer technology can track and report this automatically. Does the latest technology automatically track this as I recall? And if so, would playing a movie as a test count as a showing?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

While this certainly may be possible, I don't think it's tracked to that degree. Theaters pay to lease a film and the studio decides if there are special rules for being shown. Some smaller known movies have deals with the theaters to show the film at a very low cost in order to get people to watch it. On the first weekend most of the ticket profit goes to the studios and then every week the profit to the studios gets lower and the theaters get more of that money depending on what was agreed on. Some movies like the Taylor Swift concert film could only be shown after 12:00 p.m. and only Thursday through Sunday for example. Say there was a busy night and we sold out of a show, we could cancel a different show and play that sold out movie in another auditorium to fit more people in. This is fine for most studios except for Disney, if Disney finds out that you cancel one of their films to show a different film, they will not be happy. As far as I know we can show movies and definitely as long as we have the keys active for them and I don't think the specific amount of time is reported back to the studios, we are just required to play it a minimum amount of times.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Don't fuck with the mouse?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

1st Jan? Smells like an expired certificate somewhere in whatever chain of DRM bullshit they use.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The marvels of intellectual property

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

capitalist efficiency at its very best

Death to America

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Sony is a Japanese corporation

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Japan is an American corporation

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

You joke, but Japan hasn't even been allowed to have their own military since WWII. They barely are a separate nation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Remember when they started infecting people's computers with rootkits?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

these are already thin profit margins, and its incredibly event-sensitive, like holidays. this sounds financially painful

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

So, like usual, DRM only fucked the people trying to play by the rules.