The funny thing about this little movie piracy thing that the film industry is always crying about, is that most of the good pirated copies of films come from movie industry people who get screener dvd copies of films and then pass them around (like this story on a SAG member found guilty of pirating his screener copy of Million Dollar Baby).
But it looks like the industry is finally doing something smart about this problem. Disney is going to be the first company to distribute encrypted DVDs that will only play on certain machines that Academy members will have. The good folks over at ABC News give us this:
Cinea, a division of Dolby Laboratories, distributed 12,000 machines last year, but it was too late for the studios to produce the encrypted discs. Most studios instead distributed unencrypted DVDs or specially watermarked VHS tape copies of their films.
Meh… you know me. Usually I like to rant about how stupid the industry is most of the time… but from where I’m sitting this looks like a pretty good move. It’s simple, effective, and if it works will take away the vast majority of the higher quality bootlegs out of circulation without going after and suing little teenagers.
