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.
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?
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.
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.
Not a cinema guy, but assuming those movies are encrypted with modern standards, it is practically impossible if you simply would steal the media. Could be done if you could tap into the original playback device where movie plays and pull decrypted copy out of it.
Edit: As per this AES 128 is used so good luck if you ever stumble upon an encrypted copy.
I’ve gotten bad keys from the studio before, usually when we were doing advanced screenings. It was a relatively quick fix… I think the longest delay was ~15 minutes. I never had to cancel a show because of it, certainly didn’t have to close the entire building.
For as much as I loved the convenience of digital, I really miss the days of 35 film.
35mm was a whole thing and while I miss the nostalgia, I certainly don’t miss the upkeep and the problems with film. Digital is so much easier. I feel the biggest issue with digital is if a problem goes wrong, there’s really not much you can do outside of standard problem fixes. If it’s an internal issue. You’re just screwed until the technician can fix it.
I agree that moving to digital saved so much time, and I’ll never miss brainwraps or thrown platters… but working booth shifts threading projectors were some of the happiest times I had running theaters.
Not familiar with cinema projectors, but as I have gatherered from this forum problem is caused by KDM (used to decrypt movie) provider / reseller called Deluxe. Neither Sony or this cinema chain is at fault and problem indeed seems worldwide.
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.
Find it very hard to believe to be honest. Could this be simply some rumour from colleagues? Doubt any vendor would implement anything like this, drives could be simply encrypted to protect data if they ever get stolen.
Yes, I deal with KDMs weekly but I’m not for sure if this issue was KDM related or if it was certificate related. As for the service destroying themselves, I’ve never personally seen it happen, but I’ve been told by upper management that they’ve seen it happen twice. I don’t really have any way to verify the information but it wouldn’t surprise me and I don’t see why anyone would make that up unless they really don’t want people messing with it, but it seems like such an unlikely scenario.
I mean, my home is filled with ancient laptops that we use until they explode, its a pretty common occurrence when trying to watch something streaming the ads would load just fine but the actual show wouldn’t actually load. So… shrug
Someone working in a movie theater could just take the file and send it to other movie theaters and then they can play the movie whenever they want without paying the distributor. They could also just upload it onto the internet so anyone can watch it. It’s essentially to keep theater operators honest.
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 I saw accounts elsewhere that Sony is only providing parts and support for these projectors now, and Alamo is changing vendors. They half assed it, not Sony.
These are all accounts I saw on The Verge and I cannot independently verify them.
So Sony sold them projectors, locked down their media, and then forces theatres to buy new projectors every x number of years to keep up with DRM? Sounds like a lot of unnecessary waste…
Ah, so “Company provided service, but then ditched it and now theatres are left to buy more expensive (and likely locked down) hardware in hopes the next company doesn’t pull the rug on them again”
Companies exiting a market and leaving clients/customers without their service isn’t a new thing. Was happening well before DRM was even thought of, let alone implemented. And still happens now. Polaroid leaving the instant photo market comes to mind.
Sony is actual abandoning the industry so all the theaters with Sony projectors have to get new ones from elsewhere as Sony is only going to provide parts and support. I’ve been forced to deal with the “support” left for dead products many times, it’s always the absolute bare minimum designed to make you move away from the product finally so they can sunset the skeleton support crew
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.
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.
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.
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.
Come to think of it there’s probably something to make sure theaters are completing the number of contractually obligated screenings too. Like a 3 person screening is probably a loss for the theater, but not revenue distributers want to lose out on.
Yes, the amount of showings that a theater has is tracked. Certain movies are contractually obligated to show at certain times or a certain number of times a day.
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”
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.
My wf-xm4 earphones have battery problems and sony won’t do any about it. it’s a known problem, so I went out and got a sony es receiver, that has a known hissing problem and they won’t do anything about it. Maybe ill learn someday.
That’s 2Password2Remember, they sign off every comment that way. It’s surprisingly relevant a lot of the time, though: America has had an almost unrivaled hand in shaping the economic landscape of Japan, from the San Francisco Treaty to the Plaza Accords
Hilariously enough, even at the theater, you’d get a better experience pirating the movie. Y’know, cause you’d ACTUALLY GET TO WATCH THE MOVIE AT ALL. Proving yet again piracy is a service problem.
How exactly does a jury trial work in a case like this? Aren’t juries supposed to be “peers” of the accused? How can a corporation be tried by a jury of its peers?
GPS, mobile network tracking, IP, region the device is sold in (us iphones have a block of plastic where everyone else has a sim card slot), apple store region.
Also VPN, fake apple store region. If detected during download/install also RF-shielding to prevent GPS and mobile network (if download, also needs a wifi signal inside the shield to download at all).
Lot of workarounds for lot of possible detections.
That doesn’t answer the question. Sure, in isolation, Android app ecosystem isn’t ideal. But it’s so so much better at allowing competition than the apple one.
From what i read about it, Apple has a walled garden but charges a flat fee for everyone and has no special deals. Everyone pays the same and they make a little money off of the store but also the hardware sold.
Whereas Google has been caught treating certain parties differently, such as Spotify, something called Project Hug, where they gave extra benefits to parties at risk of leaving the play store, among other unequal dealings.
So the crux of the question is not about the monopoly itself, but the fact that Google is treating market players differently and throwing its weight around to influence the market to its advantage.
I get the hate on Google. I use a degoogled phone and got rid of google everywhere else. But I am not a fan of this. Its their store. Imagine a goverment comes to your own grocery store that you built and tells you whose products to put where and how much to charge for them. Instead of trying to build an alternative to compete with Play Store we will give more power to goverments. Thats not good.
If that were all this was, sure. In your analogy though, Google owns 95% of the grocery stores and has deals with 90% of the food vendors that if they allow you to stock their brands they lose access to sell in the Google grocery store. That practice is anticompetitive, because it functionally prevents you from opening your own store to compete.
If your grocery store "willfully acquired or maintained monopoly power by engaging in anticompetitive conduct".. then you'd be actively and purposefully affecting the ability for anyone to "try to build an alternative to compete with [it]".
They aren't asking Google to use a specific price, what they are asking is for them to stop offering special custom-made deals under the table for some of the partners with the intent of preventing competition. Nobody is stopping Google from offering the same fees to everyone indiscriminately... the issue is when they pick and choose with the purpose of minimizing/discouraging competition. Particularly when they are already the biggest one in their market by a wide margin, so they have a higher power/responsibility than a Mom'n'Pop store.
You really need to read the article, and specifically the linked article within that details the court proceedings. Anticompetitive behavior is illegal, and Google did lots of it, and did so blatantly, and deleted evidence of doing so.
The 30% they charge isn’t the issue. The issue is the anticompetitive actions they took to keep themselves from ever having to charge less than 30%.
Problem is that it not really is “just a store”. By using the google store you get access to the google play APIs, which are upgraded separately from the device OS - which is sensible from a security perspective, but they also were created by google specifically for regaining control over what goes on on Android devices.
A lot of applications are needlessly tied to play APIs - either because that way is a bit easier, or just because google is good at marketing them, and the developer didn’t think twice about it. Some relatively basic APIs are part of google play - for example maps, which needlessly is tied to google maps. Unlike Android itself the play APIs are not opensource.
Yandex tried about a decade ago to re-implement the play APIs to keep such applications working without the play store, by utilizing other services providing the same functionality, and tried to get other companies to join them. I’ve visited the Yandex office in Saint Petersburg a few times to discuss that back then (just checked, most of that seems to have been 2014 - that year Yandex was sponsoring my Russian visa). The effort failed for various reasons, unfortunately - the big one being that doing this required reverse engineering API changes on every play update google was pushing to stay compatible. There’s the microG project around now, but it seems to be less ambitious than what Yandex was trying to do back then.
My point is, as long as at least the API for play services isn’t maintained in a way that allows full open source reimplementations - or better, google releases parts as open source where we can plug different backends in - “use a different store” is not really a possible solution for many.
This is further crippled by how the increasingly tight security measures in Android make harder and harder to add functionality that is considered "system-level" and is as deeply integrated as the Play Store.
You can't simply install F-droid and expect the same level of user friendliness and automatic app updates as in the official Play Store. Without esoteric, hackish and warranty-voiding rooting methods, you need to give manual user confirmation for every small update. You need to update 30 apps that accumulated because you forgot to manually update each of them? get prepared for going 30 times thought the same process of pressing buttons and giving confirmation for each of them.
Yeah, things are getting to the point where just having a mobile device running Linux and using Waydroid for some useful Android applications is less painful than trying to make Android work.
I’ve been trying to warn folks to store your precious* family photos locally. A ton of people are gonna be bummed when they realize their photos are being held hostage behind API or data transfer payment plans. Sure they will let you view a 50x50 thumbnail to prove the photos are still alive. All cloud photo storage will essentially turn into ransomware.
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