BAS Message
December 2013

1. If all the sounds of the blockbuster “Man of Steel” were stripped away, a light humming would still be heard in the theater. The barely audible noise is an audio watermark intended to be Kryptonite for the digital pirates who circulate illegal copies of movies. Designed by engineers at Verance Corp., (www.verance.com) the watermark is a unique signal to Blu-ray disc players that the movie being watched was illegally recorded at a movie theater. After 20 minutes of playing the disc the player shuts the movie down and offers the viewer the chance to continue watching by paying through legitimate sources like Amazon.com and Netflix.

Another system, PirateEye, (www.pirateeye.com) uses technology adapted from the military to detect the presence of recording devices and then send pictures of the offenders to theater security. If a movie has been copied from one disc to another, the Blu-ray player can tell if a watermark doesn't match up with the disc's unique encryption code.

As the window for theatrical release shrinks, studios are becoming more anxious about keeping their movies from hitting the black market soon after hitting the multiplex. Wall Street Journal 13Au13


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updated 1/13/14