Looks like DRM prevented to watch movies in many theaters yesterday

Moonrise2473@feddit.it to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 956 points – Alamo Drafthouse blames ‘nationwide’ theater outage on Sony projector fail
theverge.com

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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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.

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.

Oh fuck I’d forgotten about that.

I knew I hated Sony, but I’d totally forgotten about that.

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.

You could probably only find CAMS for in theater movies anyways.

And a CAM is arguably worse than nothing

capitalist efficiency at its very best

Death to America

Sony is a Japanese corporation

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

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.

Money people are literally too stupid to understand anything other than line go up or line go down. They were told line would go up if DRM, so that's what they want.

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?

Exactly. There is a huge potential safety issue.

I'm sorry, but I think that's a little far fetched.

Are you really suggesting that we run the risk of being too disconnected to receive emergency messages?! In an age where everyone has a smartphone on their person at all times, as well as at least a dozen internet-connected devices in their homes, offices, classrooms etc?!

You would've had a point maybe 20 years ago, but technology has changed a bit since then.

Ah yes, let’s put all our bets on cellphone infrastructure. Because that never goes wrong.

You do know landlines are still a thing, right?

Landlines are not part of the emergency broadcasting system. TV and radio are.

This is like assuming everyone has a car because most people do.

It's not, because the statement is much more accurate in the case of internet-connected devices, and for emergency messages it's enough to have someone around you who has one (e.g. a neighbour). I guess it would be really hard to find someone - in the areas where this change is made - who doesn't have access to such a device in that sense, maybe even impossible.

It's really more like assuming everyone breathes air because most people do.

Yeah this was nonsense. Like it is mandated to have a TV always on to receive such emergency broadcasts. Same thing can happen to someone not having or not using a TV

And fear overpowers intelligence yet again.

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.

While I completely agree with you based on the data, DRM is absolutely sold to publishers on the pretense that it combats piracy, at least with keeping paying customers from engaging with media in ways the publishers don't like (such as lending content or selling that content used in a secondary market).

And yes, the more draconian their restrictions, the more they drive people to resources that provide cracked or DRM-free content. That said, Sony is notorious for going to extreme lengths to severely limit use of their content outside narrow consumption, often with obligatory ad-viewing, driving people to either piracy, or avoiding Sony content at all.

At one point, I might have been interested in playing Horizon Zero Dawn and went from buying it, to getting a refund to thinking about pirating it to eventually deciding I cannot be bothered. But then I steer clear of most AAA game companies, now.

I mean unfortunately denuvo has been pretty effective lately. It's not uncrackable but not a lot of effort is being put into it other than when Empress feels like it.

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?

Nothing wrong with digital, just the drm part that sucks

Yeah, and freighting, protecting and maintaining 30mm films in cans is a pain.

And the fact that your access can vanish for no reason at any time.

Also… internet crash. That’s going to be fun for folks.

Maybe we'll have that kind of technology in the future.

im looking at a future that no longer has any working film production equipment because nobody makes parts for such things

Somebody’s collecting all those old projectors and celluloid and that person is going to be the coolest person in whatever city they are in depending on the celluloid they also collect.

In fact — in Portland — a big assed projector would go over huge even today.

I think people are sick to death of the magic of digital streaming.

There are lots of things that can go wrong with film.

Yes — but local projectionists maintain the ability to restore the ability to present the films.

When corporations are in charge of everything, humanity is a powerless minion holding its icky tiny gruel filled bowl and whining, “please, sir, May I have some more.”

The film caught fire when I saw Interview With the Vampire in the theatre. It was awesome.

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 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...

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

Good news! Sony has exited the business, and its basically Alamo's fault they didn't move faster on their vendor change.

These are all accounts I saw on The Verge and I cannot independently verify them.

I know these are issues with any tech but the amount of expertise and culture around 70mm film at least guarantees its continued adoption for some.

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.

So what point are you trying to make with that?

That sony is fully at fault here?

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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.

Sir, I must ask - what are the chances that emplpyee might steal a movie? Or is it not possible because of DRM?

I guess if someone really wanted to they could even with the DRM but the DRM just makes it more difficult.

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.

Probably very low due to the DRM. Cinema leaks are extremely rare since they are encrypted and all that.

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.

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'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.

Thursday nights were an event for sure. Building up new movies, breaking down the old ones.

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

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.

Only focusing on the knife thing. What else did you want them to do with it? xD

Display it prominently as a warning to any other feet thinking of stepping out on them. Gotta make sure they toe the line. Third foot pun.

Probably, the issue was that he asked for no mushrooms.

Interesting thought experiment lol, what's the difference between the knife stabbing a human vs an animal (meat)

Nothing lol cleaning it and continuing to use it is the proper response. The human needs medical attention, the knife just needs soap and hot water

Similar experience when my local restaurant/bar theater got bought by regal.

What happened to this little new invention called filmreels?

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.

Re: reasonable levels - You can have fail safe or fail secure. Those are two mutually exclusive options. Locking people out of content, whether it be consumers or a partner organization (like a theater) is the price of security (fail secure).

There is no condition where mild DRM is valuable to anyone. For consumers it constitutes a hurdle to use of content they have purchased without hindering non-purchased copies from being reproduced and distributed. No DRM allows the latter; unbreakable DRM ensures the former will be substantially affected at some point.

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

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.

Why would a theatre owner help their competition?

Multiple theatres owned by one mother company / investor / whatever you get what I kean

Buy the rights for one location/franchise to run it then copy to your other locations to save cost

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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Curious how I’m supposed to pirate the theater experience.

This doesn’t really seem like a problem that piracy can solve.

The theater just projects pirated copies rather than DRM copies

I would laugh so hard if they downloaded a version with chinese subs because they are not good enough to find better versions.

You can watch pirated movies in a virtual theatre in VR. It's quite impressive really.

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.

Except people can do those things anyway so the DRM is all just creating problems for the honest ones.

Yes I'm aware but if the DRM wasn't there it would certainly be easier

The theater pirates the experience for you!

Reminds me of how many times outages to corporate software has been caused by some bullshit with the licensing management.

Screw the movie theatres anyway.. Here in Australia, there are two big ones (Hoyts and Village), and both screw patrons by doing things like charging patrons extra money for booking online.

In fact, they ruined every joke in the simpsons movie for me (except one) by allowing ads to use clips from the movie. By 45mins of ads, every joke was ruined.

I really wish the big theatres here would f off, and get replaced entirely by small ones. I don't pay for 40mins of sh***y coca cola ads.

I no longer go at all. It's not a good experience, and its not even a good place to take a date

In my place they name it convenience fee.

For pete's sake movie goers book online and help your fuxxing operations ourselves, you should be paying us or giving us discount not charging extra.

I'm afraid it's spreading too. My partners pharmacy now charges a $1.50 "technology fee" if you refill online.

I could maybe get the fee if it was a small place just passing on the presumed credit card charge that goes with ordering online IF they provided a discount for paying cash. A lot of small shops around here do that because the extra 3% or so paid to a bank makes it that much harder to keep prices anywhere near the Walmarts and such.

It probably is costing them more because they're paying some obscene license to a third party for the online software.

I wouldn't be against that if it were the case, but ordering by phone they didn't charge the fee for using a card. It was only the next month when doing by computer. It was a small local chain, but a website user fee to refill is next level BS. Still our only choice when insurance discount cover medication and you have to pay someone to mix it in house to afford it.

I'm saying they are probably being charged some portion of website sales specifically by the vendor of the web service provider. Which realistically makes sense, because regular online retail already almost always takes a percentage and there are significantly stronger regulatory requirements around anything medical.

Yeah I doubt it's much of that considering their crappy home brewed website without any type of real portal system. you literally have to email them a picture of your old bottle to get a refill. It's almost a WordPress website. Almost. I disagree that it makes sense. That's called overhead and should be figured into their operating costs. Otherwise I would expect customers that come in physically to do business to be charged a brick and mortar fee since I don't utilize that "feature". If it were my pharmacy I'd fire them like they deserve, but it's my partner's choice.

I worked as a projectionist in 2009 when the cinema got its first digital projector in order to be able to show Avatar in 3D. At the start of the movie no one actually knew if it would work. Due to the movie being encrypted - with every cinema in Germany waiting eagerly for the password - No cinema was able to play the movie. But everywhere cinemas were packed with people. Because of fuckups somewhere in this incredibly stupid system the movie was delayed about half an hour (IIRC) nationwide. With no-one knowing if it would eventually work - especially nice for the people working at the cinema having to deal with angry audience members.

At the same time the 2D 35mm film-version we also had started without any problems (it was massive and pretty dicey to carry it around).