Movies on the Internet

Abstract

A few months ago, Hollywood executives were pondering the impact of Napster on the music industry and wondering how long it would take before full-length movies could be sent over the Internet. It seems the wait is over, any movie issued on a digital videodisk, or DVD, can now be copied and sent over the Internet.

Advanced digital video recorders and a hard-core group of enthusiasts, make even first-run movies such as "Gladiator" and "Tomcats" available on the Internet in less than 48 hours after they are available in theatres. In some cases pirates copy first-run movies from the projectionists' booth, using a digital video camera on a tripod and taking the audio directly from the projector. They then send their copies over the Internet. Others use far more sophisticated techniques.

These copies may be just a touch below Digital Video Disk quality but for all intents and purposes, movies on demand are here. Hollywood is now facing the same issues that have been plaguing the music industry and facing them much sooner than anyone had expected.

Just how big is the potential market?

It is estimated that today some 350,000 movies are being downloaded, illegitimately, every day. By the end of the year it is estimated that one million illegal downloads will take place every day.

Even so movie studios see the Internet as a delivery system of great potential but are struggling with the copyright issues. It is reported that several movie studios will be online with their films within four to six months. These films will be encrypted however.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has however taken issue with the Napster-ideology of distributing movies. They argue that Creative property is private property. To take it without permission, without payment to its owners, collides with the core values of society.

They have cautioned as to who will invest the huge amounts of private risk capital in the production of films if this creative property cannot be protected from theft? They suggest that in such a scenario, the ultimate loser will be the consumer.

On the other hand we're about to see an explosion of the home director-producer. It is suggested that overnight successes will be commonplace due to the power of the Internet.

Proponents quote such successes as those of Bruce Branit and Jeremy Hunt who finished a three-minute short film, 405, about an airplane that makes an emergency landing on a Los Angeles freeway. Total budget: $300 (including a $75 traffic ticket). It was posted on Ifilm, and in less than a year, almost 3 million people have downloaded it. The partners were bombarded by offers, got representation from the Creative Artists Agency, and quit their day jobs

What techniques are employed to get these movies onto the Internet?

Whilst a boon for some two software programs are at the source of Hollywood's digital headache. One is DeCSS, which unravels the embedded Content Scramble System, or CSS, which then allows a movie file to be copied from a DVD onto a computer hard drive.

Even if the resulting file can be 9 gigabytes or more, often larger than many computer hard drives, the distribution of DeCSS has sent shudders through the movie industry, which has over the past three years released more than 5,000 films in the DVD format.

DVD stands for Digital Video Disks, they look like compact disks or CDs. Unlike videotapes copied DVDs don't lose quality.

The second program is called DivX. It compresses full-length movies into sizes small enough to be sent on the Internet and stored on a single compact disk. Using DeCSS software to crack the Content Scrambling System on DVDs and compresses the movie files to about 800 megabytes for a typical movie.

Scores of film buffs have discovered that DivX can be a real alternative to paying for movies, just as Napster and MP3 allow music fans to trade millions of songs for free.

DivX holds the same promise and peril that the MP3 audio format presented to the record labels. DivX has already shown the potential to become a de facto Internet standard and the basis for the compressed digital video format of choice. The creator of DivX hopes it will become so popular that Hollywood will decide to make it the standard, in the same way that record labels have grudgingly accepted MP3s as the way to deliver music.

So what are Napster and Gnutella?

Whilst a great bonus to the home grown movie producer Gnutella presents a unique challenge to those clamping down on copyright infringement because unlike file-swapping systems such as Napster, which are known as Peer-to-Peer systems, Gnutella does not provide a central point through which people reach each other. Instead, the Gnutella systems pass along movie or music files through a giant daisy chain of individual computers.

It enables users to copy movies onto any computer with a DVD drive and send them out unscrambled on the Internet. As bandwidth increases it will become easier and faster to download these movies. And then the question will be, why pay six or eight dollars to rent Hollywood's latest blockbuster when you can see it for free without leaving your home? And why buy a DVD player if your home PC can do the job?

For those who want to, why is it so difficult to protect films or movies?

Even the most optimistic analysts concede that the latest encryption lasts only a year or so before intrepid pirates break the code. That's why work starts on a new encryption method almost as soon as the old one is implemented.

Experts say the encryption code was easy to break, partly because the United States long banned exports of more advanced encryption technology, lest it fall into hostile hands. This ban left a big hole in the copyright armour.

It was so easy that a hacker network that calls itself MoRE -- Masters of Reverse Engineering obtained parts of the Content Scrambling Code and worked out the rest itself.

What are the challenges facing movies over the Internet?

The challenge for Hollywood and technology companies is to create a popular, yet secure standard for online video delivery before the movie industry suffers the same losses that record labels have seen.

Even with compression downloading a full-length DivX movie using standard phone wiring could take days, compared with a few hours using high-speed broadband modems.

Movie studios will be very cautious releasing movies to the public that reduces revenues from theatres and video rentals. It is most likely online versions will appear only after films are delivered to theatres, airlines, home video and pay-per-view.

Movie studios do not appear to have endorsed any particular file format. They only urge that any movies delivered online be encoded with enough security measures to prevent unauthorized copying.

In America a near miss occurred for delivery of piping movies on demand straight to desktops over high-speed Internet connections. Video rental chain giant Blockbuster Inc. canned a deal with Enron Broadband Services. Each company blamed the other for a lack of commitment.

An entertainment industry analyst with Edward Jones said eight to 10 years could pass before consumers have full catalogues of movies online, particularly because most consumers still connect to the Net through telephone wires.

How is the movie industry fighting back against pirates?

Keeping copies of sitcoms is legally permissible for personal home use, but if someone decided to share those files online they would run the risk of copyright infringement. Hollywood trade groups are fighting back, cruising through newsgroups, Web sites and chat rooms for DivX movie traders.

Recently a court stated that posting DeCSS is analogous to the publication of a bank vault combination in a national newspaper. It ordered the program removed from the Internet. Easier said than done. DeCSS can still be found on hundreds of Web sites.

Backed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2600 magazine appealed the ruling. It says computer code is a language, protected as free expression. It also argues that the DVD players prevent owners from being able to take full advantage of the DVDs they purchase, such as fast-forwarding past commercials, or making copies, all of which can be done on computers.

Hemanshu Nigam, the MPAA's director of Internet enforcement, expects to send 20,000 cease-and-desist letters to people who illegally trade copyrighted movies this year. That's 10 times the number sent out in 2000.

And that's just the people actively trading movies. Any number of people could be building their own collections in secret, or trading DivX movies in less public ways.

The MPAA has sent hundreds of letters to major Internet service providers and universities, warning them that some people on their networks are violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by trading copyrighted movies through Gnutella.

Some of the universities that have been targeted in the MPAA's investigation include Harvard University and the University of Connecticut. Meanwhile, ISP Excite@Home has sent out about 20 e-mails and letters over the past four days telling Gnutella users their services will be terminated within 24 hours if their alleged movie sharing continues.

The MPAA already has aggressively, and successfully, sued several companies, accusing them of aiding copyright infringement by allowing people to record and trade copyrighted content. But until now, Gnutella systems have flown below the legal radar screen of many copyright holders, partly because it's so difficult to track infringement on systems that lack central servers.

How are copyright infringers being tracked down?

The MPAA said the crackdown is the result of a month-long investigation by Ranger Online, a company it hired to scour the Web and find cases of copyright infringement. The swapping of movies isn't nearly as widespread as music trading because films use so much bandwidth and can take hours to download. By notifying ISPs now, the MPAA is taking a more proactive stance than the music industry, which watched Napster use grow to the millions before it took legal action.

How are movie companies making movies over the Internet a reality?

One company Sightsound Inc. offers short films for rent or sale on its Web site. They encrypt the files, and then sell electronic keys that unlock the file once for a rental or permanently for a purchase. It is also making many of its films available over Gnutella, a "peer-to-peer" file-sharing network where many of the pirated copies of current movies can also be found.

Miramax will also use the Sightsound technology to distribute 12 films for pay-per-view viewing over the Internet.

They say the copyright holder has only one defence —release the copyrights in this new useful way and fill the demand. Pirated copies of movies still be available but will be crowded out with legitimate copies at affordable prices.

In a competitive show of its own technology Microsoft Corp. showed the power of the Windows Media format last month by delivering a half-hour film starring John Cleese to a Pittsburgh theatre via the Net.

Microsoft also claims DivXNetworks uses technology stolen from Windows Media. "It's our technology and they've essentially re-branded it,'' said Michael Aldridge of Microsoft's Digital Media division. "It's like taking a Volkswagen, taking the brand Volkswagen off the hood and putting DivX on it.''

Yet another company, RealNetworks Inc. also offers a secure format for "streaming'' video content online and can leverage MusicNet, its online music subscription venture with AOL Time Warner and Bertelsmann AG.

Arthur Hissey
Computer Research & Technology
www.crt.net.au