The extreme lengths movie studios go to prevent leaks
Movie studios' fight against leaks and piracy has gotten more serious than ever.
While fans of huge films like "Batman v Superman," "Star Wars," or "Captain America: Civil War" are hungry for every detail about upcoming films they can find, studios are working harder than ever to make sure nothing comes out before they're ready.
Some of their tactics to prevent leaks and recorded footage are standard.
Trailers and unreleased clips of upcoming movies are screened frequently at conventions like New York Comic Con, San Diego Comic-Con, and other events. During these screenings, fans and members of the press are asked to turn off their phones, while security agents often walk around the room to make sure there are no hidden recording devices.
But some of them are extreme. Keep reading to find the lengths studios and organizations like the Motion Picture Association of America go to to prevent leaks.
The MPAA created a training course for elementary school children to deter them from online piracy.
According to Wired, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and a non-profit called the Center for Copyright Information created training exercises in 2013 for elementary school children about online piracy and copyright protection.
Wired uploaded a draft of one of the exercises, which encourages teachers to engage students with prompts like: "Think about the art you made—How would you feel if your art was used without your permission? What if it cost you a lot of money to make your creation, and then you couldn’t make money because someone posted it online and everyone could get it for free?"
As the L.A. Times reported, there was widespread criticism of the curriculum, with one intellectual property expert calling it a "scare tactic."
Studios and special effects vendors are 'audited' by professional security teams.
When a movie is a made, there are a lot of people involved. Effects teams, editing teams, test audiences, etc.
To prevent leaks, these vendors have their offices audited by security teams. During a recent visit to Shade VFX's offices in New York City, we were told a bit about this auditing process. They check if there are any areas that can be exploited to gain access to film footage or story details. They interview building security to make sure their protocols are up to date, they check the integrity of their software and make sure they aren't revealing too much to the press. Vendors are audited regularly and are graded to make they maintain security standards.
Studios protect, alter, watermark, and destroy film scripts.
To prevent leaks of the "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" script, Disney printed its pages on a red paper that would make it illegible if it was scanned or photocopied.
The cast of "'Captain America: Civil War" had to had a very strict security protocol. As Elizabeth Olsen, who plays Scarlet Witch, told USA Today, "When you get the pages that you’re filming that day, you’re not allowed to take those home with you. They account for everyone at the end of the day and then they shred it."
The cast of "Pacific Rim" could only read their scripts on an iPad that auto-deleted the script after a certain amount of time. And finally, each script of "The Hunger Games" trilogy had slightly altered words, making it easier for the studio to find where the leak came from.
Studios file lawsuits in order to block certain sites and prevent them from showing up in searches.
In its transparency report released last November, Google revealed it receives 2.2 million takedown requests every day. What are takedown requests? Well, have you ever seen something like this in your search results?
It means a copyright holder has filed a complaint with Google, asking it to remove the site from search results. Torrentfreak reports that, in addition to filling thousands of such requests, the MPAA may have even more extreme measures in mind. They may move to sue domain registries that host sites that have been flagged for piracy. This is a big change because it would mean domain hosts are now financially responsible for popular piracy and filesharing sites, which have proven very difficult to shut down permanently.
After homeland security agents questioned a man for "hours" over his Google Glass, they were banned permanently from all theaters.
In 2014, blog site The Gadgeteer posted an account from an Ohio man saying he was pulled from a theater and questioned for hours by homeland security agents for wearing Google Glass, eyeglasses enabled with recording features, inside a movie screening.
This was a full year before the MPAA banned Google Glass from theaters.
The man told the site the recording functions were not enabled while he watched the film. He used them as simple eyeglasses. The ordeal ended when, according to the man, authorities accessed the files on Google Glass and did not find any recorded footage. The man was given an apology and four free movie passes.
Since this incident, the MPAA still encourages employees to call the police when they suspect someone of recording footage and has updated its policy on Google Glass to emphasize that they can't be worn into movies even if they're prescription.
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