Preventing Movie Piracy

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Additionally, the researchers want to take advantage of interference patterns that can be created by overlaying film frames with grids of tiny features that are too small to be resolved by human eyes. Overlaying two of these grids at a certain angle creates a moiré pattern that a camcorder picks up, but people miss.

An anti-piracy system that included some or all of these techniques could make it prohibitively expensive for bootleggers to keep pace.

By altering the movie itself, says Zhao, their system avoids some of the potential drawbacks of other anti-piracy prototypes. Some systems, for example, position cameras in front of an audience, where they actively hunt for the distinctive reflections given off by CCDs, the light-sensitive chips that capture images in a camcorder, and send beams of light that temporarily disable the chips (see "Lights, Camera -- Jamming"). Thomson's system would be less intrusive, says Zhao. "I would not feel comfortable with a camcorder constantly monitoring the audience," he offers.

Even with the progress in such technologies, however, it could still be years before an anti-piracy system becomes commercially viable, says Zhao. "A lot of people in the studios have some doubt if we can ever have an effective solution," he says. In March, Thomson opened the Burbank Innovation Center to keep Hollywood organizations up to date on its progress and to garner feedback, according to Zhao.

Ultimately, acceptance of such a system will depend on several factors, says Ethan Bush, senior project director at National TeleConsultants, an engineering and design consultancy for the media industry. For one, on-film artifacts must be completely hidden from audiences. For another, the rapid play of words, light, or patterns across a screen cannot have harmful side effects. "We don't want anyone going into epileptic seizures," says Bush. Yet, he adds, piracy is "a huge issue" and an effective solution could be worth billions.