Seriously, it’s getting hard to be a pimp copyright thief in the city these days. Technology can cut both ways apparently, and the good guys had it on their side in this case:
Huayi Brothers Media announced Saturday that it will seek to reclaim 660 million yuan (US$105 million) in lost box office revenue from two parties responsible for pirating its blockbuster film Painted Skin: The Resurrection.
Huayi Brothers, one of the main producers of the film, immediately collected evidence from the anti-piracy watermark ID on the digital copy and delivered it to China’s State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television for analysis. The ID confirmed that the pirated version came from a projector at Ma’anshan Dahua Times Cinema in eastern Anhui province and was initially leaked online by Beijing Tengdu Internet Company. Both parties will be named in the lawsuit, Huayi said.
More than 2,000 links to the pirated version of Painted Skin: The Resurrection have been made available online. As each link as been viewed around 10,000 times, Huayi estimates that the piracy has cost the film’s producers about 660 million yuan (US$105 million) in box office earnings.
Damn. You might be surprised to hear this, but the idea that one could take a digital copy and trace not only the identity of the screener, but then also find the online platform operator and distribution statistics, that’s physically arousing. Well, probably only for IP lawyers who have been around a while. And don’t get out much.
I would guess that tech workarounds already exist to extract these watermarks, but at least in this instance, the system worked as intended.
Two enthusiastic thumbs up.