©Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences®
As the 87th Academy Awards approach on Sunday, Mediafly can’t help but revisit the subject of piracy in films. If you have not had a chance to see Birdman, Whiplash, or American Sniper (among the other five 2015 Best Picture Nominees), you can watch nearly all of these titles right now on your laptop or tablet for free. For real.
Researching movie leaks last year, I made a claim that legislature on anti-piracy would cool down. It appears I wasn’t far off, if 95% of this year’s nominees have leaked. Anti-piracy threats of litigation do not seem to have slowed anyone down. I’m not one to point fingers, but the most likely culprit in this case is someone on the panel of Oscar judges.
If judges for the SAG awards, Golden Globes, and Oscars get an early screener of a film, the distribution method needs a drastic update. Movie piracy is preventable with the right distribution platform. Perhaps it’s time for Oscar to embrace digital screeners?
Medially developed ProReview to make sensitive film content secure, without sacrificing the convenience of streaming pre-release content on a mobile device. Screener films can cost around $800,000 to manufacture, watermark, and ship in a six week period. It’s time to move away from the discs altogether.
How Can ProReview Help Prevent Movie Leaks?
- ProReview is a secure platform that hosts content and tracks it, down to the individual usernames and/or email addresses that have access to the film. Only the administrator can decide user permissions on files. If the wrong person has access, the admin can wipe the device remotely and retrieve the misplaced file.
- ProReview leaves a forensic watermark on the file(s) in question. This is an embedded sequence of code that uniquely identifies both the file’s origin and authorized user for that specific copy. Any time a user interacts with the file, a digital audit trail is created.
- In addition to the forensic watermark, shared link time limits allow admins to set a specific amount of time that the movie will be available for viewing. ProReview clients are often legally required to limit the “availability window” of sensitive content.
- Best of all? Your files are encrypted and secured several times over. As one AD mentioned to us: “Nightmares of online leaks used to wake me up in a cold sweat. ProReview lets my director watch dailies and all the cuts in a Fort Knox-like secure environment. I’ve never slept better.”
There’s a reason ProReview is trusted by the largest television and theatrical studios in the world. The platform is already deployed on 600,000 devices and counting. It’s time that Oscar Screeners experience a secure, new distribution process.
I don’t want to be writing this same speech to the Academy in February 2016. Stop sacrificing security for the status quo. Take a preventative approach to movie leaks with ProReview.
Interested in seeing ProReview in action? There’s nothing quite like it. Experience ProReview for yourself.
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