The internet can offer you a cinema of worldwide proportions; however, placing your film online also exposes your work to risks of piracy. Here are a few tips you can use to fend off film pirates.
Digital fingerprinting overview
Film currently allows for effective online protection using digital fingerprinting. Just like the unique fingerprints on our fingertips, a film’s unique digital fingerprint can be used to identify where a film is being hosted online through web-crawling programs. Although the identification process is quite technical including extracting, compressing and monitoring, there are software programs that simplify the entire process of digital fingerprinting.1
To date, digital fingerprinting has been a boon of protection for filmmakers and rights owners. Even edited films, clips, mash-ups and film with an altered resolution can be discovered online using digital fingerprinting. In addition to filmmakers and rights owners, online video sites like YouTube use digital fingerprinting to monitor for unlicensed or infringing film.
Once discovered, you can take steps to stop unlicensed or infringing use of your film by issuing a take-down notice or Letter of Demand to the domain host or owner. An example can be found in the Arts Law information sheet Copyright infringement and letter of demand.
Copyright note
Because a film has several elements or layers, under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) one film will have several separate copyrights attached to it. There will be a copyright not only in the film itself (the visual images together with the accompanying sound) but also the screenplay, pre-existing sound recordings such as songs, as well as potentially the sets and costumes. The film copyright generally first vests in the person who arranges for the film to be made (i.e., the producer). However, this may be modified by written agreement.
Further protection
The increased use of peer-to-peer networks coupled with BitTorrent and other fast video-sharing technologies means that digital fingerprinting may not protect your film for all times and all purposes. Beyond digital fingerprinting, you can use the following tips to further protect your film from unauthorised distribution.
When using the following tips, it may be easiest to conceptualise your film as two elements, each of which needs to be protected: the picture and the sound.
Tip 1: Start simple
Start simple by storing high-quality versions of your film offline or in password-protected and encrypted folders. This way, you can minimise the risk of your film falling into infringing hands by restricting access to your film.
Tip 2: Low-quality copies
Whenever you place a long clip or the full version of your film online, it may be best to render it at a compression rate of less than 151 kilobits per second (picture) and 49 kilobits per second (sound). Make it clear to fans that a high-quality version is available for licence or purchase.
Tip 3: Name and licensing or purchasing information
In all samples of your film, whether or not they are online, it is best to integrate licensing or purchasing information. Information such as your name and purchasing or licensing details will allow fans to pay you for your work. Such information can be included in a visible watermark and by using a sound overdub at points throughout your film. You can use most video-editing programs to embed a visible watermark over each picture frame.2 Most multi-track recording and editing programs can be used to perform a sound overdub.3
Tip 4: Unique digital watermarks
Digital watermarking allows you to embed invisible and inaudible information into your film. It will allow you to track the distribution of your film without restricting its legal use. You can use programs such as those by Digimarc and Verance to embed digital watermarks to both your picture and sound. By adding a unique digital watermark to each licensed, sold and sample copy of your film – including those on DVD and USB – you will empower yourself with the ability to trace unauthorised copies of your film to a specific source. From there, you can make use of the abovementioned Letter of Demand or contact the Arts Law Centre of Australia for further advice.
James Heller was a daytime volunteer at Arts Law and law student at Sydney University.
Footnotes
1 Examples are Attributor, Audible Magic, Auditude, Civolution, iPharro Media, Thomson, Vercury, Vobile, YUVsoft and Zeitera.
2 These programs include Final Cut Pro, Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere.
3 This can be done by using any multi-track recording and editing program like Pro Tools, Logic Pro and Adobe Audition.