MPAA Release DivX Proof Movie

12th February 2005

The Motion Picture Association of America has financed a new movie which it hopes will become the first step in the fight against Internet film piracy. The film, 'The Teamaker,' will be released later this year and has been shot entirely with special cameras which produce images which are entirely impossible to encode with the DivX codec – the most popular codec used for encoding films distributed online.

“Its certainly a breakthrough,” MPAA spokesperson Chuck Hankman announced, “And it will certainly confuse the hacks – they'll waste all their time obtaining raw footage of the film, only to find their efforts wasted when they can't encode it with DivX.”

Whilst the movie can be encoded with other codecs such as MPEG4 and WMV, analysts predict that the movie pirates will be so shocked when they can't encode it with DivX they won't even think to try another codec.

“DivX is their holy grail,” Chuck Hankman continued, “If DivX fails they won't know what to do. They'll probably start crying until their mother brings in some cookies, or for the ones that are older than 12 – they will probably go to some online webforum and start moaning about Microsoft until 4am. In their words... we got them pwned.”

At the moment, the technology is still in its trial stages and pirates are expected to find ways around it. The MPAA has stated, however, that it will take legal action against the makers of the DivX codec if they modify it in anyway that makes it possible to encode the unencodable movies. They have claimed any such effort would be deemed as a move support Internet piracy and the company would receive lawsuits to that effect.

The news has been met with great enthusiasm by the major Hollywood studios, and almost all major movies made from 2006 onwards are likely to license the technology. The only exception though, is Warner Brothers, who have said that they would not use the piracy proof technology should they make a fourth Matrix film. They have claimed this is because they actually want some people other than their mothers to watch it.