# Okay, what are the red dots about in The Passion **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 10, 2004, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/okay-what-are-the-red-dots-about-in-the-passion/233503 "2004-03-10T16:16:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Gfactor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@Gfactor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gfactor)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/okay-what-are-the-red-dots-about-in-the-passion/233503/1 "2004-03-10T16:16:23Z")
I’ve seen discussions of them elsewhere on the net. Anyone know what the deal is? ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/okay-what-are-the-red-dots-about-in-the-passion/233503/2 "2004-03-10T16:21:20Z")
It’s not just The Passion. Many studios are including various patterns of red dots on random frames to protect against piracy. Each theater supposedly gets a different pattern, so they can track down which theaters are allowing (or not policing) people to bring cameras into the theater. Some of the bootleg copies are incredibly well done, so it may even be a projectionist with a tripod. ---
**Author:** ![Gfactor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@Gfactor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gfactor)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/okay-what-are-the-red-dots-about-in-the-passion/233503/3 "2004-03-10T16:33:52Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > It’s not just The Passion. Many studios are including various patterns of red dots on random frames to protect against piracy. Each theater supposedly gets a different pattern, so they can track down which theaters are allowing (or not policing) people to bring cameras into the theater. Some of the bootleg copies are incredibly well done, so it may even be a projectionist with a tripod. I suspected as much. Not to be a stickler, but I would be curious to see something authoritative about that. Can you cite anything? Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Papermache\_Prince](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f05b48/32.png) [@Papermache\_Prince](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Papermache_Prince)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/okay-what-are-the-red-dots-about-in-the-passion/233503/4 "2004-03-10T16:46:31Z")
Will Roger Ebert do? > [@](#): > > Why are the dots so big and visible? Why not do something subtle and subliminal? Because the dots are intended to identify prints that have been pirated by analog means – i.e., by being videotaped off a screen. On this [page](http://suntimes.com/output/answ-man/sho-sunday-ebert30.html), towards the bottom. ---
**Author:** ![philfromfsu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/48db29/32.png) [@philfromfsu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/philfromfsu)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/okay-what-are-the-red-dots-about-in-the-passion/233503/5 "2004-03-10T16:46:45Z")
Using an individual frame within a movie as a copyright protection seems a bit pointless to me. It wouldn’t take much work to write a little program to edit out those frames when the pirator (or is is pirate, what do you call someone who pirates movies?) puts the film into a video format on his PC. ---
**Author:** ![Bongmaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Bongmaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bongmaster)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/okay-what-are-the-red-dots-about-in-the-passion/233503/6 "2004-03-10T17:01:16Z")
> [@philfromfsu](#): > > Using an individual frame within a movie as a copyright protection seems a bit pointless to me. It wouldn’t take much work to write a little program to edit out those frames when the pirator (or is is pirate, what do you call someone who pirates movies?) puts the film into a video format on his PC. As always the people doing the copying are three steps ahead of those trying to prevent it. ---
**Author:** ![Lagged2Death](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ac8455/32.png) [@Lagged2Death](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lagged2Death)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/okay-what-are-the-red-dots-about-in-the-passion/233503/7 "2004-03-10T18:29:35Z")
> [@philfromfsu](#): > > Using an individual frame within a movie as a copyright protection seems a bit pointless to me. It wouldn’t take much work to write a little program to edit out those frames when the pirator (or is is pirate, what do you call someone who pirates movies?) puts the film into a video format on his PC. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of something like this happening eventually, but it’s probably not as easy as it sounds. Getting the computer to detect the dots for you isn’t an entirely trivial software task. It’s not something the average projectionist or projectionist’s buddy is going to hack together in an evening or two. Watching for the dots and removing them “by hand” would be error prone - and if you miss even a single frame, you may as well have not bothered (which goes for automatic detection too). And even so, when you’re done, you’ve got a video with jumps, blank frames, or repeated frames where the encoded frames were. Those discontinuities may be detectable in the final video. I don’t know everything about how the system works, but it may be practical to encode the print ID in the timing of the codes, as well as in the splotch pattern. If the system works that way, then frame deletion only makes the code harder to read, not impossible to read. Even if it is/will soon be possible to circumvent this system, it will prevent quite a lot of casual copying for a time. From the MPAA’s standpoint, that may be a win. And too bad for those of us who are distracted by the blotches. ---
**Author:** ![ReverseCowgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/cc9497/32.png) [@ReverseCowgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ReverseCowgirl)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/okay-what-are-the-red-dots-about-in-the-passion/233503/8 "2004-03-10T19:40:46Z")
Thanks for solving the mystery.