News.blog: DRM scuppers 'Munich' for BAFTAs

It's getting harder to be a film awards judge whever you are in the world. According to the Boing Boing blog, British Academy of Film members were recently sent copies of Steven Spielberg's latest movie Munich encoded to play only in North American DVD players.

The awards panellists had been previously been sent special DVD players from the Dolby-owned Cinea, which encrypts the movies so they are harder to pirate, but the wrong region code made this batch of discs wholly unplayable.

The studios are doing their utmost to make sure these awards candidates don't leak out onto the Internet, and wind up being swapped on file-swapping networks. But this might not be quite the balance they're looking for.