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Jett points us to an article in free! and another in Broadcasting and Cable, describing how CBS News digitally inserted ads into their New Year's broadcasts - the same technology that adds ads into live sports broadcasts. The technology to undetectably alter a still photo has been around for a long time, but only recently has the capability existed to alter live broadcasts in real-time. The CBS News director suggests that a good, ethical use of this technology would be 'blocking out objectionable signs or covering up a competitor's logo'. How can society cope with a world where seeing can not equal believing?
i just smoked a doobie with the Allman Brothers. They raped me six ways to Sunday, afterwards. They're always playing around, those crazy Allman brothers.
If CBS found a sign objectionable, I'd WANT to see it.
Just another example of the media attempting to alter our perception of reality. If you can't trust a live picture, then what? Will video footage soon be inadmissable in court because of the ability to seamlessly alter it? How long before this technology is available to the general public? "No, your Honor, I couldn't be the murderer. Here's a video of me in Times Square at the time of the murder."
How can society cope with a world where seeing can not equal believing?
:)
Easily. Stop believing in everything those other people tell you, already. See behind their facades.
So I guess altering information is OK when it's done for profit by big companies, but doing something similar is probably considered a crime. Eg. web-page defacing, image manipulations, cracking software and so on.
It would be an unethical use of image manipulation because CBS presented the New Year's festivities as a news event, using news anchors, and most people would expect the news to show the events as they happened.
A Sunday football game is entertainment. Most people do not consider sports events to be journalism. And while I still consider it to be questionable behavior to throw in subliminal messages, it is a different yardstick.
I hope this also brings the possibility to "opt out" on avoid seeing that brainwashing called advertisements altogether. Imagine, blank white boards everywhere and not a sign of trash in sight. Ahh.
Someone please come up with the e-mail of that bozo, I'd like to share a piece of my mind with him.
A mind is a terrible thing to taste
Maybe they can build slashdot style moderation into TV shows and movies - Don't lile Pierce Brosnan as James Bond? Set your moderation at level 3! :-)
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The parent of this comment was moderated to "-1, Troll" because we Anonymous Cowards are evil and detrimental to Slashdot.
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Will video footage soon be inadmissable in court because of the ability to seamlessly alter it?
Didn't Microsoft already get busted for that? They submitted some video evidence that IE could not be removed without messing up Windows, and the video was edited. Mind you, in that case it was noticeable that the video was edited. Still, it's food for thought...
The first down marker thing is really cool, and the hockey puck trail annoys me. I accept that ads are everywhere (look at the top of this webapge.) But say this technology could be used to spread misinformation by changing what is on the placards of protestors. That scares the hell out of me.
...aside from South Park and Babylon 5 reruns (missed a lot of it the first time around), I rarely watch TV. Easy, isn't it?
'The Running Man' also had edited or altered news footage earlier in the show (helicopter scene with Arnold). If I remember the movie correctly, that's why the girl got to play on the game show too...
Exactly wrong.
The bulk of the academic research on advertisements confirms that ads cannot convince people to buy products they don't want, or even products they do want when they aren't in a mood to buy them.
A cereal advertisement will only work if the viewer has run out of cereal, doesn't mind eating the brand being advertised, and is planning a trip to the grocery store. And even then it just increases the probability that that particular brand will be purchased; it's not a silver bullet.
Basically, all an ad can do is remind a viewer that a particular product exists.
This is the same reason, you will note, that grocery stores are organized to maximize the path length for each trip through the store. People are more likely to buy stuff only if they remember that it exists. Seeing it in person is one way of doing this; so are advertisements.
Furthermore, all this research does is confirm basic common sense. What's really funny is that people are so determined to come up with excuses for why they were willing to pay good money for garbage that they are willing to ascribe magic powers to advertisers.
The truth is that if you spent $25K on Chia pets, it's because you're a putz, not becuase evil ads mind-controlled you.
WE MUST STOP THIS OPPRESSION NOW AND LET FRANK BE HEARD. THE MODERATORS ARE AFRAID OF WHAT THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND. THIS IS UNFAIR AND UNJUST. LET FRANK BE HEARD. FREE FRANK FROM THE OPPRESSION STOP THE OPPRESSION OF THE GREAT FRANK RIZZO
Why are people so caught up in the advertising aspect of this story? Who cares if one imperialist corporation blocks the billboard of another imperialist corporation? The real issue here is that nothing that we see anymore, be they protests, celebrations, or wars, can be believed to be real. Everything can be completely fabricated to manipulate opinion, and we will all be stuck here arguing whether GPL is more or less free than MPL. It does not matter. For those of you smug enough to say that you don't trust anything on the news anymore, or never did, I congratulate you. However, there are billions of people out there who do not have your insight, will believe what they are told, and if sufficiently motivated will pick up weapons and join in the fight. This is very dangerous. Much more dangerous than companies trying to make an extra advertising dollar, and something has to be done NOW because in a few years it will be too late to reverse.
You do not need to be tape the show before hand. This system is real-time, it can add the adds on the fly, so therefore it seems reasonable that another could likewise delete them on the fly ;P
$.02 (-- This is mine
Along the same lines, I have noticed "fake" advertising on Speedvision's British Touring Car Championship for some time now. Both ads on the infield grass and a few on the racing surface. Also check out the ads behind the hitter on MLB on tv, then look at the real ballbark,Bank One Ballpark has blue mats on the real wall, ads on TV.
It then stands to reason that they must remove / alter all objectional signs.
You can't remove a sign held by a fan behind one of the uprights that says "J Bloggins Blows Baby Goats", without removing the one at the other end of the field that says "R Floggins slept with your mother". If I were R Floggins, I'd go after the broadcasters. They have the ability to mask it, they use it, but they didn't apply it to a sign that could cause me damage. Much, MUCH easier to mask no signs, and state that as policy, then to risk one slipping through the cracks that could cost you big $$$.
It's like an ISP scanning e-mail / news posts for content. They can't censor, because there's too much to check. And can you count the number of signs at your averate sporting event?
I'm not a lawyer, not even an anonymously couwardly one, but I can see this being very bad.
Apologies to J Bloggins and R Floggins, if you're reading this. I have no knowledge of your sexual practices, and if you are offended, it is just a horrible, horrible coincidence.
So, if they go too far, they might undermine their credibility to the point where people start thinking critically. But if they are careful and don't overexploit it, they can get away with it forever. Gee, I wonder which way they'll decide.
"Ubiquidous"?
Ooh, a big word. You look so smart. Too bad it's not only misspelled, it's used completely incorrectly.
Yes, it wasn't the cars. If you look closely at some GP's there are blank green billboards around the track used for superimposing the ads.
This is similar to what one poster said above about the ads in MLB on the blue wall behind the batter's box.
...was "Bitten & Hisses" used by Team Jordan!
;)
I wasted two 'Funny' points on this, only to see three humorless droids knee-jerk bitch-slap this commendable bit of fun down to Troll-ville.
Try reading the whole thing. It's funny. Drop the gag reflex to moderate things ASAP and READ THEM. Read and enjoy.
Sheesh.
My login is './' but I'm posting anon 'coz I've moderated in this discussion.
The link in your sig is incorrect...just thought you might want to know!
You've been reading John Brunner's The Jagged Orbit, haven't you?
This was the dilemna when Midi Sequencers were first used live back in the 80's.
Maybe next, they'll edit coverage of abortion protests to make it look like there are fewer pro-choice supporters than there really are. News media will start effecting political changes via doctored coverage. I already think they report bogus numbers for the "who's ahead" in various political races. I've never been asked to be in one of these "polls" they seem to have so often. Have you? And what would be the effect if they kept reporting over the next 11 months that "Gore was leading Bush in the polls 75%/25%!" over and over and over?
Maybe polls ought to be subject to the same restrictions as election coverage (where over 50% of votes are tallied and news media used to declare the official winner before polls out west closed, leading folks out west who hadn't voted yet to say, "why bother?").
This is fucking scary.
Remember the Gulf war, where the US military staff was shielding reporters away from military actions they did not want the American audience to see. Censoring -whoever the party may be that does this- is as old as newscoverage itself. That being said, always try to get your news input from as many different sources as possible. (this story reminds me of Gorbachev's official press picture, where they removed the "Afghanistan" birthmark from his head).
>During the superbowl, you will see Toyota ads, while I see Coke ads, an other one will see Microsoft ads.
Cool. While you're teaching the world to sing, I'll be watching non-stop Victoria's Secret ads.
turn off the god damned television
i don't like the thought of altering "live tv". what's next? changing a word or two from allen greenspan? i do know this, if i paid $$$ to advertise my product and a live telecast blocked it out, i would feel painfully raped... by the Allman Brothers
Douglas Adams' Wonko the sane came to the same conclusionyears ago... But then.. what do you expect from a society that requires a package of toothpicks to have a complete 'how to use' printed on its box.
Ad Busters have been talking about this for a long time.
But then I've always wondered why we even care about TV. This seems like a pointless battle. Internet access for the underpriviledged, and mico-radio broadcast rights are much more worthy goals in my mind.
seeing was never believing anyway, this is just adds another brick to the wall. WYSIWYG was never a reality anyway... Stop using your eyes to interpret reality and start using mind...
>How can society cope with a world where seeing >can not equal believing? Turn off your television.
They don't call it C.B.S. for nothing!
Then they never get it. The Post Office is under no obligation to deliver anything but the little postcard itself, and they'll just "accidentally" lose your package if you try to send a box of rocks postage due with the card. The only people you annoy are the post office, who merely forward on the junk mail. What you're doing is like mailbombing Rob Malda because Amazon's one-click patent annoys you.
In broadcasters hands, of course the first big tip off was when during a soccer game someone in the control booth hit the wrong button and had the team playing around a huge soda can in the middle of the field. People were not amused.
When I first saw this I thought "so what", then I saw the reality warping was on a NEWS show. Yikes.
Course ABC recently covered MP3. The only people they interviewed were the RIAA, a Record company (EMI?) executive and a bunch of college students who pirate CD's. How do they get away with callig a PR piece for the recording industry "journalism"?
It's all about connections. What happens when you combine this reality warping technology with the recently released V-Chip????
"It has other applications [besides branding] that I think are very valid and lend themselves perfectly to news, such as obscuring things you don't want in the frame,"
Like obscuring blood or dead bodies in a war: justification, need it for that V-Chip G rating.....
I was at the Seattle WTO protests and what I experienced first hand is totally different from what I saw on the TV. That is what finally destroyed my faith in the mainstream news media. I mean, I had read about other cases where the media distorted facts and misrepresented the truth. But this happened to me. I experienced it first hand. I feel like I live in INGSOC, I watch TV and hey what do you know it's actually the Eurasians we're at war with, I must not remember correctly. Doublethink and doubletalk. Big Brother is alive and well.
...and received the same luke-warm response as it is now. The Seven Network apparently own the rights to its use in Australia and have used it on numerous occasions when televising sporting events.
Normally done to superimpose a logo on the field itself, and swap logos during the game, they created a storm of contoversy here when the superimposed an Erricson (i think) logo over a quarter of the crowd at a rugby match.
Their ability to alter logos on signage on the ground also generated a bitter public and corporate debate - The stadium owners arguing that they own the land and can place any signage they want on it, and the TV station arguing that they own the pictures and can modify them how they want.
In the end I think the stadiums managed to modify the broadcasting rights to protect their advertisers, but I think the technology is still in use in certain circumstances.
Nowadays, we tend to think of lying as something that can be accomplished mainly with words because the techniques for manipulating photos and video have been crude. But this widespread (at least in America) trust of images is something of an historical aberration which technology will soon correct. Ah, the good old days, where a picture was only as trustworthy as the person who painted it!
A funny example: a certain painter of the nineteenth-century Hudson River School had to bring Fall leaves from upstate New York to Europe in order to convince viewers of his paintings that he wasn't lying (on canvas) about their bright colors.
Regarding ghoti's first point, I just want to say that while I agree that this *ought* to unethical, it sure ain't that way to broadasters. Remember, "what we're ultimately talking about is business, and the kind of discourse business tolerates."(Jonathan Rosenbaum http://www.chireader.com/movies/96best.html)
Chris
... in an article about the impact of digital editing of photos, video, etc. on the use of these media as courtroom evidence. Is it possible to determine with reasonable accuracy whether or not an image has been doctored? If so, for how long is this likely to remain true? If these media become useless as evidence, what do we do? Eyewitnesses are next to useless. This topic might make a good Q&A subject.
--- Brian
I put up with advertising for that reason - broadcasting costs money. What I really hate is when I pay a premium and get advertising anyway -- like on a videotape. And don't get me started on public broadcasting in America.
I have tried hard to aruge with people at work about this. Back in the UK, we have the BBC. Sure, it costs $150 a year to buy a TV license, but you get two TV channels and 5 radio channels completely free of commercials! Now there's a bizarre concept. Pay for a service, get a service, advertisment free! I have no problems paying for a service if I can get rid of the advertising. Web sites, email services, TV, radio, whatever. I pay to go to the cinema and I get a (reletively) commerical free experience (except for blatant product placement) The thing is, I wouldn't mind advertising so much, if the commericals were interesting or funny! In the UK (and a lot of other countries, I'm sure), there are a lot of very subtle, very funny commercials, but having 'Ford Country' and 'Did somebody say McDonalds' in my face does one thing, and that is exactly the opposite of what a commerical is supposed to do!
Bah, my grandfather could see the puck just fine, and he was listening to the hockey game on the radio. ;-)
Lander craft settles down onto a huge Coke logo, other billboards are featured in the background, most of the mars landscape is obscured. The first astronaut steps of the craft onto the surface, gets half way through something like "One small step for man..." etc before being cut off by some CGI babe running into the screen handing him/her a can of Coke(tm) say "After a 2 year flight, I bet you could use the refreshing taste of Coke(tm)."
One last thing:
errr... wouldn't the existing guidelines prohibit this, or do these people always need to have things made 'specific' and spelt out for them. I can't help but think that some people are just a bit thick.--
Simon
It will soon be mighty easy to manufacture evidence against someone and frame them. So what if lots of people know that this capability exists. The onus will be on the accused to prove they were framed in this manner.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Never assume a gun is safe unless you've checked it yourself.
:P )
Never assume a login from another box is valid unless your own sshd authenticated them.
Don't believe everything you read.
Don't believe everything you see on TV.
Now... Never assume that it's real unless you've seen it with your own eyes, even if it's "live".
(With movies like The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor, the philosophers are probably wondering if our own eyes can be trusted.
---
Computer graphics people used to have an axim (probably still do) - "If you can tell it's a computer graphic, we're not doing our job right." Old demos like Second Reality were made all the more awesome because they were happening "live" on your CPU. In TV, it's still "live" even if the whole event is scripted, controlled, and planned out. Is it still "live", by the TV definition, if a computer generates the whole show on the fly?
---
Come on Hollywood, blur the line a little further and ENTERTAIN me already! The Matrix was good, NYE was a letdown. We want MORE!
It would only be blank if you didn't precache the television show... This would require tons of memory, but I think a couple of the televison servers have the capacity to record a prime time telecast..
Tivo and ReplayTV can both do this, and you can even watch while it records. Start watching a half-hour after a two hour show starts, and you'll probably finish watching at exactly the time the show normally ends.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Personnal I believe it is wrong to change the image in that way. An advertiser pays money to have their advert in a location, particularly in sports stadiums, and they pay an high price based on the fact that their sign will be shown in media broadcasts.
If the advertiser cannot control whether their image will appear on TV, the price will go down. Since the stadiums are part of the whole contractual system by which TV rights of sporting events are sold on TV, it will almost certainly be part of those contracts that certain ads must be displayed in all local broadcasts, all national broadcasts, or not at all, with different rates for different levels of exposure.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/question2 25.htm
And since the line is added by the broadcaster, there isn't just one company doing it. Each of the 3 broadcasters has their own system, I think.
ESPN (and MNF) use SporTVision for example, not PVI.
I can see it now, bank robber bursts in, kills everyone, and walks out with all the cash. Security video shows the whole thing including his face with no mask. Goes to trial.
Brother-in-law testifies that they were watching 'when butterflys attack' on FOX. Defense claims that the footage was rigged, just like on the evening news because the police hate people who watch fox. The police claim that the home video of him watching the show and getting sprayed with beer in a vain attempt to win $10,000 is faked, just like the evening news.
After extensive interviews, eye witnesses across the street testify that they saw a man with three legs and a purple beard run out of the bank and escape in a giraffe drawn sled.
Case dismissed.
What annoys me more is how much ads are being forced upon us in all aspects of life; tv, movies, the net, magazines, even in college textbooks. TV is the worse right now; it used to be that the end credits for most shows were just shown in full screen, no problem, but then someone got the idea to splitscreen them, to allow an ad to run along side the credits. This idea expanded everywhere, and now nearly no show has anything happen during the credits (one of the few I can think of is Frasier or Whose Line is it Anyway?). I remember one time a local station tried to do the same thing during the end credits of Voyager, which UPN had already splitscreen, such that one could not hear the preview of next week's episode, nor read any of the credits as they were 1/4th of the screen.
Why do we need ads pushed in our face as much as advertizers think we do? I'm sure I'm not the only one on /. that generally makes shopping purchases based on reviews and reports, rather than "I saw that on TV!". I would also suspect that up to 50% of such Americans are like that as well, being trained consumers rather than drop-of-the-hat buyers. Unforunately, I suspect that this group does not include the target of these commercials: the 15-21 and 22-30 demographics. These people tend to spend more on impluse purchases, as thus will be more prone to an ad than others.
And very much unfortunately, we have no way to stop this forced advertizing. We are the low end of the entertainment food chain, when it comes to consumers. The stations know they have our eyes, and the ads know they have our wallets. We have no real place to complain to except the FCC (as Americans, at least), and I'd suspect such cries would go unheard. Until we are at a point where there are 6 minutes of show vs 24 minutes of commercials.
Hopefully, what occured above may spark something, whether a law suit between two rival TV networks, or something pointing out that the press can no longer be considered to be biased. One question that might be asked is what version of a live shot might be archived away in the stations' vaults, the original or the modified? Can you imagine the shear power that a network press room might have if they can present their archived version (the one that was modified in real time) and use that as evidence in a major governmental scandal? Sure, there are telltale signs that the picture was modified, but technology will only get better to a point where you can't tell.
I do hope that the network media realizes they have journalistic morality to think of here. Even something as innocent as changing a sign to be an ad for yourself can lead down the road to trouble.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I think it lies with two parts: first, the camera that will have the shot of the first down line will be in a fixed position (though it's angle of view might change) at the start of the place, so the software can calculate based on camera angle and the appropriate yardage line where the FDL is at and where the camera is at to plop the line on screen. The second part is then just to block the line when players cross it, and since no uniform is green in the NFL (or significantly green), this is almost just doing a chromakey with a big fuzzy zone.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
bah! Still primative junk. Until they can correctly render a player's cast shadow (from the Sun, overcast sky, or various artificial stadium lights) onto the generated line, they won't fool me!
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
A few weeks back, I saw a TV sitcom (Oh Grow Up), where a guy was wearing a black t-shirt with some kind of logo on it (I'm assuming Nike), which was "blurred-out" so you couldn't see what the logo was. If you weren't looking directly at it, you wouldn't notice, the few seconds the logo was visible to the camera. Granted it wasn't live, and I don't see how technically, a replacement could be done live on a moving object, but perhaps with enough hardware, and maybe a few seconds delay. . .
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
What if you're doing a story on say, a Calvin Klein bilboard with a too racy photo on it or something? How do you cover that if you have to pixelate the footage?
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Seeing hasn't equalled believing for some time. That's why photographs are so carefully examined for alterations when their veracity is important and why they actually investigated the "Alien Autopsy" video. This just is a new step up. Besides, oftentimes live TV is delayed slightly anyhow, to give them a chance to hit the bleep button when someone unexpectedly starts cursing.
Not to mention that while many of us may watch Trek and Star Wars, we don't necessarily believe that either is a valid vision of the future (or past, for Star Wars).
I don't trust the media anyhow, so I'm not really concerned.
Right now you see ads that are for the general demographic that is watching the show. Be they ads within the show itself OR in the commercials.
How many times have you been watching some sci-fi show and have a douche commercial come up. Granted there are no doubt some females watching the show and that commercial is targeted to them. But for the male geek that ad space/time is wasted on them. The same thing goes with the ads on the sides of the basketball courts. Many people could care less that Nike is splattered all over there. Nike is wasting money on me.
Now enter this luscious technology. Imagine the ability to have your profile on your set top box and as the signal comes in the set top sees that there is a space for an ad. Boom it looks up and sees that you just bought some kick ass new computer and slaps up "128 DIMMS for 89.99" right across that courtside ad space.
And this can apply to commercials also. Right now mega corporations are stuck buying ads that hit a demographic (hopefully). But by being able dynamically insert ads, we the consumer are going to benefit. I will get to see ads about things *I* am interested in and not what the some huge demographic rating says.
Some are going to cry out about privacy issues and what not. I think once I start getting ads for things I am interested in I will have a happier life. If I am not in the market for a new car I don't want to be pestered by stupid local "come on down to bob's ford!", show me things that I want to buy or do. Have a little button on my set top box that I can click to have more information sent to me. Send me FREE Stuff that I am interested in.
The one thing I see that could be sketchy about this is from Diamond Age, where people have had their vision hacked and all they see are are ads, ads, ads, ads. imagine that on your TV. Which ever channel you turn to are FULL screen ads. Your calls to your service provider are met with deaf ears. Ohhh the humanity.
All human transactions include built in presumptions about the status of each interaction--in plain english, there's alot about what we get from eachother that we just sort of "assume".
Contracts generally exist to clarify assumptions, not introduce utterly unexpected clauses--for example, a parking lot *can* disclaim liability for random damage caused to your car, but *can't* make the claim that exceeding one hour parking causes ownership of the car to transfer to them.
Contracts reflect the surrounding legal environment; they rarely completely rewrite it. The leeway granted on contract negotiations appears to usually be connected to the equivalent levels of power between the two negotiating bodies--the less legal force one party has in relation to another, the more the validity of the underlying contract is controlled by the legal environment. (Thus, the recent dismissal of an employee's noncompete clause which stated they couldn't work for a year in the same industry--this would have destroyed the employee but done no harm to the employer, thus the judge declined to enforce.)
This applies directly to the re-editing of video streams in that there's a presumption by the viewer that what they are seeing is a representation of the facts. The yellow first down line represents a fact that is in conceptual existence but lacks physical representation. This is a use of the technology to aid comprehension. However, the surreptitious modification of video streams to replace advertising and/or objectionable content is different--there is no underlying shared context being expressed, rather the value that the viewer places in what they see within in a given scene is redirected towards whatever the production crew desires.
Now, it obvious that the production crew can decide the backdrop as a whole--indeed, computer generated news desks are not entirely rare. But they're represented as such, and come replete with their own credibility wins and losses. Similarly, a correspondant appearing to report from the Middle East is spawning the presumption that, "They must know what they're talking about because they're actually there when I'm sitting on my couch *here*".
We attach value and credibility to the backdrop of any news report--even the simple tagline for an AP Newswire story gives the location of the author(if not his or her name).
To replace advertising, or any content in a non-obvious manner(pixelation of objectionable content is obvious, and explicitly changes the context of the display) is to borrow the credibility one holds for an environment and secretly sell it to the highest bidder.
That's not fair, and not even a 1.5 second blurb at the beginning of a broadcast can escape that fact. It's lying to the customer. That's not fair. Show some kids a walking, talking, thinking Teddy Ruxpin bear, and when they grow up provide them invisibly manipulated cities and scenes to believe in?
Hell, at least they're consistent.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
There is no ethical use for this sort of thing. It's tantamount to altering the viewers' reality. As someone who believes that free will is one of the two things that define humanity (the other being the ability to exchange complex information) I find the very idea of altering a broadcast in this manner to be outright immoral (certainly more so than anything they could possibly block out could ever be).
I suppose inserting ads is borderline, since at least the alteration is obvious. Same for sticking the score in the corner of the screen. But other than that, I see no potentially ethical use for this sort of thing.
I totally agree. I think in Canadian high schools, you are required to take some sort of class on "reading media" (any Canadians care to comment?). We could really use something like this is the US. That really goes into the category of learning to think for yourself, which our school system most definatly does not support. Those in power certainly don't want a bunch of young people becoming politically concious.
It's been a while (12 years I think) since I graduated but, when I was there, there was no such course. I did take a sociology course which did talk about such things but it wasn't required.
Technology is moving too quickly for an authentication scheme like this. Relatively soon it will be possible to do a lot of potentially abusive things in real time. Just insert this information into the bit stream of a compromised camera before the signature is generated.
I've always felt that when grade schools try to introduce students to the news paper in grade four or so they should also teach them the power of critical thinking. This would of course go against the normal school systems agenda, so I doubt it'll ever happen. An interesting exercise is to pick a few articles in the newspaper, especially if they are on something people typically have an opinion about, and seperate cold hard facts from the reporters opinion or interpretation. Maybe use two colours of highlighter to dilinieate fact v.s. opinion. Tally it up. Even in situations where you are supposed to be getting a report on something you'll find a great deal of opinion interjected.
The media has also been guilty of image manipulation before. One of the popular magazines was caught during the OJ Simpson trial. They doctored up a picture of Simpson and gave him a couple days beard growth, darkened shadows to make him appear more menacing and so on. They were definately trying to manipulate the public. It was done to sell more magazines but it was done at the expense of the publics perception of Simpson.
Watch any interview on TV, most of the cutaway shots to the reporter are done after the fact. Often the questions are reshot later to give the reporter a heightened air of professionalism. Have you ever contrasted the way a reporter speaks to the way the typical person speaks? Some of it is professionalism but a lot of it is a cheat on the part of the producers.
So, this is nothing new. It's reprehensible but you shouldn't trust the media any less over it. You should always be looking for the hidden angle which is the only way you'll be able to form your own opinions.
"...blocking out objectionable signs or covering up a competitor's logo, he says...meets CBS' journalistic guidelines."
Is this an admission of censorship from CBS? Are they admitting that the news is watered down and censored to meet the needs of whoever is paying the most in sponsorship and advertising that quarter?
I watch the news. I need the news. I enjoy the news. I don't need someone elses idea of what the news should be.
I know this is a little muddled but I know what I mean!
Certain networks have been doing this with sporting event broadcasts for quite some time now. I saw a special on it about a year ago in which they found a logo (I think it was Coke), then stretched it and made it fit on a certain part of the ballpark.
Every single shot of the logo (near or far or on weird angles) showed what it would look like as if you were at the game itself. It was nearly impossible to tell the difference. Then they showed a split screen of an actual game - one with no 'branded' logos, one with branded logos. Even after commercial breaks, the logos changed.
The whole concept is pretty cool... However... I'd probably freak if there was some bizarre occurance in which the software screwed up. For example, if a (branded) Veterans Stadium wall collapsed (which has happened), what would happen to the logo? Would it stay there? Would it disappear? Curious, as you know the camera would not turn away from an incident like that.
What about the company who paid for THEIR ad to be on that billboard? Companies pay big money for high-profile adspace. Now, that adspace can be hijacked by whomever has the most $$ to throw at the networks/cable companies.
This WILL devalue adspace. Of course, it also will bring into being the ability of companies to throw ads onto EVERYTHING, regardless of content.
Okay, I can see blocking something objectionable -- but who's to say what's objectionable? What's the limit to this? "Live" TV used to be one of the few ways the populace could be sure they were seeing what was going on.
Now, a "live" shot of a war could be doctored to not show any of "our" troops dying - hell they could edit the footage to change the outcome of things...and it would all be done in the name of "protecting the people" - Bullsh**. It's lying, plain and simple.
And "blocking a competitor's logo" is *not* ethical, at least in my opinion. Blocking ALL logos and ads would be OK if it was a consumer decision, but we don't need TimeWar^H^H^H^H^H^H^HAOL deciding that every ad on cable TV is an AOL ad, and brainwashing people that way.
This isn't to say that this technology doesn't have good, legitimate uses. It's just that in our society the way it is today, the power of this WILL be misused, and it's the people who will get the short end of the stick, not the companies, corporations and media.
You could always have a time/date stamp included along with the hash. That would preclude later video alterations in many cases, until people reverse engineered the camera hardware. (How easy is it to embed a private key into a microchip that does digital encryption/signatures, and keep that private key secret from even a determined reverse engineering attempt?)
But of course just yesterday there was a GPL'ed software release to do realtime video editing, and anyone with enough kilobucks to spend can do better.
There are third party services out there that will timestamp and PGP sign your data, but that's kind of pointless when the latency involved in video editing is less than the latency involved in sending hashes to the timestamper's server and getting them back.
He wasn't really in the toilet. At least...I don't think so....
**>>BELCH
All this talk about government conspiricies and doctoring footage is REALLY funny coming from a technical crowd. Beforehand, did you REALLY believe all those special effects in X Files??
You don't even have to calculate camera paths anymore to match moves against the camera - software does the math for you (See MatchMaker at my companies website). You can also automatically build 3D models from 2D motion footage, WITHOUT extra cameras and such.
You can fool a lot of people with virtual sets and motion capture, but an expert will [hopefully] always be able to tell what has been faked. The editing and compositing process always leaves some destructive signs of work, even if they are not visible to the eye. Relax people... I'd be more afraid of those transcievers they want to put in your driver's license so they can track you, only when you go through those express toll-booths of course ;-)
This message was posted with Mozilla M12, and wow it's looking good!
A drama that some stupid alien-obsessed people tuned into late and didn't recognise as such? It wasn't meant as a hoax, and to me it sounds utterly unconvincing.
There's a TV show in France where they do that all the time -- "Le Vrai Journal" (The REAL News). They have a heavy bunch of SGI servers and make big fake news reports. They do, however, warn the public. They've shown Bill Clinton in the Oval office with a naked monika. Rather funny.
Blocking a competitor's logo is, probably, fine - so long as the block is obvious. The pixellated area of a screen masking a face or some other censored partial image, the visual equivalent of the beep or the "expletive deleted".
It's censorship though, but if you watch/read/listen to any news media you're being given someone else's view of the facts anyway, is editing censorship? Yes, no, maybe.
You cannot believe what you see - that's not new. What is new is that modifications are much harder to detect than previously, say, the classic example of the shot of Lenin preaching with the then out of favour Trotsky replaced by a lump of wood.
Can you trust what you see? That's the real issue. Can you trust your news provider to give you as many facts as are pertinent. After all, you can read two newspapers, but you can't watch two live actions feeds with as high a level of discrimination.
If you can't trust the image - and unless a strict code of conduct is used to indicate when manipulation is used you can't trust the image - then you must be able to decide whether you can trust the provider.
--
"I do not speak for my employers, though they are controlled from my Teddy's huge pulsating brain."
But saying "Goebbels would be proud" goes beyond that. It implies a similarity of motive in the development or use of this technology. I don't see why Goebbels would be proud of inserting ads into a TV broadcast, unless, for example, they were conveying vile propaganda.
No, that would be the "deceptiveness" of a media tactic. Its evilness depends on the purpose or message inherent in that deception. It's not a comparison of deception: Goebbels used other, more subtle ways to promulgate evil and destructive propaganda besides outright deception. Furthermore, Goebbels is not just some PR person: again, comparing someone in the media with Goebbels is perhaps the ultimate insult, so I'm curious what brought this on in the article heading.
Uhh, michael, you may have gone a little far with that department listing. Drawing a connection from anyone involved in the media to the Nazi propaganda minister is, to me, the height of condemnation. It implies the most evil intent possible, and I don't see any explanation why -- was that just the first thing that came to mind or what?
It's one thing to digitally add advertizing to blank billboards, or to non-blank billboards with the knowledge of the real advertizer -- nothing underhanded going on there, really.
But if they ever start to change the image of anything WITHOUT asking the permission of the people involved, I bet a lawsuit will happen VERY rapidly.
I would imagine it would be legal to do something like fuzz out somebody's ad, but to put someone else's ad on top would be misrepresentation.
Very treacherous legal ground, so I don't think it will happen. TV networks employ very paranoid lawyers.
Ya know, there are some things I've seen with my own eyes and *still* don't believe...
XenoWolf The Original - Since 1993
What's sad is I saw a blurb on CNN about a new device someone invented which automatically finds redundant frames, etc. to time-skew a program to fit more advertisements in there...
*sigh*
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
We have these stupid fucking media driven news shows with the ability to "alter reality"
ever hear of a non-'media-driven' news show?
THE ONLY SOLUTION IS TO REBEL....NOW !!!! WE HAVE NO TIME TO WASTE. SO GET OFF OF YOUR FUCKING ASSES ADN STAND UP FOR YOURSELVES
OR PREPARE TO BE FUCKED UP THE ASS ON A DAILY BASIS.
oh no! its the great homosexual menace! gasp!
Personally if I were an advertiser who had paid money for an ad or logo that was edited out of a live shot, I would want to sue.
If I were the owner of a building who had chosen not to have a billboard and one was plastered on anyways for the evening news, I would want to sue.
But would either have a case?
Wondering,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
And can you think of anything Fox News would like better than to prove CNN faked something? Except maybe proving that the government faked something?
No, I'm not paranoid. I know that whatever they can do, they won't agree on what to do.
They license the technology out.
I'm reminded of a story I read in Analog Magazine a few years back. The basic idea was a high-tech whodunit. I don't remember all of the details but in general, a person was seen, on a Nationwide LIVE broadcast, to fatally shoot another person. The only problem was that the accused was innocent. The video feed was edited in real-time and his image was altered to show him pulling a gun and firing at the victim. Meanwhile, the real shooter was hiding in the bushes or on the grassy knoll or somewhere. And, of course, since he was seen pulling the trigger by 60 gazillion people viewing the whatever it was live, plus the replays on the nightly news, he stood a snowball's chance in hell of actually proving his innocence.
Gosh Toto, isn't it a good thing that stuff like that can't happen and that the technology to do that sort of thing doesn't exist?
Time's fun when you're having flies. - Kermit the Frog
It's been a while since you could really believe what you saw.
Consider this: Print out a "memo" from your boss saying you should get a raise. Include a scanned image of your boss' signature. Don't claim it to be the original, just a copy you made on the inkjet-based fax machine. Or, pick up one of those photo printers, and digitally stick your ex-wife's head on Hillary's body.
For that matter, think about those psychic hotline ads. People believe them all the time, even though it seems painfully obvious that they don't have to be psychic, they just have to have a copy of the script. And yet, they make money hand over fist.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
yeah it is pretty neat to be able to take a shot across, say, a baseball diamond and replace one of the local hardware stores ads on the fence with, say, "AOL" or whatever, seamlessly. I haven't beleived anything or anyone in years - like Hindu theology, everything is just a grand illusion.
Boojum
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
is that this technique will probably go thru the same trajectory as the "colorizing old B&W films" flap of many years ago - it'll all blow over and people will, like spam, just accept it and the media companies will continue to do whatever the fsck they want to do, in the name of free speach.
Boojum
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The use of this device to display the first-down line is the best innovation in TV coverage of football since the instant replay. Forget reverse-angle views. Forget goalcam and helmetcam and all those other cameras. Forget all those other gimicks and gadgets. The virtual first-down line is something that adds real value and enjoyment to watching football.
But its use to alter news coverage is fraud. It's misleading for CBS to think they alter Times Square just because they want it to be their "studio".
--Jim
I guess this explains why a few games early in the season didn't have it and others did... you need the model of each stadium to make it work.
--
Brent J. Nordquist N0BJN
Their web site doesn't say anything about how the first-down line technology works; I've been wondering how they place the line, and whether any technology is needed on the field to make it work. Anyone have more details?
--
Brent J. Nordquist N0BJN
So does anyone know if this technology has been used to reappropriate others Ad Space? As a business owner, I'd be up in arms if someone decided to film outside my office and thus reappropriated billboard space I payed good money for. To me, it would be like someone reappropriating content from a piece of my software to advertise their own adgenda...look at the problems Real is having because someone decided to change the advertisement in their free software (free as in it doesn't charge ya to download and thus you are paying for it with your eyeballs).
To me, this is nothing more than theft. If you don't want my advertising don't film near it. If you don't like my advertisments in software, don't use my software.
Having said all this, I do very little in the way of advertising and usually the whole concept sickens me, still if someone pays for something it cannot and should not be taken or edited without their permision (hmmm...maybe I'll rent a sign outside my office and GPL it for non-commercial work, but require a $50k licensing fee for every other occurance).
blah
clif
Essentially, we live in a world where the majority of the population is willing to take CNNs word for what goes on beyond their immediate world. This is no different in my opinion. While the knowledge of what goes on in the rest of the world is not normally required information, it does influence people. And when those people take the word of biased corporations (CNN) and manipulating television stations (NBC), they are buying into an altered, tailored, and unreal version of the world.
Some people might not care, but I do. And in the end, if I have to limit what I can honestly say I know is real to what I see and experience in my own life, then so be it. When it comes to media companies, take the advice of our old friend James T. Kirk, "Don't beleive them, DON'T trust them!"
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
Wow, so we'll have to actually read the source code for the evening news to be sure of it. Not only of it's accuracy or lack of spin, but also it's reality. Interesting.
/.) about what was happening during the WTO 'riots'. I have a much better understanding that I would have from the evening news.
Well, maybe the proliferation of internet access and connected wireless devices will be good in this resepect as well. We'll be able to take advantage of omnipresence, and draw our own conclusions. For example,
It was priceless to me to hear directly from people in Seattle (via
The military actions in Bosnia were heard of through the people there, on usenet. People who had bombs going off down the street were writing about it, and the world on-line had the option of knowing things first hand.
The dissemination of the truth, by private individuals, is not foolproof. There's bias and ignorance and assumption. But I suspect that it will/does work much like the opensource development process. You just can't tell a lie when there are other people, who know the truth, listening and able to speak. Just like you can't sneak a virus, or a back door, into a piece of open source code.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Goebbels was a brilliant propagandist. All that the reference implied to me was that this is a brilliant tool for propaganda.
Being able to distort reality towards any means is very impressive. For example, showing a local businesses logo on one of the boards of an international soccer match would make the company appear larger than life. Putting a M.A.D.D. logo in place of a Budweiser one would raise the cause to a higher status. Being able to elevate any agenda to a more prominent position than it holds, and thereby really placing it in the forefront of people's minds, is very Goebbels.
Goebbels was one of the greatest marketting geniuses of history. He managed to sell genocide to the masses, he justified it and made people believe it was the right thing. He made it into something people rooted for, or at least wouldn't speak out against. Not even Microsoft has been more successful. Goebbels did his job, right or wrong is not at issue. Much like Johnny Cochran did his job defending O.J., right or wrong was not at issue.
If anything, the Goebbels reference is a warning, and as such, it's the most effective reference that could be found.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
I know everyone realizes this fact, but nobody seems to have mentioned it yet.
:), can be implemented with existing technology. Telephone or ISP style billing at a rate near that of electricity, with ReplayTV functionality, with possibly different price points for HDTV and old-style quality. Maybe we could get to the point of giving away TV sets with a three year subscription...
It costs a lot of money to do (national and local) broadcasting. This is where advertising revenue comes in. All the customer has to pay for is the TV set, and the electricity. If it were not for advertising, we would have 15 minutes per hour of pledge breaks, or worse yet, we'd have to pay a premium (over cable or satellite service fees) to the broadcasters.
A different system, where we are billed for time spent watching a particular station, might be better. First off, content might be better, since it would actually be 'our' money paying for what we spend our time watching, and we'd be more discriminating. Second, products might actually be cheaper and better, since they wouldn't carry the cost of advertising in the price tag, and would have to sell themselves on their actual merrits instead of cute or cleaver advertising (Bud, Weis, Errrr). Third, we'd spend less time watching TV, since it would cost money to do so, so we would do more valuable things, like reading, coding, and actually raising our kids. There's also the fringe benefit of not leaving the TV running when you leave the room.
The whole face of marketting would be different, since merit and value would be the predominant sales point, instead of image...
But that's not the system that is in place. It's not the system that has been shown to work well for those who are in control of it and who benefit by it.
My SYSTEM (tm)
I sure hope AOL Time Warner doesn't read this post before I file for a patent... [sigh]
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
I could be incorrect about this, but I believe that stations have a certain block of advertising time set aside for 'Local' adverts. The local businesses still want to get their word out, and with so many people subscribing to cable instead of just using the free television waves, they were losing airtime. So I think it is a planned thing, not just a local cable company oversplicing their own ads in.
Again, could be wrong about this.
V
There is something here that bothers me. No, it is not the fact that people are doing real-time adverts, nor is it the fact that we can now do real-time manipulation[0]. The thing that is bothering me, actually, is the response to this issue.
You see, this is nothing new. Every since the first monkey[1] picked up a bone and thought to itself, "tool." We have had trickery, backstabbing, conning, and deception. Humanity suffers from an incredible amount of want, the want of more possessions. Humanity will do just about anything, including defacing his/her personal reputation and good worth, simply for a few more possessions. Not all is bad of course, ever since deception, we had the ones seeking out the deceptors and uncovering them for what they are.
It has been a game of tag since day one. What we are seeing now is the very evident cycle where the greedy have found ways to circumvent what used to be an unstoppable barrier of truth: Namely, photographs and the moving picture. For years these two technologies bared life for what it really was, and could even be used as evidence in courts of law.
What we are seeing is essentially no different than a gang of crackers circumventing new software bugs, and the developers coming up with new patches to fix the bugs, albeit at a much slower pace. We are already to the point where everybody looks twice at a picture. Simply everything is run through a computer now, and sometimes it is getting very tricky to spot the evidence of computer tampering[2]. Now we just need to readjust to the fact that video, even live video, is becomming just as vulnerable to dupery as a pre-shot film. Nobody has placed truth in pre-shot film for a very long time now[3], and soon people won't place so much validity in live film.
This isn't a bad thing, nor is it a good thing, it simply is the way things are. We had, for about 60 or 70 years, a very good medium for 'prooving' things. Before that there was just paintings, sketches, and word of mouth. We may have to go back to that, we may come up with something new and revolutionary, who knows! Times change, people just need to realize that change is not evil.
With all of that being said, I'm going to go back a tad and state my opinion. I think this is excellent news. The ability to manipulate moving pictures in real time brings us one step closer to an entirely new, and interactive form of entertainment. Sure, it will bring along with it the sleazy car salesmen and whatnot...as do all new technologies. I prefer to look at how such developments will aid humanity instead of dwelling on the abuse, the abuse can be ignored. Turn off your television and do something constructive for a change[4]. It isn't that difficult.
.:. Starface
------------------
[0] There seems to be two arguments going on. One against advertising in general which is a tad bizarre if you ask me, the other is pro/con real-time manipulation.
[1] Or, perfect, wonderfully created being. Whatever your cup of tea is.
[2] I worked at a job where it was my description to 'fix' photographs. I know the tricks of the trade, there are alot of adverts and photos out there that are tampered.
[3] See here, for an excellent demonstration of that.
[4] Try literature and a cup of Earl Grey.
V
Listen to what your mother said; Don't believe everything you see on TV. And the same goes with photos.
The only way in todays world to believe what you see, if you are an extreme skeptic, is to see and touch it yourself. I recently went to Madam Tusades(sp) and realized that seeing alone isn't enough :). But even seeing and touching may not be enough. (Fakes of famous pieces of art for example) Actually, its pretty much impossible to be 100% completly sure of something if you are an extreme enough of a skeptic.
To adapt a quote "Reality is in the eye of the beholder".
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
That this technology came to be was inevitable. Chroma Key has been around for decades, making it possible to composite live analog video images. I believe the Princeton digital system has been used to create virtual billboards in baseball broadcast coverage for a couple of years now.
I hate it.
It should be illegal for anyone to altar in any way an image used to portray a real event. I don't even like having the TV weather reporter superimposed on the map -- I prefer a simple voice over. Even cropping photographs is skirting a fine line of propriety. The only exception I would make is for markups conspicuously added for illustation after the raw image is shown (e.g., during football game replays).
I hope it isn't too late to stuff this genie back in its bottle. As we have been shown ad nausemu, the maintstream press will pick a quick buck over the unvarnished truth every time. Because we cannot afford a tyranny of corporate thought police any more than we can a governmental one, we must not allow any altered images in news or event reporting.
And if it takes a ruling by the FCC or even the Supreme Court to force the media to give us the complete picture, then make it so!
P.S.
RE: the Netherlands, that includes showing billboards in news broadcasts. Those advertisers paid good money to have their ads put in plain sight. If that's what the scene looks like, that's what it looks like. Showing us the whole truth includes showing the ads that decorate the scene.
The key thing to remember is that images *never* represent reality. Even high-quality video doesn't quite capture reality. This is always underscored for me whenever I see a newscaster or other public figure that I've seen on television numerous times. They always look "different" somehow from the way they do on television.
article at adbusters about superimposed ads.
featuring comments from Denny Wilkinson of Princeton
Video Image "the world's pioneer in virtual advertising and product placement
for TV and film." This guy scares me.
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
TV stations are always sending out talking heads to Report Live in silly places like: front of the state capitol (at 11pm); or the house where some kid disappeared 3 weeks ago (and a neighbor chimes in her two cents) or the shopping mall ("will this Xmas be good for retailers? Because that's what really matters").
Who cares. The babble sounds the same outdoors as inside.
What we need are disclaimers of interest, e.g. Big Cigarette Company owns both Us and the food company we're reporting on, so you might want to independently verify everything we say.
TV news sucks. I'd never see it except some friends & relatives are into it. One doesn't want her baby girl to watch "Simpsons" because it'll make her grow up sarcastic. I would (silently) counter that the same principle would imply that watching Dateline NBC would make her grow up shallow, narrowminded, and stupid.
I was wondering how people thought of fighting back? We've got Junkbusters, and I often send business reply mail back with a generous helping of rocks, asking them to remove me from their lists.
It seems like Mann has done pretty much research in WearComp, If some want to know more just visit his homepage, or Unv. Toronto.
I think it's high time we start building many wearable computers with full video and souond. A bunch of geeks with these could help make sure the real footage is available. Steve Mann has alot to say on uses for wearable computers with video.
The Matrox Meteor II card in PC/104-Plus format with MJPEG compression doughter board could be used for capture. Storage could be to a set of 25GByte Travelstars from IBM. All the rest of the parts is old hat for wearable use. The only thing not there yet is the drivers for the Meteor II.
They're not thick, they're lawyers.
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Exactly. How else are we gonna find Kendall Square??! :)
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
For one I'm oblivious to advertising most of the time anyway. (notable exception: Network Associates: "who's watching your network") The name dropping type of advertisments at sporting events don't faze me.
Secondly I think its an interesting proposition to put advertising control into the hands of content providers. It will probably change the way people pay for advertising, but thats over saturated as it is. The premise that this is a technology that could generate more advertising dollars is nice if they use it to increase the quality of content.
Gee, that's profound, Jon Katz Jr.. I experienced a similarly crushing blow a few months ago when I found out that all of the people on the sitcoms I watched actually didn't exist! They were just other people, 'actors' I think they're called, PRETENDING to be these people we're watching shows about! Well, when I found this out I was shocked, because what's to stop people from 'acting' outside of the sitcom world? This sort of deception could have horrible effects on, say, the world of politics! Something needs to be done about this!
And I won't even -tell you- about the visual deception of that evil show The Simpsons. Let's just say that just because they're lovable doesn't mean they even exist. To think I was fooled for so long!
--neil
comedy is not flamebait even if you don't think it's funny
I remember reading a brilliant essay by Oliver Wendell Holmes about photography and the way it can "skin the world" and be used to make a "currency" of images and how it divorces image from reality and so on and so on.
He rather brilliantly foresaw many of the issues that would arise from this and none of his prescience is diminished by our ever increasing faculties for making the real false and the false seem real.
Does anyone here know the essay I'm talking about? I cannot remember the title, so I'm finding it hard to locate. In particular, if anyone knows of an on-line source and can provide a link, that would be great. You simply would not believe how "on the money" he was, and he wrote it over 100 years ago now.
or using it to project images of burning piles of questionable books, and death camps for people who we deem lesser.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
-- H. L. Mencken
First, I don't understand how blocking out a competitor's logo could be ethical. It might not be a big deal, but ethical?
Assuming that you meant to s/ethical/unethical/g I can suggest what is wrong with this: up till the advent of this technology an advertiser on a billboard could be assumed to be buying not just the immediate real-life presence, but also knock-on advertising when images of real-life were propagated over TV or in newspaper photos. Now the goal-posts have been moved. Real-life advertising slots have in a sense, been devalued. The commodity has been further carved up and developed - a previously overlooked, unclaimed, implicit part of the commodity has now been staked out and put up for sale. One can imagine feelings of irritation if one were an advertiser (don't get me wrong, I have little or no sympathy for them!). So I don't think this is to do necessarily with blocking out a competitor's logo - also you make it sound as though you consider that competition mitigates any actions taken - is that really an argument?
Second, I think most of us know that pictures cannot be trusted, anyway. This has been true for a long time for photographs (especially on magazine covers), and is also true for most media reports (they can be edited without you being able to tell)
The free! article linked here makes a big deal about the fact that there are guidelines in operation at the station that prohibit the digital manipulation of news-images, and the spokesperson explained that this was a new, unregulated thing that they were doing that didn't seem to be covered by the letter of the law of those prohibitions. Also, they point out that Nat.Geog. had a huge amount of flack when they altered their magazine covers.
I guess what I'm saying is that it looks as though the biggest point here is that they are trying to commodify even more things. If we say "what's the big deal" it's just advertising and the people that deliver most of our information to most of the people are just a company and companies have to make money...etc. then we are in danger of not opposing the invasion of what used to be a previously un-sold "thing". What would the logical conclusion of this -it's all commerce- attitude be? Perhaps we shall watch disaster survivors being carried into Redcross ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h Nike-swoosh ambulances? Or at the olympics we'll be able to watch the intertwined Coke/Pepsi cans floating above the medallists (oh, didn't something like that happen already?). Or perhaps during presidential inaugurations we could watch (whoever) standing proudly beneath the golden arches.
A precursor technology to this was used in Soccer games in the UK a few years ago. From what I remember, they replaced the (as you rightly say: tacky) signs with billboards that had a peculiar shade of blue on them - something that didn't occur very frequently. This was then replaced with live digital images. The fans copped onto this after a while and started wearing blue of that colour and there were some pretty weird images of crowds with bits of ads spread out over them.!
It's nice being paranoid already. :) I don't believe news broadcasts, the newspaper or even this site 99% of the time. I don't believe what I see in person myself until I have coroborating evidence. Oh, by the way, don't watch TV, it sucks the brain right out of the skull.
If what I said is nonsense,
I'm making a point with it.
If what I said makes perfect sense,
you obviously missed the point.
To quote the yahoo article:
Steganography could be used to embed the authentication into the signal itself (perhaps even for each frame) and could make it difficult to alter the picture without altering the integrity of the hash. Wow, what a great IDEA! Someone patent it. :)
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Also, the movies themselves are often sped up a bit to allow more commercial time. I remember watching Star Wars on TV, and I could easily tell it had been considerably sped up because the pitch of all the audio had risen (voices, music, etc.) and the pacing even felt faster than I remembered it. This actually was noticed enough to be mentioned in the news afterwards. (Even though it had been sped up, it still took over 2.5 hours to run, so probably more than 40 minutes were commercials)
And all this while various Hollywood guilds have lobbied hard to prevent or lesson such actions by the networks. The guilds hold considerable power, and without them, there would probably be many more alterations (ie. not showing the credits at all).
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
to cut back on tacky signs hanging all over the place
No, no! Because the real-physical-world ads can now be replaced digitally, these ads will become cheaper and your ballpark will need to put up MORE of them.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
They mention in the story that you can only put a digital sign over a solid field if you want motion in front of it. In order for a venue to sell market specific advertising for places like behind home plate or in front of a basketball scorer's table, the actual sign would have to be plain (probably blue). For billboards or scoreboards you can get away with covering up regular signs, because little action is going to take place in front of them.
I'm sure venues would put blue signs up in a second because the number of people who see the sign in person will almost always be a fraction of the number that see it on television.
Be prepared to see a lot more of this stuff because there is a LOT of money involved.
My 2 cents: The yellow first down line they use in football broadcasts is great.
-Barry
As for advertisers not getting their 'paid' room, I disagree. They have their spots on buildings and billboards, and paid for the people there to see them - not for the chance that they /might/ appear on tv, sometime.
Billboards in Times Square are on TV/ in movies all the time. Sure, they are expensive because 10 million New Yorkers might see them, but they're REALLY expensive because 200+ million people will probably see them on New Years Eve.
The number of sign-type advertisements that will be seen on TV is low, but the cost of those ads are huge.
-Barry
The technique they use is quite cool, and it's even called "The Flame" ;-) The guy doing Le vrai journal (Karl Zero) explained how they could get access to this really expensive technology: They rent the hardware for a bargain (that is, compared to the normal price) when it's not used to make movies and commercials. Quite clever... The show runs on Canal + on sunday 12:00 (or 12:30, I don't remember exactly)
OK...
Not saying I don't believe you by ANY stretch of the imagination, but this isn't one I've heard before and, though I'm not an image manipulation expert and haven't watched the footage in detail, it's always looked about right to me, with nothing jumping out. After all, the footage has been known for a fair while now so any doctoring would have had to be done a LONG time ago when standards were rather lower...
Does someone wish to explain this one to me?
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Right, thanks.
The question is, though, does this significantly alter the viewer's perception of the film? I can't see why this could have been done otherwise (ruling out simple incompetence) but why? I mean, it still looked pretty incriminating last time I saw it, but the framing rather suggests that it couldn't get much worse.
Or am I being naive here?
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Speaking as an F1 fan I can imagine this, but...
:)
It doesn't seem to work as an idea. Cigarette advertising can't appear on TV in Britain, but that doesn't mean we've blanked out the logos of all these cars for the last few years. It just means that when the cars are within our jurisdiction - as in the British GP - the cars run with different branding. Winfield became Williams, Mild Seven became Moto Sport, West once memorably became East
The different markets justification I can certainly see, but the cigarette advertising one doens't seem to hold water. And this is VERY expensive...
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Anyone know where we can see captures of the CBS broadcast in question? Neither article seems to have them, weirdly enough.
Goebbels was a great propagandist, but he wasn't as cutting edge at the time as people make him out to be. (Take a look at the American propaganda during WWII.) His work was built off of the work that the American government did in World War I, and the books of Edward Bernays, the man who is considered the grandfather of public relations.
I highly recommend reading the books "PR: A Social History of Spin" and "Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies, and Public Relations."
Remember the Gulf-war? A lot of what was presented through CNN was in fact pure propaganda.
A kuwaitian girl crying, saying that soldiers from IRAQ defiled an orphanage.. pure propaganda, not true.
Of course, IRAQ did it to an even greater extend.
The same happend in Yugoslavia. People were shown all the monstrous acts by NATO.
Of course there were some horrible things that happened. But when you only present the worst acts of war, on none of the more gentle, you have already fooled your people.
Of course.. this technology could leed to an even greater abuse of "reality". Seeing opposition do things they never really did. Scary...
Perhaps not outright lying but subtle truth bending has been going on for as long as newspapers then radio then newsreels then television existed. Yet people still blindly assume that these things are reported "as fact" or that they're unbiased renderings of "the truth".
Maybe once everyone can see that the pictures on their telly in the corner don't even match up with the view they get when they drive to walk down the same street they'll start to seek other points of view on a story. Maybe people will start to WAKE UP.
And media companies (or gov't) can make up their own news, alter the stuff that does happen, ignore it, or, gob forbid, just report it. With the AOL,TW merger it is just becoming too difficult to trust large media outlets. Almost every story they report on now will have some facet that effects the company in some way. Who can be honest when talking about themselves? Esp, when such talk can move stock and change billions of dollars. Just hope the 'Net can give us some form of news worth trusting.
+&x
While this sucks, it doesn't change the base problem: we are at the mercy of the media to report the truth. This has always been the case. A reporter can write and cut all they want to make the story sound as they please. The studio can further enhance and cut to fit their agenda. They can also choose which stories to run.
Every reporter is biased; they are only human. A good reporter keeps the bias out of the report as much as possible, but they may not file a report for a story they don't think is important, may report with an unintended tone of voice that projects their opinion upon the listener, etc.
Editors have the same bias problems; in addition, they are under pressure to keep viewer's interest so that advertising can be sold. Therefore, they have a tendency to report shocking or glamorous stories that keep people glued, but may not be representative of what is really going on in the world.
In the end we have to simply trust them or not trust them. Everyone has certain news sources that they trust and others that they don't trust.
Hopefully people will always want a trustworthy news source and there will always be an entreprenour willing to fill the niche.
Combine that with the information advertising agencies have from every internet user (cookies et al), then in the near future they will insert viewer-specific ads.
During the superbowl, you will see Toyota ads, while I see Coke ads, an other one will see Microsoft ads.
Mark
maybe next they will show spoofed footage of the
mars polar lander. "see, NASA isn't all that bad
after all".
bah!
where will this stop? why not just have max
headroom report the news from the surface of
Neptune? we rely on news to be REAL and in NO
PART FAKED.
i guess it's time to start wondering about the
validity of everything *except* that which we
behold with our own eyes...
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Anybody who still believes what's on TV, I got a bridge to sell ya.
---
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
It seems to me that they still have a place.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Regardless, anyone who still believes that the JFK assination was a one-man job is either retarded, or ignorant of the facts.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
The film has undergone significant doctoring. Frames have been removed, altered, and made into composites, and the film speed has been tampered with in some places.
The lesser known Orville Nix film, taken the same day, shows the exact same footage (from across the street). However, a frame-by-frame comparison makes the doctoring of the Zapruder film quite obvious -- they do not follow each other in parallel at all.
Check out Bloody Treason by Noel Twyman and Assassination Science by James Fetzer. To see the Orville Nix film, get a copy of The Assassination Tapes from New Frontier Productions.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Have you ever seen FOX in the US? It seems like The Running Man can only be a few months away.
:(
This network has to be epitome of lowest-common-denominator TV. I [semi-]recently saw Robbie Knievel jumping over the grand canyon (well, a small part of it) on a motorcycle.
Fox made a 1-hour special out of this 15-second event, complete with 'simulations' of what 'could go wrong'. They even had a motorbike, with a dummy dressed up like Robbie strapped on it, which they pushed over the canyon wall to show what might happen if the worst came to the worst. They filmed every bounce on the way down, and screened it in slow-motion, so you didn't miss a trick.
We do have them to thank, however for 'The Simpsons' and 'The X-Files'. Ah, the internal struggles my mind has reconciling great shows like these with 'When Good Pets Go Bad 2'.
Ah, hell with it. As long as there is a market for this sort of crap, people will make it / market it. I'm sure 'Climbing for Dollars' or 'Treadmill to Bucks' (only chronic heart or respiratory illness patients accepted) would be ratings winners too.
The challenge will be to get it past the network execs and censors, but with the continuing downward slide of TV standards and ethics, it can only be a matter of time...
The idea of television people (including news reporters) doctoring footage is old. This is just new tech for doing it. Take a look at any sit-down interview on a nightly news program. You will notice subtle background changes between the shots that show the interviewer and the shots that show the interviewee. This is because the interviewer footage is shot later on a sound stage in order to make the reporter look as good as possible. In many cases, it's not even the same reporter.
Babylon 5 (a science fiction show that aired in syndication and later on TNT) did an interesting take on this where a reporter interviewed various people on the show, and they actually used the same technique as a subtle que that the news company was not on the level (this later turned into a plot point when the same news company was under the thumb of an oppressive Earth government).
Same here. This technology will be used for ads first, but the much more valuable tool will be doctoring the news so that it's "acceptable" for mass consumption. Yahoos in the background of street footage will be edited out. Protesters in a rally that have nothing to do with the main story will be removed. These things will all seem reasonable at first (unless you think about it too hard)
The danger is that once the mechanism exists, it will tend to be over-used. The news we see already feeds on itself, downing out events that don't fit the demographics. What happens when the drive is to have the news look more and more like what you're expecting after having switched channels from another station? One edit feeds another, and eventually you'll have "a dramatization" tags at the bottom of every news screen. Or maybe you won't even have that....
I believe formula 1 bosses were looking at something like this so that the car sponsorship logos would be added on digitally, broadcaster by broadcaster.
That way they could bypass national anti-smoking regulations and each team could sell more space per car.
Tom
"Ever since it was invented." - suddenly the fiction of 'Max Headroom' is becoming the reality. Looks like our '20 minutes' are up!
Just take a look at the recent WTO protests. The news media already had a field day representing the protestors as maurauding barbarians, what with the protests being a threat to the broadcaster's owning companies and all.
Just imagine how easy it would be to replace placards reading "Fair rights for workers now!" with "Bomb the Whitehouse!" - Suddenly your peaceful protestors become slavering Unabombers. After all, the camera doesn't lie.
Everybody has an agenda. Trust nothing!
Personnal I believe it is wrong to change the image in that way. An advertiser pays money to have their advert in a location, particularly in sports stadiums, and they pay an high price based on the fact that their sign will be shown in media broadcasts. This basically allows the media company to resell slots that are rightly that of the stadiums. Also if a advertiser lost out to a competitor, the could get a media company to replace the add. Coke and Pepsi spring to mind.
The problem is not knowing if it will or will not happen. If Advertisers knew it would happen, they would not pay so much for stadium adds, and the stadium would probably charge more for coverage, which seems fair.
I have noticed for a while my cable TV company replaces some of the add breaks between shows with there own. I have oftain wondered if the advertiser knew they would lose coverage... or if the station knew....
It could however be claimed it was a good thing... as media companies can localise the ads for say the super bowl to each state it was broadcast in. However advertisers buy slots knowing that they will get national/international coverage.
Probably this is a thing that requires some regulation, as it seems at the moment its buyer beware!
James
Personnal I believe it is wrong to change the image in that way. An advertiser pays money to have their advert in a location, particularly in sports stadiums, and they pay an high price based on the fact that their sign will be shown in media broadcasts. This basically allows the media company to resell slots that are rightly that of the stadiums. Also if a advertiser lost out to a competitor, the could get a media company to replace the add. Coke and Pepsi spring to mind.
The problem is not knowing if it will or will not happen. If Advertisers knew it would happen, they would not pay so much for stadium adds, and the stadium would probably charge more for coverage, which seems fair.
I have noticed for a while my cable TV company replaces some of the add breaks between shows with there own. I have oftain wondered if the advertiser knew they would lose coverage... or if the station knew....
It could however be claimed it was a good thing... as media companies can localise the ads for say the super bowl to each state it was broadcast in. However advertisers buy slots knowing that they will get national/international coverage.
Probably this is a thing that requires some regulation, as it seems at the moment its buyer beware!
James
Personnal I believe it is wrong to change the image in that way. An advertiser pays money to have their advert in a location, particularly in sports stadiums, and they pay an high price based on the fact that their sign will be shown in media broadcasts. This basically allows the media company to resell slots that are rightly that of the stadiums. Also if a advertiser lost out to a competitor, the could get a media company to replace the add. Coke and Pepsi spring to mind.
The problem is not knowing if it will or will not happen. If Advertisers knew it would happen, they would not pay so much for stadium adds, and the stadium would probably charge more for coverage, which seems fair.
I have noticed for a while my cable TV company replaces some of the add breaks between shows with there own. I have oftain wondered if the advertiser knew they would lose coverage... or if the station knew....
It could however be claimed it was a good thing... as media companies can localise the ads for say the super bowl to each state it was broadcast in. However advertisers buy slots knowing that they will get national/international coverage.
Probably this is a thing that requires some regulation, as it seems at the moment its buyer beware!
James
When I was in college, I ran and edited an underground newspaper that covered a range of political and social events and topics.
During that time, I was at many events being simultaneously covered by the "traditional" news media. What I saw during those events and spoken by orators WAS AMAZINGLY different from what was reported on television or in the traditional media newspapers the next day.
One example: while covering a speech by Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, he stated that "there will be blood on the streets of America" alluding to some sort of racial uprising and that the blood would not be on his hands, that he was just the messenger. This racial Armageddon theme was threaded throughout the speech, yet on the local television news that night, the only focus was on Farrakhan's message of self-help for minorities. Now please, before the flames and claims of racism start, I was covering the event because our local university paper was NOT covering minority issues at the time; that is, I was an empathetic listener. But I was appalled at what I heard and even more appalled by the traditional media's blatant filtering of what was actually said during the speech.
My point? That these electronic insertions are the least of our worries. The drastic filtering and altering of what's being reported on is of more grave concern than any background images we're looking at.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
Bravo was recently (they may still be) rerunning the old Max Headroom series on Sunday afternoons. It's scary how well it holds up. (Well, except for the very 80's costumes - but then again, even the mohawk haircut is making a comeback...)
"Have you any idea how successful censorship is on TV? Don't know the answer? Hmm. Successful, isn't it?"
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"News director suggests that a good, ethical use of this technology would be 'blocking out objectionable signs or covering up a competitor's logo'."
They have another word for this...
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I can think of a better use for this technology!
Just like Junkbuster: an Open Source system to bust all the ads.
On the other hand: Half(+) of my screen would be blank during many shows...
-- From Denmark
At the very least, in France, even the commercial stations don't interrupt programs with ads; all the ads run between programs.
--
The problem isn't individual bias, it's corporate bias. Mergers have concentrated ownership of most of the world's mainstream newspapers and TV networks in the hands of a very small number of huge companies, all of which have exactly the same biases.
I expect the media to have biases; that in itself is acceptable, as long as those biases are apparent, and as long as different news organizations have different biases. Then I have some chance of triangulating to find the truth. This is very hard to do in the U.S. because the media take great pains to present stories in a deceptively bland, neutral-sounding language, apparently devoid of any opinions.
In France, for example, the situation is a bit different, because most newspapers are written in a highly opinionated style, usually containing a mixture of sarcasm and idealistic indignation. Different newspapers have substantially different and easily recognisable political biases.
Democracy can't work unless there are there are real alternatives to choose from. This requires sharp differences between political parties, and between opinions expressed in the mainstream media. The U.S. urgently needs alternative media organizations that can express dissenting views to a large audience, and alternative political parties to represent those views.
The homogenisation of American politics is a direct result of paranoia created by the government during the Cold War; anything resembling dissent was condemned as anti-American. A whole generation has grown up with its head buried in the sands of mass entertainment, afraid to think or talk about basic political issues. The media are happy to oblige.
--
- Decisions of editorial boards are subject to veto from marketing departments, so that content will not offend advertisers
- Most radio, but especially talk radio, prohibits on-air disparagement of advertisers either through use of the dump button, call termination or call screening
- Major newspapers, especially those in Dallas, Texas and Portland, OR (owned by the Belo Corporation) routinely omit content that would shed light on questionable business practices and/or the corporate community (the Washington Post had to break the Bob Packwood story, and Monsanto's Terminator Seed Technology scandal was spiked a full year after it broke)
- Nearly every major media outlet, save this one, had the wrong take on the Columbine massacre, carefully spun so as not to cast aspersion on the social structure of a highly-conservative suburb of Denver, CO
- Conservatives and other corporate media interests successfully fought during the Reagan Era to overturn the "Equal Time for Opposing Viewpoints" rule of the FCC, and for Term Limits for Elected Officials, thereby eroding both institutional memory of political issues and exposure to political messages beyond the mainstream political parties
There's ample reason to distrust mainstream media already, such as CBS. That they're now doctoring allegedly live video through the marvel of technology is only a drop in the bucket, compared to the grander snow job they've been trying to perpetrate on the global public for years._____
_____
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
This technique is in heavy usage on the Global Television Network here in Canada during their NFL feeds from CBS or Fox. Between commercials (Canadian ones--the original network commercials are not used) and the beginning of action, the screen will show a shot of the stadium, usually focussing on the JumboTron with billboard ads around it. Those billboards are changed on the fly to Global's own advertisers. For example, I doubt a local pizza chain would be able to afford to advertise in Miami's NFL stadium, let alone want to (there goes the 'thirty minutes or free' delivery guarantee). :-)
Furthermore, they are starting to superimpose fake blimps, with logos for Canadian companies, in sky shots of the stadium. My mother thought it was so cool that an auto insurance place had their own blimp at a recent game. She was shocked to find it was computer-generated.
I cannot simply escape this by watching the CBS or Fox network versions on cable, because CRTC (Canada's version of the FCC) rules regulating a certain percentage of Canadian content mean that when I switch to the CBS or Fox station, they are replaced with the Global feed! This means we can't get any of the American commercials when both a Canadian and American network are broadcasting the same show. When commercials are the only aspect of programming that some people will watch (e.g. most of the women in my family do watch the commercials during the Super Bowl), we have to haul in an old TV, hook up the antenna, and tune to a poor broadcast signal simply to see Bud Bowl XXXVIII.
I have been thinking of creating a Boycott Global Web site all about this--they also received some pretty negative press last year about the billboard replacement stunt. Any Canadians in with me?
Yup.
The big news centers are coming to the end of their 15 minutes of fame. As soon as we have pseudo-AI good enough to create our own news casts from a wide variety of sources, traditional news desks will become little more than editorial services that point our news-bots towards interesting information (hey! does this sound like a web site you've been to recently?).
It's easy to see: if there are alot of information feeds, (many more than just reuters, AP, ABC) then it will be rather easy to figure out what really happened; to strip away any spin or advertising or whatever, just average out the originals (or something like that)
ramble ramble. I guess all I really wanted to point out that as long as there is a recognised need for disintermediating the news, all we need to have is easy information access and uploading, and from there it is easy to design a system that will assign reputation points to trustworthy sources and spam points to those who consistently color it.
blah blah
There is no reality beyond what your senses tell you. And I'm not trusting them just to be sure.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
People suck, kill a friend today.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
ofcourse this doesn't completely apply to sports, where advertisements run loose. Not to mention the sponsored sides of the field, on players' shirts etc.
but to blot out 'objectionable' signs ETHICAL? jeez.. it looks like censorship, it smells like censorship.. and it probably is. Actually, the rule is a little more complicated and since I am not a lawyer I cannot explain it much further. But indeed in most programs you cannot prominently show a product name, and this is actively enforced. You want a commercial as a company, then you buy a commercial, not some guy who makes your favourite soap-series.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
They fixed that problem fairly quickly, and the ads are now pretty much indistinguishable until they cut to a secondary camera and you see the same terrain, minus fake ads. Spooky.
Wah!
How about this: Just as they do national / regional / local TV commercials, they can replace the local Atlanta boards with U.S. / northwest / Seattle boards in broadcasts seen in the metropolitan Seattle area? They may as well, since Seattle will be watching the series on TV instead of at their fancy new stadium, troll troll).
Or even better: Now that TimeWarner Cable has access to everything its AOL subscribers have bought on-line for the last year (and every website they've visited), sooner or later maybe they can start replacing those bulletin boards with ones of interest to your household! Imagine visiting Ford's website one afternoon, then that weekend settling down to watch a ballgame only to see ads for Explorers and Tauruses (or Jimmy's and Bonnevilles and auto insurance companies) plastered all over the stadium. Hell, they could do that for the regular advertising, too! Ghod help you if you're watching the game with your S.O. and ads for divorce lawyers, escort services and rubber fetish 1-900 numbers start showing up.
Just a paranoid raving. Or I'd think it was, if stuff like this didn't actually start happening every time I turned around...
--
This is not my sandwich.
The problem is, of course, that of finding a way between extracting the interesting stuff and changing what was said. Such an interview probably takes several hours, it takes some time for the interviewee to "warm up", there are misunderstanding, question have to be rephrased, etc.
So the problem is not so mucht *that* they change stuff (which they have to), but *what* they change, and if you can trust them not to change the meaning.
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
First, I don't understand how blocking out a competitor's logo could be ethical. It might not be a big deal, but ethical?
Second, I think most of us know that pictures cannot be trusted, anyway. This has been true for a long time for photographs (especially on magazine covers), and is also true for most media reports (they can be edited without you being able to tell). And one thing that has been possible in TV since the beginning --- and which is much more effective --- is to reorder parts of an interview, for example, or to leave stuff out.
So I think this boils down to the old question of trust: Do I trust the media (or certain tv stations, papers, etc) to not manipulate the facts? It's now possible to do more stuff, but that doesn't mean we were safe from manipulation until yesterday.
(and I apologize for my troll posting yesterday - I was in a very, very bad mood.)
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
Guess what? Looks like at least one of the "virtual billboards" CBS put up over Times Square covered up the "astro-vision" which was showing ads for NBC -- and now NBC is "shocked and outraged" (i.e. pissed because somebody else did it first)! Suddenly Dan Rather is contrite. Oh brother.
...disavow all knowledge...
I find it highly unlikely that, given the rising costs of sports these days, any sporting venue would decide not to sell any advertising space it possibly could. In fact it's a lot more likely that the same space will be sold several times over. Take the prime ad space behind home plate, for instance (I'll use Safeco Field as an example, a Mariners vs. Yankees game). The stadium would sell that space to local merchants like Starbucks, Eagle Hardware and Eddie Bauer (as it is now). The Mariners broadcast team would rent the rights to digitally alter the same area for their sponsors, like State Farm, Fletchers and Pepsi. The Yankees would likewise rent the space to advertise Mobach's and The Wiz (or whoever sponsors the Yankees games). And, if the game is picked up nationally by ESPN they could use the same space for national sponsors like Chevrolet, The Gap and Budweiser.
Multiply this by the scoreboard, outfield fence, facades and other vertical surfaces and you can begin to see that there's too much potential money to be made for anyone to leave this alone. Not that I think it's a good thing, but I think it's the way things are.
--
Someone you trust is one of us.
I don't think they're trying to fool you, they're just trying to help you figure out the game.
It's obvious that they aren't trying to make it look like part of the field, for example, when the ball is intercepted and the line promptly fades away.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
One instance of the advertising being the news around here, was when a computerized billboard went buggy. The billboard is for the New York Lottery, and it has numbers that can change to reflect the current jackpot. Anyway, at one time it started enthusiastically displaying that the jackpot was 0 MILLION DOLLARS! All the local news mentioned it.
However, I'd suppose that anti-advertising rules have exceptions for things like that. They sound like a really good idea to me, except that they'd be almost impossible to introduce in the USA.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
The Gulf War was covered like a football game, complete with fancy graphics. On the other hand, there was a cable channel in Baltimore (Ch. 43 I think) called "The 90's". It was a one hour show that was repeated 24/7 all week, where there was a new episode each week.
The kicker is that almost all of the show was independantly made by people with video cameras and other small film-makers, simular to PBS's POV show (I keep missing it for some reason). Just people filming whatever happened, mostly because they couldn't afford fancy editing. Of course some of the content had a slant, anything made by a human being has some kind of slant to it. One of the best memories of high school was watching that show. One time, they showed footage taken from Iraq showing damages to towns, etc. Of course, nowadays, that channel is now ESPN6 or whatever.
Does anybody know what happened to this show? Is it still around? I think I saw parts of it on PBS, but that was a while ago.
Wouldn't digitally blocking out competitors logos on display in public places be considered anti-competative? If not... then the billboard owners will soon find themselves out of pocket cos no-one would need to bother paying to post the bills... just add them to your show later...
-~ Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier. ~-
I used to work at a printing company, along side of some digital re-touchers. And if you *ever* thought you were seeing the real image as it was photographed, forget it. I remember watching one guy take a poorly angled photo in a wheat field, with a model's clothes wrinkled and wind-blown, her hair blowing all over the place, and transform it into a full sized poster. The angle was taken out, wheat field was added, as was blue sky and clouds, the model's hair was perfected, and every wrinkle on her and the clothing was taken out. This is the norm for advertising.
Which isn't suprising - but this CBS development is the next stage, and companies will most assuredly do this IF YOU LET THEM. There will always be new technologies which will fool the eye - it's easily fooled. But we need to attack this kind of problem on two fronts: one everyone has already mentioned, which is to encourage the mindset that you shouldn't trust anyone.
The second, is to force the companies to label when they alter images. The companies don't have any reason to do so, it's not in their interests. They don't have any "moral ethics" to think about - companies aren't humans, don't have human feelings and consciences. So, if you find it ethically disturbing to alter images, face it - a company will not respond unless you hit them where it actually does feel, which is either in the pocketbook or in their public perception. And if you hit on both of these points, companies will fold and not use it.
Beauty is truth, and truth, beauty.
Whatever you do... don't read this.
The "evilness" of a media tactic such as L-VIS is a function of (a) the extent to which a media tool claims to be factual, and (b) the extent to which the tactic alters fact. Live broadcasts, as such, are the ultimate in factual media (visual fact, not what is said), thus amplifying the effects of any alterations.
So yes, Goebbels (PR people everywhere, for that matter) is probably smiling right now. If he had his hands on this tech, we'd have probably had to drop an A-bomb on Germany, too.
True, Goebbels isn't just some PR hack. My mistake for grouping him.
On the other point, we almost agree, though. What you're calling deceptiveness looks like the (b) portion of what I'm talking about. I'm coming from the point of view that if one is supposed to be relating fact, deception is "evilness" of a sort, that is applied to a message with the intent of getting a result.
I have a friend who was a journalism major. I remember being appalled when she told me about how some of their classes that train them to be reporters actually have assignments wherein they are supposed to bias the news. If the paper/media source that you work for is a liberal one, you are supposed to be able to put a liberal slant on your topic. Same thing for conservative sources. Journalists aren't trained in telling the Truth (TM), they are trained in observing from a particular point of view and they have the same biases as any other human.
While I think that digitaly editing news broadcasts is a bad thing, it really isn't any different than what we already have to deal with, just a little more blatant.
-FGP
It's simpler to present the news that way. In the case of the Sudanese factory alleged to be a chemical weapons plant, some reporters DID note that soil samples from outside the plant were retrieved by confidential sources, and that chemical traces were found that were consistent with at least the presence of chemical weapons byproducts -- as well as pointing out that the evidence was not *conclusive*. To discuss this in detail would likely have to note:
A) the distance to the plant (I've never heard the exact location mentioned)
B) what OTHER processes can result in that chemical being there
C) the history of the land -- Sudan not having been a land blessed with lasting peace, after all.
That's tricky to do in a half-hour news spot with numerous minutes of lame commercials.
There's also the fact that the vast, vast majority of reporters polled voted for the current CIC, and probably still support him.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Nah. There's a simpler way -- force it to go to cable rather than regular broadcast, through FCC regulations, and then require full scrambling, and perhaps even then only starting in the late evening.
That's already done, and it's probably a heck of a lot cheaper than real-time video editing.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
A couple of additional thoughts: 1) Virtual advertising is probably the best way to go for events like soccer (football) matches, which has a lot fewer breaks than US football or baseball. 2) Will ad rates begin to be determined post event? For example say some company bought the virtual billboard space while Mark McGwire was up to bat, and he hits a grand slam. Consequently, that ad gets replayed ad naseum both in replays and highlight reels later that night. Does the company pay more for that additional coverage?
Sorry so long, BTW... looieprima
Let's call it the way it is. The news is supposed to be an honest, although not necessarily unbiased reporting of the important events of the day. If the footage has been manipulated, we can't trust it. The obvious answer is to build a mechanism for disseminating information about the media's reputation. A database containing information about the integrity of the news media (and possibly others) could be quite valuable.
Oh, and CBS, if you're reading this, I'll be getting my news somewhere else tonight.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
For years I've dreamed of making a car windshield that would block billboards and such. I can't stand billboards and would love to replace them with a bright blue sky. Is this algorithm available for Linux yet? Then I could plug my lcd windshield into my empeg and be all set
Television dead oh boy, how wonderful. I think it's great that technology has got to where people will no longer trust their TV screens.
/editable recall!
There never has been ANY reason to believe that video told truth - it's just like an eye witness, only one totally biased point of view. And now an eye witness with selective
TV is the worse right now; it used to be that the end credits for most shows were just shown in full screen, no problem, but then someone got the idea to splitscreen them, to allow an ad to run along side the credits.
I don't know how this is in the USA, but here in the Netherlands the commercial channels don't display the credits anymore at all! This is most annoying when a good movie is being run and it has great music, or you want to see who the cast was, and then the credits are cut off after three seconds and those stupid commercials begin.
Also, during movies or longer series there is approximately one commercial break (usually lasting five minutes) every 30 minutes, and in even longer movies there is sometimes a 25-minute break for some blatantly commercial news program! How's this in other countries (particularly USA)?
I'm not sure how advertisement laws in the US work, but here in the Netherlands, it is illegal for stations to show footage that contains advertisements.
Signs of Coca-Cola and other brands have to be made unreadable (Pixillated). The technique used here is just a bit more subtle, making it appear as if it never was there in the first time.
As for advertisers not getting their 'paid' room, I disagree. They have their spots on buildings and billboards, and paid for the people there to see them - not for the chance that they
One last thought - Anyone remember seeing Arny in 'The Running Man'? Near the end of the movie, the outcome of the fight is altered, digitally, to make it appear as if he lost, by altering the live feed to the viewers... The next step?
You're talking about television, a medium which is:
a) almost entirely owned by a handful of individuals and corporations
b) entirely biased to the agenda of whatever corporation is represented, which can chage at a moment's notice
c) so entirely filtered for content and reality by the time it gets to us that the vast majority of its meaning is already lost.
We're not just watching what's happening, we're being told what's happening, and we're seeing it through the eyes of the controlling corporation and the individual they've sent out to report back to us what is happening.
There is so much crap on TV these days approaching TV *with* a critically thinking mind is almost too much work for the minor bits of usefulness you can glean out of all of the marketing and bullshit.
The question for the 21st Century should not be "What is art?" but "What is news?" Welcome to newsertainment, the opiate of the future.
I think we're going to see a lot more of this - and not just on billboards and the like. How about an imaginary blimp floating in the sky above? Hell, why not just trademark the sky itself?
I guess it can tell the Jets from the grass.
How it Works
The central computer in the 1st & Ten system examines every frame of video in real time (i.e. 30 times per second) and determines which pixels to change to yellow. These are all the points in the image where an actual painted-on-the-field first down line would be visible, such as grass along the line that is not obscured by a player or referee. It determines which pixels to change based on very precise information about the camera's view, a 3D model of the field, which camera is on air, and a palette of colors for the field and another palette for players.
Pixels along the line with colors from the field palette are changed to yellow unless that color is also in the palette for players. Player colors and other colors not on the field palette are left unchanged. This makes the virtual line visible where the field is visible and hidden where the field is obscured, just as a real line would be.
Each camera in the 1st & Ten system, is instrumented with very precise encoders for pan, tilt, zoom, focus and extender (1x or 2x doubler). A computer at each camera reads the encoders and transmits these readings to the Sportvision production truck 30 times per second. Another computer in the truck gathers readings from all the cameras and transmits a consolidated data stream to the central computer. These readings and the 3D field model go into a geometrical calculation that determines which pixels in the video frame would be in an unobstructed view of a real first down line.
Yet another computer determines, also 30 times per second, which camera is tallied (on air). It does this by comparing the video streams from each of the 1st & Ten cameras to the program video. This computer allows for graphics, such as the constant time and score box, that are not in the camera view but are introduced into the program video. The result, camera 1, 2, 3 or none of them, is transmitted to the same computer that is consolidating data from the three cameras, and it adds tally to the data stream going to the central computer.
The final computer has only one simple but crucial task, draw the yellow line in video 60 times per second (every field, not just frame) and send that to a linear keyer to superimpose the yellow onto the program video.
Need more
I'm not sure but i guess this technology was already used here in Italy, if my memory's not wrong some months ago, during a football match there were ads added with computer along the football camp.
This allowes to earn the double from ads on sport, they sell ads for the match and moreover they sell the same publicitary space for tv watcher and then replace the first ads with the second during trasmission.
Nothing too shocking if it's only used to add ads during sport broadcasts but it could be very dangerous in other field. What's coming next ? ads digitally added on marine's uniforms in CNN reportage of the latest war ? The pope wearing a Coca Cola Dress during the liturgy ?
Is it the end of the world as we know it ?
ZCool
I guess this just furthers the increasingly popular theory the mainstream media "news" that we see may not actually be what is really going on out there. As has been posted previously, this fairly fundamental tendency to provide certain points of views or certain aspects as hard "facts" by the news medium have been around for yonkers. By selecting what to show and what not to show, they can often alter the tone and focus of a piece by highlighted particular points. Alas, being "mis-quoted" or quoted out of context is a popular excuse these days...
The problem here is really that the media now not only have the capability to munipiltae and alter the news slightly, but they also have the means to concoct convincing scenes to be called news. Okay i know, i'm getting a bit ahead of myself here, it's only replacing billboards with their own ads but every journey starts with a single step. This would seem a step in a dangerous direction. More worrying was the fairly devious piece where the public seemed to be duped that a footage shot in a studio was actually something otherwise. If they are tricking the public now, even to this fairly insignificant extent,what is there to come?
We expect,perhaps unrealistically, that news and media should serve to inform not deceive us. I think, although not much by itself, the digital munipilation of "live" footage being passed as "real" footage and TV executives deciding what's relevant news and what is not for the audience, is a step in the very wrong direction...
I think it is more interesting to note that this allows broadcasters to edit images on the fly. Silly things like billboards or advertising are not goiing to change the world, but there are further ramifications to this sort of tampering.
What would JFK's assisination look like with a shooter added in?
What would the missle strikes in Africa look like with incriminating evidence added in?
Or maybe a president and some young woman?
I know these sorts of images are already present to some degree, with many people believing in faked images or others believing images have been faked (the moon landing and Mars faces come to mind), but technology such as this has the potential of allowing someone like Ted Turner or the military to wield power over what we know.
Yes, I am paranoid. But I know what I can do, and I am not as smart as they are.
Computers can only simulate determinism. ~Hermetic.
Citizens,
We have come a long way in the last few years.
The inspirational guidance of Our Immortal Leader
has brought us to a peak of development
unparalleled in human history. Surely our
adoration of Him is right and just, for He is
responsible for our present utopia.
Nonetheless, it grieves me to say that some
dissidents, enemies of our state, have been
spreading poisonous seditions, saying that our
fine country is no longer what it once was - false
lies that Our Immortal Leader has authorised me to
put straight.
The first allegation to deal with is that Oceania
is a recent amalgamation of four ancient
countries, called 'America', 'Canada', 'Great
Britain' and 'The Republic of Ireland'. It is
further alleged that the moon landings of 1969
were not carried out by our fair Oceania, but by
this fictional 'America'. We have decided to
release to you the people the video of that
glorious happening. Note as you watch the video
the Oceania flag flying proudly over the duned
surface of the Moon; note the insignia on our
brave astronauts uniforms and on the landing
craft. See also the footage of Our Immortal
Leader greeting the astronauts on their return,
and decorating them with the Cross of Oceania.
Citizens, beware of these seditionists! They
allege further that the colonisation of the
surface is a myth, that we are no nearer to
returning there than a decade ago; but this
video will help convince you, citizens, that
they lie; see Our Immortal Leader viewing the
fields full of crops and giving His blessing to
the workers. See also the fine houses we build
on the surface; and we promise you citizens that
your efforts are not in vain; when you reach the
age of retirement you too can live there, in these
paradisaic and blissful surroundings. Those
who have already retired are waiting there for
you to join them, so do not believe the rebels'
self-seeking lies. We encourage all approaching
retirement age to approach their local
Commissioner and get him to sign their passes
to the Colonised Surface.
Citizens, I thank you for your patient hearing
of my address. As always, in the name of Our
Immortal Leader,
Chief Citizen of Lundun,
Fiscio Snark.
Actually, one interesting effect that might occur if on-the-fly modification of images becomes common place - even the "average" person will stop believing ANYTHING the mass media produces, and will only believe things where they have received independent confirmation from other sources that they trust. In a way, this will destroy the ability of mass media to manipulate the general populace. What will they do then? :)
(For purposes of this discussion: "Photography" includes the eventual addition of film and videotape.)
Some of us have become complacent in a world where we believe the absolute truth conveyed by photographs. Yet for years photographs have been cropped and retouched. I work with a lady who has spent the last 30 years doing pen and airbrush retouching wedding photography. Her work has gone way beyond simple blemish removal, to the point of simple cousin removal. ^_^
What we are really doing in looking back on an era. For a short time human civilization could rely on photography as a permanent unbiased record of events. That era is over now.
It was nice while it lasted.
--
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
In some way it's our own fault and naivity that we have been regarding streaming media as more authentic than printed, for we already knew how to manipulate the latter (although any tv-director could show you in a sec how to manipulate you without actually image processing a live broadcast).
My guess is that when we feel we need to have authenticated live media, we'll develope ways to ensure this, analogous to the way this is possible on the internet.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars
What will they insert their slimy little digits into next?
Robert A. Heinlein wrote in the section of "The Past Through Tomorrow" called "The Man Who Sold the Moon" about the race to be the first company to paint thier logo across the surface of luna and that sort of thing. Far-fetched? Exaggeration? Now I'm not so sure . . .
And you actually believe everything you see on TV? Reminds me of a Dudley Do-Right quote: "If it's in the paper it must be true!"
At least this will allow some sporting venues (ballparks, in particular) to cut back on tacky signs hanging all over the place. In that case, this technology could help those who wouldn't see it (fans who actually go to the game).
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Journalists rely on being able to present stories the way they see them. Ideally, the way they see them is the truth, but every human has an opinion on what they see, and journalists need to present those opinions. In the past, the way this was done was by critical omission. Information that backs up a story is presented; information that doesn't is conveniently left behind or only briefly glossed over. We all knew that doctoring images would become a part of the media. Having it in live-time ups the ante for anybody who desires true, balanced reporting. My question: what could be a way around this? Is the answer in the Internet, where identifying trustworthy reporters is even harder than TV? Or do there need to exist more publically funded stations?
QAExpress: Solid bug tracking for you. Graphs and reports for your PHB.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
It won't be long now, folks, before you start seeing blipverts!
Since the technology has already existed (frame-rate compression,etc.), and many networks use 15 second "mini-blurbs" between news updates, it won't be long before some programming honcho decides that time-sharing five or more ads in a 30 second timeslot would be a really "hot" concept...
I think I think that the networks should do this stuff all they want, 'cuz it's cool and will lead to a more fun Matrix...
But they should simultaneously lose "freedom of the press" protection. It is time to stop treating them like they are the defenders of truth since now they are just doing with video backdrops what they have been doing all along with the content: creating myth and crass commercial entertainment, good things, but not worthy of high-falutin' principled philosophy.
Instead, they should have to label their packages like Twinkies:
Oh yeah, and cable operators should be allowed to mask their ads over the networks', and then if somebody wants to give me a free TV, it should be allowed to put their ads over the cable operators', then my free "active" contact lenses could put... why not? :)
I do not believe that we have ever fully trusted the media since Orson Welles great broadcast of War of the Worlds! I do not trust the media to tell the complete truth and I do not think many other people do either- what one must do to get an unbiassed opinion is consult multiple sources!
All that said, I believe that this technology is a blow against the right to know and "journalistic impartiality" as it can be so easily abused. I believe that the technology should be banned for any "news" broadcast- although fitting something to your tv of which you have control- and not the "impartial" broadcaster might be useful to remove all the junk adverts.
--You say it best when you say nothing at all
-Ronan Keating--
--Only the intellectually lost ever argue-
I don't suffer from insanity- I enjoy it immensly!
Hey all, pardon my retardedness, but what is the difference between inserting commercials digitally and changing from live source to the commercial?? I am confused... to the viewer they see commercials one way or another. Thanks farshad
...and remember in your brain boggle, wrong starts with a wubble-u.
This is just the begining. In the end, people will be able to program their TV to give them the answers they want individually. OJ can be innocent. OJ can be in jail. Will you are I really know?
There are reasonable sources of information still out there, but TV has not been one of them for a while. TV news had degenerated into a chain of shallow reports that draw ratings, repeated until they are accepted as truth. But this seems to be what the people want. You are free to seek the truth, will you spend more than the average 15 minutes a day doing it?
-pf
Make affiliate bucks
That's an interesting comment; could it be that maybe the newsmedia are shooting themselves in the foot, so to speak, with this new technology? Up until now, it's been fairly difficult to tell when the truth/actual event has been modified to suit the media's idea of what attracts viewers/readers...however, if you can actually, with your own eyes, see the differences (e.g. ``hey, that house wasn't there when I drove past last week!''), maybe it'll trigger a general disbelief in what the media presents. Then again, maybe not.
Food for thought, though.
-pf
Make affiliate bucks
Id like it pretty much if I turned on the TV and saw an ad for Quake 4:"Stroggs in space" instead of an ad for Tampoons, isnt this what it all comes down to, advertisment that suit you, stuff you are intrested in. All advertisments arent bad (some are) but once you see stuff your intrested in.
If im watching a sporting event on tv(never happens) and im seeing a pepsi cola sign in stead of coke. Doesnt bother me, shouldnt bother you. Yeah, I hear you the implications of this technology are pretty hefty, but like in so many replies, its nothing new that the media edit stuff, they just have a new way of doing it,
how powerful, I dont know, but the world isnt going to change from it.
If I had paid for a billboard overlooking Times Square, that would be in place during this past New Year's Eve, I certainly would have expected to be paying in part for it to be picked up in the numerous media broadcasts.
If broadcasters just cover it up with whatever they want, they're selling MY property (the space I rented from the rightful owner) without paying me any royalties (or even asking my permission).
I wonder if any lawsuits will fall out of this...
There has been a great deal of commentary dealing with the fact that the alteration of images is not a new idea, but very little on how society will deal with the new technology that allows real-time video alteration. And though no historical scholar of merit, I believe we can already see precedents in past technological advances.
When The Great Train Robbery was first shown, people were alarmed when a man on the screen turned towards them and shot a pistol. Reportedly, certain men in certain theaters actually drew their weapons and shot back. This was a new technology, new trickery of the eyes; unused to it, people were gullible, and some could not separate reality from technology's alteration of reality.
Flash forward. We have many many movies with guns. Yet the news is not full of stories about people whipping out semi-automatic weapons and shooting back at the screen. Why? Because we have become accustomed to the technology.
With every technological advancement there is an initial "wide-eyed acceptance" that takes place. "Ooh! Shiny!" But luckily (?) people have short attention spans, and they adapt to their situations. Dishwashers do not illicit comments like "What is that thing? It does WHAT?" Simple line drawing animation no longer fools people into thinking that dinosaurs are actually still alive. And, given time, not only will people not believe the little digital ads inserted into live broadcasts, but bunches of slackers will sit on couches and make fun of them for being poorly rendered.
Rumor has it that Dan Rather was also nothing more than a digital addition to the new year's eve newscast. He was on vacation in Hawaii. =P
metatr0n.net - the digital divine
Exactly when did you believe that the news WAS real? Or being reported truthfully? You act like this is a big shock to your system... Are you truly naive enough to think that it ever was? What are you.. new?
Ever hear of " Don't believe everything you read" ? Face it- The media is out to make a profit, which is why the most frequently asked question to a victim or widow or orphaned child is " How do you feel?" The media has no interest nor is there any profit in relating the truth, only the "STORY"
3C
Americans have already seen the technology in question put to excellent use. How else would we know how far our favourite football team has to go for a first down? Of course, this same technology can completely alter the "reality" of a picture. This is especially questionable for news events. From the description in this article, it seems like CBS is seriously walking the line for a couple of reasons:
In the book by Ray Bradbury, the leaders of modern society enstated a ban on all books, literature, newspaper, etc. Their reason for doing this was because the disadvantage of spreading propaganda through written materials is that the written words cannot be changed to reflect changes in their policy. This gave them more control over the present because they only used TV to spread propaganda. I guess RB didn't forsee the invention of modern devices like VCR's and Tivo's, but Real-Time Editting of TV broadcasts is a weapon against those types of devices :) God help us all!
Once the virtual images are superimposed over the actual live picture, whether of a football game or in a news story, the virtual images appear to viewers at home to be as real as anything at the scene. People who walk in front of landmarks replaced by virtual billboards appear to television viewers to have walked in front of the electronic billboard, making it appear completely real.
Just like the above, she wasn't really there, she was standing in front of a blue screen in a studio in New York. The networks put a spin on the practice and called it " Look Live", It got some attention for a couple of weeks. In one camp they had the ethical journalists stating that it was not right and on the other they had the execs saying that it added flavor the news.
This is not too much different. Placing any kind of "Look Live" or "Look Anything" behind a live news broadcast is misleading. As far as placing the first down marker etc. on sporting or entertainment programming would more than likely be ok.
But is the news entertainment??
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Anyone ever watch Football on FOX? They use very similar technology to do the first down line in yellow. They have like two tractor trailers full of equipment to pull it off. It is really nice stuff. I think as long as they are open about its use that leaves the choice in your hands whether or not you watch there channel. But really how much worse is this than a commercial? So they change the content of the poster or a billboard. Its what media people do.
Jeremy Allen
jallen@idminc.com
Most news is propaganda biased towards the viewpoint of somebody or other. Compare the coverage of the gulf war from the US and Iraqi perspectives. + I can imagine the US news machine trying to justify when they blew up an african medicine factory which was probably reported as a chemical weapons factory... Reality is that which the majority are told to believe.
Working for the (other) man
We all know that seeing is hardly believing (seen any "war" news lately?), but we naturally tend to believe in images anyway, particularly if they are moving and in color.
If the images get tweaked all the time, our level of confidence might drop to a more reasonable level...
YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CANNOT HIDE FROM FRANK RIZZO.
Yeah... that's right...just because your afraid of Frank you must moderate him down as flambait. Well listen up buttplugs...
FRANK RIZZO DOESN'T NEED SLASHDOT BUT SLASHDOT NEEDS FRANK RIZZO.
Your not gonna shut me up cause I'm on a mission. I WILL BE HEARD... I WILL NOT BE OPPRESSED BY THE IGNORANT CLOSE MINDED MODERATORS.
YOU CANNOT OPPRESS FRANK RIZZO
A genius writes code an idiot can understand, while an idiot writes code the compiler can't understand.
As a Computer Science-cum-Comparative Literature major, I've dealt with this problem before. Basically, no photographic image (nor audio recording, for that matter), can be trusted the way it was seventy years ago. For thousands of years, seeing has been believing for the human race (optical illusions excluded).
My personal conclusion is that the seeing part doesn't matter - it's the believing that's the problem. For hundreds of years, humans saw the stars and believed they were at the center of the universe, the most important thing out there. Now, we know how insignificant we are.
My answer to this particular problem (digitally altering video in realtime):
STOP WATCHING TELEVISION.
heh.
After reading many of the comments, one thing seams to be left out... if you don't like all of the advertisements and electronic tampering that's happenning support PBS (Public Brodcasting) or NPR (National Public Radio). At least then you know where your money is going.
"Never teach a cat to say 'Tuna,' its all he'll ever want to talk about!" - BEAR
You assume what you see is true, otherwise you have to go around questioning everything you see. Most people don't think twice but to believe what's on the TV. It was that way years ago with radio (think War of the Worlds). If the media is allowed, unregulated, to alter the images they transmit in a fashion as to make the alteration undetectable, then we are in serious trouble. The whole idea of removing a competitor's ads especially bothers me. Companies pay good money to put their signs up only to have them deleted out because the network has a deal with a competitor? That stinks of unfair business practice. I won't even get into the whole journalistic alteration debate.
If the general public doesn't take a stand, the government will have to. That will lead to a whole new round of free speech debates that will ultimately lead to a few hand slaps. However, it won't happen until some network gets carried away and creates a case of "digital libel" by altering an image.
That is, if anyone notices...
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
Pushing the non-ethical uses to one side, as we move to global audiences viewing the same events the technology can be used to provide localised branding - so for example you would buy the advertising space/hording in the same way, but would then apply the appropriate image for the country.
It would also allow for situations where advertising rules (such as for cigarettes) differ in many countries - the prime example being the FIA Forumla One Championships.
The removing of competitors logos aught to come under some ethical guidelines, but could provide new pitches for the TV station - "Watch us, we show it like it _really_ is." - or a "What the camera really saw" show.
Either way we all need to parse information we receive through any media through a reality check before taking it as fact. The real issue is that society is increasingly losing the ability to do this, which is why this technology could present such an issue.
"Get a Life? Where do I FTP one from?"
http://www.pvi-inc.com/
in the FAQ:
Is PVI's technology patented?
Yes. PVI has a growing suite of patent property, including 5 issued US Patents and 3 granted European patents. PVI's patent property includes the seminal US 5,264,933 patent. The European version of this patent was recently granted.
How broad is PVI's patent protection?
PVI believes that it covers any image insertion into video that uses pattern recognition as part of the process. This includes its use on all video distribution mechanisms, including the Internet.
Is PVI prepared to defend its patents?
Yes. PVI recently filed suit in Delaware against a competitor that PVI contends is violating its patent property. See news release. http://www.pvi-inc.com/news/rel eases/1999-0622.html
WHOA!!! The technology has been used for almost a decade, the concept must go back quite a ways, and they are trying to patent ANY insertion with ANY pattern matching? WTFIUWT?!?!?
Does anyone else see a sort of disturbing irony here? Here we have the news, who I thought was here to present the "facts" to the viewing public so they will know what's going on in the world around them. However, they're now boasting the technology to alter what becomes presented as "fact". What's worse is that they claim to be able to do this without anyone being able to tell the difference between reality, and what might just be in their best interest. How long 'till we can file the 10'oclock news under Fiction???