MPAA Developing Digital Fingerprinting Technology

Danathar writes "The MPAA is looking to use digital fingerprinting technologies that in conjunction with legislation will enable and force ISPs to look for network traffic that matches the signatures. " From the article: " Once completed, Philips' technology--along with related tools from other companies--could be a powerful weapon in Hollywood's increasingly aggressive attempts to choke off the flood of films being traded online."

Comments

Encryption

[Odo]

And ISPs are going to search for fingerprints in encrypted downloads how exactly?

It would be relatively easy for the next generation of P2P applications to add very basic encryption. Possibly based on a captcha (just a regular zip file encrypted against the random letters contained in a gif).

Or will the MPAA's next trick be to purchase legislation banning encryption.

Re:Encryption

[mickwd]

Maybe the MPAA's next trick is to publicise some scheme they're thinking of using, letting it get published to Slashdot, reading what Slashdotters have to say, and using this to help decide on its viability, before investing any serious amount of money in it.

Free technical review.

Doesn't anybody else here think that occasionally someone from the "usual suspects" (Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA, etc) might read what some of their "opponents" are saying about them ? Especially when people here openly post how they will get round what the organisations concerned are trying to achieve (rightly or wrongly).

Forget it

[Karamchand]

Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. -- Bruce Schneier

Wow!

[rbarreira]

The trick is to make that identification process work even if the file is compressed, turned into a different computer file format or otherwise changed slightly. For a song, this means basing the fingerprint on the music's acoustical properties, rather than on the ones and zeros that make up a given digital file.

The video process is similar, but would use visual characteristics of individual video frames instead of audio qualities.

A good fingerprinting technique must be able to identify the movie even if parts of it are being downloaded out of order, or if some bits have been cut out, Maandonks said.

Wow, is this a kind of an april's fool or something? I don't even think I need to comment much on the infeasibility of this...

Next thing you know, the RIAA will be solving NP-complete problems in constant time or something...