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DSL Gateways to Fight Piracy by Marking Video
Stony Stevenson wrote with an article about home gateway devices being set up to identify video pirates. The article reads: "Home gateway manufacturer Thomson SA plans to incorporate video watermarking technology into future set-top boxes and other video devices. The watermarks, unique to each device, will make it possible for investigators to identify the source of pirated videos. By letting consumers know the watermarks are there, even if they can't see them, Thomson hopes to discourage piracy without putting up obstacles to activities widely considered fair use, such as copying video for use on another device in the home or while traveling to work."
Is a watermark that's so insignificant that you can't see it likely to be preserved in any useful form by DivX/XVid encoding?
A tool is supposed to do things my way. Not the manufacturer's way.
What you fail to understand is that it's so much easier to find a way to screw you over than to actually come up with something new and useful.
I started getting pissed when I found out the video card that I had bought specifically with a TV-Out port wouldn't let me watch DVDs I had purchased on my TV (despite this being fair use) because surely I was a pirate and wanted to copy that DVD. Well fuck them, now I rip movies that I rent and/or download movies, and watch them anywhere I want in my house. Call me a thief. They are bigger theives - I don't remember a label on my video card saying "Hey, the TV Out port you want and paid an extra $100 for won't actually WORK due to something called Macrovision".
Come and get me, no DMCA in THIS country. Let's see, which movie should I download tonight?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Come and get me, no DMCA in THIS country. Let's see, which movie should I download tonight?
Do you think they really care if you download a movie? Of course, they pretend to, but in the end it just helps them 1) spread their movies and 2) claim that everyone's a pirate and they're losing 100 trillion dollars due to piracy. Go watch an independent movie instead.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
LOL, I hate to point this out to the Einsteins who are making this but all you would need to do is run two of these boxes on two different accounts and diff the resulting output of the two fixed length videos, eliminating any element that are not common to both. Wa la, no more watermark. It does not matter where they put the watermark. If you remove anything that is not the exactly same in both streams, it may still leave a sign a watermark was there but anything that is unique about them by definition must be removed so they will not know who it belonged to. Even if they modify the length of the videos each time it plays slightly, you will just need more copies. If the signal is digital it becomes so much easier. It is relatively simple to write a pattern recognition algorithm that will sync the videos, diff, and remove the watermarks perfectly. In addition if they do try to warp the videos in someway each time they play and you can watch them more than once you may not even need two boxes because The slight variance between to nearly identical copies means that if you watch the same file say three times you can purge it yourself as each version will have a watermark slightly out of sync with the other. This last method assumes no portion of the watermark is always fixed, but even if it was, the fact it is fixed would give you a target to be removed. What more each time this was done more and more information would be gathered about how they are watermarking it. In time you would be able to write an program that would detect and remove the watermark with no need to have multiple copies at all. Why this seems to be so hard for people to understand seems to be failure of understanding basic mathematics in the US. On a final note, the one thing this method would have trouble doing might be to remove any sign that some form of watermark had been on the video at some point. It would not say who did it but it might say it was done so it would tell the MPAA one thing, that this company's product was failing and exactly how often. Seems really bad for their business if you ask me.
AKA this is milarky, another company trying to make money off stupid movie industry execs. When will they get the fact they are being bilked by these guys. This one is not even clever.
No, no, no. The reason for a hardware manufacturer to get involved (and I think it's a damned compelling one) is avoidance of contributory infringement suits.
This country was not founded on the Articles of Confederation. It was not founded on the Constitution. It was founded on the Boston Tea Party. A bunch of guys went onto a ship carrying the wares of a state-enabled, repressive trade federation and threw their shit in the water.
You can call them hysterical too if you want but they gave birth to a great Republic with great ideals. I spend four hundred dollars a month to run the highest bandwidth Tor exit node I can. I don't filter BitTorrent. I know that this encourages piracy; this is why I do it. I consider it patriotic. I consider it as much my duty as an American as I consider gun ownership a duty. And I will continue to throw their fucking tea in the water, because it is the right thing to do.
Watermarking schemes are ludicrous, as is DRM. Their continued failure to read and comprehend the Microsoft Darknet paper is the only reason this scheme exists.
You know a few weeks ago at Blackhat in DC some guy from a RFID card company, HID, came out to tell the crowd why they had sued one of the presenters off the floor. He got up in front of a podium and told everyone that America is founded on patent law. Some funny little guy with glasses stood up and said "um, I'm from the ACLU, and I just want to say that, um, America is founded on freedom".
His approach was a bit lacking, it would have been better with a megaphone and a shotgun, but then the ACLU doesn't believe in gun rights. The point is that you can preach your corporate ankle-grabbing to people till your face turns blue. You won't stop people like me.
And we're going to keep dumping tea in the water.
Your comments have just reminded me of the one thing more scary than the **AA stupid ass business model... the possibility of seeing 'copyright infringement insurance' advertisements on late night television! Yes, don't let it happen to you, you go to the grocery store and while you are shopping someone steals your entertainment property from your vehicle and posts it to the Internet. What are you to do? With a copyright policy from bigassInsurance Inc. you won't have to worry... blah blah blah
Yes, if all entertainment media was serialized, it might work, but then the insurance vultures would have a toe hold on a new kind of policy: insurance against copyright infringement 'accidents' just as you can get them to insure against loss of employment, sickness, and autotheft etc. Then we would have to pay 50 times what the content is worth, and it could never be given to anyone else free of encumbrances.
The other implication that comes with serialized media is something the **AA cannot live with: Ownership! If it is serialized, its my copy and I can sell it, loan it to friends, and all the other things that come with ownership. Currently, the entertainment industry is leaning toward the rental business model rather than ownership. Yeah, yeah, I know it's a copyrighted work, but the car I drive has patented materials in it too, but I still own it!
There are a lot of ideas, but none of the good ones include the current **AA business model.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
---Why is piracy so staunchly defended in the tech community? I know rationalizations like fair use are quoted but the truth is people want free movies and music.
It's simpler than that. The rest of us apply for a job, and then do the work required for money delivered. Muscicans and such do things backwards: they do the job then whine when somebody uses the service already performed without paying for it. Then they want "protections" so they can do things backwards.
Well, reality recently caught up with content makers. Either switch to a "Agree to pay, do work, then pay" like everybody else does, or shut up.
---The piracy on this scale and technology are a recent thing.
It's not MY problem their business model is being outdated as we speak. Perhaps when the fat cats are out of business or whatever, smaller guys who're willing to change will take place.
---I know it was the stone age but when I was growing up people saved up for a record album, yes I mean vinyl records. If they couldn't afford it they just listened to the radio. There's nothing in the Constitution about free exchange of copyrighted material, if I record a song you don't own it I do.
The law is on their side. Precedent is on their side, as are much money in the politicians' pockets. But the majority of the people in the US isnt on their side. Because of this, they must change to a position that is supported.
---I know this is a troll post because it's not bashing copyright holders but at the core this is about people wanting to avoid paying for music and movies.
Well, I AM a troll and this doesnt even come close to a troll post. You're spot on WRT copyright law.
Techies understand the nature of information, especially how a world wide network affects its proliferation. If people want to get paid for making movies, they need to find a way to get paid that doesn't rely on working against the nature of information. There will be no copyright in 50 years.
Do you use a VCR? There's a show that you really want to watch, but you have another appointment. The broadcast flag is designed to prevent people from recording television shows for personal use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_flag/ VCRs were declared legal by the Supreme Court, which the content providers want to overrule. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America _v._Universal_City_Studios%2C_Inc./ The purpose of this is to make you pay for the episode which you already paid your cable bill for. The cable company pays the television channel for access and you paid the cable company. This is even more warped in countries like the United Kingdom which have a television tax.
If I own a DVD, I think I should be able to rip the video from it so I can watch it on a portable device. I paid for the DVD, the company which made the movie received its cut. The DMCA prevents me from legally ripping the video. This is to make me pay for a second copy of the same movie.
The nature of mandatory DRM hurts open source audio/video players (read more about this in the broadcast flag link). This closes the market to companies with innovative ideas and makes manufacturers follow the draconian rules of the RIAA/MPAA. The heart of a free market is the ability of new competitors to enter a market.
This is very similar to treating every Arab as if they were a terrorist. Imagine if you wanted to watch a movie and a permanent record is kept on a corporate server. If it's porn, I hope you never want to run for public office. If it's about a medical condition you have, I hope your insurance company doesn't find out. Why would you want to give up your rights so that a few companies can continue to enforce their cartel?
As far as the economic damage of piracy, Microsoft has admitted that when someone pirates software, they hope that it's their software http://techdirt.com/articles/20070312/165448.shtml /. A pirated copy is compared to a demo copy which might lead to a future sale. Windows has been frequently pirated, has Microsoft gone out of business? Several of the richest men in the world (including the richest) have made their fortune from this company which has been "victimized" by piracy.
I believe that stiff efforts need to be in place to stop the selling of pirated material. I just don't want to be monitored, digitally handcuffed or otherwise screwed over because the RIAA/MPAA wants to blame a bad year on someone other than themselves.
You know a few weeks ago at Blackhat in DC some guy from a RFID card company, HID, came out to tell the crowd why they had sued one of the presenters off the floor. He got up in front of a podium and told everyone that America is founded on patent law.
That's especially ludicrous since American industry was actually founded on the VIOLATION of English IP law - breaking the mercantilist system that attempted to limit the colonists to producing raw materials for, and buying finished products from, British companies.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Ahh, but here's the thing: Part of the point of these watermarks is to be robust enough to be detectable even when you've tried to use the analog hole to get around it. So, if you use your camcorder to record a DVD playback, the watermark applied by the DVD playback is intended to still be detectable given a large enough sample -- and the folks making this equipment do in fact claim to be able to do precisely that. To put it a bit differently: You don't watermark the recorder, you watermark the playback.
So if the watermark applied by the PVR does its job, there isn't any need whatsoever for an additional one provided by the camera.
Hey, Dave -- it's been a while. Look me up if you're even in the Austin area, 'kay?
Back onto topic... the Betamax case is no longer so sweeping as it once was; the breadth of its holding was significantly reduced by Grokster, and there are ongoing attempts to legislate around it entirely. A simple PVR is safe for now, but once one starts adding any kind of network functionality to it (even functionality clearly intended for space-shifting within a household), things become significantly less clearcut.
As you say, the law should be changed for the better (and ongoing attempts to change it for the worse should be resisted) -- but if I were a hardware manufacturer in that line of business right now, I'd want to cover my arse for the event that it changes for the worse.
It degrades the quality of the video by inserting useless noise into it.
More generally, it's a feature that isn't beneficial to the owner of the product. If it's my video encoder, it should do things that are useful for me - a feature that serves no purpose except to allow others to track my behavior doesn't belong in my stuff.
This isn't unlike the unique tracking patterns that laser printers output on printouts. Sure, I'm less likely to use a TV encoder in the process of producing an anonymous political message, but embedding insidious tracking codes into all of our electronics just isn't something that should be considered even slightly socially acceptable.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
The latter raising the question of, "If they don't know who you are, what value is the watermark?" i.e. What information is going into that watermark to make it useful? It's certainly not your name and address.
I suppose they could embed the system's serial number. If it's on the network, which is not at all unlikely, it could embed it's IP address. But that's only marginally useful since it could very well be a LAN IP (e.g. 192.168.1.X). Beyond that, it'd need to start being smart about probing the network around it to figure out what the WAN IP it's connecting through is.
Beyond these technical hurdles there are also the legal ones. As the popular RIAA .vs. Lindor case that we've all read about here is demonstrating, proving that a device actually corresponds to a person can be a bit tricky.
So, what the hell does that have to do with the price of Tomatoes in Somalia (or this article)
This is about watermarking stuff from the cable company, before you even have it on your computer.