Nielsen To Offer Web Copyright Protection System

J053 writes "The Nielsen company, along with Digimarc, are planning to offer their digital watermarking technology to web content providers. According to Information Week, the system will provide 'a way to quickly discover unauthorized content on sites. To do that, the system would leverage Nielsen's existing watermark technology, which is used on more than 95% of TV programming distributed today. The watermarks are used by the meters installed in people's home to identify the programs they watch.'"

Comments

fair use

[timmarhy]

as long as they don't just send out blanket infringement notices and obey the law allowing fair use

Re:fair use

[CSMatt]

Which is impossible with an automated system.

Re:fair use

[freshmayka]

History shows us that they WILL INDEED send out blanket "take our stuff off your website NOW or we'll SUE" notices as often and as abundantly as they can.

I'm sure this will have a painful affect on fair use - but the pain will only fuel the coming copyright revolution.

Re:fair use

[Tim C]

Of course it isn't impossible - for example, you could program in a rule that says "if the discovered infringing content represents less than X% of the whole work, ignore it".

Doesn't mean that it'll be implemented, of course, or that it's easy to make it fool proof, especially in edge cases, but it's certainly not impossible.

Re:fair use

[newsdee]

It's "impossible" in the sense that once the cost goes above a certain threshold, no company will ever bother implementing it unless mandated by a court or if it is under watch by a regulatory body (e.g. banks watched by the SEC).

So implementing it is politically unacceptable for a company whose mandate is to maximize profit for its shareholders (like most for-profit companies) but only real product/course of action is to control the means of distribution. The "rights" of the end users are the least they care about. If they could get away with it, they would charge for every pair of eyes and ear every time one "experiences" the content.

I'm not trying to demonize them; but a lot of actions of "content companies" make sense if you take the view that maximizing profit is their main driver. What we need to truly defeat it is either find an alternate (legal) business model for artists or other "content providers", and find ways to (legally) make "content distributors" irrelevant. Of course the latter will fight toe and nail and use every political mean they have to keep their paychecks, like some corporate version of Luddites.

Re:fair use

[h4rm0ny]

Well so what? If it's fair use it can be defended. I object to DRM because it prevents me from using the product I've purchased in fair ways and even worse, it prevents me from ever really owning what I've bought - never knowing when it will be taken away from me by a company's failure or a change in technology. But watermarking does none of that. If it doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of the product, then I have no problem with it. I think I even approve as a means of keeping down piracy will encourage companies to sell me products in a way that I want - i.e. as downloads.

Personally, I encourage watermarking.

Re:fair use

[pandrijeczko]

I object to DRM because it prevents me from using the product I've purchased

I always find it amusing when people like yourself make this statement - no, you're by no means not the only one.

But why would you buy such a product in the first place? I like movies and I love my music but absolutely ***NONE*** of it is stuff I wouldn't do without if it was too highly priced or too encumbered by DRM. I don't understand these people who need a movie or a piece of music ***SO BADLY*** that they're prepared to put up with being treated like shit by the manufacturer.

We consumers need to start maturing in the way that we do things. We need to stop blindly falling for hype and advertising, we need to research our purchases more and we need to only buy things when we are happy that we're getting value for money. Once we start doing that, then we demonstrate to the record & movie companies that if they want our money then they have to give us value for money and what we want.

It's the mindless sheeple buying everything they're told to buy in a glossy magazine that make it bad for everyone else.

Re:fair use

[QuantumG]

Well so what? If it's fair use it can be defended. haw haw haw.. It costs money to defend fair use. It is always cheaper to just go silently into the night.

Maybe if there was some kind of legal fund for defending fair use that you could dip into, you might have a chance.

Re:fair use

[CRCulver]

Most of the world doesn't believe that people can control the distribution of content once it's out there. Remember, copyright is a fairly recent invention, and popular support for it is limited to some Western countries. Content-makers can find plenty of way to pay the rent and feed their family without controlling what I do with my computer.

FWIW, the genre of music I enjoy, contemporary art music, doesn't generate much of a profit for a record label even if every single disc is sold; it's mainly funded by state arts subsidies. And we've already read here before about how in Asia, where copying of media is rampant, the music industry has already found new models to survive and even prosper. Instead of delaying the inevitable by hassling individuals, the American content industry would do well to change its business methods fast.

Re:fair use

[darthflo]

Perhaps they could un-automate it a tiny bit. Instead of "Any copyrighted content?" ? "DMCA" : "Go on", building "Any copyrighted content?" ? ("95%+ directly copied from copyrighted work?" ? "DMCA" : "Minimum wage operator, is this parody, educational or other fair use?") : "Go on" could be a possible solution.
If such a system could reduce the workload for human-assisted operators to a sensible level, the operating costs shouldn't be too high. A community effort to raise the cost of DMCA takedowns by issuing counter-notices for all "bad" requests would also help lowering the cost of such a layer.

Actually somewhat sane.

[SanityInAnarchy]

The only problem I have with this is the potential to completely automate the process.

But if we must have the DMCA, I'd much rather have takedown notices than outlawing circumvention.