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

[CSMatt]

Fair use isn't just about the length of the work. It's also about the context in which it is used. If your suggestion was implemented, anyone could add a clip and then add nonsense or a blank screen to the bulk of the video to fool the filter.

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.

Re:fair use

[PopeRatzo]

Just to clarify, in my comment above, I didn't mean to suggest that by giving away their work, artists would be showing disdain or hostility to their customers. Just the opposite. I meant to say that it was the record labels, publishers, and mostly the RIAA that are showing the disdain (and yes, outright hostility) to the people that have provided them with comfortable livings for all these years.

If you are an artist just starting out, you should spend your downtime learning all you can about Creative Commons and other alternatives to becoming involved with an industry that hates you and your listeners. You can make money without playing the fool. You're an artist, use some ingenuity in your business dealings as well as in your craft.

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.

Re:"Unauthorized content"

[SolitaryMan]

How long until they outlaw the things I remember?

They won't outlaw them. You will just have to pay a monthly fee as long as you remember [to do it].

Watermarks are hogwash.

[Jartan]

The record industry put a lot of work into trying to make watermarking work. The article claims the system is an audio only watermarking system too. If Nielsen really had a system that worked their first customers would of been the RIAA.

By the time they get "watermarking" to work what they'll have is a pattern matching machine that can match tv shows to youtube clips. They are a long ways from doing that though due to the amount of content it would have to work through in a timely manner.

Re:Careful Comerad, they listen always.

[sqrt(2)]

It's probably a bit trickier than rewriting some tags or metadata that is padding the file. If the watermark is made to personally identify the user it was sold to you could get two different copies from two different users and figure out what is different. The difference is the watermark. After that it's up to some ingenious coder to figure out the best way to remove or render the watermark unidentifiable. Probably as simple as merging/averaging the two.

Re:That does it...

[bigmouth_strikes]

Just make sure you know what companies are owned by the media corporations:

http://www.thenation.com/special/bigten.html

You wouldn't want to purchase your "fat internet pipe" from the very same corporation that used to provide you with television.

Welcome to the circus

[giafly]

Of course, the central point ignored by the greedy entertainment collectors who don't wish to pay for the collection is the underlying truth that if you remove the economic incentive to create entertainment, people aren't going to do it any more.

Fortunately there is an almost infinite number of Internet trolls, fanboys and 1337 haxxors eager to be my personal clown and entertain me for free, no "economic incentive" needed.

Watermarking is fine

[Sgs-Cruz]

Spread-spectrum frequency domain watermarking is the most desirable "solution" that the studios can implement right now. The algorithms are designed so that the watermark is not detectible by humans watching the video (or listening to the audio) but any leaked copies can be traced back to their source. This way, if I buy a DVD (or Blu-ray or whatever) I can continue to use various tools to copy it to my hard drive, make a copy for my friends (as long as I trust them not to put it on the Internet), etc. but the guys at the theatres that are releasing 0-day telecines of new movies can be caught and fired/blacklisted from the industry/whatever. I don't really see a disadvantage to this, other than the supply of videos on the torrent sites drying up somewhat. Plus if this kind of thing becomes widespread it should be interesting to see the tools that are written to strip the watermarks!

Re:Careful Comerad, they listen always.

[FredFredrickson]

TFA is more about identifying the content as copyrighted so that they can offer takedown notices- not to identify the source. The idea is to utilize the same system they have to generate the ratings data- just identify each program by the watermark, making it easy to filter by the watermark. In no way does this imply there'd be a new watermark for each viewer.

Additionally, TFA says that if there's no watermark, they'd generate a digital signature and compare that. So strip the watermark, and it'll take a tad more CPU to see if it's copyrighted.

The only REAL defense we have is to *cleanse* the big database of patterns and watermarks that they'll have.

Why is Neilson still in business?

[zippthorne]

Don't like 70% of American households have cable? (or equivalent)

I'd think that over a hundred million samples would be quite a bit better than a few thousand, no matter how well-chosen those few thousand are. As for privacy concerns, I'd specifically choose a cable company that tracked what shows I watch, since it'd mean that shows I like wouldn't get canceled because by some fluke, a few thousand people chosen for their willingness to keep a diary of their viewing habits, happened to not like it (or maybe just didn't notice it was available). They'd get canceled because I really am the only one actually watching.

Re:You guys rule

[gsslay]

Most of what's being produced as a result of this "economic incentive" you speak of is total absolute crap. Thanks for introducing whine number two, right on schedule. "I don't want to pay for it, cos it's crap, yet strangely I still want to waste my time viewing it as long as it's free". Just how much consideration should we give to the opinions of someone who values their time so little and has so little taste? And if root of this problem is the "economic incentive", what do you suggest replaces it? Just what else is going to get Hollywood out of bed and spending millions making TV/films that aren't crap?? Cos I'm telling you now, the warm glow of knowing that people can see it for free on Youtube isn't going to cut it.

..and don't be bringin' your "freeloading" bullshit around here either, laddy-boy. Are you suggesting that web-sites are hosting unauthorized content, but keeping the adverts in the content, so that makes it alright because that represents payment as far as you're concerned? The adverts are not shown, they are the first things to come out. So no-one is obliged to watch them, and no-one is either paying for the content, or buying from the advertisers who in part paid for the content. So please, remind us, just exactly is being contributed here that exempts it from the "freeloading" tag?

if television networks had their way, any sort of consumer recording device (VCR, DVD recorder, DVR, computer video capture, friggin' tape recorder even!) would be outlawed, being caught with one would ruin you financially for the rest of your life

Some Guy Who Doesn't Want To Take Out A 2nd Mortgage To Go See A FSCKING Movie Wow, them there's some mighty wild strawmen you're building. Care to come back and join us in reality? But wait.. . hang on, why would you want to pay anything to see "A FSCKING Movie". They're "total absolute crap", remember?? Just what strange world do you live in that forces you to hand over a 2nd Mortgage to see something you don't want to see??? Or is just everything you're saying a smokescreen thrown up to disguise the unpalatable truth? Maybe you have no positive suggestions because you're happy with things as are. You want to see it but you don't want to pay for it. There's a word for that....