Slashdot Mirror
Mpeg 7 To Include Per-Frame Content Identification
An anonymous reader writes "NEC has announced that its video content identification technology has been incorporated in the upcoming Mpeg 7 video standard, allowing for each video frame to have its own signature, meaning that even minute changes to the file such as adding subtitles, watermarks or dogtags, and of course cutting out adverts, will alter the overall signature of the video. According to NEC this will allow the owners of the video to automatically 'detect illegal copies' and 'prevent illegal upload of video content' without their consent. NEC also claims that its technology will do away with the current manual checking by members of the movie industry and ISPs to spot dodgy videos."
A new algorithm to crack, Math is Fun! (They don't realize that some of us do this as a passion, no I endorse fully supporting those companies that deserve it, but not everyone does this for piracy, its just a hella lotta fun to crack the reported "uncrackable".)
Just my take, I love math.
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
The secret sauce proprietary algorithm in the (puff piece) TFA sounds like a file verification mechanism, in the vein of CRC, hash verification, and friends. Which is odd; because the problem of keeping digital data reasonably uncorrupt is a serious one for Big Storage type outfits, and archivists; but it hasn't been much of a concern for team content. What they've wanted is watermarks, "traitor tracing", and all that. Now, a good verification algorithm is a terrible watermark algorithm, and vice versa, period. Verification algorithms are supposed to freak out if so much as a single bit has been twiddled. Watermark algorithms are supposed to be robust against common forms of tampering and re-encoding.
So, what's the deal?
1. It could be that "PC Authority" has been handed an NEC press release, and can't even handle the challenge of regurgitating it properly. In which case, any speculation based on the details of TFA is pointless, if TFA is so much commercial word salad.
2. It could also be that PC Authority is reading the NEC release more or less correctly; but the release was just blitzed out by some PR flack, and they lack the context. This is, in fact, an integrity verification technology, designed to work quickly on video streams, that will be included in some future standard, as an obscure convenience to future editors and producers and archivists who will have to deal with 10,000 hours of MPEG7 video in OMG-4k-Super-def-3D, and need to know, fast, if any of it is getting munged. It would be a super boring, highly specific part of the spec, of basically no interest to the general public; but it could be more or less true as described.
3. And here's the sinister conspiracy theory: Where do file integrity verification and DRM come together? If, and only if, planned devices are "default deny, play signed content only". If your Blu-ray2 player simply refused to play anything that isn't a wholly unaltered copy of a commercial release, the otherwise absurd(as noted above) notion that an integrity check algorithm can serve as a piracy deterrent becomes true... It wouldn't stop cammer kiddies from playing altered copies on general purpose PCs, if those are still alive; but making "blessed only" a condition of the licencing agreement for future STB-type devices would basically kill the unsophisticated pirated disk market(barring hardware hacks on specific devices, or really stupid mistakes in media design).
The invisible hand of market forces is slapping the shit out of these companies. I wonder when they're going to realize that it's pointless fighting against it. Adding features that takes away value is no way to win customers. I would LOVE to PAY for an online streaming service, where I have access to all TV shows and movies with any choice of subtitles, and dubbed languages available. So far, since I'm in Germany, I found MaxDome, where I can only watch a limited selection of movies dubbed only in German, no subtitle options. What if I want to watch a movie that's not very well-known? I can either order it from Amazon, or just Google the movie title and stream it.