Warner Bros. Accused of Pirating Anti-Pirating Tech

psycho12345 writes "German firm Medien Patent Verwaltung claims that in 2003, it revealed a new kind of anti-piracy technology to Warner Bros. that marks films with specific codes so pirated copies can be traced back to their theaters of origin. But like a great, hilariously ironic DRM Ouroborus, the company claims that Warner began using the system throughout Europe in 2004 but hasn't actually paid a dime for it."

Comments

Do as I say---

[Darth Sdlavrot]

not as I do.

Re:Do as I say---

[WrongSizeGlass]

not as I do.

Indeed. Like most other entities that try to force everyone else to "play by their rules" or "see things their way", their own rules don't apply to them. This is just like that gaming company that was using someone else's DRM-crack in their own game. I call shenanigans!

Re:Do as I say---

[DarkOx]

Is it really that or is it that copyright as implemented today makes chain of ownership difficult to track and manage and faithful compliance with license terms almost hopeless within most organizations?

Ok so Joe in assestmanagement wants to purchase OMG DRM Poines Manager 7 USA eddition; he wants to use it to seriales all ponies for distribution in the US. Legal looks over the license and approves the purchase, after asking Bob about his plans for the application. 5 years later Bob has left the company. Ted has been asked to serialize all ponies, not just those sold in the USA. He knows they have always use the copy of OMG DRM Poines Manager 7 for serializing ponies and it works well. Do you think he goes back and reads the license terms? I doubt it; so without doing anything malicous they are not as an organization noncompliant.

Keeping track of all these issues in most larger organizations would be multiple full time jobs and there is simply no room for it in smaller orgs at all. The whole system in economic terms is unjustified; nobody would by this stuff if compliance management was taken into TCO calculations more often; but its usually not.

Re:Do as I say---

[mcgrew]

Like Sony "stealing" GPL code for it's XCP music CD rootkit malware. These lying theives are all alike, it seems.

Re:Do as I say---

[Golddess]

That's all well and good, except no where in TFA does it state they were using it anywhere before they learned of it in 2003*.

To correct your analogy, it'd be like Ted looking at OMG DRM Pawnies Organizer X from this other company, thinking "hey, this is pretty good", and then using it without licensing it.

*Actually, TFA doesn't say much of anything. Medien Patent Verwaltung filed suit against WB, but they listed one of WB's patents as the infringing patent, and now they will be refiling with the proper patent listed. So we don't really know at this time if they really are infringing on a patent of Medien Patent Verwaltung's.

Re:Do as I say---

[commodore64_love]

Well that's how feudalism works - one set of laws for the serfs and another set for the masters. We need to go back to the ideals of the revolution, where everyone was treated equally under the law. WB should be fined several million dollars.

Re:Do as I say---

[Shakrai]

We need to go back to the ideals of the revolution, where everyone was treated equally under the law. WB's executives should be tarred and feathered.

Fixed that for you :)

Re:Do as I say---

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's how feudalism works - one set of laws for the serfs and another set for the masters. We need to go back to the ideals of the revolution, where everyone was treated equally under the law. WB should be fined several million dollars.

Close, but not quite. Warner Brothers should be abolished because no abstract entity should have the rights and privileges of being a human being if it cannot also be punished in the same way (including imprisonment and death).

Re:Do as I say---

[TheRaven64]

It's well-documented behaviour. People generally expect others to think and act as they do. If you are a sociopath then you expect that people will try to abuse of any freedom that you give them, because you would do the same. You therefore implement draconian DRM because it prevents people from doing things that you would do in the same circumstances. It is not surprising to find these people acting as they expect others to act.

Re:Do as I say---

[nospam007]

"*Actually, TFA doesn't say much of anything. Medien Patent Verwaltung filed suit against WB,..."

Exactly, they got even the country wrong, it's a Swiss Firm.

Medien Patent Verwaltung AG
Axenstrasse 21
6440 Brunnen
Schweiz

Re:Do as I say---

[ArsonSmith]

If a fat person calls you fat does it make you less fat? If the only witness to the murder you committed also killed someone does that make yours ok? If a pot calls a kettle black is the kettle any less so?

Re:Do as I say---

[Schadrach]

Copyright violation is generally punished by a fine, however. What do they usually aim for, $100k per copy or something like that? So, $100k per theater that received an infringing movie per showing of said movie.

Re:Do as I say---

[ekgringo]

Actually, using the MPAA's example, wouldn't it be more like $100k per person per viewing?

They are all pirates

[Anonymous Coward]

They are all pirates. Evolutionis abount copying and improving. It is wrong to try to stop evolution.

I Hope they sue

[AndGodSed]

Really, I hope this turns into one of those messy public court snafu's that really grab public attention and cause a real raucus.

This can only benefit from all the publicity it can generate.

Re:Novel?

[benjymous]

You don't have to worry about giving people bad directions because they're dead-end streets, so nobody will route down them. Nobody is going to be hurt by these little streets in any way.

"Take the third left"?

Is that including the road on the left that's on the map, but doesn't exist in reality.

Re:Novel?

[JonJ]

How would your GPS suggest that when the street does not exist and is a dead end? You wouldn't try to find the street, it does not exist, and the GPS would never route you through a dead end.

Re:Watermarking!=Piracy

[SharpFang]

This is novel in a way that the watermark is not spatial but temporal - it only minimally affects the surface of the image, but instead as the image changes over time, the watermark does too, containing much more information than the few points it presents per frame, and being much less obtrusive. Rather original and novel approach.

Everybody owes everybody else

[amn108]

The cue here is the fact that mankind slowly but surely approaches that deciding point in time where everyone owes everyone else, directly or indirectly, money, but is unable to pay. Just look at U.S. - trillions in debt, everything is just promised back in promises themselves. Everything is in a perpetual state of "I owe you" . That's hardly news, since, ironically, the very natural state of existence is owing eachother. The problem is converting this into real value, and demanding it back. That's the difference part.

Likewise, by virtue of unberable capitalism economy, where you need to maximize your profits at any cost to survive, it was only a matter of time before it came to this - the fight against piracy is so acute that even pirating anti-piracy IP becomes an option. The lesson to learn here is - if you can't live by your own rules, don't impose them on others.

Why is this a surprise?

[Weaselmancer]

Media producers aren't in love with the idea of copyrights, they're in love with money. They just promote the concept of copyright when it benefits them to gain more money. If somehow copyrights were getting in the way of them getting paid, you'd see their lobbyists 24-7 trying to do away with them.

Business is in business to make money. Think of a large business as an amoeba that assimilates money. It doesn't have a conscience, just a rudimentary intelligence that drives it to move towards the money and acquire it. That's why they do these moves that are seemingly at cross purposes, like backing copyright and then ignoring copyright. Money is the underlying motive. Whatever gets a business more cash is good, much in the same way an amoeba gets food. Ethics don't enter into it - that's reserved for higher life forms.

Re:Novel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy fix: only add fake dead end streets to read dead end streets, so the fake dead end only comes into play if your directions tell you to go to the end of a dead end street and continue on.

"Content" producers are "theives" anyway

[IBitOBear]

All "content" is based on common ideas and techniques. Be they musical, lyrical, dramatic, or technological ideas and techniques, they come from us, the general populace, and the previous authors, musicians etc.

They pure _hubris_ of the "content industry" is that _their_ incremental changes are "worth more" than the total body of work and understanding their particular content is based on.

So they are in the habit of, to apply their own terms to their own actions, "stealing" and "pirating" from the common man to produce their content.

But just as there is no anti-smoking advocate as loud as an ex smoker, and nobody is as fearful of being stolen from as a thief, the "content producers", knowing fully well that 99% of their content comes from someone else, demand some way to protect "their work" from being used by the next guy.

The ideal of DRM is, in its own right, the idea of building a wall around a public good. It should not surprise _anyone_ that the DRM happy thieves are willing to steal the DRM techniques as readily as they stole story ideas and plot points.

I cry a river for any company that produces DRM, or just DRM _ideas_, and has it "stolen". Just as I cried when my next door neighbor, who had motion sensor lights all over his house and had locked fences and a specially built lockable out-building, was busted by the feds for selling ill-gotten merchandise on ebay.

Its a huge "no duh, what did you honestly expect?"