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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."
not as I do.
http://ayakofansubs.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/1267146748914.jpg :)
I'm not sure this is anything new. Map makers include fake streets. I believe a similar technique - making seemingly identical but subtly different documents - has been used in counter-spying to find the source of leaks.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
What exactly are they 'pirating'? I see no mention that they are using any copyrighted material without permission. All I see is that they are supposedly using PATENTED technology (software). In Europe. Isn't the slashdot rallying cry 'you can't patent software in Europe and anywhere that lets you patent software is retarded'? So what is the story?
Development of a anti-pirating, anti-pirating technology, so the watcher's can watch the watcher's.
YES, this IS ironic. Look it up.
(Cue loud music, set chapter to be un-skippable)
Hey, WB:
You wouldn't snatch a purse.
You wouldn't steal a car.
So don't don't illedally download ... er, steal others intellectual property.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100521/1529489535.shtml
Has a couple of interesting tidbits.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
"Medien Patent Verwaltung" translates to the English "Media Patent Administration". They don't even concatenate it to one word, as one would expect from normal German grammar - looks like it came straight out of translate.google.com.
Now I wonder what the German word for "patent troll" would be.... Hmmm, the German wikipedia article has various translations, I like "Patentparasit" best.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
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.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Warner Brothers and other studios paid good money for those Congressmen, it's hardly fair that they should turn around and make laws that could be used *against* the studios. I may be old, but I remember a time when Congress used to respect its bribes.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I think this is where they put the grid of brown dots in patterns across the middle of the picture. It's not quite like watermarking because it's only a couple frames here and there and it shows a unique ID pattern for each print. It's also more annoying for the viewer once you start noticing.
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.
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.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
You, the little people, have to do whatever we tell you to do. We are going to take your crops and your land and whatever else we feel like taking. You owe us everything. We're the landowners. We're the powerful, and the power we have was taken from you and we use it to take more power from you. Okay? That's how it works. You bottom, We Top. Got it?
There are NO rational arguments. You can spin them all day if you want. Point out our hypocrisies, call for legal action. We don't care. Hell, we encourage it! It keeps you idiots occupied, living under the illusion that this is some kind of level playing field. Ha ha! Yeah, go right on thinking that. -Believe that if you work hard enough that you too can be wealthy. Ha ha! Yeah, about that. . , truth is we only let a couple of people up that lottery ladder to keep you idiots mollified, and they're only the psychopaths and other favored sons who know how to play ball. And even they don't get into the inner circles. Now way! Obama and Gates and fucking Schwarzenegger are clowns in the court of the truly wealthy, (who, by the way were, the same families who really WERE stealing your crops a few hundred years ago). Those court jesters are there just to keep you retards happily taking the shit end of the stick. Ha ha! The serfs love their stupid little lotteries. What a bunch of inferior assholes you are! Ha ha!
Now where were we. . ?
Oh yeah. We can do whatever we want, steal, rape and pillage and you can do NOTHING. Got it?
Good. I'm glad we could cut through this bullshit. Have a rotten day.
-The Mgt.
To be honest, I think your post is a "troll expressing a popular sentiment". Nonetheless, I feel you are inaccurate. (And thus, I am trolled...)
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.
So, you believe that, for instance, authors should not be paid by publishers, because the authors produce the "content" of the books that publishers print? The authors are abusing public cultural knowledge etc, while the publishers are making a physical good, right?
I find that an author paid is an author more prolific, since they can (ideally) use the time they'd otherwise spend earning their crust in writing more words. Since I desire more books (by authors I favor), I favor their being paid for their work.
The ideal of DRM is, in its own right, the idea of building a wall around a public good.
This only applies if you think, as you have implied, that a creator may never have control of his creation: that in the instant of creation, it becomes a "public good". It is where the public definition of how a creative work transitions from being a "private good" to being a "public good" that copyright law and patent law are all about. How you distinguish between the creation of a painting or statue (which produces a physical object, presumably with property rights), with the creation of a digital image (which exists as patterns of electrons) is unclear. Are you saying that anyone may duplicate my painting and sell it, even labeling it as my work, without my having a right to complain? After all, it was a work of "creation, based on common ideas and techniques". If not a painting, how less a digital image? Or a series of them?
But that argument is to a degree dishonest, conflating property rights to an object with creative rights (right to distribute). However, the painting analogy remains: if the creative work is a "public good" without restriction, I could not complain about your duplicating it, nor even with your passing the copy off as my work. No restriction, remember?
Personally, I feel that yes, copyright terms have been extended much, much too far. I view this as a lobbying failure on OUR part. (Note, the congressmen's pockets... er, ears... are still available.)
And yes, I feel that software should not be patented. I'll point out, however, that patents cover processes (read: techniques), something you railed at in your first sentence but ignored thereafter. Perhaps you'd like to add something about how taking out a patent - regardless of inventive merits - is a similar "taking of a public good"?