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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 assuming that the particular math used to encode the fingerprint in such a way that it doesn't die a horrible death the second it hits a lossy codec(which is pretty much assured before it hits the intertubes) or somebody get ahold of two distinct leaks and diffs them is probably substantially more novel than the basic idea of "add artificial differences to discover leaks".
Whether it is, or ought to be, patentable is not something I can really comment on; but I would strongly suspect that the actual method being employed is considerably different than historical examples in the same broad conceptual vein.
I believe a similar technique - making seemingly identical but subtly different documents - has been used in counter-spying to find the source of leaks.
Serial numbers are printed on currency & bonds, and appear on labels on most types of consumer electronics, automobiles, etc. This is the same basic concept. Uniquely identifying something isn't new or nefarious. I'm pretty sure all color printers 'hide' something in each print, and I wouldn't be surprised if digital cameras did too.
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?
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.
If it goes to court WB will probably have to open up their claims & records on piracy, counterfeiting, etc to examination and scrutiny. This could be a valuable crack in their "pandora's box" of exaggerated statistics.
I'm pretty sure all color printers 'hide' something in each print, and I wouldn't be surprised if digital cameras did too.
Yes, they do (well, actually just laser color printers).
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!
"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.
I'm somewhat surprised this is allowed. Making a mistake is one thing, but purposely falsifying information that someone is paying you for (perhaps even specifically for the accuracy!) is another.
Is this one of those things that is actually allowed by law or just unenforceable because they can claim it was a mistake?
I assume you're referring to the maps thing...
This is generally done with street maps, where the information should be pretty much identical from one manufacturer to the next. If you can steal your competition's map, you save yourself all the time and effort of actually going out and looking up all the information. And everyone is going to show the same streets in the same places, so how do you prove that they stole your map data?
The answer is that you put in some crappy little 1-block dead-end streets here and there.
Nobody lives on those streets, because they don't exist, so you don't have to worry about incorrect address information showing up. 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.
But if you suspect that your competition stole some map information from you, you just check to see if there's a Fake Street in Chicago. If the street is there, in the same place as on your maps, you know they stole the map data from you.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
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.
Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
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.
The answer is that you put in some crappy little 1-block dead-end streets here and there.
There's sometimes entire towns that only exist on paper.
Someone even wrote a book about that.
You can't take the sky from me...
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.