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Cisco Develops System To Automatically Cut-Off Pirate Video Streams (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Pirate services obtain content by capturing and restreaming feeds obtained from official sources, often from something as humble as a regular subscriber account. These streams can then be redistributed by thousands of other sites and services, many of which are easily found using a simple search. Dedicated anti-piracy companies track down these streams and send takedown notices to the hosts carrying them. Sometimes this means that streams go down quickly but in other cases hosts can take a while to respond or may not comply at all. Networking company Cisco thinks it has found a solution to these problems. The company's claims center around its Streaming Piracy Prevention (SPP) platform, a system that aims to take down illicit streams in real-time. Perhaps most interestingly, Cisco says SPP functions without needing to send takedown notices to companies hosting illicit streams. "Traditional takedown mechanisms such as sending legal notices (commonly referred to as 'DMCA notices') are ineffective where pirate services have put in place infrastructure capable of delivering video at tens and even hundreds of gigabits per second, as in essence there is nobody to send a notice to," the company explains. "Escalation to infrastructure providers works to an extent, but the process is often slow as the pirate services will likely provide the largest revenue source for many of the platform providers in question." To overcome these problems Cisco says it has partnered with Friend MTS (FMTS), a UK-based company specializing in content-protection. Among its services, FMTS offers Distribution iD, which allows content providers to pinpoint which of their downstream distributors' platforms are a current source of content leaks. "Robust and unique watermarks are embedded into each distributor feed for identification. The code is invisible to the viewer but can be recovered by our specialist detector software," FMTS explains. "Once infringing content has been located, the service automatically extracts the watermark for accurate distributor identification." According to Cisco, FMTS feeds the SPP service with pirate video streams it finds online. These are tracked back to the source of the leak (such as a particular distributor or specific pay TV subscriber account) which can then be shut-down in real time.
The watermarking will just be removed and life will go on.
So every single stream is going to have a unique watermark embedded in the audio or visual data? The original will be decompressed, the mark added, then recompressed and streamed to each specific subscriber to allow identification? Tens or hundreds of thousands, simultaneously?
I don't buy it.
And even if it did, will it survive recompression? Or averaging with a few other subscribers streams then recompression?
It's either some metadata tag that won't survive stripping, meant to catch out naive stream cloning, or they're talking shit.
...this will only be effective if the software is installed on the backbone/tier 1 switches and routers. I can't see operators at that level willingly paying for this.
Maybe the goal is to have the content producers pay for extra boxes, and have them installed by court order...
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They'll lobby the undemocratic parts of government to make it compulsory (e.g. EU Commission, all 5 eyes governments). Which in turn will mean your ISP is required to supply such a modem to you, for which you'll pay the bill.
Did you buy a PS3 or PS4?? That contains the exact same mechanism. It's called Cinavi, and its a watermark embedded in the audio track of movies. If PS3 or PS4 detects that, it will refuse to play the rip of your DVD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia
I'm wondering how liars (like governments) will be prevented from interrupting streams they shouldn't have any right to interrupt (like viral videos of government corruption). And then there are the other Big Liars, claiming copyright over things about which they have no right to claim copyright.
Its not legal. That's a wiretap and blocking a service without a DMCA notice is criminal.
Don't see many installing that one...
Add to it all false positives that will suddenly create problems on the net.
This will just cause the streams to go encrypted instead.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Now tell me how that's going to work with Fair Use Exceptions. Oops, someone legally included up to 30 seconds of content-protected A/V as part of a review - their review will not be viewable through any participating Cisco devices.
Honestly, after all the NSA backdoors and intercepting packages to install spy devices, who is installing new Cisco equipment?
This is for Pirate movies. Cisco has issue with pirate movies. I guess they really hated Cutthroat Island with Mathew Modine and Geena Davs. It's a bit of an over reaction, but if I could, I'd do the same for the Star Wars prequels.
There's huge untapped amounts of money in not enabling communication.
They're probably using some sort of pattern recognition. Video streams have variable bit rates depending on the content. Even redistributing data into different length packets and encrypting them doesn't change the time-variable data rate of a particular stream. I foresee padding to the maximum bit rate causing a lot more traffic, and that gives a clearer image why Cisco might be doing this.
I guess they'll just do deep packet inspection on all traffic to discover that it is uhm, encrypted.
Next step is to further de-prioritize encrypted traffic so to "discourage" this behaviour. Or just make it easy to read transmission content.
This is useful because it will encourage us to encrypt all our traffic. Then there will be little alternative but to give a fair share of bandwidth.
Thank you Cisco and good luck.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Since the internet has been running so smoothly lately, with absolutely no items of growing concern, I can understand why Cisco would be taking the chance to focus on frivolous, user-hostile, bullshit for a while, since all the real problems have clearly been solved...
A little encryption on the pirate streams and the watermark is illegible.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
But if you would pay if you could, then the conclusion that "money spent on preventing piracy has a negative ROI" is still true -- perhaps they would make more money rearranging things so that you had a chance to acquire the content legally.
FWIW, I believe you, and I believe you are fairly representative, yet I can believe there are others for whom the original argument does actually apply.
A restated version of the argument is this: money spent on content protection (a) may coerce some pirates into paying for content, (b) will deter some pirates who wouldn't pay anyway and who will simply stop watching, thus giving your content less mindshare in the world and reducing your available free advertising, (c) will deter some who only pirate because they have no available legal means of acquiring the content, and (d) may actually encourage some to pirate because now it's a challenge.
This means that content protection is only viable if its cost exceeds the revenue gained from (a) by more than the lost revenue and lost opportunity costs from not dealing with (b), (c), and (d) properly.
I would argue that Cisco (and others) should make a greater investment in developing methods to prevent distributed denial attacks and other forms of network attacks. In many countries the Internet is no longer a nice to have (like broadcast television) but rather a critical infrastructure (like the power grid).
I remember ages ago, drivers for computer scanners suddenly had MANDATORY checks for those patterns you see on banknotes and refuse to scan if it was a positive. I had a CanoScan 6000 at the time and remember seeing a patched version of the then-latest driver that disabled the check. Now I don't see any patched drivers anymore, by the way. Then there were the laserprinters that printed "secret" identification-dots, providing forensic information leading back to the specific printer that was used to print it. Then there are the MANDATORY (as per the LA) checks for the Cinavia audiomark in BD players, including the PlayStation 3.
It's just a matter of millions of dollars in 'campaign donations', time, 'VIP -package with meet&greet invitations to events', etc. before similar checks pop up everywhere where you and I, right now, don't expect them.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Here's an easier/cheaper solution, JUST OFFER YOUR PRODUCTS AT A REASONABLE PRICE AND ON ANY PLATFORM THAT WILL HOST THEM. This garbage about certain programs only on Hulu, others on Netflix, still others on [name platform] and many times at exorbitant costs (digitally rent a movie for $4 or buy the DVD $6, heck in some cases you can get the DVD for cheaper than online) push people towards piracy. Stop throwing roadblocks in front of people trying to buy your product and don't try to extort them for every penny you can and you'll watch piracy die quickly and quietly.
The device will check for watermarks, and block everything that has it by default. The software running on this box will be updated directly from RIAA with no user interaction required, thereby giving them a veto over what you can watch (with no DMCA notice or counter notice possible). And they will bribe the government to make these legally required for all ISP's, world wide. The Copyright Cartel doesn't want a legal process, they want an on/off switch.
If Spike TV finds a website streaming the Garcia vs Vargas fight tonight and they can identify which of their broadcasts is being streamed.... they have every right to turn that particular broadcast off.
That's all this is about. It isn't shutting down someone's site. It isn't spying on someone's data stream. It's not a wiretap.
It's a way to put different identifiers on the service you're providing to different customers. Once you have that, you can identify which of your customers is abusing your service and stop providing that service.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
I'm sorry, but if you're going to pirate a given TV show or movie, why wouldn't you just, I dunno, download an offline copy that can be viewed whenever you feel like it? And how is this new technology going to work with re-encoded video and sound channels while ensuring there are no false positives?
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Sounds like something that could be exploited for a denial of service attack.
Most piracy is using torrents and encrypted. Sounds more like Cisco is engaged in marketing Puffery with something that will likely later come to be abused by the government or hackers by forcing backbone providers to buy higher tier Cisco routers.
Watermarking in itself is good for studding distribution patterns but little else.
Not just the packets; what if you buffer it? Induce half a minute of delay, with re-sending the buffer at an average rate only, and your immediate bit rate information is drowned out, too.
Ezekiel 23:20
I guess if I watch an NFL game outside of my market, the terrorists win. DHS seized one of the places I used to catch my team's games, because...terrorism? So I guess this means live streaming someone else's feed of free television is bad?
Most piracy is torrented, but there is one area where streams rule: Sports.
Sports fans really want to watch sports live. Which means streaming. And there's a lot of money in sports broadcasting - channels pay for exclusive broadcast rights, they want to make sure that is what they get.
That with all the other problems the US is having (massive debt, illegal aliens, etc) that this seems to be the issue everyone is focused on.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
...if the box is owned by the content providers and just co-located at the ISP, then the ISP isn't actually doing the monitoring...
That said, by providing the box with a copy of *all* the ISPs traffic, they could fall foul of whatever wiretapping laws are in place - but a few "campaign contributions" could sidestep any litigation.
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The system does it from the upstream side.
Example:
Person X subscribes to NFL Sunday Ticket. They run their satellite output into a HDCP stripper, then a video encoder, then stream it on the internet.
The NFL finds the feed. They detect the watermark, send a signal to DirecTV, who then cuts off the subscriber's box. The stream is now dead, and they never had to send a DMCA takedown.
Ah but the partisan AC's prove that they both live in a fucking bubble.
Both parties support it. This is one of few things they stand together on!
https://www.wired.com/2016/04/senates-draft-encryption-bill-privacy-nightmare/
As for Hillary personally, she has no fucking clue! She rambles inchoerantly because she honestly doesn't know shit.
Trump doesn't know shit either.
Here's there stances:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/tech-policy-campaign-2016-where-candidates-stand-encryption/
It's CONGRESS we have to worry about people, the fucking figureheads are clueless!
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
i cant wait to see the man in the middle here, lol, that should be .ulz hah
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?