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.

Comments

Raised bar will be bypassed

[Sean]

The watermarking will just be removed and life will go on.

Re:Raised bar will be bypassed

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the watermarks of random cable customers will be added to webcams that show paint drying, to DoS pay TV.

Doesn't sound plausible

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Doesn't sound plausible

[Feral Nerd]

If the watermark is only added to one sound channel, the required processing power is not that large. Eventually content providers will learn that people who watch a pirated stream will not pay for the content when the pirate stream is somehow prevented, so money spend on preventing piracy has a negative ROI.

That is a tired argument and it is not true. I pirate Amazon Prime shows because "We are sorry but Amazon Prime is not available in your region.". I subscribe to Netflix because they have no such bullshit policy although the size of their catalog depends on agreements with rights holders in each country. When I go to the UK, for example, the number of films and shows I can view grows much larger but I still get BS like being able to watch all the Harry Potter films but not numbers 3,4 and 6 because of licensing/rights issues. Which is another reason I pirate stuff, I was able to watch the first season of "The 100" and wanted to see the rest but in 'my region' seasons 2 and 3 are not available because local right holders don't want to give them to Netflix because they are not through re-running them in weekly instalments on cable TV so, being once again left with no alternative, I pirated them. Finally I subscribe to video streaming services simply because I can't be bothered with the annoyances that come with torrenting like malware and simply having to download three or four torrent files before finding one that actually gives me a decent download speed. I would gladly pay for a bundle of streaming subscriptions because the bundle would cost me less monthly than my current cable subscription and I would get more value for my money out of streaming services. The more of their own content these video streaming services create the happier I will be with their service since Netflix at least makes their own content available everywhere without bullshit regional restrictions due to licensing agreements.

Surely...

[YuppieScum]

...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...

Re:Proof that Satan is real

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Who would still use Cisco?

[mschaffer]

Honestly, after all the NSA backdoors and intercepting packages to install spy devices, who is installing new Cisco equipment?

Don't laugh this off!

[CanEHdian]

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.