Video Services May Use AI To Crack Down on Password Sharing (variety.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Still using your ex-roommates cable credentials to watch "Game of Thrones?" That may soon be getting a lot harder, thanks to new efforts to crack down on password sharing for pay TV and online video services. One of these efforts, launched by London-based Synamedia ahead of next week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), even uses artificial intelligence to uncover notorious password sharers. Credentials Sharing Insight, as the new service is being called, targets both casual password sharing as well as criminal enterprises looking to resell pay TV login information. However, the focus clearly is on friends and family taking their generosity a bit too far, explained Symanedia chief product officer Jean-Marc Racine in an interview with Variety this week.

[...] Most services have tried to curtail password sharing by limiting the number of simultaneous streams, with little else to go by to identify abuse. "Today, you are in the dark," he said. Synamedia's solution on the other hand digs through lots of data to cluster users based on their streaming behavior. This can include user's physical location (someone streaming from both coasts at the same time) as well as general usage patterns (someone streaming 24/7). The company can even take a look at the specific content streamed by a user to identify unusual patterns. Based on these clues, Synamedia trains models to score users on a scale of 1 to 10, indicating whether they are likely sharing their passwords or not.

Comments

GOOD LORD!!

[the_skywise]

WTF DO YOU NEED AI FOR THIS?!
Geez - just cap the number of simultaneous logins to whatever your business is comfortable with (usually 2 or 3) and/or record the device IDs.


It's not rocket science people. But then AI is the new electrolytes... it's got wut plants crave!

Re: GOOD LORD!!

[the_skywise]

But you could get all of that with a basic database and simple analytics. Sure, you can do that with AI - but that's like building a drone with a powered screwdriver that you can control with your smartphone to take the case off your computer. (Although I would probably buy that...)

Pirate

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Still using your ex-roommates cable credentials to watch "Game of Thrones?"

No, this is SlashDot. We pretty much just pirate GoT; using other people's credentials is way too much of a hassle.

Re:This has already been tried decades ago

[smooth wombat]

I'm pretty sure when you signed up for these services that somewhere in the agreement they say you are not allowed to give your information to one million of your closest friends, or use the service in any other than for your personal enjoyment (i.e. no streaming it to the world).

If your next statement is along the lines, "I don't care what the agreement says", then you're the reason these companies are taking these steps.

Re:Again with the NOT A.I.

[110010001000]

FizzBuzz is AI? Do you need funding for it? I am looking for the next new thing. AI is where it is at!

Prediction

[leroybrown]

This is effectively DRM and will lead to an increase in piracy. These dumbasses never learn.

Re: Prediction

[Highdude702]

Here is what I don't get. If they allow you to have multiple simultaneous streams.. WTF do they expect? Do they think that you're going to watch 4 fucking things at once? That is moronic on their part if so. I paid for netflix for about 6 months, and only because I forgot to terminate my account. They have a garbage selection and anything that is good and people want to watch they remove. Fuck them. They and most of the rest of the industry don't deserve our money. How many times are they going to remake the same movie/show/album? Nothing is new. Nothing is interesting. Nothing is what they get. Whats funny is most of the interesting things, mainly educational shit anymore... Is free...

In other words, time to stream via a VPN?

[jouassou]

Also, none of those metrics are failsafe. Some legitimate customers will travel a lot (varying location), work alternating day and night shifts (stream at seemingly random hours), and/or have irregular sleep cycles or suffer from insomnia (sometimes spending all day and night watching Netflix). Judging peoples taste in series to judge whether they are one or multiple people also sounds like something that can backfire for people that legitimately have unusual tastes, or people that often have friends visiting with different tastes. I hope their solution is to at least ask the customer for an explanation, instead of an "AI" simply autobanning all "weird" customers.

Let my ex take her profile with her

[iTrawl]

I still share my Netflix with my ex. She's willing to pay for Netflix herself, but there is a problem. She can't take her watching history, ratings, and her list of bookmarked titles to her new account. When asked, Netflix say "meh, just start over".

Come on dudes, your devs could easily add account merges and splits (and while at it, give me an option to let me watch the end credits in full screen in peace). I'm not motivated enough to write a scraper/saver to copy her profile from my account to hers using Greasemonkey (the watch list is probably easy to get, but the entirely to watch progress and the simulation needed to bring every timestamp over might be harder on my end), and you guys don't seem either.

But hey, AI is cool. Decent profile handling is so meh. Don't forget the blockchain.

Re:This has already been tried decades ago

[o_ferguson]

Yup. My first IT job was setting up a home network for a doctor so he could have both his PCs using one Rogers Cable internet modem. They had a rule back then that you had to pay a full monthly subscription fee for each TV accessing the cable TV signal, and each computer accessing the internet.