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DSL Gateways to Fight Piracy by Marking Video
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Mar 15, 2007 08:47 PM
from the movie-dna-testing dept.
from the movie-dna-testing dept.
Stony Stevenson wrote with an article about home gateway devices being set up to identify video pirates. The article reads: "Home gateway manufacturer Thomson SA plans to incorporate video watermarking technology into future set-top boxes and other video devices. The watermarks, unique to each device, will make it possible for investigators to identify the source of pirated videos. By letting consumers know the watermarks are there, even if they can't see them, Thomson hopes to discourage piracy without putting up obstacles to activities widely considered fair use, such as copying video for use on another device in the home or while traveling to work."
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I'm not buying. (Score:5, Insightful)
So copies go out with my ID attached? No, thanks. I'll buy brand X. Or Y. But not Thompson.
A tool is supposed to do things my way. Not the manufacturer's way.
If Thompson wants to help prevent copyright infringement, there are better ways to do it, such as financial support for civil lawsuits against pirates.
Re:I'm not buying. (Score:5, Interesting)
What you fail to understand is that it's so much easier to find a way to screw you over than to actually come up with something new and useful.
I started getting pissed when I found out the video card that I had bought specifically with a TV-Out port wouldn't let me watch DVDs I had purchased on my TV (despite this being fair use) because surely I was a pirate and wanted to copy that DVD. Well fuck them, now I rip movies that I rent and/or download movies, and watch them anywhere I want in my house. Call me a thief. They are bigger theives - I don't remember a label on my video card saying "Hey, the TV Out port you want and paid an extra $100 for won't actually WORK due to something called Macrovision".
Come and get me, no DMCA in THIS country. Let's see, which movie should I download tonight?
Parent
Re:I'm not buying. (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you think they really care if you download a movie? Of course, they pretend to, but in the end it just helps them 1) spread their movies and 2) claim that everyone's a pirate and they're losing 100 trillion dollars due to piracy. Go watch an independent movie instead.
Parent
Re:I'm not buying. (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? This isn't reporting you when you put a black-market DVD into your hardware; it's allowing a mechanism for investigation when you put a movie or show this hardware rips up on BitTorrent or YouTube.
Personally, I think this is an outstanding compromise; it leaves legitimate fair use rights in place, but provides a means for large-scale-distribution violations to be prosecuted. It's certainly a far better deal than mandatory DRM, which in all seriousness is the other contender. I'll take watermarks over DRM any day.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Since when is it up to anyone except the owner of the content to protect their interests? There is only one reason that a third party would want to get involved with this bullshit -- kickbacks from the MPAA and other media conglomerates.
Re:I'm not buying. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, no, no. The reason for a hardware manufacturer to get involved (and I think it's a damned compelling one) is avoidance of contributory infringement suits.
Parent
Re:I'm not buying. (Score:5, Insightful)
But the courts have already ruled repeatedly and conclusively that manufacturers of VCRs cannot be held liable for contributory infringement. I fail to see how "on a digital device" should suddenly change the way the law handles things, and if it does, the law should be changed. Contributory infringement is no more valid for a PVR than "on the internet" patents are for common everyday activities, and for precisely the same reason.
Parent
Re:I'm not buying. (Score:5, Interesting)
Back onto topic... the Betamax case is no longer so sweeping as it once was; the breadth of its holding was significantly reduced by Grokster, and there are ongoing attempts to legislate around it entirely. A simple PVR is safe for now, but once one starts adding any kind of network functionality to it (even functionality clearly intended for space-shifting within a household), things become significantly less clearcut.
As you say, the law should be changed for the better (and ongoing attempts to change it for the worse should be resisted) -- but if I were a hardware manufacturer in that line of business right now, I'd want to cover my arse for the event that it changes for the worse.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm not buying. (Score:5, Informative)
This is definitely an acceptable compromise between copyright holders wanting control and the purchaser of a copy of a work wanting control. I'd stand behind watermarking because it restores good faith and trust to the system, which is what I'm really complaining about whenever I bitch about DRM. I just want the copyright holder to trust me so that I don't have to deal with their rights "management." If I wanted their management I would've hired one of them as a consultant.
What the watermark does is skip all the easily broken DRM and go straight to a method by which the copy's origins can be determined. This returns some form of personal accountability to the process of piracy.
To the GP and anyone else who suggests that watermarking is unacceptable because it also reduces functionality, I've got a question. How, exactly, does a watermark with no other DRM prevent you from doing whatever you want with what you buy?
Parent
Re:I'm not buying. (Score:5, Interesting)
It degrades the quality of the video by inserting useless noise into it.
More generally, it's a feature that isn't beneficial to the owner of the product. If it's my video encoder, it should do things that are useful for me - a feature that serves no purpose except to allow others to track my behavior doesn't belong in my stuff.
This isn't unlike the unique tracking patterns that laser printers output on printouts. Sure, I'm less likely to use a TV encoder in the process of producing an anonymous political message, but embedding insidious tracking codes into all of our electronics just isn't something that should be considered even slightly socially acceptable.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
it leaves legitimate fair use rights in place, but provides a means for large-scale-distribution violations to be prosecuted
Yeah right. It allows the OP's scenario to result in his bankruptcy while doing fuckall to stop real pirates, since they just rip the DVD and copy the cover art (or make more DVDs in the same factory). This is only good for harrassing morons who upload dvd clips to youtube and the people they live with.
Re:I'm not buying. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I'm not buying. (Score:5, Insightful)
Compromise?! Who decided the copyright cartel deserves even that?
And I'll continue to demand neither, thankyouverymuch!
Parent
Re:Hammer, meet nail. (Score:5, Interesting)
So if the watermark applied by the PVR does its job, there isn't any need whatsoever for an additional one provided by the camera.
Parent
Re:I'm not buying. (Score:4, Informative)
This is not about DSL gateways, it's about "home media gateways" and set-top boxes. They do not in fact tag all video uploaded -- only video ripped using the hardware in question.
Parent
How would these even work? (Score:2)
Way to kill your sales, bitches! (Score:4, Insightful)
Brilliant! (Score:5, Funny)
Now all those nasty, evil video pirates will suddenly be forced to... to...
Buy someone else's gateway???
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Orange is giving the LiveBox away with service.
Thomson &/or the MPAA (or their euro equivalents) can pressure/bribe the big network operators into only giving out free watermarking sets.
What a coup that would be for them. Each media compan
I give it a month, tops. (Score:2)
-jcr
Re:I give it a month, tops. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
yawn (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Who the fuck is Thompson? I've never even heard of them, much less seen any of their routers.
I don't think that this is the strategy you use when you want to take on Linksys/Cisco, Netgear, and D-Link.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomson_SA [wikipedia.org]
They are about a quarter of the size of Cisco(based on revenues), but they dwarf Netgear and D-Link.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They aren't trying to take on Linksys, Netgear or D-Link -- at least, not with the products in question.
Well, it'll give the hackers something to do. (Score:5, Insightful)
Way to alienate the general public, guys.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would the general public care? Firstly, outside of the Slashdot RDF, most people don't seem to care about DRM. They bought DVDs before CSS was cracked, they buy songs from iTunes, and so on.
Secondly, the only legitimate reason for the "general public" to be annoyed by protection technologies is if it interferes with their fair use rights under law. Uploading shit to P2P networks is not a part of those rights, but it's what this is designed to discourage. So there can be no legitimate reason for annoya
Can we (Score:5, Insightful)
Altering user's data? (Score:2)
Yes, it's about control. (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose that I send my family home video. Does it watermark that?
I imagine they can add their evil bits to whatever you do. The ISP is not going to ask you, they are just going to do it. When I say evil, I mean it.
This is not about "piracy", it's about control. Real copyright violations happen in places where people set up DVD printing presses and make exact copies of works. As soon as these devices are everywhere, the AAs will redefine "piracy" to get the pay per play they want out of you. Suckering you for entertainment cash should be the least of your concerns, though. Imagine a world where nothing can be done anonymously ever again. The modem is a computer and it can be programed to track your communications. Whistleblowers and activists, beware.
Parent
This is *ALMOST* the right thing (Score:5, Insightful)
When you buy a car (yes, car analogies might not be perfect) you have a title and registration that you keep with the car for proof of ownership. When you buy a CD, you have the physical media as proof. The entertainment industries need to have something as simple, and usable as these examples.
Sure, as an idea there are holes in it, but the premise is good. DRM is not a registration that works as it is too limiting, just as the EU! When someone steals your CD, you just go without it and have to buy another one unless you have insurance that covers it. If they steal your car, same again. If either is used to commit a crime, you are not complicit but that is not how the current music industry is looking at things.
Individual watermarks in the content might sound good, but they can be stolen, and if its anything like DRM, it will get cracked in no time. The only sound answer is to make it not worth pirating by making the cost reasonable, the usefulness of the media robust, and the ease of use to the consumer no more difficult than toasting bread in an electric toaster.
Time again to mention that a CD sharing club of you and 20 of your friends can pirate music and videos indefinitely without being caught in order to reduce the cost of music and videos to a level that is acceptable. Its the Internet part that gets people caught. The entertainment industry is hell bent on fscking the consumer, and those people will continue to take back from the industry as long as they are being ripped off, or feel that they are.
Even opportunistic piracy is going to continue, has always been around, and cannot be stopped. They only thing they can stop is the online wholesale piracy. This 'watermarking' won't stop you and your CD club from your activities as long as nobody posts a copy to the Internet and gets caught.
Until they get these criteria right, people will pirate music and videos because they have enough reason to dismiss the minor chance they will be caught. The 'industry' will simply have to figure out how to make money while providing what the consumer has overwhelmingly demonstrated that they want... or just go out of business.
Personally, I vote for them going out of business. Let newer, better business rise from the ashes of the current entertainment industry!
Re: (Score:2)
To make DRM truely work, they have to sell a unique version to each consumer and manage unique keys. If someone shares their keys, those keys get revoked, and that consumer is forever shuned. Queue the movie naz
Re: (Score:2)
You're also responsible if you leave an axe in your yard and a kid falls on it. You can certainly argue that the kid shouldn't have been on your property and that the parents should
Re:This is *ALMOST* the right thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, if all entertainment media was serialized, it might work, but then the insurance vultures would have a toe hold on a new kind of policy: insurance against copyright infringement 'accidents' just as you can get them to insure against loss of employment, sickness, and autotheft etc. Then we would have to pay 50 times what the content is worth, and it could never be given to anyone else free of encumbrances.
The other implication that comes with serialized media is something the **AA cannot live with: Ownership! If it is serialized, its my copy and I can sell it, loan it to friends, and all the other things that come with ownership. Currently, the entertainment industry is leaning toward the rental business model rather than ownership. Yeah, yeah, I know it's a copyrighted work, but the car I drive has patented materials in it too, but I still own it!
There are a lot of ideas, but none of the good ones include the current **AA business model.
Parent
Unencrypted digital video (Score:2)
I'm guessing no, though, which means that this is just another example of the huge consumer electronics industry kissing the ass of the much smaller content cabal, while making meaningless overtures to consumers.
Hidden benefit (Score:2)
1. Steal somebody's decoder box.
2. Make and distribute pirated videos.
3. Profit !!
And there is a hidden benefit here. You know how Thomson is saying "if consumers know the watermark is there, they'll be disincented to pirate videos"? Well it works the same way in reverse. If media companies know the watermark is there, they'll be disincented to commit further acts of DRM.
Media companies have already demonstrated writ large that they are too stupid to grasp the implications of (and hackability of) sof
Re: (Score:3)
More like the other way around. A person knows that if he will record a movie from his own cable, it will carry his watermark, so if it ever for any reason will end up accessible on a public network, he will be sued. On the other hand, if he will download a pirated copy, he shouldn't worry about it getting out -- at worst it has pirate's watermark.
Result: tim
A better solution than DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's not a perfect solution - but I personally would not mind such a scheme, if it lets me do what I want (personally) with digital files I purchase and record.
Fake watermark generator (Score:2)
You people are absurd (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake up and face the fact that fair use is dying, and if you want to save it, you've got to stop the tide before you can reverse it. All the fantasizing in the world about "starting from scratch" is never going to happen. If you continually indicate that you're not willing to work with content providers at all, then don't expect content providers to have any consideration for your interests. Of course, this is Slashdot, so maybe correcting problems is less desirable than bitching about them (but Slashdotter hypocrisy protects us from the same derision we give to politicians and executives for doing the same thing).
I know, I know, "they" started "it." Whatever. If you can't endorse someone taking a positive step toward a fair and equitable compromise between content providers and consumers, at least recognize the fact that one of those "evil corporations" is reaching out, even just a little.
And before the privacy nutjobs come out of the woodwork, do you think that your cable box and/or ISP don't already have the capacity to track what you do? Having watermarks is no more an invasion of privacy than having a Safeway club card or a commercial DVR. All that matters is what you DO with that information.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you continually indicate that you're not willing to work with content providers at all, then don't expect content providers to have any consideration for your interests.
If they want to sell anything at all, they'll listen to congress - all we have to do is fight for our rights. Compromising with these people will only result in them coming back later asking for another compromise that pushes the line further in our direction. What we need is legislation explicitly protecting our rights to enrich the p
Re:You people are absurd (Score:4, Insightful)
Corporations love the internet because it is, for the most part, free to them. At least, it's several orders of magnitude below the what the cost would be if they actually had to pay for their own infrastructure to send packets around the planet. Those of us unfortunate to live in towns with taxpayer-funded stadiums know full well that a corporation will gladly get someone else to pay for their fixed costs. It's no different with the Internet. They didn't build it, didn't think of it, and didn't think much of it when it came into popular use. So, they were late to the party and now they want to write the rules. They put up insecure e-commerce apps and complained when they got hacked. It wouldn't be possible for "hackers" (their definition) to cause "damage" to corporate assets if they didn't connect those assets to an inherently insecure network in the first damned place! Well, fuck them! Ditto for government, which does at least deserve credit for laying the foundation for the Internet. However, then it occurred to them the "damage" that can be done by people sharing information freely. (I'm not talking about pirated DVDs, either. I don't steal or even buy movies or music because it's all such crap these days it's not worth paying attention to.) Now government does everything they can to discourage anonymity, to make people think they're constantly being watched, and to generally discourage anything but online shopping also. Oh, and be sure to pay your taxes online so some corporation can charge you a "convenience fee", while we're at it.
Well, when the net is turned into a safe, locked down haven for commerce and everyone watches what's sent to them for their montly content subscription fees and nobody can do anything they're not "supposed" to do, people will get bored and drop off. Hackers, real ones, will have moved on to more interesting things anyway. Want to stop this? How about mandatory data destruction laws? ISPs should be able to retain logs only for a brief period of time and then only for the purpose of network maintenance and security. They should be prohibited by law from sharing this information with anybody without a court order. How about laws that put the same kinds of protections on your private messages that corporations bought and paid for concerning their "intellectual property"? This isn't about what's technically possible, it's about what's legal. That your government (pick one, they're all doing it) is currently trying to go the exact opposite direction shows what they think of you. Remember that well.
Oh, and never use frequent shopper cards. If you don't have a choice, at least never use them with your actual name and address on them.
Parent
That's especially ludicrous... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's especially ludicrous since American industry was actually founded on the VIOLATION of English IP law - breaking the mercantilist system that attempted to limit the colonists to producing raw materials for, and buying finished products from, British companies.
Parent
Oh, brother! (Score:5, Informative)
Compromise? (Score:2)
Now, tell me, would the companies supposedly losing money to piracy end up having more money if they were tax exempt as opposed to going around suing people (which makes them look like a bad guy) and such?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's simpler than that. The rest of us apply for a job, and then do the work required for money delivered. Muscicans and such do things backwards: they do the job then whine when somebody uses the service already performed without paying for it. Then they want "protections" so they can do things backwards.
Well, reality recently caught up with conte
Anti-piracy technology undermines fair use (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you use a VCR? There's a show that you really want to watch, but you have another appointment. The broadcast flag is designed to prevent people from recording television shows for personal use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_flag/ [wikipedia.org] VCRs were declared legal by the Supreme Court, which the content providers want to overrule. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America _v._Universal_City_Studios%2C_Inc./ [wikipedia.org] The purpose of this is to make you pay for the episode which you already paid your cab
Re:Why Pirate? (Score:4, Insightful)
When you were growing up, making durable, faithful copies of an audio or video signal was a technically difficult and impressive service. It was a source of value, and the market rewards a service with value by exchanging other things of value for it. Today, making perfect copies of an audio or video signal is something with a material and skill cost so negligible it is practically nothing. The market does not support the sale of a service which has no value.
I am more than happy to pay a musician to play a show, or a theater to project a film. The fact that making copies of media is no longer a service with economic value does not threaten the livelihood of a musician who can give a performance or a director who can create a film that is worth going out to see on a 50 foot screen. It only threatens the livelihood of professional copyists, whose business is now no longer worth anything.
That's what technology does. It put the thesis typesetters, buggy-whip makers, and telegraphers out of business. I do not see anything special about it having eliminated the need for media middlemen.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is about watermarking stuff from the cable company, before you even have it on your computer.