NEC Develops New Tech to Detect Pirated Video, MPAA Squeals with Joy
NEC Develops New Tech to Detect Pirated Video, MPAA Squeals with Joy
Posted 05/07/2010 at 3:37pm
| by Ryan Whitwam
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Automated technology to detect pirated content has been tried before, but the results are usually a mess of false positives and misses. NEC claims their new video identification system can succeed where the others have failed. According to NEC, the technology has a detection rate of 96% and a suspiciously good false positive rate of 1 in 5 million.
The NEC detection system works by creating a digital fingerprint from the original content. The files are 76 bytes in size per frame, making storage of many fingerprints doable. The system can work with scenes as short as two seconds; say goodbye to fair use. NEC is also claiming it can detect content that has been altered by converting it from digital to analog, or filming in a theater. It is unclear if a video can be manipulated sufficiently to evade the filter.
The technology is on its way to being integrated into the upcoming MPEG-7 media standard. We'll be interested to see if NEC is promising more than it can deliver here. It sounds like Star Trek level tech to us.
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Silencer
May 09, 2010 at 7:02pm
OK. I can save you Hollywood people a lot of money from buying this 'copy-protection' which
identifies the source, the pirated copies come from: Movie studios,
Russia, movie theatres, released DVDs and Blu-Rays, and everywhere
else! So no need to figure out where they're coming from, I just told
you!I guarantee I won't buy devices or operating systems that will only use MPEG-7. Windows will still play .avi's, right? Are they going to police all
of those video-editing tools too? LOL! I'm sure that once the MPEG-7 content is converted to XviD, vlc will be able to play it just fine on my computer. And when ConvertXtoDVD burns the disc, it will play just fine in my DVD player.And if Windows can't handle it, well, it's not the only game in town, and this could provide the much-needed motivation to make Linux actually work, (on ALL PCs, without having to be a command-line geek. Like Windows does.)
Just a waste of Human Resources to get some money from people who obviously have too much.
snapple00
May 09, 2010 at 5:22pm
Love the comments about how software will always be crackable.
Duh? Apparently DRM companies are completely oblivious to this right? Thats why they keep releasing new DRM month to month.
No one is trying to stop 100% of piracy. They are trying to curb it as much as possible, from the obvious explosion of stealing since the internet became common.
But if you can't stop piracy 100%, or make truly uncrackable DRM, its a complete failure? LOGIC FAIL.
slowpoke2
May 10, 2010 at 1:34pm
DRM isn't meant to stop piracy, only curb it? I guess the MPAA hasn't introduced itself to you yet.
i7_DOMINATION
May 09, 2010 at 10:47am
First of all, there is no such thing as "uncrackable" DRM. Another thing; how can they be happy with a 96% detection rate?! What about the other 4% that paid for the goddamn movie that won't be able to watch it because of this DRM?
The only thing DRM ever does is fuck over the customers that actually pay for the stuff, and the pirates always find their way around DRM anyway. The companies that do DRM are only wasting their money and driving away the good paying customers by turning them into pirates.
If a consumer finds it difficult to consume a product that they fucking paid for, they're gonna simply steal it because it's easier for them. Simple as that.
The MPAA needs to get their dicks outta their asses and realize what is really going on.
----------------------------------------------------------------
FIX THE GODDAMN FILTER!! IT'S WORSE THAN FUCKING OUTLOOK.
LatiosXT
May 09, 2010 at 8:17am
Am I missing something here? I don't see this anywhere being DRM in the sense like Sony's or whatever that Super Audio CD format does. This is just a digital watermark used to track down pirated copies. Whether or not it actually does something that's a privacy invasion, like you need a key or the movie starts sending your info to the internet police, I don't know. But from the looks of it, this pretty much looks like some digital watermarking I saw at an IEEE meet at my university where a company was solving the issue of watermarking movies that even gets by the so-called analog barrier (i.e, using a camcorder to record the movie)
So honestly, I think people are just waving their arms around over nothing.
It's funny how people blow this up, and yet they've seemingly forgotten about oh, I don't know, HDCP? Oh look, don't have HDCP stuff? No HD content for you! Has it hurt anyone yet? No.
To0nces
May 08, 2010 at 5:50am
Companies still waste their time and money creating new DRM? They haven't figured out that it's ALWAYS cracked?
What's next on their agenda? Perhaps they will make it like Ubisoft's DRM, requiring you to be online at all times to watch your movie. Except that will be cracked too.
SillyElf74
May 08, 2010 at 12:35am
I found it interesting that they are satisfied with a 96% detection rate. Unless you can be right 100% of the time, honest people (aka the non pirates) will be the ones who are affected by this. Pirates will always find a way around these kinds of counter-measures, we all know that. For gods sake, DVD Shrink still works on 95% of the movies out there, and it has not been supported for years. The movie industry is clinging to a dying business model, and manufacturers like NEC are more than willing to help them try to retain whatever they can. The ironic thing is NEC is ultimately hurting it's customers with this.
Good by to fair use is right. The MPAA has to understand that fair use is something they need to accept, as the music industry has to a large extent. I have kids that treat DVD's roughly. I think it's fair to make a back up of that movie movie that I purchased. Essentially this kind of technology (along with things like the ACTA treaty) make it clear that when you buy a movie, your only paying for the right to playback that movie. Even though you paid for the DVD and own the physical media, anything other than playing it is illegal.
The MPAA and others should spend less time working on ways to invade my hard drive with spyware and more on ways to give the consumers the content in a way that works for a savvy, high tech consumer.
JohnP
May 08, 2010 at 1:37pm
Folks come into our library and take out a dozen DVD's at a time. an entire room is filled with just DVDs. The library likes it because a lot of the DVDs are donated and it shows the town board that the library is a busy place. But when DVDs outlend something called, what's their name again?, Oh, BOOKS, then there is a thorny issue going on.
Saigua
May 08, 2010 at 11:10pm
Thorny how? Is you is or is you ain't coddling film study in along with flick dorking and catalog search abuse, dawdling with flatscreen/CRT, and title (license really, but title-derived) smurfing?
fusobotic
May 08, 2010 at 6:35am
This makes me wonder, how the heck are video rentals legal!? Think about it. They practically share their videos with customers, and even worse, they make a profit out of it. Same thing with libraries, and they're government funded! Maybe I don't know something about some kind of contract between every rental retailer and movie companies, but from what you say, it doesn't seem right.
aviaggio
May 08, 2010 at 8:14am
Because they don't make copies. It's perfectly legal to buy a movie and then lend it to anyone you want, even for a fee, so long as you are giving them the original disc.
Legal for now anyway. The MPAA has long lamented how the rental market destroys their profits and sends millions of poor film workers to bed at night without any supper (yet the industry continues to make billions in profits every year -- how exactly does this work out?). They would like nothing less to see the end of places like Netflix. They want you to buy DVDs, not rent them. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they start pushing to make rentals illegal.
CentiZen
May 09, 2010 at 11:09am
It's not perfectly legal to lend a DVD that you have bought, and certainly not for a fee. Haven't you seen all the stickers on every new DVD saying "DO NOT LEND OR MAKE COPIES OF THIS DISC". Video rental stores pay loads of royalties to all the movie companies to be able to lend out their media. And your right, even now they are trying to beat out rental stores by trying to force them into 60%+ royalties.
fusobotic
May 10, 2010 at 2:49pm
So a SWAT team will knock down your door if they see you watching a movie you brought to your friends? (yeah technically) See how convoluted copyrights get when it comes to digital media?
Saigua
May 07, 2010 at 11:39pm
Do they truly dream of making people pay residuals every time they reference Aliens; stopping the practice; or just making bit actors into unstoppable political capital?
It's to be integrated (fingerprintwise) into the MPEG7 content description profile, so it's more like citation is given for fair use examples...unless the use windows the original content, in which case it's perhaps like a citation within SGML documentation markup, like documentation and FAA filings for flotation seats. Which means your Blu-NeXT machine foams madly at any complex or self-aware work.
Likewise as per The Show last night, you would have to hit the cross-license button on your MPEG7 device's button 30 times during any given episode of Lost or V. The venerable edit deck's jog shuttle dial has been replaced in this scheme with a SeaMan control pak where you have to say the actress' name again and again as she gets more scenes; you have to say it backwards to replay a scene and get the producing directors' names right in any shows she may reference.
Within the shletl you can just say yenta for anyone, though. Heh heh.
roninnder
May 08, 2010 at 3:15am
Could you repost this in english please? From what little I could translate I might be interested in what you're talking about.
Saigua
May 08, 2010 at 11:26pm
The original is sufficient. You can't just level up in a cave and expect to handle everything.
Arrowdodger
May 07, 2010 at 7:03pm
Is this just another way to scan p2p networks for pirated content? If so, split .rar archives. Problem solved.
Saigua
May 08, 2010 at 11:20pm
Since it covers even very short excerpts, perhaps RARchives (split any other way than infinitesimally) are less demonstrably opaque to this scanner, even with secure RAR passwords affecting the stream. Moreover if your filesystem is on the cloud with the RARs, you can at least hope to be flabbergasted (under some schema) with an arbitrary bill for delivering a stiff Jean-Luc Picard-like Duncan Macbeth in your filmed Community Shakespeare.
Danthrax66
May 07, 2010 at 6:51pm
Yeah this is all fine and good for the mpaa but how are they going to get legal access to scan my pc for pirated content?
Live, Learn, and Shut the Fuck Up.
Mark17
May 07, 2010 at 6:24pm
They think they can stop piracy? Lol. This new DRM-like technology will be cracked before it's even released. All this does is screw over the paying customers. If people want to pirate it, they will find a way. I gurantee it.
WarCrime342
May 07, 2010 at 6:13pm
So... after the software detects pirated video, then what happens? I fail to follow what the consequences are.
Mighty BOB!
May 07, 2010 at 7:00pm
I dunno, I can see Google and video hosting sites using this to filter content like they already do when scanning audio, but I don't see what else they can do with it.
There's no way in hell I'm ever switching to a format that needs to be connected to the Internet to let the man scan it. I mean it's true that these idiot publishers are stupid enough to get behind that kind of format, but I'm not. Neither are the pirates, which completely would negate the purpose, so I don't think that could be what they have in mind for this.
aviaggio
May 07, 2010 at 6:59pm
Exactly. Sounds like something they would use to find stuff on YouTube. I can't see how this tech would help them any other way.
Vual
May 07, 2010 at 4:57pm
I just dont understand why these companies spend all this time and MONEY on some form of security that will be cracked in a short amount of time. Windows 7, lol. Skid-Row managed to crack the new DRM less than a day.
The Blu-ray disc format was designed in order to stop software
pirates from creating and selling movies in high-definition resolution. You would think they would figure out --MADE BY SOFTWARE---CRACKED BY SOFTWARE--
Neufeldt2002
May 07, 2010 at 3:52pm
Another DRM solution that is written to fail. Even if this solution "works" how long before fair use comes into play? I think it is time to look at buying the solution from Slysoft.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
The stupidest question that you could ever ask is the one you never do.
Caboose
May 07, 2010 at 4:03pm
AnyDVD (HD) is an awesome app! I love it!
-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-
thesmilies
May 07, 2010 at 3:43pm
Who cares? If Ubisoft's "Unbreakable" DRM can get cracked, then this is a speedbump / just another way to screw over legit consumers.
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