Warner Bros. Accused of Pirating Anti-Pirating Tech 228
psycho12345 writes "German firm Medien Patent Verwaltung claims that in 2003, it revealed a new kind of anti-piracy technology to Warner Bros. that marks films with specific codes so pirated copies can be traced back to their theaters of origin. But like a great, hilariously ironic DRM Ouroborus, the company claims that Warner began using the system throughout Europe in 2004 but hasn't actually paid a dime for it."
Novel? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure this is anything new. Map makers include fake streets. I believe a similar technique - making seemingly identical but subtly different documents - has been used in counter-spying to find the source of leaks.
Re:Novel? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm somewhat surprised this is allowed. Making a mistake is one thing, but purposely falsifying information that someone is paying you for (perhaps even specifically for the accuracy!) is another.
Is this one of those things that is actually allowed by law or just unenforceable because they can claim it was a mistake?
Re:Novel? (Score:5, Interesting)
Whether it is, or ought to be, patentable is not something I can really comment on; but I would strongly suspect that the actual method being employed is considerably different than historical examples in the same broad conceptual vein.
Re:Novel? (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe a similar technique - making seemingly identical but subtly different documents - has been used in counter-spying to find the source of leaks.
Serial numbers are printed on currency & bonds, and appear on labels on most types of consumer electronics, automobiles, etc. This is the same basic concept. Uniquely identifying something isn't new or nefarious. I'm pretty sure all color printers 'hide' something in each print, and I wouldn't be surprised if digital cameras did too.
Patents? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I Hope they sue (Score:5, Interesting)
Really, I hope this turns into one of those messy public court snafu's that really grab public attention and cause a real raucus.
This can only benefit from all the publicity it can generate.
If it goes to court WB will probably have to open up their claims & records on piracy, counterfeiting, etc to examination and scrutiny. This could be a valuable crack in their "pandora's box" of exaggerated statistics.
Translation (Score:5, Interesting)
"Medien Patent Verwaltung" translates to the English "Media Patent Administration". They don't even concatenate it to one word, as one would expect from normal German grammar - looks like it came straight out of translate.google.com.
Now I wonder what the German word for "patent troll" would be.... Hmmm, the German wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] has various translations, I like "Patentparasit" best.
From TFA: (Score:2, Interesting)
"Medien Patent Verwaltung originally claimed that Warner was infringing on patent 7,187,633, called "Motion Picture and Anti-Piracy Coding," but as The Hollywood Reporter discovered, the patent going by that particular name actually bears a different number and is held by none other than Warner Bros. MPV's attorney in New York acknowledged the error and said that the suit will be refiled with the proper information."
Is this funny that MPV's attorney mixed up patent name, or pathetic that MVP's attorney can't keep the patent name straight?
Or both?
If it were me, I would have a backup lawyer. Just in case. Not an auspicious start.
Re:Novel? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Do as I say--- (Score:3, Interesting)
Like all the movie companies being based in Hollywood ... so they were far enough away from the holders of all the movie technology so thy could make movies without paying them ....
Re:Novel? (Score:3, Interesting)
Many companies (naming no names) produce such truly appalling maps that it would be hard to tell the difference between deliberate mistakes and genuine ones.
IME, the only parts of the world where this is not a huge problem are where there already exists a very good mapping agency that licenses data to other companies (such as the Ordnance Survey in the UK).
Re:Watermarking!=Piracy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Novel? (Score:5, Interesting)
The answer is that you put in some crappy little 1-block dead-end streets here and there.
There's sometimes entire towns that only exist on paper [googlesightseeing.com].
Someone even wrote a book about that [google.com].
Re:Everybody owes everybody else (Score:3, Interesting)
The cue here is the fact that mankind slowly but surely approaches that deciding point in time where everyone owes everyone else, directly or indirectly, money, but is unable to pay. Just look at U.S. - trillions in debt, everything is just promised back in promises themselves. Everything is in a perpetual state of "I owe you" . That's hardly news, since, ironically, the very natural state of existence is owing eachother. The problem is converting this into real value, and demanding it back. That's the difference part.
Well now, the banks don't appear to owe me a dime.
They DO owe everybody an enormous and rapidly mounting spiritual debt, (and collection will take place in due course), but according to the rules, they rightfully hold all the cash. But "Render unto Caesar", right?
Now, the movement of power would certainly make sense if it were circular, (as you seem to suggest), but it has been hijacked into a pyramid shape with the banks nearer the top, and the slaves and livestock at the bottom with nobody but the Earth and Sun paying them any energy, (and certainly not in cash form!). Of course, there's plenty to go around, but the psychopaths in charge don't see it that way; those spiritual black-holes want it all and so devised the banking system whereby unpayable debt is the product of the machine; a large sucking sound, bigger than all of creation. They're in direct competition with the Earth and Sun for goodness sake! They want to climb back into the womb so badly that they are willing to extinguish all of reality to do it. Stupid fuckers.
The whole thing is only 'natural' in the sense that greed and lack of conscience are naturally occurring forces. But that doesn't mean that they HAVE to organize themselves the way we see them here on our world.
Interestingly, since the pyramid scheme is inherently unstable, it will inevitably reach a point where it collapses leaving us with the option of reorganizing in a less stupid way. But in general, this doesn't happen very often, and I'm not even sure it would be desirable. -Well. . , it would be amazing and comfortable to live on a world like that, but it seems that the lessons young souls need to go through involve growing conscience and giving up greed, and the best way to do that is to live through and experience and the consequences of the various Dharmatic forces (or whatever your want to call them) connected to the big money/usury/slave-keeping scheme. -Greed and stupidity and the big Karma-whammie at the other end.
It's a bit of a pain in the arse, though, even if nobody is kicking you directly. I guess one of the reasons I'm still here is that some days I dearly want to do the kicking.
-FL
Let's cut the bullshit. HERE is the rule... (Score:3, Interesting)
You, the little people, have to do whatever we tell you to do. We are going to take your crops and your land and whatever else we feel like taking. You owe us everything. We're the landowners. We're the powerful, and the power we have was taken from you and we use it to take more power from you. Okay? That's how it works. You bottom, We Top. Got it?
There are NO rational arguments. You can spin them all day if you want. Point out our hypocrisies, call for legal action. We don't care. Hell, we encourage it! It keeps you idiots occupied, living under the illusion that this is some kind of level playing field. Ha ha! Yeah, go right on thinking that. -Believe that if you work hard enough that you too can be wealthy. Ha ha! Yeah, about that. . , truth is we only let a couple of people up that lottery ladder to keep you idiots mollified, and they're only the psychopaths and other favored sons who know how to play ball. And even they don't get into the inner circles. Now way! Obama and Gates and fucking Schwarzenegger are clowns in the court of the truly wealthy, (who, by the way were, the same families who really WERE stealing your crops a few hundred years ago). Those court jesters are there just to keep you retards happily taking the shit end of the stick. Ha ha! The serfs love their stupid little lotteries. What a bunch of inferior assholes you are! Ha ha!
Now where were we. . ?
Oh yeah. We can do whatever we want, steal, rape and pillage and you can do NOTHING. Got it?
Good. I'm glad we could cut through this bullshit. Have a rotten day.
-The Mgt.
Re:Novel? (Score:1, Interesting)
The problem is that once the watermark embedding algorithm is known, it's basically game over.
Let's take that paper you link to: it transforms the luminance of the I-frames to a wavelet domain, replaces the least-significant-bytes of the DWT coefficients with the (supposedly "robustized") watermark and then it transforms them back (inverse DWT) and the chrominance channels are added to the signal.
I wonder what happens if take the same video and replace the LSB of the DWT coefficients by white noise...
The whole problem is that the watermarking algorithm requires that some of the data of the video is replaced by the watermark, but it has to be done in a way that the quality of the video itself is not significantly fucked up. As long as we know where that data is/how that data is stored, it's simply a question of replacing it by anything else (and, due to the way watermarking is implemented, it's _guaranteed_ that there must be a way, for each watermarking algorithm, to do it in a way that is perceptually neutral).
And _even_ if the watermarking algorithm is unknown... comparing different instances of the same video and statistical analysis can go a long way ;)
Re:Novel? (Score:1, Interesting)
Oddly, there are even cities that are all buildings and completely devoid of people [zerohedge.com].
Re:"Content" producers are "theives" anyway (Score:3, Interesting)
To be honest, I think your post is a "troll expressing a popular sentiment". Nonetheless, I feel you are inaccurate. (And thus, I am trolled...)
All "content" is based on common ideas and techniques. Be they musical, lyrical, dramatic, or technological ideas and techniques, they come from us, the general populace, and the previous authors, musicians etc.
So, you believe that, for instance, authors should not be paid by publishers, because the authors produce the "content" of the books that publishers print? The authors are abusing public cultural knowledge etc, while the publishers are making a physical good, right?
I find that an author paid is an author more prolific, since they can (ideally) use the time they'd otherwise spend earning their crust in writing more words. Since I desire more books (by authors I favor), I favor their being paid for their work.
The ideal of DRM is, in its own right, the idea of building a wall around a public good.
This only applies if you think, as you have implied, that a creator may never have control of his creation: that in the instant of creation, it becomes a "public good". It is where the public definition of how a creative work transitions from being a "private good" to being a "public good" that copyright law and patent law are all about. How you distinguish between the creation of a painting or statue (which produces a physical object, presumably with property rights), with the creation of a digital image (which exists as patterns of electrons) is unclear. Are you saying that anyone may duplicate my painting and sell it, even labeling it as my work, without my having a right to complain? After all, it was a work of "creation, based on common ideas and techniques". If not a painting, how less a digital image? Or a series of them?
But that argument is to a degree dishonest, conflating property rights to an object with creative rights (right to distribute). However, the painting analogy remains: if the creative work is a "public good" without restriction, I could not complain about your duplicating it, nor even with your passing the copy off as my work. No restriction, remember?
Personally, I feel that yes, copyright terms have been extended much, much too far. I view this as a lobbying failure on OUR part. (Note, the congressmen's pockets... er, ears... are still available.)
And yes, I feel that software should not be patented. I'll point out, however, that patents cover processes (read: techniques), something you railed at in your first sentence but ignored thereafter. Perhaps you'd like to add something about how taking out a patent - regardless of inventive merits - is a similar "taking of a public good"?