7 ms·

Australian cable provider suing people who streamed event via Facebook

45 points by kimburgess 10y ago

ioquatix 10y ago
> Rep: "It's a criminal offence against the copyright act, mate. We've got technical protection methods inside the box so exactly this thing can't happen." Ah, yeah, so "exactly this thing can't happen". Logic 101. Guess DRM was a terrific success then.
- jfoster 10y ago
  Well, it sounds like they did eventually cut his access, so that's one measure. Presumably they relied on Facebook having his real name in order to know who he was, though it's also possible that they have some stenographic watermarking.
  - girvo 10y ago
    > they have some stenographic watermarking They did. Right before access was cut, a code was watermarked on the TV, I assume it was per-box as a number so they knew who it was to cut access to.
    - i336_ 10y ago
      Whoa. Do you have any video or photographic references of this? Just really fascinated with the technicals of how they'd do that.
      - klackerz 10y ago
        My cable provider also has a unique code which flashes on TV randomly. I could provide a photo or video of it if you are interested later when I reach home.
        i336_ 10y ago
        Someone linked a photo in another comment in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13566519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13566519). If it looks significantly different to that then sure, I wouldn't mind seeing.
      - MatekCopatek 10y ago
        I work in a similar industry and many times content providers require you to implement a system for this kind of identification. It's nothing special technically, you just display a unique ID over the video on ALL client devices for a fraction of a second when a potential infringement is under way - just enough to get evidence that lets you later identify the user from the recording.
      - thejosh 10y ago
        They use to do this in UK pubs for those who were showing something on their TVs without a licensed. They tried showing an image, but the owners would just stick something covering the watermark so they wouldn't be caught q Edit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9419930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9419930
        mattmanser 10y ago
        You've got it a bit backwards, they still show a pub glass icon. It's for inspectors to see that it's a pub license, which is more expensive than a home one. The volume in the glass changes daily so you can't just put a sticker or overlay on to replicate it.
        i336_ 10y ago
        While thinking about this for a bit after reading https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9419930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9419930, I thought of something: Why not just get the home package and run it through your own overlay system? The fatal flaw here with this design is that there's nothing in place of the glass. With enough tinkering (a pub subscription and a home subscription to play with, and maybe a fortnight to a month, if that) build something that exactly reproduces the watermark. 1080i-capable HDMI capture systems are expensive but not 5-figures (or even 4-figures) expensive nowadays, and most satellite feeds don't even justify 1080i anyway. Do satellite receivers do HDCP? If they do, RGB video is still very very very good quality for 1080i, and reference-quality RGB capture systems aren't 5 figures (probably very low 4 figures). You could just output via HDMI or whatever of course. To complete the setup, you could have one place receive a legitimate broadcast, and (alongside the TVs/projectors) run that through a capture system which would do differential frame analysis to heuristically figure out what watermark is displaying at the moment. This location automatically pushes the current watermark type out to a bunch of other places - for a nice small fee. Of course, the above is said from an honest academic-security standpoint. :P
        mattmanser 10y ago
        To be able to do this, you'd need access to the pub subscription to be able to see the glass to replicate it, so why bother?
      - stordoff 10y ago
        Sky in the UK do this routinely on their sports channels (example image: https://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/bbc_sky_sports.png https://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/bbc_sky_sports.png ). IIRC, switching channels causes it to temporarily disappear, so I assume the receiver is responsible for overlaying it on the incoming video feed.
        laumars 10y ago
        It has to be the receiver because otherwise you're then sending a unique video feed to every set top box. It makes far more sense to braudcast 1 video feed and let the clients manage the unique watermarking.
jmkni 10y ago
Seems like an open and shut case, no? The guy streamed from his personal Facebook page, and answered the call during the stream, what could his defense possibly be?
- jstanley 10y ago
  Where do you draw the line? If he was streaming something else that was going on in his home and happened to have the fight on in the background, would that be OK? What if you only caught a glimpse of the fight? What if it was just audio? I think it's dangerous to let Foxtel sue this guy for streaming something that's going on inside his own home (albeit, a view of his TV).
  - chrisbolt 10y ago
    Wherever you draw the line, it's nowhere near "I've got 78,000 viewers that aren't gonna be happy with you mate" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvoJju4B11s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvoJju4B11s
    - posterboy 10y ago
      Why wouldn't it? Arcane laws modeled after theaters presenting unlicensed material are hardly the end of the stick either.
  - jsmeaton 10y ago
    This is what judges are for. In this case it's fairly easy to determine what his motive was. Broadcast a pay per view fight to thousands for free. Or do you think an audience of thousands would have been watching if he'd been talking with his family with some barely audible audio in the background?
  - vacri 10y ago
    As jsmeaton says, judges aren't idiots, and a reasonable person's interpretation of intent is used in law all the time (see murder vs manslaughter, for example). Or another example: a person I know got done for embezzling a five-figure sum from a business. She got off pretty lightly (though not scot-free), because she used those funds to feed and clothe homeless people; she wasn't doing it to profit. The action and the damage to the victim was the same, but the intent made significant difference to the legal opinion.
peternilson 10y ago
Title should read '..suing people who broadcast the event via Facebook'
codewithcheese 10y ago
I enjoyed the use of 'mate' in that conversation. No mistaking what country that conversation took place in.
tdkl 10y ago
Well this is what you get, when idiots get access to the web.
ominous 10y ago
So is there a limit on the number of people that can watch, per box? Can I watch it with my dog? With my friend? With my friend and her kids? Can I watch it during a birthday party? There will be 20 kids and their parents around, is that ok? Can each of said parents have a conference call with their buddies to watch and discuss the game? Is there a limit on the size of the tv? Can I mount a 10x5 monitor setup so people across the street can see as well? Can I project it on that publicity board? Can I twitch my reaction to the game? Can I stream the screen? Oops. Be creative. Also, "It's stealing. It's no different to video piracy or music piracy," one of the fight's promoters The usual stealing/piracy synonym. I don't remember the name, but there was this project to have a server somewhere running rtorrent continuously, piping any downloaded torrent to /dev/null, stealing and burning money as fast as bandwidth allows it.
- supercoder 10y ago
  Once the number of people at your house reach 100,000 it would seem to put the party in a different category
- flashman 10y ago
  > is there a limit on the number of people that can watch, per box? While it's not fixed, it's generally thought to be fewer than 91,000.
- nkkollaw 10y ago
  I don't think it's hard to see that streaming the event on Facebook is not what the subscription is meant for. I think it's pretty easy to discern private viewing from public viewing. You're not allowed to distribute the content. Don't tell me that those people didn't know they weren't supposed to stream someone else's content on Facebook.
  - ominous 10y ago
    "meant to" is not something that is factored into purchase. And what should, or should not be done is so subjective it's meaningless.
Walf 10y ago
Dazza, maaaaaaate. You fuckwit. You glorious fuckwit.
technion 10y ago
Note, Telstra isn't "just" a cable provider. They currently own nearly all of the landline market, large portions of the Internet provider market, and the mobile carrier market. This randomly Googled page looks about accurate: https://www.statista.com/statistics/326147/number-of-broadband-subscribers-in-australia/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/326147/number-of-broadba...
- viraptor 10y ago
  For the UK people, it's like BT before openreach, with extra mobile business.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    So it's like BT now since OpenReach is still under their thumb and they bought EE a while ago.
airbreather 10y ago
$60 to watch at home was unreasonable - definitely the law was broken, but this is what happens when they charge unreasonable amounts, it was almost a form of civil disobedience. I would say that a lot of people who watched it on the streaming were not going to pay anyway, so the loss was probably minimal in reality. If you really wanted to watch and did not have the Foxtel or the money you could have gone to the pub, or a mates, anyway.
- technion 10y ago
  $60 is only the price if you have an existing Foxtel contract, which is an increasingly poor proposition these days. My parents pay $120 per month for their Foxtel subscription and honestly there's better viewing on Netflix.
  - airbreather 10y ago
    Totally agree, but some people get it for the sport. I just go to the pub or local bowling club if there is something I want to see.
RileyJames 10y ago
It seems like Darren (Dazza, to his mates) knew what he was doing. But the second example is more reasonable. A guy, trying to share with a few mates, doesn't realise it's public (google hangouts can be confusing when sharing, could easily lead to making it public instead), suddenly 100,000 people are watching. Yes, it's illegal either way. But the intent is very different. With the role technology plays in our lives now this use case (a few friends) it's more akin to inviting those mates to physically attend the viewing, in which no law was broken. Looks like Dazza needs a few more mates: https://www.gofundme.com/9rp4a2-legal-cost https://www.gofundme.com/9rp4a2-legal-cost

45 points by kimburgess 10y ago

> Rep: "It's a criminal offence against the copyright act, mate. We've got technical protection methods inside the box so exactly this thing can't happen." Ah, yeah, so "exactly this thing can't happen". Logic 101. Guess DRM was a terrific success then.

jfoster 10y ago
Well, it sounds like they did eventually cut his access, so that's one measure. Presumably they relied on Facebook having his real name in order to know who he was, though it's also possible that they have some stenographic watermarking.
- girvo 10y ago
  > they have some stenographic watermarking They did. Right before access was cut, a code was watermarked on the TV, I assume it was per-box as a number so they knew who it was to cut access to.
  - i336_ 10y ago
    Whoa. Do you have any video or photographic references of this? Just really fascinated with the technicals of how they'd do that.
    - klackerz 10y ago
      My cable provider also has a unique code which flashes on TV randomly. I could provide a photo or video of it if you are interested later when I reach home.
      - i336_ 10y ago
        Someone linked a photo in another comment in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13566519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13566519). If it looks significantly different to that then sure, I wouldn't mind seeing.
    - MatekCopatek 10y ago
      I work in a similar industry and many times content providers require you to implement a system for this kind of identification. It's nothing special technically, you just display a unique ID over the video on ALL client devices for a fraction of a second when a potential infringement is under way - just enough to get evidence that lets you later identify the user from the recording.
    - thejosh 10y ago
      They use to do this in UK pubs for those who were showing something on their TVs without a licensed. They tried showing an image, but the owners would just stick something covering the watermark so they wouldn't be caught q Edit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9419930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9419930
      - mattmanser 10y ago
        You've got it a bit backwards, they still show a pub glass icon. It's for inspectors to see that it's a pub license, which is more expensive than a home one. The volume in the glass changes daily so you can't just put a sticker or overlay on to replicate it.
        i336_ 10y ago
        While thinking about this for a bit after reading https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9419930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9419930, I thought of something: Why not just get the home package and run it through your own overlay system? The fatal flaw here with this design is that there's nothing in place of the glass. With enough tinkering (a pub subscription and a home subscription to play with, and maybe a fortnight to a month, if that) build something that exactly reproduces the watermark. 1080i-capable HDMI capture systems are expensive but not 5-figures (or even 4-figures) expensive nowadays, and most satellite feeds don't even justify 1080i anyway. Do satellite receivers do HDCP? If they do, RGB video is still very very very good quality for 1080i, and reference-quality RGB capture systems aren't 5 figures (probably very low 4 figures). You could just output via HDMI or whatever of course. To complete the setup, you could have one place receive a legitimate broadcast, and (alongside the TVs/projectors) run that through a capture system which would do differential frame analysis to heuristically figure out what watermark is displaying at the moment. This location automatically pushes the current watermark type out to a bunch of other places - for a nice small fee. Of course, the above is said from an honest academic-security standpoint. :P
        mattmanser 10y ago
        To be able to do this, you'd need access to the pub subscription to be able to see the glass to replicate it, so why bother?
    - stordoff 10y ago
      Sky in the UK do this routinely on their sports channels (example image: https://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/bbc_sky_sports.png https://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/bbc_sky_sports.png ). IIRC, switching channels causes it to temporarily disappear, so I assume the receiver is responsible for overlaying it on the incoming video feed.
      - laumars 10y ago
        It has to be the receiver because otherwise you're then sending a unique video feed to every set top box. It makes far more sense to braudcast 1 video feed and let the clients manage the unique watermarking.

jmkni 10y ago

Seems like an open and shut case, no? The guy streamed from his personal Facebook page, and answered the call during the stream, what could his defense possibly be?

jstanley 10y ago
Where do you draw the line? If he was streaming something else that was going on in his home and happened to have the fight on in the background, would that be OK? What if you only caught a glimpse of the fight? What if it was just audio? I think it's dangerous to let Foxtel sue this guy for streaming something that's going on inside his own home (albeit, a view of his TV).
- chrisbolt 10y ago
  Wherever you draw the line, it's nowhere near "I've got 78,000 viewers that aren't gonna be happy with you mate" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvoJju4B11s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvoJju4B11s
  - posterboy 10y ago
    Why wouldn't it? Arcane laws modeled after theaters presenting unlicensed material are hardly the end of the stick either.
- jsmeaton 10y ago
  This is what judges are for. In this case it's fairly easy to determine what his motive was. Broadcast a pay per view fight to thousands for free. Or do you think an audience of thousands would have been watching if he'd been talking with his family with some barely audible audio in the background?
- vacri 10y ago
  As jsmeaton says, judges aren't idiots, and a reasonable person's interpretation of intent is used in law all the time (see murder vs manslaughter, for example). Or another example: a person I know got done for embezzling a five-figure sum from a business. She got off pretty lightly (though not scot-free), because she used those funds to feed and clothe homeless people; she wasn't doing it to profit. The action and the damage to the victim was the same, but the intent made significant difference to the legal opinion.

peternilson 10y ago

Title should read '..suing people who broadcast the event via Facebook'

codewithcheese 10y ago

I enjoyed the use of 'mate' in that conversation. No mistaking what country that conversation took place in.

tdkl 10y ago

Well this is what you get, when idiots get access to the web.

ominous 10y ago

So is there a limit on the number of people that can watch, per box? Can I watch it with my dog? With my friend? With my friend and her kids? Can I watch it during a birthday party? There will be 20 kids and their parents around, is that ok? Can each of said parents have a conference call with their buddies to watch and discuss the game? Is there a limit on the size of the tv? Can I mount a 10x5 monitor setup so people across the street can see as well? Can I project it on that publicity board? Can I twitch my reaction to the game? Can I stream the screen? Oops. Be creative. Also, "It's stealing. It's no different to video piracy or music piracy," one of the fight's promoters The usual stealing/piracy synonym. I don't remember the name, but there was this project to have a server somewhere running rtorrent continuously, piping any downloaded torrent to /dev/null, stealing and burning money as fast as bandwidth allows it.

supercoder 10y ago
Once the number of people at your house reach 100,000 it would seem to put the party in a different category
flashman 10y ago
> is there a limit on the number of people that can watch, per box? While it's not fixed, it's generally thought to be fewer than 91,000.
nkkollaw 10y ago
I don't think it's hard to see that streaming the event on Facebook is not what the subscription is meant for. I think it's pretty easy to discern private viewing from public viewing. You're not allowed to distribute the content. Don't tell me that those people didn't know they weren't supposed to stream someone else's content on Facebook.
- ominous 10y ago
  "meant to" is not something that is factored into purchase. And what should, or should not be done is so subjective it's meaningless.

Walf 10y ago

Dazza, maaaaaaate. You fuckwit. You glorious fuckwit.

technion 10y ago

Note, Telstra isn't "just" a cable provider. They currently own nearly all of the landline market, large portions of the Internet provider market, and the mobile carrier market. This randomly Googled page looks about accurate: https://www.statista.com/statistics/326147/number-of-broadband-subscribers-in-australia/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/326147/number-of-broadba...

viraptor 10y ago
For the UK people, it's like BT before openreach, with extra mobile business.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  So it's like BT now since OpenReach is still under their thumb and they bought EE a while ago.

airbreather 10y ago

$60 to watch at home was unreasonable - definitely the law was broken, but this is what happens when they charge unreasonable amounts, it was almost a form of civil disobedience. I would say that a lot of people who watched it on the streaming were not going to pay anyway, so the loss was probably minimal in reality. If you really wanted to watch and did not have the Foxtel or the money you could have gone to the pub, or a mates, anyway.

technion 10y ago
$60 is only the price if you have an existing Foxtel contract, which is an increasingly poor proposition these days. My parents pay $120 per month for their Foxtel subscription and honestly there's better viewing on Netflix.
- airbreather 10y ago
  Totally agree, but some people get it for the sport. I just go to the pub or local bowling club if there is something I want to see.

RileyJames 10y ago

It seems like Darren (Dazza, to his mates) knew what he was doing. But the second example is more reasonable. A guy, trying to share with a few mates, doesn't realise it's public (google hangouts can be confusing when sharing, could easily lead to making it public instead), suddenly 100,000 people are watching. Yes, it's illegal either way. But the intent is very different. With the role technology plays in our lives now this use case (a few friends) it's more akin to inviting those mates to physically attend the viewing, in which no law was broken. Looks like Dazza needs a few more mates: https://www.gofundme.com/9rp4a2-legal-cost https://www.gofundme.com/9rp4a2-legal-cost