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Microsoft’s New Patent Identifies Pirated Content: Flags Repeat Offenders
- userbinator 9y agoEncryption --- along with unenlightening file naming, etc. --- seems like it would make this pretty trivial to bypass. Share the encrypted file and share the keys somewhere else.
- jackvalentine 9y agoI presume this will have the same faults as YouTube's Content ID: - Can't identify when it is fair use. - Can't identify when the user has licensed the content outside of the system for use.
- jjcm 9y agoYoutube and Soundcloud's content ID engines effectively killed the genre of mashups. There was a pretty vibrant community with a lot of new artists on both, with rooms on plug.dj and even turntable.fm back in the day. Then the content ID engines hit and one by one every mashup artist (with the exception of girltalk) had their work taken down by poor fingerprinting. It was such a massacre we took to making http://mashup.fm http://mashup.fm which used youtube-dl to cache everything locally, but by then it was too late. All the artists stopped creating content because they didn't want to be permabanned from these huge services. I worry what by-catch Microsoft's engine will leave in its wake.
- Mayzie 9y agoWarning for those with sound turned on. The website automatically plays music at full volume.
- annnnd 9y agoI hate this. There really should be a setting in browser so that I don't allow sound from any website unless I explicitly click the speaker icon in tab bar. Annoying as hell.
- msl 9y agoIf you use Firefox, go to about:config and set "media.autoplay.enabled" to false. A few web sites throw a fit when they can't autoplay, but that's a price I'm willing to pay.
- alexsays 9y agoIt's probably one of the worst faux pars you can make in UX. I'd appreciate it if they wouldn't announce to everyone in the bathroom what I'm browsing
- kuschku 9y agoThat’s actually a default in the latest nightly. Pretty nice IMO.
- hashhar 9y agoIt'll be a default on Firefox 55. Or you can try the current Nightly.
- annnnd 9y agoYES!!! Thank you! :) EDIT: though it's not exactly what I had in mind... I want content to autoplay as normal, just the sound should be muted until I unmute it...
- magila 9y agoOr even: - Can't identify when the user is the actual copyright holder who the accuser licensed the content from. These automated systems are always going to have lots of false positives because they only know as much about the copyright status of a work as they have been told. The data entry process that drives them is inevitably going to be incomplete and error prone. Copyright enforcement in the digital age is a hard problem that I've not seen a clear solution for. The legal system around copyright that exists today is not scalable enough to handle the volume of works being produced and distributed. It's not clear what sort of system could ever hope to handle the rate of disputes coming from a site like Youtube in a judicious and economical fashion.
- flukus 9y agoYou missed the biggest one: - Can't identify content that has been cropped or had some sort of filter added. It's amazing how many blatantly copyrighted videos (tv shows and movies) like this still appear on youtube, with ads.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoSure it can. The number of tricks you have to do to a video to circumvent the content ID system makes the video difficult to watch. For example, you have to stretch the audio by some percentage or else the audio fingerprinting will ID it regardless of your filters.
- flukus 9y agoThe early circumventers did, but the newer ones don't seem to mess with the audio as much. I suspect they either went a bit too far with the initial modifications or content-id had to be dialed back a bit.
- userbinator 9y agoFor example, you have to stretch the audio by some percentage or else the audio fingerprinting will ID it regardless of your filters. A few years ago, sped-up music was uploaded to YouTube in an attempt to bypass content ID, and with the realisation that this actually made it sound better, a whole new genre --- Nightcore --- was born. ...or so the story goes, but I've seen this explanation a few times before and it does make sense.
- teddyh 9y ago“Either he’s playing classical music at 78 RPM, or I’m still dreaming.” http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/02/01 http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/02/01
- angry-hacker 9y agoA lot of soccer goals are uploaded and they are mirrored, often scoreboard and broadcasters logo blurred out. This seems to do the trick.
- doh 9y ago1) Fair use is incredibly hard to identify, especially as the intent in the center of all of it. 2) This is easy once you go multi-site. We [0] are actually doing that across many sites. [0] https://pex.com https://pex.com
- jackvalentine 9y ago1) Duh. Doesn't stop companies like Microsoft and YouTube saying "we've solved the copyright problem!" though. 2) This pex thing you've linked doesn't seem to cover the use-case I had in mind. I'm working on an analysis of XYZ Hollywood movie with a number of people working remotely (for argument's sake, with the consent of the publisher). I stick it in my OneDrive and share a link to them and they download it. MS blocks it because I'm "sharing copyrighted materials" and they don't have the context in which I'm doing it legally.
- bryondowd 9y agoIf all you need to do is transfer the file, couldn't you just use something like WinRAR to archive the file, possibly with a password?
- saint_fiasco 9y agoPirates already do the same thing.
- jackvalentine 9y agoWhy should I? I thought we were supposed to be making life easier by giving our lives to the six or seven companies that dominate our internet lives.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sfifs 9y agoSure, but you're using _their_ free platform to host _your_ content that _may_ be fair use. They have the right to be as legally cautious as they want on stuff appearing on their platform. You have the right to put your stuff on your own platform without such oversight if you want and directly deal with the legality.
- madshiva 9y agoAfter the live YouTube feature added there was a lot of channel with the Simpsons, I saw yesterday that they flipped horizontally the episode in order to don't be tracked.
- andreareina 9y agoDoesn't Dropbox already do this? IIRC they let you store anything, but block sharing a file if its hash is found in some blacklist.
- rubayeet 9y agoYep.
- DBThrowaway1492 9y agoDropbox scans user uploaded content pretty aggressively, well beyond what is legally required. It won't always do this in a visible way, either. I know child abuse images will get you silently reported to LEO (as well as anyone who views the link), but I'm not sure about copyrighted content. Personally, I would refrain from storing any pirated songs or movies on Dropbox, since I think they'd be amenable to bulk snitching to large copyright holders.
- PrimHelios 9y agoFlip a LIB somewhere in the file and it works fine, though.
- y_u_no_rust 9y agoWhat kind of idiots still use Windows?
- libertymcateer 9y agoDoes no-one see the irony in patenting an anti-piracy standard? If it is remotely effective, it will, itself, be pirated. If it is not effective, it will only make the lives worse of people who choose not to circumvent it. Additionally, I just do not see how this passes subject-matter standards post Alice.[1] Seriously disappointing to see vague algorithms of this type receive patent protection. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern...
- mrout 9y agoNot ironic. Just very fitting. They're using a failed system (patents) to try to monopolise their (probably very obvious) method of enforcing a failed monopoly system.
- donquichotte 9y agoThis is one of my pet peeves with movies as well. When I buy a DVD, I have unskippable trailers and an ad that warns me not to pirate it at the beginning. Seriously, it's about 10 minutes of crap that I need to watch to see the movie I f*ing paid for! The viewing experience with pirated movies is much more enjoyable and streamlined. I get the movie, double click on it and booom - it starts right away.
- Ntrails 9y agoI mean, I've torrented every single DvD I own and the disks sit in the attic. Strangely, not once I have missed the lack of "hilarious cut scenes" or "Directors commentary" features. Man I love clicking on a folder, scrolling for 30 secs and pressing play and the actual film just starts playing. The only thing that it fails on is remembering where I am in a series. So for eg. Blackadder I'd rather just stick on Netflix thank play in VLC
- danparsonson 9y ago> The only thing that it fails on is remembering where I am in a series. So for eg. Blackadder I'd rather just stick on Netflix thank play in VLC You can easily solve that one with something like Plex :-)
- quadrangle 9y ago> a patent which will allow the Redmond-based tech giant to identify and block users who stream files illegally over the web. NO. Patents do not allow you to do whatever. Inventions do that. Patents give you a legal monopoly over whatever it describes. Either they actually made technology for this or they didn't, and that is unrelated to whether they have a patent.
- klodolph 9y agoIt's an example of metonymy, where related objects are substituted for each other. Metonymy is a common trope. It doesn't reflect some kind of misunderstanding of the world, and if you're going to complain about metonymy you might as well complain about metaphor and irony too.
- monochromatic 9y agoNo, this is just wrong, not metonymy. It stood out to me too.
- quadrangle 9y agoThat metonymy argument would be more correct if we knew that the technology existed. Patents are filed all the time for technology that doesn't really exist (or maybe even can't really work).
- beedogs 9y agoIt'd be nice if companies would stop wasting their time trying to enforce copyright.
- nitemice 9y agoYou wouldn't say that if it was your copyright they were enforcing.
- PrimHelios 9y agoExcept I would. I just use copyright to prove I made something. Everything I do is released under CC BY-SA or (for my code) Expat/MIT licensing. Things should open, information deserves to be free, especially when people are no longer making money from the content.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nitemice 9y agoI bet you still wouldn't be happy if someone violated CC BY-SA or Expat/MIT licensing, and didn't even attribute to you. Thus, copyright still serves a purpose to you, and even for the minimal set of actions you want, it needs to be enforceable. I agree that copyright law, as it currently stands is usually mostly about screwing the little guy, in favour of some big corporation in perpetuity, but that's a separate argument to enforcement which should apply equally to all works, including yours.
- PrimHelios 9y ago>I bet you still wouldn't be happy if someone violated CC BY-SA or Expat/MIT licensing, and didn't even attribute to you. Thus, copyright still serves a purpose to you, and even for the minimal set of actions you want, it needs to be enforceable. Happy? No. Unhappy enough to pursue legal action? Hell no. >I agree that copyright law, as it currently stands is usually mostly about screwing the little guy, in favour of some big corporation in perpetuity, but that's a separate argument to enforcement which should apply equally to all works, including yours. True. I'm not arguing completely against copyright law, I just wouldn't sue someone for violating my license =P
- drewmol 9y ago>Another major blow will be to services such as Pirate Bay and Kodi. For anyone unfamiliar, KODI is an excellent, open source media center program available on most major platforms. It started as a homebrew project (called XBMC) on the original Xbox game console. The name has become synonymous with piracy to some because there are popular 3rd party add-ons which allow streaming of potentially copyrighted media via links to files on cloud hosted file storage services. Depending on a user's jurisdiction, these files may be illegal to stream without appropriate permission.
- chris_wot 9y agoSort of like BitTorrent in that it has legitimate and better known illegitimate uses?
- grub5000 9y agoSort of like the internet :)
- hasenj 9y agoNice come back, but for BitTorrent the illegal use case constitutes probably more than 95%
- dogma1138 9y agoThe stats for the Internet aren't much better, spam, porn etc....
- emiliobumachar 9y agoMost (but not all!) porn is legal. Spam, in many jurisdictions, is legal when selling something legal.
- dogma1138 9y ago
- achievingApathy 9y agoI must be missing something here. I read the entire patent and it repeatedly mentions file metadata and a "content flag" that can be toggled and read to determine if there is restricted or prohibited content included in the file or stream. So what I think this says is a copyright owner notices that you are sharing XYZ's latest movie and files a claim with the cloud provider. That metadata flag is then toggled and sharing is no longer allowed and there is some master server somewhere that tracks how many times files you have uploaded have been flagged. For this they can get a patent? Why couldn't someone just change the metadata? Or presumably change the checksum? (I think I have a really great way to actually implement something like this but I have to fill out a patent application before I tell anyone.)
- CommanderData 9y agoSo where will this be used? On bing or Windows 10?
- NTripleOne 9y ago>The company aims to use the patent to disable prohibited content and identify repeat offenders in service provider storage systems. So onedrive, more than likely.
- excalibur 9y agoWindows 10 is sort of the elephant in the room here. M$ absolutely could use these methods to determine what copyrighted material you have stored locally. However it's not as easy to say for certain that you've done anything wrong. Cracking down on sharing through their platforms is the low-hanging fruit, scouring your hard drive for known pirated files comes later.
- ForFreedom 9y agoSo as the file is downloaded it will check or while its being played? That is a bad move by windows.
- panzer_wyrm 9y agoNo news. This is for cloud services. It is not on windows from what I understood. If it has the side effects of people rolling their own clouds - the better. We really need something better anyway. The last major innovation was bittorrent in 2004...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ComodoHacker 9y agoLooks like Microsoft urged to file the patent in 2013 when DropBox started doing this. Either as a potential weapon for patent wars or "just in case".
- SeanDav 9y agoIt never ceases to amaze and frustrate me that almost every time I buy a legal DVD, I am punished by being required to watch non-skipable content warning me that pirating is illegal (I can just hear the irony dripping). This can often be followed by adverts and previews that are either difficult to skip or impossible. All this combined with the fact that I probably had to wait longer to be able to purchase the DVD legally in the first place, because of regional restrictions... Any anti-pirating scheme really should encourage, as its first priority, a smooth, hassle-free, user experience - or risk encouraging people to go over to the dark side.
- Asooka 9y agoI buy what I feel is worth buying, then pirate the superior version. I actually own blu-rays even though I have no actual blu-ray player.
- userbinator 9y agoIt's amazing how long that experience has been around and most people still put up with it; this image is at least from 2010 if not earlier: http://i.imgur.com/dXiNAhu.jpg http://i.imgur.com/dXiNAhu.jpg
- joering2 9y agoIts interesting to read that imgurl is been constantly asked to take this image down. Boy I would pay few bucks to read andyof the letters from RIAA/MPAA/lawyers et al justyfing its removal... must be priceless fun ;)
- bartl 9y agoOK maybe I'm missing something, but what is new about this patent? The schematic "how does it work" figure 6 is nothing but a napkin design. Anybody with half a braincell can make that up within 5 minutes after being introduced to the perceived problem. In other words: the subject of the patent looks to be very obvious, to me. OTOH This might discourage other companies from implementing a similar idea, which is something at some users will appreciate.
- jpalomaki 9y agoThere is nothing new. I suspect the writer of the article did not really study the patent [1]. Reading the summary and part of the text I got quite clear impression that this is ONLY about counting how many times a certain user has shared something prohibited and then blocking users who do that too many times. I don't see this patent having anything to do with actually recognising infringing content. So I don't see any real invention here. I think the only explanation for patenting this is that if you don't do it, somebody else might and then you may need to fight in court. Since filing patents is cheap (compared to going court over them and on Microsoft scale) it just makes sense to patent everything you can. [1] https://www.google.com/patents/US9614850 https://www.google.com/patents/US9614850
- Asooka 9y agoI think the innovation is in the detection algorithm that isn't shown in the article, and in the fact that it happens when the data is shared, rather than applied on data sitting in a personal account, or data identified by third-party (e.g. the rightsholder). The patent isn't available online just yet, it seems, so I can't say for certain.
- achievingApathy 9y agohttps://torrentfreak.com/images/msrep.pdf https://torrentfreak.com/images/msrep.pdf All US Patents are available online, there just isn't anything innovative or novel anywhere in the patent that I think justifies it as anything more than patent trolling.
- faragon 9y agoPirate countermeasure: store encrypted files and decrypt "on the fly".
- bcoughlan 9y agoI can't get over the triviality of that flowchart in the article. The system is well and truly broken. If anything this just allows Microsoft to extract money from any other company trying to prevent piracy on their cloud storage.
- jasonkostempski 9y agoWhat are they doing this for? Even honest people don't want to work with tattletales.
- falcolas 9y agoJust for a moment, combine this patent with Microsoft's announced willingness to look through your content. > we will access, transfer, disclose, and preserve personal data, including your content [...] when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to: > > protect the rights or property of Microsoft, including enforcing the terms governing the use of the services Sounds like a potential nightmare, especially if they can't tell the difference between legitimate backups and pirated software; of which the difference is only whether you've bought the original or not.
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoThank you Microsoft! Everyone will start licensing your technology so that now there will be only a single point of failure. And, because you're Microsoft, there will be a failure.
- madshiva 9y agoMy new patent 07-875545-99: [ SOMEBODY READ THIS ] -> [ PROFIT]