Category Archives: Copyright

Some updates concerning older topics

Posted on by
Reply

In September, I reported that the French TV recording service wizzgo was not allowed to record M6 and W9. Last week, the court banished TF1 and NT1 (a subsidiary of TF1) from the service. Meanwhile, all the channels of France Television group were also banned. Only a few channels remain available through this service.

More and more Free To Air broadcasters propose a system of catchup TV. And of course, they expect to secure their advertising revenues. This type of service would cannibalize these revenues. Wizzgo wil have to find another business model.

In September, I also reported the massive campaign against DRM for the game Spore. The creators of the game “World of Goo” have reported that they estimate that the PC version of their game has been pirated at 90% (more accurately 82%). On their blog, they explain their measurement methods. They record the IP addresses of the highest scores reported to their server. World of Goo is not protected by DRM.

The conclusions of the creators is that DRM is worthless, because another game that was protected by DRM had the same piracy level. :Sad: His conclusion is also that for 1000 deterred pirated instances, you gain one purchased version. I am not sure that this ratio would be valid for a blockbuster. If you sadly want the game, and have no alternate solution than purchase it, would you miss the game?

Brilliant Digital offers a new filtering technology

Posted on by
Reply

Brilliant Digital Entertainment announces a new technology for ISPs. Once the ISP detects that the request concerns an illegal audio files, it would block the link and propose an alternative link to purchase a legal version. The company already proposes legal distribution using P2P.

Some interesting facts:
– The announce of this new technology has been made by two former rivals: Kevin Bermeister (formerly KaZaa) and Michael Speck (former anti piracy of Music Industry Piracy Investigations)
– The business model is interesting. Brilliant Digital Entertainment would share some part of their revenues gained from sales with the ISPs.

Now, let’s have a look on the technical tidbits. Very few information are available (only the announcement). The site itself has no reference to the new technology. It seems that the ISPs would intercept the request of the illegal file. This means two things:

  • A mean to detect illegal files; It is probably associated to a list of hash codes of contents that have been spotted as illegal. Similar work will have to be done for instance for French graduated answer. Fingerprinting technologies should allow to find some infringing files.
  • A mean to spot the request; In view of the described method When the architecture of the internet that has our technology recognizes one of those proven illicit files, it blocks it, disconnects the link to it and adds to the search results the opportunity to purchase the legitimate material , I would guess that they replace the illegal trackers by legal trackers powered by AltNet (the technology of Brilliant Digital). It means that they have a way to spoof the request.

As a rough analysis, the second point may be Achilles heel. This may work if the request is done using a typical browser calling the tracker sites. It may be more difficult if using dedicated tools such as Che for instance. With collaborating tracker sites, they could secure the answer.

It is an interesting initiative that we have to follow.

Is French HADOPI law dead? (3)

Posted on by
Reply

The story about HADOPI continues. On 31st October, French Senate, the upper parliamentary chamber, has voted with a huge majority the law “Création et Internet”. This law allows the implementation of the graduated riposte. An amendment has been appended that would restrict the blocking to a given set of services. Mrs ALBANEL, the French minister of Culture, announced that HADOPI would not stop access to phone and TV services (if possible).

Nevertheless, it is still not clear if this law is not overruled by the EU amendment 138 (see Is French HADOPI law dead?)

More information about this law will be available in next next security newsletter (due in less than two weeks).

Michael Moore, rights and P2P

Posted on by
Reply

Michael Moore, the brilliant provocative essayist, wanted to provide for free his latest documentary “Slacker Uprising.” Thus, he offered it on the Net at http://www.slackeruprising.com/. Unfortunately, the download does only work for US and Canadian citizens. Michael Moore does only hold rights for US Canada, but not for the rest of the world.

Without surprise, soon “Slacker Uprising” was available on P2P sites. Rumors claimed that the leakage was perhaps not unintentional. In a recent interview for TorrentFreak, he seems to confirm the rumors. In any case, Michael Moore is happy of these torrents.

This is not a surprise. If your objective is to denounce a problem (as claimed by Michael Moore), then your goal is to get the largest audience possible (and not to make the largest earning possible). Then P2P is a channel of distribution that you must not avoid. P2P offers both a large audience and a defense against censorship.

Would Emile Zola have made a video version of his famous “J’accuse” and distributed over YouTube and BitTorrent?

VOD before DVD in Korea

Posted on by
Reply

Movie delivery is ruled by a strategy called “release windows”. It means that a movie is not available at the same time for all distribution channel. The traditional sequence is “Theater – Hospitality (airplanes, hotels, …) – DVD/rental – VOD – Premium channel – Pay TV – Fre To Air.”

It is believed that one of the reason of the slow take off of VOD is the availability of illegal DVDs before VOD. People are willing to pay a few dollars (euros or whatever money in their country) to get an earlier access even if an illegal one. In theory, offering VOD before DVD should thwart this type of behaviour.

Thus, Warner Bros announced the release of VOD before DVDs in Korea. If successful, this strategy may be generalized to China. Why Korea? Because Korea is probably the country with the best broadband network and the higher penetration of broadband. Thus, download times should be negligible and potential customers larger. Will it work? I am not sure. According to me, two conditions have to be simultaneously present:
1- The VOD release occurs at the same time than “release” of illegal DVDs. Currently, illegal DVDs pop up soon after (if not before) the first worldwide theatrical release.
2- The price of VOD has to be near the price of an illegal DVD.
Another solution could be that VOD offers attractive goodies not available on illegal DVDs (this is less obvious)

I find the strategy used in China more interesting. Warner and Paramount offer legit DVDs at a price near the price of illegal DVDs. Customers may be ready to pay a little more to have a guaranteed quality product.

For sure, the traditional release windows will drastically change in the coming years. We already see a sever shrinking in the duration of the different phases. The delay between theatrical release and legit DVD constantly erodes.

Is French Hadopi law dead? (2)

Posted on by
Reply

On 24th September, by voting the amendment 138 proposed by Daniel Cohn Bendit, European Parliament strongly hit the French initiative HADOPI for flexible response (see Is French HADOPI Law dead?. in a letter (pdf) , French president, Nicolas Sarkozy asked José Manuel Barosso (President of the European Commission) to drop this amendment.
It seems that yesterday José Manuel Barroso rejected the possibility for the Commission to reject it. It is not the role of EC to censorship a decision voted by 90% of the European deputies, unless democracy is at stake. It will be up the European Council of Ministers to promulgate or drop amendment 138.

[Edition 13-oct]: Here is a link to the press release by the Commission.

MPAA 1 – RealDVD 0

Posted on by
Reply

A judge has ordered RealNetwork to stop selling its new RealDVD software. Here is what is currently displayed when visiting the site of RealDVDrealdvdinjunction.jpg.

RealDVD is a 30$ software that allows to backup DVDs on your PC. You may state that DeCSS is doing the same for 0$. The main difference is that the copy on PC is copy protected. Furthermore, it is supposed to limit the copies to 4 registered computers (additional 20$ per computer). Thus, RealNetworks claims not to have broken CSS and not infringing DMCA. Studios do not have the same opinion.

A rather similar started four year ago with Kaleidescape. Kaleidescape produces a video server that stores content read from DVD. The video server can then playback the movie without the presence of the original DVD. DVD Copy Control Association claimed that it was a violation of its compliance rules. In 2007, a judge ruled in favor of Kaleidescape.

Thus, a new battle of Titans started. A bet for the winner?