Category Archives: Technology

The Pirate Bay and 3D objects

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AnonymousWould you like to have a Guy Fawkes mask (currently better known as Anonymous mask)?  If you have a 3D printer, it is easy.   Just ask the Pirate Bay.   The Pirate Bay, the flagship of P2P sharing, recently added a new category of torrents:  physibles.  Physibles are files that describe a 3D object for 3D printers.   In other words, the Pirate Bay proposes a category for sharing 3D printable objects.

With the advent of 3D printers, we could expect soon to see copyright infringement for 3D shapes.  This is the first sign of such trend.  It will take time before 3D printers become mainstream. They are still expensive.  But once they will become cheaper, then it will be a new battle field for anti-piracy and anti counterfeiting.

Funnily, next issue of the Technicolor Security Newsletter will feature a long article on how to protect 3D CGI object.   The Pirate Bay demonstrates that it will be needed in the future.

Is Google moving towards paid distribution of content?

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End of 2010, Google acquired Widevine.  At that time, I was forecasting that the acquisition of a DRM provider was the preparation of paid distribution of content.   This prediction seems to be correct.

The initial trial would occur in Kansas City.

 

Apple, Google, Amazon: the future giants of content distribution?

UV has reached 800,000 accounts

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The industry analyst company IHS has claimed that UltraViolet (UV) has reached 800,000 user accounts in the US.   At CES 2012, UV announced to already have 750,000 user accounts.   Each account has in average 1.25 titles.   This low value can have several explanations:

  • The catalog of available title is currently small (I found last week about 30 BD titles on Amazon which could be redeemed).  Most probably, the majority of new released BD titles will be UV ready
  • The first UV title appeared only end of 2011 (Warner’s Horrible Bosses).  In view of this short period, 800,000 seems impressive to me.
  • Many people experiment.  If ever you purchased a BD/DVD that is UV ready, why would you not try it.  Its for free.

 

The interesting trend to monitor is the number of average titles per account.  As more new titles will be available, this will show the people buy-in to the concept.  If the depth increases, then UV may become successful.

BTJunkie is down!

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After the closure of MegaUpload last month, another iconic site is closing: BTJunkie.   BTJunkie was the fifth P2P tracker site.   This is what appears on the site:


2005 – 2012
This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we’ve decided to voluntarily shut down. We’ve been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it’s time to move on. It’s been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!

Are these two events correlated ?  Is this correlated to the signature of the ACTA ?  To the best of our knowledge, BTJunkie was not under any current legal suit.

The PirateBay is still active.  They will replace torrent-files by magnets on the 29th February.  Another movement in this arena.  (I’ll come back on this one later)

 

You have downloaded

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The site youhavedownloaded is starting to make some buzz.  This is especially true, since Torrent Freak reported that some people at Fox, Google, or NBCU did download copyrighted content (or at least IP addresses registered by these companies).  Of course, with the heated debate about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), this has been used by the opponents.

The site claims to have collected information about downloaded content on BitTorrent for more than 55 million users (or rather 55 million IP addresses).  When you visit the site, it displays the allegedly downloaded content for the currently presented IP address of the visitor.  You can check the records for any IP address.  The site even offers a banner to display the results to the visitors of your site (nice way to make friends :Weary: ).

Is it serious?  The authors announce

Don’t take it seriously

The privacy policy, the contact us page — it’s all a joke. We came up with the idea of building a crawler like this and keeping the maintenance price under $300 a month. There was only one way to prove our theory worked — to implement it in practice. So we did. Now, we find ourselves with a big crawler. We knew what it did but we didn’t know how to use it. So we decided to make a joke out of it. That’s the beauty of jokes — you can make them out of anything.

However, if you have a better idea — don’t hesitate to contact us.

I would love to see a person who would claim that”yes!  the claimed content are true”.  The likelihood of such a person is low.  Serious or not, this site highlights that it is possible to collect such data by using the BitTorrent DHT and trackers.  I am doubtful about the story of large companies downloading copyrighted content.  I would expect that the proxy/firewall of such companies would ban P2P traffic or at least restrict it for trusted users.

Oh, by the way, the site did report that Technicolor did not download copyrighted content. :Angel:

Update 20-dec:  Is it serious?

With the team, we did some experiments, and found at least one positive evidence that the site has true data (using a long-tail type content)/

After The Pirate Bay, here is BayFiles

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Two founders of The Pirate Bay, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde, launched in August a new service: BayFiles.  BayFiles is a cyberlocker such as MegaUpload or RapidShare.  Thus, users can upload files and share them with other public.  The upload limit, as well as the bandwidth, depends on the subscription model.  Unregistered users can share up to 250Mb whereas premium users have no limits.

When examining the available services, and the terms of service, BayFiles officially claims proper behaviour regarding copyright.

We have a policy of terminating, without notice and without recourse, accounts of subscribers or account holders who are repeat infringers of copyright, and you agree that we may apply that policy to your account or subscription in our sole judgment based upon a suspicion on our part or a notification we receive regardless of proof of infringement.

Although they seem not to use detection tools, they should obey to DMCA take down notices (which was never the case with The Pirate Bay).  Furthermore, BayFiles does not offer search options or shared directories.  Thus, it is the user who will have to create the infringement by publicly publishing the sharing address.  Furthermore, BayFiles has not implemented a reward program which is often a huge incentive for illegal sharing.

And because they do not trust pirates, they put the legal fences:

If you write programs aiming to violate our Conditions of Use, you will be prosecuted and made liable for any losses occurred.

This transition from Peer-To-Peer towards cyberlockers is logical:

  • Cyberlockers are taking an increasing share of illegal sharing of copyrighted content
  • Cyberlockers are easier to monetize than tracker sites with subscription for premium services.

Cyberlockers are the new challenge in anti-piracy.

A cloud over ownership

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This is the title of an excellent article of Simson Garfinkel in Technology Review.  He explores the consequences of the switch from physical cultural goods to digital cultural goods stored in the cloud.  It is nothing really new but it has the advantage to be clearly stated.

The first point is about privacy.  When you purchased a physical book or a CD, the merchant has no way to profile you.  Of course, if you purchase it on  a digital store such as Amazon, the merchant will be able to profile some of your preferences.  but with a digital good stored in the cloud, the merchant will be able also to analyze how you consume this digital good.  And this is even more interesting.  he will know what is you prefered book among the ones you purchased.  For the same result with a physical book, you need to look for the more worned book in my library.

The second point is really about persistence.  When I purchase a book, it is mine until I destroy it, or give it away.  With a e-book in the cloud, it is mine as long as the cloud operator accepts (or survives).  This si a massive difference.  I am not sure that the legislation has taken into account this shift.   I do not even tackle the issue of DRM that may shape the ways I can consume the digital good.

Thus, the notion of ownership of a digital cultural good is changing.  As the good itself, the ownership seems to become more ethereal.  Is it good or bad?  I don’t know.  It is most probably useless to look for the answer, I’m afraid it is an unavoidable shift.  We will have to adapt for the best and the worst.