Prison Break and P2P

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What is currently the hottest hit on P2P trackers? Not the last Hollywood movie. It is the first episode of new season of PrisonBreak. According to TorrentFreak, more than 1 million people downloaded the torrent using BitTorrent. The broadcast audience for this episode was 6.5 million viewers according to Fox. This means that at least 20% of the audience will not use the official channel.

Like ABC, Fox has proposed a catchup TV service where users can stream legally and for free the latest episodes. Why do people prefer to use P2P?

TorrentFreak proposed the convenience as an explanation. It is true that you have two advantages compared to broadcast or streaming:

  • Possibility to store and play back on any device
  • Skip advertisements

Nevertheless, there is also another factor. What is the proportion of non-US downloaders on P2P? Currently, non-US/Canadian citizens can neither have access to broadcast nor streaming. When attempting to connect, the connection is rejected because the receiving IP address is not located in the US. Not everybody has access to a US proxy that may allow to bypass this limitation. Fans/addicts will do all there possible to get access to the newest episodes. They will not wait several months (even one year for France) to legally get them. They will download them through P2P. Furthermore, they will find subtitled version available a few days after broadcast. (I checked that the latest episode of PrisonBreak was already available with French and Italian subtitles!)

What can content owners do against it? Provide advertisement free content? This is in total contradiction with Free To Air business model based on advertisement revenue. Provide to foreign countries the episodes as soon as they are available in US? This as a cost because it requires dubbing all episodes with the main languages before initial broadcast. Subtitling is not sufficient in many countries. In France, people hate subtitles. M6 attempted to offer as paid VOD season 4 of Desperate Housewives with French subtitles. it did not work.

Unfortunately, for non US addicts, P2P is the most convenient and cheapest solution. :Sad: This may also explain why TV series are the biggest part of P2P trackers (see Mininova reaches 5 billions torrents)

Wizzgo banned from M6 and W9

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In May 2008, the French startup wizzgo launched its service. Mainly, wizzgo offers two functionalities: Electronic Program Guide and Network recorder for the French channels of Free To Air operators so called Télé Numérique Terrestre (TNT). In other words, you are able to explore the guide of all channels, and through one click you “record” an event. You may view recorded events as often as you want through Internet. The downloaded events are not DRM protected and thus can be copied and distributed without restriction.

Unfortunately, wizzgo did not negotiate with broadcasters. M6 and W9 have sued wizzgo for unfair competition and commercial parasitism. Wizzgo claims that it is legal because it performs only a private copy. The judge did not buy in this argument. Private copy is not applicable to commercial application. Although the service is free for users, wizzgo gets money from advertising. Furthermore, it modifies the audience and user viewing habits thus spoiling broadcasters’ advertising revenues.

An interesting information is that M6 and W9 have just launched their catch up TV service (M6 replay). Thus, wizzgo is in direct competition for the same market.

Spore and the DRM fury

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Spore, the long awaited simulation game from Electronic Arts has generated a huge buzz and fury. Probably not from the type EA was expecting.
Spore is protected by SecuROM and requires online authentication of the genuine disc every ten days. Between these 10 days, you do not need to put the disc in the drive for authentication (This is extremely convenient. I hate the games where you need to have the disc in the drive. For frequent travelers it is annoying) The game cannot be installed more than three times, else you would have to phone to EA support. Some people are concerned that their copy would be dead if EA would not anymore operate the authentication server.

The fact that Spore would be protected by “DRM” was known for months (and provoked already some waves in the game community). Nevertheless, since its launch, Spore has been the target of anti-DRM aficionados. Interestingly, they use a new Denial Of Evaluation attack. The evaluation comments on Amazon.com are spoiled by voluntarily negative critics. At the time of editing, the score was less than 1 star for more than 1400 comments. Negative comments were about DRM. At the same time, the evaluation for the Nintendo DS (not affected by the DOE) was 4.75 stars!

Will this “attack” be efficient? I am doubtful. It seems that Spore is a really innovative great game. Thus, gamers who love this type of game (simulation + MMOPG) will go. Negative comments, only about DRM will not reduce the appealing of the game. Will “DRM” block some users? Of course, some people will use it as an excuse to justify the use of illegal version. The ISO file and the crack was available several days before the commercial launch of the game on main P2P tracker sites

Reading forum is instructive. My preferred one is the person who purchases an official copy but install a cracked one for convenience. He uses it with clear conscience.

It will be interesting to see if this campaign will impact the sales of Spore? If other game editors will reduce the use of “DRM”? Is DRM the right language for SecuROM and likes?

In any case, I will soon play Spore. Did someone already test it?

10-sep: An error did display only half of this ticket yesterday. Sorry for the inconvenience. During this night, about 500 additional negative comments were added on amamzon

Comcast, FCC and throttling (2)

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In July, FCC ordered Comcast to stop throttling P2P connections ( See Comcast throttling BitTorrent: trouble). On Thursday, Comcast challenged the decision at in the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington. Nevertheless, Comcast will comply with the FCC order. Comcast has to stop discrimination before end of the year.

Meanwhile, two consumer interest groups and a company seek an order of court to have Comcast stopping immediately the throttling. The company is Vuze Inc. that distributes a software Vuze formerly known as Azureus. Azureus is one of the P2P software built on top of BitTorrent. Azureus has a serious “market share”.

Comcast has prepared its next move. On 1st October, Comcast will install a monthly maximum download capacity of 250GB for residential customers. This remains a rather high capacity. It represents 300 SD DiVXed movies and around 100 HD movies. Not too bad.

We could have expected Comcast to announce throttling policy in the usage conditions. This limitation is another answer. What will other ISPs do?

Risky IT managers

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Company Cyber-Ark has conducted an interview of 300 IT managers. According to their press release, there are some interesting (worrying) outcomes:

  • 88% of the interviewed IT managers admit that they would steal sensitive data if being layed off. A third of them would leave with the list of privileged passwords that give access to root resources!
  • More than a quarter of the interviewed managers announced to have faced problems of leaking or stolen data. Economic intelligence (nice euphemism for industrial spying) is a reality.

The report seems to show that bad practice with sensitive data and password are still very generalized.

88% is awfully worrying. With the generalization of outsourcing storage (Sharepoint, …) or outsourcing computing power (cloud computing), this problem will become more and more problematic. Outsourcing is changing the trust model of IT. Some trust hypothesis may weaken. Will you trust as much IT administrators from outsourcing companies than your ones. Are you sure that they can be trusted? Will you audit their security policies and their compliance to them? Storage of sensitive data will become more and more complex.

I have not read the report. I will try to get access to it (not directly available on their site) and will come back to you with the best parts.

A very pragmatic guide to protection of prerelase content

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German GVU, Austrian VAP and Swiss SAFE recently edited a 16 page booklet with very pragmatic guidelines to protect prerelease content from piracy. Its title is: “Filmschutz vor und bei Kinostart”. You understood that it is in German (It seems I am in my German mood :Wink:, sorry for non-German speaking readers). It analyses the complete chain from production, delivery and actual performance and gives some advises. Some are extremely low tech but efficient, for instance:

  • Request to get back any screener you delivered
  • If using post mail, do only send screener from Monday to Thursday. Avoid the other days. The risk the parcel will be blocked during week-end is too high…

The appendix provides a list of companies offering solutions, ranging from anti camcording to guard companies. Of course, THOMSON STS is in the list!

The document can be found at Filmschutz vor und bei Kinostart  (in German)

French CNC edited last year a document which provides also a set of guidelines. Its scope is larger. It is available in French and English. It si available at Fighting audiovisual piracy: a good practice guide for the industry

IRBI: A nice initiative from Microsoft

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Microsoft Germany and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) designed an evaluation of the Internet Risk Behaviour Index (IRBI). It is a set of tests to educate users in different situations that they may encounter while using Internet.

The tests are interesting and well designed. I must confess that I failed one scenario. I will not tell you my mistake, just that it was situation 3. The advises are also extremely good. Some situations seem complex for a non tech savvy such as 6 or 11. It is a good educative tool although in real environment, you may be less vigilant than during the tests.

Some small critics:

  • The display was awfully slow on my computer. I don’t know if it comes from it or from SilverLight.
  •   It did not work with Firefox!!!! I know that it is a Microsoft study, nevertheless many internet users are using this browser.
  •  It is in German. I did not find an English version. Is it planned?

So for people who read German, the address is https://www.irbi.de/iHome.IRBI?ActiveID=1008  I will try to see if there is an English one