
Napster Founder Obtains New Patent for P2P-Polluting Anti-Piracy Tech - dane-pgp
https://torrentfreak.com/napster-founders-screening-room-obtains-new-patent-for-p2p-polluting-anti-piracy-tech-200619/
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aaron695
> distributes corrupted files of the same film at a ratio of 1,000 to 1 via
> peer-based distribution.

If I have a list of the top pirate crews and their digital signatures, why
would I DL one of the 1000? Why would a site list it?

Also part of the wishlist -

"The content distribution network 2100 may be implemented as a closed
membership service, and records for members or subscribers in the following
basic information:

Name

DOB (must be 18+)

Gender

Home Address

Email

Phone number (home and cell)

Own or rent home

How long lived at home address

From this information, and a social media scrape automated analysis of a
member's social media profile and circle the movie distribution system is able
to determine the applicant's suitability and grant or deny membership"

So it'll work, making every watermarked copy to a real human should stop the
end users copying it. Not sure if people will go to all the trouble for
dropped shipped movies, maybe.

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akater
So-called “anti-piracy” measures are futile. As long as something can be
played back, it can be recorded, copied, re-played.

If watermarks become an issue, people will develop methods to mangle
watermarks and make them unreliable in figuring out the source of the leak.

Any attempts to prevent copying by technical means are at odds with public
ownership and use of general-purpose computers. The only reliable way to
prevent people from making and sharing copies of data is to ban such computers
or restrict their usage.

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contravariant
I think (invisible) watermarking media is fair, although I'm not sure how
strong it is from a legal standpoint (blocking an account seems fair though).
However flooding P2P networks with corrupted copies seems a bit iffy, not just
because it is a heavy handed unilateral move, but also because it seems
_really_ close to a DDoS and 'they started it' is not much of a legal defence.

~~~
dane-pgp
I'm not sure how well a watermarking algorithm can work if the "attacker" has
a few different copies of the same file. By averaging out the pixel values,
and re-encoding the file, it would be difficult for any unique identifier (or
unique combination of such identifiers) to be extracted.

Worse, by reverse-engineering the watermark algorithm, the attacker could add
watermarks that correspond to arbitrary IDs, possibly framing innocent
customers (especially if those customers' IDs have been extracted previously
by malware running on their devices).

I agree with your other point too about DDoS. For a system to be effective at
preventing people from finding the media file they want, it also has to be
effective at preventing people from finding the right answer to search queries
on every search engine, online forum, and social media platform.

~~~
contravariant
Depending on the method used averaging the files would just result in a file
with multiple watermarks (think something like a bloom filter). At any rate
the worst that could happen is that the watermark doesn't work, which is a
shame for the person that added it but doesn't really affect anyone else.

Preventing the attacker from adding arbitrary IDs is as easy as
cryptographically signing the ID (requires more bits, but the available space
is huge).

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bonyt
> The new patent (pdf[1]) granted this week sits in that same niche.

It's linking to a patent application publication, not a granted or issued
patent.

[1]: [https://torrentfreak.com/images/screening-room-
patent.pdf](https://torrentfreak.com/images/screening-room-patent.pdf)

