Managing Rights Management

Anonos and Proclus Blockchain and Rights Management Patents

New patents are issued by the USPTO on Tuesdays. Today's Spotlight Patents continue the theme of blockchains (distributed ledgers, smart contracts) and rights management broadly construed. Assigned to Anonos, the first patent addresses techniques for enforcing centralized privacy controls in de-centralized systems. Assigned to Proclus, the second patent addresses techniques... Read more →

WSJ: RIAA Drops MediaSentry, Picks Up DtecNet

The Wall Street Journal reports that the RIAA has dropped MediaSentry (Safenet), an application that finds and documents copyrighted music on consumer and student PCs. The information is then used as evidence in the RIAA-instigated lawsuits against individuals. Instead, the RIAA will use software or servies from Danish software provider... Read more →

BD+ Broken Yet Again

As many news outlets (e.g., CDRInfo, ) have noted, the latest version of BD+, the virtual machine based software that protects movies and games on Blu-ray discs. The cat and mouse game continues. Read more →

CNET: The RIAA's Letter to ISPs

cnet.com has obtained a copy of letters sent by the RIAA to ISPs regarding P2P downloading of music files. Please bear in mind that this letter serves as an official notice to you that this network user may be liable for the illegal activity occurring on your network. This letter... Read more →

Judge postpones hearing in key RIAA lawsuit

CNet reports that a hearing regarding the RIAA initiated copyright infringement suit in Rhode Island federal court against Joel Tenenbaum has been postponed until January 6. As reported here and elsewhere, Harvard professor Charles Nesson and Law School students have intervened in Massachusetts Federal Court to get the copyright law... Read more →

Blu-ray BD+ Resealed, At Least For A While

Slashdot, Engadget, and others are reporting that there are now at least 16 Blu-ray titles that cannot be cracked by SlySoft because of updated / upgraded BD+ programming on the optical disc. The Engadget article also presents a useful BD+ architecture drawing. As I've noted earlier, the BD+ VM-based programmable... Read more →

Harvard Professor Fires Back At RIAA

The AP reports that Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson has filed a law suit in Boston federal court challenging on constitutional grounds the RIAA's aggressive legal tactics against individuals. Nesson argues that the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 is unconstitutional because it effectively lets... Read more →

Blu-ray Piracy

The WSJ is reporting (subscription require) that pirates in Asia are providing high-quality copies of films released on Blu-ray discs. Pirates are taking advantage of the fact that many viewers can't tell the difference between Hollywood's new high-definition, higher-priced Blu-ray movie format and a bootleg format -- called AVCHD --... Read more →

ATI and Samsung Copy Protection Issued Patents

On Tuesdays the USPTO issues new patents. Today's Spotlight Patents deal with aspects of video copy protection in analog and analog/digital video. Assigned to ATI Technologies, the first patent concerns the detection of copy protection indicators or redistribution control indicators in an analog video signal. Assigned to Samsung, the second... Read more →

Who Killed The Home Theater PC (HTPC)?

Writing in Ars Technica, Nate Anderson says the death of the Home Theater PC may be ascribed to several factors, including various rights management / copy protection / encryption technologies. While the recording industry has largely learned its lesson from DRM, the movie business still thinks it's a great idea.... Read more →

Selectable Output Control: MPAA, Others Lobby FCC

Ars Technica reports that the MPAA has petitioned the FCC to enable Selectable Output Controls (SOC) on theatrically released movies distributed via cable and satellite prior to their release on DVD. SOC lets video distributors close down analog or digital output on broadcasts, which could be used to force HD... Read more →

A Textbook Case of Piracy

The Boston Globe reports that textbook piracy is becoming rampant. "We think it's a significant problem," said William Sampson, manager of infringement and antipiracy at Cengage Learning Inc., a reference book publisher in Farmington Hills, Mich. Sampson said that in any given month, 200 to 300 of the company's titles... Read more →

What's Up With Home DVD Copying?

A survey funded in part by copy protection and DRM company Macrovision reports that home copying of DVDs in the US and the UK is up. Roughly a third of respondents in the UK (36%) and the US (32%) report copying DVDs in the previous six months compared with 25%... Read more →

Textbooks Shared On BitTorrent

[tip o' the hat to Farber's IP list]. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the Association of American Publishers (AAP) is increasingly concerned about the use P2P BitTorrent to share textbooks. One Web site, called Textbook Torrents, promises more than 5,000 textbooks for download in PDF format, complete with... Read more →

M.P.A.A. Accuses Laser Printers of File Sharing Copyright Violations - Really

Brad Stone's NYTimes blog entry describes research conducted by Tadayoshi Kohno, an assistant professor, Michael Piatek a graduate student, and Arvind Krishnamurthy, a research assistant professor, all at the University of Washington. The research was directed toward understanding how the M.P.A.A. identifies those who received nastygrams from the trade association.... Read more →

Nate Lawson on Designing and Breaking DRM

Nate Lawson is a co-creator of the BD+ security layer on Blu-ray. He gave a talk at the recent RSA conference.that covers techniques for attacking DRM. His slides are posted here and are worth reviewing. Lawson writes: Of course, people in glass houses should not throw rocks. As someone who... Read more →

EXCLUSIVE - Macrovision's Eric Rodli Comments On Slysoft's Claimed Break of BD+

As noted here yesterday, Slysoft claims that it's AnyDVD (HD) 6.4.0.0 software will remove the BD+ security component of Blu-ray HiDef optical discs. When asked for a comment, Eric Rodli, Macrovision's Executive Vice President & General Manager of Entertainment, had this to say via email: “Macrovision does not comment on... Read more →

Verizon Set To Improve Legal P2P File-sharing

According to the AP and NYtimes, Verizon is set to announce later today support for legal P2P filesharing companies and applications. Working with companies that use P2P and researchers at Yale University, Verizon will reportedly help P2P applications make more efficient use of the Net. Verizon shared details about the... Read more →

Another View of Piracy in the PC Games Space

Loyd Case writes on the ExtremeTech site about rampant piracy in the PC games space. This longish article is well worth a read. Among other data, Case offers selective quotes from an article by Michael Fitch on the shutdown of Iron Lore Entertainment, for reasons that include piracy: ...the numbers... Read more →

Rampant Piracy In the Causal Games Space

Causal games might be defined as games small enough to be downloaded and/or web based (e.g., one of my favs, Desktop Tower Defense). How does piracy affect the causal game business? Over on Gamasutra, Reflexive's director of marketing Russell Carroll has posted a great article asserting that 92% of one... Read more →

The RIAA is At It Again-Where Has All The Music Gone?

CNet reports that the RIAA is shooting new threatening letters across the bows of numerous colleges and universities coast to coast in what must be a failed attempt to deter piracy. Critics charge that the letters are just a scare tactic, and the RIAA has admitting to goofing on identifying... Read more →

What's Next for Blu-ray, BD+?

So now that Toshiba has given up on HD-DVD, what's next for Blu-ray, the winning HiDef optical format? This is the question posed by Kelly Rush and posted on HiDefDigest. Rush's prognostications include the suggestion that "BD+ starts getting aggressive:" Until now, studios haven't been overly-aggressive with pushing this; they... Read more →

MPAA Admits Mistake: College Students Not As Culpable As Previously Asserted

According to this AP news story, the MPAA nows says that there was a computational error in earlier results indicating that college student file sharing was a major source of pirated media. The MPAA said that it has told education groups a "human error" in that survey caused it to... Read more →

Reuters - Porn Industry Challenged By Video Sharing Sites

In a Reuters article, Adam Tanner reports that the adult film industry is being hit hard by piracy. Adult rated videos are being distributed by sites such as Xtube, a site for 18+ year olds apparently modeled after youtube. "We're dealing with rampant piracy, tons of free content," said Steven... Read more →

Fox, Apple, and FairPlay - Jon Healy's View

Check out Jon Healy's coverage (LA Times blogs) of the Fox / Apple iTunes deal regarding downloading Fox movies. Fox has been in the lead on Blu-ray BD+ and their implicit endorsement of Apple's FairPlay DRM should come as no surprise. Healy says: Today, the Financial Times reported that 20th... Read more →

MPAA, ISPs, and Content Filtering

[tip o' the hat to Lauren Weinstein's post on the Net Neutrality Squad list]. Nate Anderson writes in Ars Technica that the MPAA expects ISPs to reduce piracy by implementing content filtering technologies (e.g., deep packet inspection and/or fingerprinting-based filtering). Case in point: AT&T and its publicly-stated plan to implement... Read more →

Goldman Sues PirateBay For Lost Royalties On O.J. Simpson Book

The Associated Press reports that Fred Goldman, father of slain Ron Goldman, is suing the Swedish site The Pirate Bay over alleged lost royalties from O.J. Simpson's book, If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer. Although Goldman's attorneys have sent a letter demanding the Web site's operators stop posting... Read more →

Anti-Copying Programs May Slow Piracy Says MSFT and BSA

The Associated Press' Brian Bergstein reports that anti-copying technologies may be reducing software piracy. The technology has provoked some hostility, because it enables Microsoft to remotely examine user computers. After analyzing such information as the computer's manufacturer, hard drive serial number and Windows product identification, Microsoft can block access to... Read more →

Macrovison Says BD+ Not Hacked

In today's conference call regarding the acquisition of BD+ technology from CRI, Macrovision says that BD+ has not been hacked: "So first of all let me provide a clarifying comment. BD+ has not been hacked. There was a software player that did not have the correct implementation of the specification,... Read more →

Will BD+ Be Hacked In The Near Future? Slysoft Says Yes

The blogosphere is alive with the songs of BD+ being hacked by Slysoft. This noncommital note from Engadget's Darren Murph is an example of reasonable "wait and see." Others are more enthusiastic about Slysoft's comments, for example this posting on CDFreaks.com, which quotes Slysoft as follows: To prove them right... Read more →