back to article Hollywood: How do we secure high-def 4K content? Easy. Just BRAND the pirates

Movielabs, the R&D business for Hollywood studios, has just issued a new specification for securing 4K high-def streaming video content, and one of the things that it’s going to demand is forensic watermarking. This spec is being described as “recommendations”, but studios will need to adopt these overnight as the hard and …

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              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                > How about you start calling it what it is. It removes cash from the pocket of the creator - it is theft. End of.

                I wasn't going to feed you because you are obviously a troll, but here goes.

                If a local shop sells DVDs and another shop opens up next door, are they stealing from the original shop for each customer that goes to them instead? Opportunity cost is not the same as actual cost.

                If I decide not the buy a DVD from a shop having previously decided that I would and thereby depriving the creator of potential revenue, am I stealing from them?

                You really are having a problem differentiating actual cost and potential cost. Nobody has a right to a living and income, it has to be earned.

                For your further education, I will explain it using little words: In the beginning, there were physical goods. People traded with each directly, exchanging goods for other goods or money. As commerce became diverse and geographically separated, this "contract of exchange" was maintained by the chain of the passing of a physical good. Because that physical good represented effort on the part of the original creator, the physical good becomes a representation of that original effort. Since breaking the link between that good and the effort is a bad thing, the law of "theft" came into being.

                Without a physical good, there is no token, which is why we have strange and unenforceable laws to try to perpetuate the myth of a physical good where there is none. Making my own copy of a film or music, I am performing the effort of manufacture. There is no effort on the part of the original creator so there is no implied contract and there is no loss in the effort/good balance. So there is no theft. It really is that simple. Because you feel sympathy for creators does not change the law or the basis of the concept of "theft" one jot.

                Copyright steps in here but even in this case, there is confusion on the part of those that would conflate theft with copyright infringement. Copyright is a sole privilege granted by the law to duplicate to the exclusion of others for a period of time. The copyright holder does not hold "property" and does not own the original work. That would be absurd and is the reason why I wince whenever I see the term Intellectual Property.

                You will hear from some that it *is* property because property is merely a manifestation of the rights of things granted by law and just because it isn't physical doesn't make it any different. The problem here is that the creator could indeed "own" the original but they don't own a copy, because it is not the original, just in the same way that a carpenter doesn't own all sofas just because he made one. Someone else who makes a sofa that is identical to the original sofa owns his copy, not the carpenter because this breaks the original tenet that goods and effort are linked. The effort for the sofa copy is not linked with the carpenter.

                If you cannot understand the above, then I suggest looking at some books on the subject. It really has been done to death to the extent that I really don't understand why some people just don't 'get it'.

              2. MrDamage Silver badge

                "....no excuse for theft."

                You are right, there are no excuses for theft. No please go along and make it easy for film-goers to receive a refund on movies which were over-hyped, poorly scripted, acted, directed and produced which completely failed to live up to the expectations pumped out by the movie studios.

                Failure to comply with a simple refund request for false advertising, is STEALING, which you yourself claim there is no excuses for.

                If you dont give us what we pay for, and stop giving us a refund on failing to provide us what we paid for, then eventually, we are going to stop paying for anything you offer.

                Now go back to your MAFIAA masters, and tell them your pathetic shill attempts failed, and that they are going to have to actually produce something original, entertaining, and worth our time, instead of just a remake of a reboot of a reimagining.

              3. Chris Beach

                "How about you start calling it what it is. It removes cash from the pocket of the creator - it is theft. End of."

                Cept that is precisely what it doesn't do. It removes the 'potential' cash that might have at some point ended in pocket of the creator*. So its not theft. * as not all legit sales end up with money for the creator, and nor should they.

                You're making the same mistake the studios do, assuming that every pirate copy is a lost sale. Which is utterly illogical, as its assuming most people want to break the law, which has been shown many times is false. Its also assuming that their desire to want the content means they 'will' acquire it, which is also false.

                People have multiple sources, they might buy the bluray, or dvd, or maybe rent, maybe stream. They'll pay as much as they can afford, but if the producers have blocked one or more of these for their own narrow minded reasons then people might see piracy as an alternative. And that pirate market was created by the content producers themselves...

              4. beep54

                No wonder you're posting as a coward. Idjit!

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            having stared at a 4k demo unit in-store, I did not find it compelling enough to justify its outrageous cost. 1080p is already very good. if 4k comes with this added distrust, it's truly not worth it to me. I have to assume that the millions of ordinary users content to watch cat videos on their mobiles will agree with me. sayonara, Hollywood.

            1. P. Lee

              Does not scale

              Can you imagine the traffic on the crl servers if this went mainstream?

              What happens when the server goes down or the studio goes bust?

              Are we really going to track every player against its owner, forever?

              What happens when torrents contain md5 sums of frames or frame fragments so that it is possible to compare with other people's versions to see which bits are different?

              Given the number of recent reboots, Hollywood's problem is providing original content, not protecting it.

              1. Sir Runcible Spoon

                Re: Does not scale

                I reckon the only way you could understandably conflate copyright infringement and theft is when someone is selling copied stuff at full price. They have *definitely* deprived the owners of a sale at that point.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            "Paying users won't notice."

            I find the unskippable adverts and messages at the start of discs accusing me of theft such a huge improvement in my viewing experience and not in any way incentive to go rip the content so I can watch it without being accused of theft...

          3. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            "Only the thieves will complain about this"

            Copying is not theft.

            If not clear, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

          4. JEDIDIAH

            Utter nonsense, obvious industry shill.

            > Paying users won't notice.

            That's a total lie. They notice already.

            That is why I prefer my own rips to using a sanctioned decoder.

      1. Tom 38

        Do you think a pixel precise time based watermark will successfully survive the rip, resize and transcode to be able to successfully determine with reasonable certainty which source the transcode comes from? The purpose of transcoding is to throwaway "useless" visual information that cannot be "seen" (controlling what is "useless" and what can be "seen" are the codec parameters such as bitrate and size), and I would have thought "invisible pixel watermarks" are probably something that would get pruned quite high.

        I think you could have a field day in court arguing that their identification of you is a type I error, especially if not based upon the original media, but on transcoded versions of it.

        1. Charles 9

          "Do you think a pixel precise time based watermark will successfully survive the rip, resize and transcode to be able to successfully determine with reasonable certainty which source the transcode comes from?"

          The thing about watermarking systems is that they recognize the potential for mangling the watermarks through transcoding, so they go about it in different ways, using the codec system to create various artifacts that can survive transcoding, and many of them are block-based as well as time-based. That's why Cinavia's audio watermarking system is better than most: it's designed to keep its data above the noise floor so that it's more likely to be preserved in transcoding. Most watermarking systems like the Cinavia one also introduce plenty of redundancy, creating multiple gotcha points. The tradeoff for a system this robust is that you can't encode a tremendous amount of data in the stream, but if all you want to encode is identifying information, that's not that big a deal. A robust system spraying the ID information all over the stream, again and again and again in random intervals. It's gonna make for a very hard cleanup job. And you can forget about trying to mix and average two streams. Random intervals means you're more likely to MIX them together rather than destroy them (IOW, they'll be able to tell you used TWO sources in an attempt to mangle the data).

        2. Dave 150

          resize and transcode? why would anyone get a 4K film to resize it?

        3. paulll

          "Do you think a pixel precise time based watermark will successfully survive the rip, resize and transcode to be able to successfully determine with reasonable certainty which source the transcode comes from? "

          I imagine any working system would be locale- rather than pixel-based. e.g., on alternating keyframes, the 64 macroblocks around offset .75*.70 will have somewhat diverging average U and V values to encode a 1, or not to encode a 0. Compression would smudge out a preset value on an individual pixel but if the value is encoded in the smudge you're golden.

      2. Stewart MacDuff

        Don't remove the watermark, simply add more information and render it meaningless.

        Britain or Holland or a n other needs to take a stand and declare DRM illegal and blow down the entire house of cards.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Or not even cracked. Wha bout people, for quicker downloads, taking not the HD version but the quicker to download low res. The watermark info would be lost would it not ?

      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Boffin

        "Or not even cracked. Wha bout people, for quicker downloads, taking not the HD version but the quicker to download low res. The watermark info would be lost would it not ?"

        This also opens up a quick-and-dirty approach to checking the pixels by creating a "pseudo 4k" image and looking for the differences between it and the 4k version. Tedious by hand but readily automated.

        The question is how much variance (in terms of watermarked bits per frame, frame sequenc, etc) can the systems support.

        My bet is once that's quantified pirates will zero in on a small number of areas and frames, cross compare between a few copies and hey presto mint 4k for flogging off "down the market."

    2. streaky

      Compare copies from 2 different sources and erase the difference, easy life.

      Yeah I already did it.

    3. Homer 1
      Pirate

      Re: Expect this to be cracked

      If it can be read then it can be removed.

      This has always been the fatal problem with silly "security through obscurity" methods. Certainly it won't be trivial, but it will be done.

      But as others have noted, watermarks won't actually stop unauthorised distribution anyway, because correctly identifying the copier won't be trivial either, and taking legal action might be impossible, depending upon the legal jurisdiction, even if by some miracle they could identify the culprit.

      So basically the next generation of torrents will all be watermarked in the names of various temporary and untraceable Ukrainian iTunes accounts, or whatever other video distribution service, and no one will care.

      Perhaps the Content® manufacturing industry should consider spending its our money on a more pressing matter, like, oh I don't know, say improving the quality of their garbage Content®, instead of wasting it on desperate and greedy DRM measures that never work.

  1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    To be honest

    This sort of thing simply points out the pointlessness of such high resolutions anywhere except in cinemas. Increase the frame rate, not the number of pixels to the size where they're less than invisible, if you want to increase the perceived 'quality'.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: To be honest

      4K has absolutely nothing to do with increased quality. The reason for it is to give them another "differentiators". Anyone can do HD nowadays; hell, lots of people are producing top-quality content using RED cameras without having anything to do with the major players. 4K is something you can only do if you are well funded. Even if you had 4K cameras, the file sizes are enormous, and the higher the resolution the better your makup/costumes/props/etc have to be. Today, 4K needs major studios to be done right.

      More to the point, they get to use 4K as a means to both attempt to ram through restrictive copyright measures and argue for another round of copyright maximalist legislation. They'll even use it to try to crush the competition (independent content producers) and go after copyright infringers in order to extend and then preserve their monopoly on content.

      I'd wish them luck with that - the genie of content competition is not going back in the bottle - but the major content companies are the epitome of what's wrong with our society. So instead of wishing them luck, I hope they all get cholera.

      1. Arctic fox
        Flame

        @Trevor_Pott RE: "I hope they all get cholera."

        You are far too kind hearted Trevor, I prefer the following.

        .

        "3.1 1. Plague of blood (דָם): Ex. 7:14–25

        3.2 2. Plague of frogs (צְּפַרְדֵּעַ): Ex. 7:25–8:11

        3.3 3. Plague of lice or gnats (כִּנִּים): Ex. 8:16–19

        3.4 4. Plague of flies or wild animals (עָרוֹב): Ex. 8:20–32

        3.5 5. Plague of pestilence (דֶּבֶר): Ex. 9:1–7

        3.6 6. Plague of boils (שְׁחִין): Ex. 9:8–12

        3.7 7. Plague of hail (בָּרָד): Ex. 9:13–35

        3.8 8. Plague of locusts (אַרְבֶּה): Ex. 10:1–20

        3.9 9. Plague of darkness (חוֹשֶך): Ex. 10:21–29

        3.10 10. Death of the firstborn (מַכַּת בְּכוֹרוֹת): Ex. 11:1–12:36"

        1. Khaptain Silver badge

          Re: @Trevor_Pott RE: "I hope they all get cholera."

          Alternatively they could be made to sit in the same room as Trevor for a few days and made to discuss the varying potential of improving IO on eSata interfaces.

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            @Khaptain Re: @Trevor_Pott RE: "I hope they all get cholera."

            fry_narrow_eyes.jpg

            1. Khaptain Silver badge

              Re: @Khaptain @Trevor_Pott RE: "I hope they all get cholera."

              >fry_narrow_eyes.jpg

              im_innocent-your-honour.jpg

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: @Trevor_Pott RE: "I hope they all get cholera."

            Or maybe explain to Trevor the difference between Hyper-V Server and Hyper-V on Windows Server...

        2. Elmer Phud

          Re: @Trevor_Pott RE: "I hope they all get cholera."

          "3.10 10. Death of the firstborn (מַכַּת בְּכוֹרוֹת): Ex. 11:1–12:36"

          Being the second child I can wholeheartedly agree with that one.

          1. VinceH

            Re: @Trevor_Pott RE: "I hope they all get cholera."

            ""3.10 10. Death of the firstborn (מַכַּת בְּכוֹרוֹת): Ex. 11:1–12:36"

            Being the second child I can wholeheartedly agree with that one."

            Downvoted because I'm a firstborn.

        3. Tom 7

          Re: @Trevor_Pott RE: "I hope they all get cholera."

          @Arctic fox

          Ah bollocks - even the righteous damnation is a bloody remake.

          1. Arctic fox
            Happy

            Re:Tom 7 "even the righteous damnation is a bloody remake."

            They are probably the first example of torrented distribution!

        4. John Sanders

          Re: @Trevor_Pott RE: "I hope they all get cholera."

          LOL, LOL, AND LOL!!!

          And there goes all the coffee in my screen.

      2. Neil Barnes Silver badge

        Re: To be honest

        Indeed; 4k is of no more benefit to 'quality' than the change from analogue to DTT was - everything is about selling more TVs or selling material for higher cost.

        But the simple fact everyone seems to miss is that most of those pixels you just don't see - even the best HD DTT is compressed from 3Gb/s to at best 12Mb/s... but that's just an old video engineer rant.

        It's all to do with control. And to be honest, who cares? They'll control it so far and nobody will give a damn, and then nobody will see it in spite of the expensive advertising...

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: To be honest

        "Anyone can do HD nowadays; hell, lots of people are producing top-quality content using RED cameras without having anything to do with the major players. 4K is something you can only do if you are well funded. Even if you had 4K cameras, the file sizes are enormous, and the higher the resolution the better your makup/costumes/props/etc have to be."

        RED ONE has always provided 4K, so those people producing top-quality content with RED hardware have 4K available to them.

        As for props and costumes - unless you're shooting at high frame rates you just end up with a larger blurred image than before, so they don't need to be that much better (unless your footage consists almost entirely of perfectly static scenes which don't get blurred by the slow exposures required to make 24fps look smooth).

        However, as you mention, it's a bit moot because it's all very well shooting in 4K with a rented RED ONE (which can be done on indie budgets) but you then need Heavy-Duty storage and compute to do anything useful with it, which is more industry-grade-workstation territory and not at all indie-budget-friendly.

        And yes, a pox on all their houses. LSE have done a report recently that found that piracy isn't killing the music industry (http://gizmodo.com/report-piracy-isnt-killing-content-1441055599). Recorded media is being hammered, but overall revenues are up, acts are just having to do more concerts (concert revenues rising from $10bn in 1998 to $25bn last year). I like to think this is encouraging a better quality of musician as anyone who wants to be rich and famous needs to be able to walk the walk in live performance and not just be capable of putting together a semi-decent record in the studio. Similarly the theatre industry has been innovating with the National Theatre broadcasting live performances to cinemas, so I can see London quality acting without having to actually go there (and pay for trains, hotels, etc, etc). I can see how it's harder for the film industry - them being the recorded portion of the visual arts - the studio album to theatre's live gig. I think it just compels them to produce good quality output that you want to pay for - I went to see Avatar in 3D at the cinema. I won't buy it on DVD/Blu-Ray, nor would I bother pirating it - it was a marvel of technology and I enjoyed it in the format it was to be designed for - a hoofing massive screen with better audio than the sound bar at home will ever manage. What would be the point in pirating a 720p 2D version? More of that please.

      4. Robert Helpmann??
        Childcatcher

        Re: To be honest

        Anyone can do HD nowadays; hell, lots of people are producing top-quality content using RED cameras without having anything to do with the major players.

        I had to look up that reference. Pretty nifty stuff though I had a chuckle out of the price difference between the Epic Red Dragon Collection at $45,720.00 and the Epic Red Dragon Pro Collection at $58,385.00. You have to be a pretty serious hobbyist to sink $45,720.00 into your kit... semi-pro at the very least.

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          @Robert Helpmann??

          You can rent RED cameras. We almost rented one for the NAS we're setting on fire, but went with a cheaper one instead. The cost difference wasn't that much, but we we'll be lucky if the Special Projects Bureau pays our costs as is.

          A RED is probably overkill for the web anyways. *shrug* In the meantime, I have to go produce new content. By setting a NAS on fire.

          Fuck you, hollywood.

    2. Suricou Raven

      Re: To be honest

      Sometimes more pixels is the way to go, sometimes more frames - it depends entirely on the content shown.

      Not that it really matters. Very few people can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p, and the same will be true for higher frame rates. Aside from a minority of people with exceptional perception, it isn't of any benefit. We've hit the limit of human vision on a screen of practical size.

    3. fajensen

      Re: To be honest

      They need the extra bits for the watermarking, encryption codes and some viriii-infested malware to authenticate the customers system. The actual "content" will be 1024x720 as always.

      1. JEDIDIAH
        Linux

        Re: To be honest

        It takes quite a bit to just perceive the benefit of 1080p. Going beyond that is a matter of greatly diminishing returns for most people. Screen size and the viewing environment is paramount here. Many people just don't care and/or don't bother with a setup where these larger resolutions manifest well.

        Industry simply got fat and happy off of the digital transition and want the party to continue.

    4. streaky

      Re: To be honest

      "simply points out the pointlessness of such high resolutions anywhere except in cinemas"

      Remember that when you have a 20ft screen and massive pixels on 1080p - even 8k probably won't be enough.

      1. Rufusstan

        Re: To be honest

        The only issue with the argument of using a 20ft screen (assuming that you've got somewhere to place it) is that the optimum viewing distance is somewhere between 25ft and 50ft away.

        That basically IS a cinema; I've certainly been in smaller ones over the years.

        1. streaky

          Re: To be honest

          Optimum viewing distance for a 20ft screen would be about the point it fills your vision - closer to the 10-15ft mark. Also your entire wall is the answer.

      2. JEDIDIAH
        Linux

        Re: To be honest

        > Remember that when you have a 20ft screen and massive pixels on 1080p - even 8k probably won't be enough.

        Where would you fit yours? I have a room pretty much dedicated to this sort of thing and anything much beyond 10ft is pushing it. Furthermore, I've yet to see a McMansion with a space suitable for a larger screen (sadly enough).

  2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

    I'll buy content only when A) it's content I want to watch and B) it's reasonably priced. Otherwise, there's plenty of free content out there. Like just reading The Register instead of watching a movie.

    This isn't 1986. TV and movies aren't competing against a limited selection of books and the terribly dry newspaper. They're competing against Reddit, Steam and an entire universe of new content. If they make this too onerous - or expensive - then they are signing their own content-protected death warrants.

    If you don't let me run it on any device I want, when I want, where I want and for whatever reason I want then fuck you, because I've got better things to do than to fund the retirement of a bunch of geriatric douche canoes that can't grok their own irrelevance.

    Now, if you'll excuse me, Tabletop and House of Cards are on. What's that? They're always on, you say?

    That's king of my point, right there, innit?

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      And there you have it

      @ trevor "This isn't 1986. TV and movies aren't competing against a limited selection of books and the terribly dry newspaper. They're competing against Reddit, Steam and an entire universe of new content. If they make this too onerous - or expensive - then they are signing their own content-protected death warrants.

      If you don't let me run it on any device I want, when I want, where I want and for whatever reason I want then fuck you, because I've got better things to do than to fund the retirement of a bunch of geriatric douche canoes that can't grok their own irrelevance."

    2. Handle This
      Thumb Up

      Worth the Wait

      "Geriatric Douche Canoes." That, my friends, is why I read the Register, and why it is worth wading through pages of troll comments (and even sage responses) to get to the real gold.

      It is now a part of my standard repertoire. You're never too old to learn.

  3. Arctic fox
    Thumb Down

    What a bunch of charmers they are to be sure.

    "The latter will mean that the guilty party customer can be identified from the source of any copy found on the internet."

    So little johnny borrows a film from his mate and plays it and the next thing Dad knows is that "the boys" are kicking his door in. They appear to be utterly ignoring the lessons from audio downloads and the like. Oh and I would be grateful if their apologists do not come out with the "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" routine*.

    *Attributed to Joseph Goebbels, ironically enough.

    1. NightFox

      Re: What a bunch of charmers they are to be sure.

      Not sure I even get how this is meant to work - so, they can work out that a pirate copy of Star Wars XII that's the most downloaded film on PirateBay originated from a Sony 4K BD player sold in Singapore... then what? Is there going to be a global Big Brother database somewhere that records who owns every single 4K device?

      1. Horridbloke

        @Nightfox

        Will there still be anonymously purchasable and playable physical 4K media as at present, or will everything be delivered online to named subscribers / UV account holders?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @Nightfox

          "or will everything be delivered online to named subscribers / UV account holders?"

          and who says the "names" for the named subscribers will be real? I'd think the folks who are truly interested in pirating/disseminating these high-end movies probably aren't too far removed from the folks who have shedloads of stolen credit-card numbers handy with which to setup fake user accounts and download the streams. I can't imagine you have to show up at the local courthouse with drivers-license in hand and have a form notarized before they let you stream one of their movies.

          And, you know, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, has fake accounts on websites like Facebook... If it's on the Web, it has to be real.

      2. rh587

        Re: What a bunch of charmers they are to be sure.

        "Is there going to be a global Big Brother database somewhere that records who owns every single 4K device?"

        Presumably with the pervasion of "smart" hardware they're expecting everything to be plugged into the internet and registered to activate the app store for iPlayer/LoveFilm/NetFlix/etc (simply make it compulsory to register your warranty to unlock the smart functionality, which then ties your identity to that serial number). It's not an entirely unreasonable supposition either - I'm hardly likely to spill for a smart TV and then go to the effort of plugging a laptop in to watch iPlayer when the TV has it built in. Pretty easy to get a device-purchaser list together.

        Of course what happens on the second hand market is another matter!

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