p2pnet - rss feed: Scouring the web for p2p crime
p2pnet.net News:- Yet another company figures it’s found a great way to get rich on the backs of all those hundreds of millions of evil file sharers.
Simple. Just scour the entire web.
But, “executives decline to say how frequently they will update their Web index, a key factor in their ability to stay on top of postings,” says The Wall Street Journal. “They also say they won’t at least initially monitor peer-to-peer file swapping systems, where large amounts of pirated music, movies, TV shows and software are traded.”
Attributor Corp in California, “has begun testing a system to scan the billions of pages on the Web for clients’ audio, video, images and text — potentially making it easier for owners to request that Web sites take content down or provide payment for its use,” says the story.
Or as the company itself sees things:
Attributor is a technology company creating a platform that provides transparency and accountability in online content use and licensing for the rapidly growing content economy. Attributor customers will include publishers of all kinds seeking a more effective way to identify, evaluate, and resolve re-use issues for content across the Internet.
“Identify, evaluate, and resolve re-use issues”? Nice one.
Apparently, it’s been in “stealth” mode but is now, “emerging into the public eye … at a time when some media and entertainment companies’ frustration with difficulties identifying infringing uses of their content online is increasing,” says the WSJ. “The problem has intensified with the proliferation and increasing usage of sites such as Google Inc.’s YouTube, which lets consumers post video clips.”
Maybe Attributor’s emergence will solve a problem for the Big 4 music and Big 6 Hollywood movie cartels who’ve both been using a firm called MediaSentry which is supposedly able to “identify” alleged copyright infringers, called “criminals” and “thieves,” on behalf of the music and movie industries.
However, MediaSentry’s results are perhaps less than reliable, it’s been suggested, and it’s increasingly being held up to scrutiny.
Of course, MediaSentry isn’t the only p2p parasite firm and meanwhile, “Media companies have used digital-rights management technology designed to make it hard to copy or transfer files,” the WSJ goes on blandly. “But such measures have often proved to be clumsy, despised by consumers or quickly thwarted. That’s the case for DRM technology built into DVDs to prevent them from being ripped onto computers, for example.”
Sony BGM, one the Big 4 Organized Music cartel members, knows all about “clumsy”. It tried to secretly weasel dangerous spyware onto the computers of people who’d bought music CDs. But it was caught in the act and is now being forced to pay the price both financially and in terms of the ongoing disastrous PR it’s being painted with as a direct result.
But not to worry. Attributor co-founders, former Yahoo executive Jim Brock, and Jim Pitkow, “a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has sold companies to Google and VeriSign Inc,” say they’ve, “cracked the thorny computer-science problem of scouring the entire Web by using undisclosed technology to efficiently process and comb through chunks of content,” says the WSJ. “The company says it will have over 10 billion Web pages in its index before the end of this month.”
“If it works, it’s a fantastic invention,” the story has Lawrence Iser,a lawyer who represents, “musical artists and other entertainment industry clients”.
If it works ;p
Meanwhile, “It’s unclear whether such a service will be welcomed by Internet companies that allow users to post content,” the story observes. “YouTube, News Corp.’s MySpace and others already face copyright lawsuits. In some cases, they’re building systems to identify pirated materials consumers upload to their sites, and say they’re open to sharing revenue with content owners.”
How do Attributor do what it do?
It, “analyzes the content of clients, who could range from individuals to big media companies, using a technique known as ‘digital fingerprinting,’ which determines unique and identifying characteristics of content,” says the story. “It uses these digital fingerprints to search its index of the Web for the content. The company claims to be able to spot a customer’s content based on the appearance of as little as a few sentences of text or a few seconds of audio or video. It will provide customers with alerts and a dashboard of identified uses of their content on the Web and the context in which it is used.
“The content owners can then try to negotiate revenue from whoever is using it or request that it be taken down. In some cases, they may decide the content is being used fairly or to acceptable promotional ends. Attributor plans to help automate the interaction between content owners and those using their content on the Web, though it declines to specify how.”
And Ali Aydar, cto at Shawn Fanning’s Snocap DRM company, think Brock and Pitkow are really cool
“They’re real guys who have solved hard-core problems,” the WSJ has him declaring enthusiastically.
Stay tuned.
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
Also See:
The Wall Street Journal - Copyright Tool Will Scan Web For Violations, December 18, 2006
supposedly able to “identify” - RIAA: trying it on with MediaSentry, December 17, 2006
held up to scrutiny - Utrecht MediaSentry decision, December 18, 2006
knows all about “clumsy” - New Sony spyware deal, December 22, 2006
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December 23rd, 2006 at 12:12 am
well this is gunna work isn’t it… does their indexing method abide by the robots.txt file?