Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ISP AT&T Considering Content-Recognizing Anti-Piracy Filter for Entire Network

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–9 of 9 posts

Re: ISP AT&T Considering Content-Recognizing Anti-Piracy Filter for Entire Network

#3

Post by rms »

pg wrote: post #2

Surely music-sharing software would evolve to encrypt files even before they finished installing it, no?

Bittorrent is well on its way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_protocol_encryption

It boggles my mind that AT&T is even considering this, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Re: ISP AT&T Considering Content-Recognizing Anti-Piracy Filter for Entire Network

#4

Post by ivankirigin »

pg wrote: post #2

Surely music-sharing software would evolve to encrypt files even before they finished installing it, no?

I'm not sure pirates are that flexible, but I agree circumnavigation is trivial. I think lots of people are pirates mainly out of convenience. If decrypting were harder than unzipping, people might not use it.

I was thinking about movies and realized that one way to stop pirates is to leapfrog a generation of HD quality. If movies were 3600x2400, even with h264 they would take eons to download. Also, they would take a great deal of time to recompress [compression is much more cpu intensive than decompression]. This makes the amateur pirate's life harder. There would be a reason to buy/rent the disk. Avoiding piracy through innovation ... what a thought.

Re: ISP AT&T Considering Content-Recognizing Anti-Piracy Filter for Entire Network

#5

Post by rms »

ivankirigin wrote: post #4
pg wrote: post #2

Surely music-sharing software would evolve to encrypt files even before they finished installing it, no?

I'm not sure pirates are that flexible, but I agree circumnavigation is trivial. I think lots of people are pirates mainly out of convenience. If decrypting were harder than unzipping, people might not use it. I was thinking about movies and realized that one way to stop pirates is to leapfrog a generation of HD quality. If movies were 3600x2400, even with h264 they would take eons to download. Also, they would take…

>I was thinking about movies and realized that one way to stop pirates is to leapfrog a generation of HD quality.

That would definitely do it to a certain extent, but the vast majority of people right now aren't interested in super-HD. HD media is catching on slowly enough because most people don't seem to care about the difference between HD-DVD and DVD.

It couldn't stop piracy, it would just end up differentiating based on whether or not people thought 1.4 gig .avi's are good enough.

Re: ISP AT&T Considering Content-Recognizing Anti-Piracy Filter for Entire Network

#6

Post by tlrobinson »

What happened to the quite simple idea of me giving money to an ISP in return for unfettered access to the Internet?

Oh, that's right... ISPs oversell bandwidth in the hope that most people don't [try to] saturate their connections. Then when they do, the ISPs come up with b.s. excuses like piracy to throttle customer's connections.

I'm not saying piracy isn't a problem, but the ISP's job is to [p]rovide [I]nternet [s]ervice, not decided what I should or shouldn't be able to do on the Internet.

Re: ISP AT&T Considering Content-Recognizing Anti-Piracy Filter for Entire Network

#8

Post by ivankirigin »

rms wrote: post #5
ivankirigin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure pirates are that flexible, but I agree circumnavigation is trivial. I think lots of people are pirates mainly out of convenience. If decrypting were harder than unzipping, people might not use it. I was thinking about movies and realized that one way to stop pirates is to leapfrog a generation of HD quality. If movies were 3600x2400, even with h264 they would take eons to download. Also, they would take…

>I was thinking about movies and realized that one way to stop pirates is to leapfrog a generation of HD quality. That would definitely do it to a certain extent, but the vast majority of people right now aren't interested in super-HD. HD media is catching on slowly enough because most people don't seem to care about the difference between HD-DVD and DVD. It couldn't stop piracy, it would just end up differentiating…

Most people don't know how to use HD -- certainly a system failure, but also needed info when thinking about what people want. I'm talking about things like cabling and other junk that people have no idea how to properly configure.

If I were the MPAA, I would push partnerships between player makers and TV makers. Make it trivial to play super HD content. They should add their own P2P download rental service to schedule movies -- another convenience factor added on. If a TV just worked with super HD, and if it were internet enabled to get the content I want, piracy would significantly decrease. Piggyback on top of FIOS, and you'd have something great.

Post reply on HN