Managing Rights Management

Watermarking and Fingerprinting Patent Applicatins

On Thurrsdays the USPTO publishes new patent applications. Today's Spotlight Applications address various uses of watermarking and fingerprinting. Assigned to IBM, the first application discloses a watermarking system for tracking digital content. The second application discloses ways of using fingerprinting for detecting duplicate and near duplicate files.

Irdeto Conditional Access and Samsung Copy Protection Patents

On Tuesdays the USTPO issues new patents. Today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of conditional access systems and copy protection techniques for video. Assigned to Irdeto (NL), the first patent addresses conditional access techniques. Assigned to Samsung (KR), the second patent address copy protection techniques.

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 are posted illegally as free Internet downloads. Distributing books for free without permission violates copyright laws and deprives publishers of revenue.

User Generated Content: Mashups vs. the Copyright Industries

The San Jose Mercury reports that Universal is attempting to get Pennsylvania mom Stephanie Lenz to take down a video showing her toddler learning to with the music of Prince in the background. Alleging copyright violations, Universal sent Lenz a "takedown" letter.

Calling it a "case of first impression," U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel on Friday considered Universal's attempt to dismiss Lenz's lawsuit, which maintains the media giant and Prince are abusing a 10-year-old copyright law intended to curtail movie and music thievery on the Web. Lenz is seeking unspecified damages and a court finding that she did not violate Universal's copyrights with the YouTube video.

Huawei Technologies and NHN Co DRM Patent Applications

On Thursdays that USPTO publishes new patent applications. Both of today's Spotlight Applications address various aspects of DRM. Assigned to Huawei Technologies (CN), the first application discloses techniques for realizing accurate billing in digital rights management. Assigned to NHN Corporation (KR), the second application discloses ways of presenting advertising using free ring tones and DRM.

Digital Doesn't Dimish DVD, Blu-ray

Digital distribution a drag on DVD, Blu-ray? 'Taint so, says this article in Home Media Magazine.

Blu-ray Disc sales alone should amount to at least three times what digital downloading is expected to bring in this year, studio executives say. In the first six months of 2008, consumers spent an estimated $194 million on Blu-ray Disc purchases, according to studio estimates — a gain of nearly 350% from the $43 million that came from high-definition disc sales the first six months of 2007, when growth was stymied by a format war between Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. The format war ended Feb. 19 this year, when chief HD DVD backer Toshiba Corp. officially bowed out.

Viacom Agrees To Anonymous YouTube User Information

Reuters and the New York Times report that Viacom and Google/YouTube have agreed to anonymize user information as part of discovery in the lawsuit between them over copyright infringement in user generated or uploaded content.

Earlier in July, a federal judge in Manhattan ordered Google to turn over YouTube user data to Viacom and other plaintiffs to help them to prepare a confidential study of what they argue are vast piracy violations on the video-sharing site.

Google said it had now agreed to provide lawyers for Viacom and a class-action group led by the Football Association of England, a large viewership database that blanks out YouTube username and Internet address data that could be used to identify individual video watchers.

Sony Conditional Access and HP Copy Protection Issued Patents

On Tuesdays the USPTO publishes newly issued patents. Today's Spotlight Patents address various aspects of cable conditional access systems and copy protection. Assigned to Sony, the first patent concerns a configurable cableCARD. Assigned to HP, the second patent concerns copy protection for analog video signals from computing devices.

Another Layer of Security for Blu-ray?

AfterDawn has noticed a June 9th announcement on the site of the DVD Association regarding another layer of security for Blu-ray discs from German DRM firm X-PROTECT. Augmenting AACS renewable encryption and BD+ programmable security,

X-PROTECT blueTM is of no impact to the end- consumer and works on both HDMV and BD-J Blu-ray Discs. One of the key advantages is the high flexibility of the solution, as it can be easily and frequently updated to stop new piracy attacks in its tracks. It supports all Blu-ray profiles, as well all existing and future stand-alone Blu-ray players, PC players and Playstation 3, securing the quality of the material and compatibility.

Since it's unlikely that hardware manufacturers would agree to support a third party security layer if modifications to player firmware were required, it would seem that X-PROTECT blue is leveraging the player's Java interpreter to accomplish its goals. As of a few minutes ago, there is no mention of x-protect on either the  Blu-ray or BD+ sites.

Apple and Microsoft DRM Patent Applications

Thursdays the USPTO publishes new patent applications. Both of today's Spotlight Applications concern various aspects of DRM. Assigned to Apple, the first application discloses a token passing technique for media playback devices. Assigned to Microsoft, the second application discloses a content encryption schema for integrating digital rights management with encrypted multicast.

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% in 2007.

Copying of movies declined slightly between 2007 and 2008 from 76% to 67% of respondents while copying of TV shows increased from 42% to 61% of respondents.

Microsoft Fingerprinting and Philips Watermarking Patents

Tuesdays the USPTO publishes newly issued patents. Today's Spotlight Patents address various aspects of digital fingerprinting and watermarking. Assigned to Microsoft, the first patent addresses techniques for collusion resistant desynchronization for digital video fingerprinting. Assigned to Philips, the second patent addresses ways of using multiple watermarks to protect content material

Podcast With Ed Gaudet, Liquid Machines, ERM

Liquid Machines (LM) is the last remaining important independent US-based Enterprise Rights Management (ERM) company. It's earlier independent competitors were acquired: SealedMedia by Stellant and, in turn, Oracle, and Authentica by EMC.

I recently spoke at length with Ed Gaudet, Liquid Machines' SVP Corporate Development and Marketing about Rights Management, ease of use, the competitive landscape, ERM and content management technologies, and related topics.

An edited Podcast version of our conversation is available in MP3 format here.

A time index to our conversation follows:

DRM and Copyright Related Patent Applications

On Thursdays the USPTO publishes new patent applications. Both of today's Spotlight applications address aspects of DRM and copyright. The first applications discloses techniques for integrating advertising in user generated contributions, no assignee given. The second application discloses techniques for DRM based on message exchange between DRM agent and rendering, no assignee given.

Napster Undervalued Because of Earlier DRMed Music?

Wired reports that a few Napster shareholders have filed suit complaining that Napster has been unable to compete with iTunes in part because at one point Napster used Microsoft's DRM to protect music tracks.

The Apple situation can be traced back to Napster's ill-fated embrace of Microsoft's DRM platform and Apple's refusal to license FairPlay and implement subscription-capable music DRM. Napster's subscription service can't compete fairly with iTunes and file sharing networks because iPods are currently incapable of playing music from any unlimited music subscription. Napster removed DRM from its single song downloads earlier this year, and now sells them in the MP3 format, which works with the iPod. But iPod owners still seem to be more likely to shop at iTunes, if they're buying music at all.

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 the original textbook layout and full-color illustrations. Users must simply set up a free account and download a free software program that uses a popular peer-to-peer system called BitTorrent. Other textbook-download sites are even easier to use, offering digital books at the click of a mouse.

Markany and Cloakware Watermarking Patents

On Tuesdays the USPTO publishes newly issued patents. Both of today's Spolight patents address various aspects of watermarking and both are assigned to foreign companies. Assigned to Markany (KR), the first patent concerns techniques for embedding and detecting digital watermarks. Assigned to Cloakware (CA), the second patent concerns techniques for sustainable digital watermarks.

Sony and Divx Partner, User Rather Than Device Oriented DRM

BetaNews reports that Sony Pictures and Divx have partnered to provide a movie downloading service.

DivX has a Digital Rights Management system that it claims can protect copyright holders, while not interfering with a viewer's ability to watch content. Viewers will be able to download Sony content's for devices other than just a PC, and DivX will partner with retailers to market Sony's content.

Something unique about DivX DRM is that content is tied to the user, rather than to the device, as is generally the case with other DRM technologies for protecting movies and music.

Allowing users to move content from device to device may solve one of the major irritations that have turned consumers against DRM.

Seclore Added To List of ERM Companies

Mumbai-based Seclore has been added to the list of ERM/IRM companies in the right column.

Samsung and IBM DRM Patent Applications

On Thursdays the USPTO publishes new patent applications. Both of today's Spotlight applications address aspects of DRM. Assigned to Samsung, the first application discloses various techniques for DRM and measuring a usage amount of content used in a device. Assigned to IBM, the second application discloses accessibility content copyright permission techniques.

Digimarc Watermarking and InterTrust DRM Patents;

On Tuesdays the USPTO publishes newly issued patents. Today's Spotlight patents address various aspects of DRM and watermarking. Assigned to Digimarc, the first patent concerns techniques for digital watermarking with variable orientation and protocols. Assigned to Intertrust, the second patent is another divisional (same specification, different claims) of the "item delivery" patent (one of mine).

What's Up With Blu-Ray?

Paul Sweeting, Editor of ContentAgenda, wrote recently that Toshiba and Kaleidescape are bringing to market players that up-vert standard DVD video to 1080p HiDef video.

"We have some customers who want Blu-ray just because it's the latest and greatest thing," Kaleidescape CEO Michael Malcolm told Media Wonk. "But believed all along that Blu-ray would not be a successful product because the difference is just not compelling enough compared to DVD. Some early adopters will buy it, but I never believed it would make the leap to the enthusiast or early mainstream market."

Microsoft Reverses Course On MSN DRM Servers

Ars Technica reports that in the face of consumer complaints, Microsoft has decided to maintain its MSN DRM servers.

The decision comes almost two months after the company announced that customers would have until August 31 to commit to which PCs and devices they want the music to play on. After that, the MSN Music authorization servers were going to go dark, meaning that users would no longer be able to authorize new machines or operating systems to play the music if they were to upgrade in the future.

Obviously the right thing to do.

Two NBC Universal DRM Patent Applications

Thursdays the USPTO publishes new patent applications. Both of today's Spotlight applications address various aspects of DRM. Both are assigned to NBC Universal.  The first application discloses techniques for DRM copy sharing system. The second discloses a DRM flexible continued usage system. 

Microsoft and Digimarc Watermarking Issued Patents

On Tuesdays the USPTO issues new patents. Both of today's Spotlight patents address various aspects of watermarking. Assigned to Microsoft, the first patent addresses countermeasure against estimation-based attacks of spread-spectrum watermarks. Assigned to Digimarc, the second patent addresses content authentication and recovery using digital watermarks.

ISP Targeted Advertising

One example of the current discussion regarding ISP efforts to participate in revenue streams based on advertising is this overview article that appeared in MediaPost. Charter and others are looking into ad insertion based on capturing information about the web browsing behavior of their customers.

In the U.S., ad company Charter Communications has said it intends to share information about its broadband subscribers' Web surfing with ad company NebuAd. Bob Dykes, CEO of NebuAd, has said that the platform is anonymous, and that users will be able to opt-out.

Open Source Meets Proprietary: Where's the Balance?

BusinessWeek has an article on open source and restrictive and/or proprietary technologies such as DRM. The article reports a discussion with Nokia's Dr. Ari Jaaksi:

Jaaksi, Nokia's vice president of software and head of the Finnish handset manufacturer's open-source operations, said: "We want to educate open-source developers. There are certain business rules [developers] need to obey, such as DRM, IPR [intellectual property rights], SIM locks and subsidised business models.... Why do we need closed vehicles? We do," he said. "Some of these things harm the industry but they're here [as things stand]. These are touchy, emotional issues but this dialogue is very much needed. As an industry, we plan to use open-source technologies but we are not yet ready to play by the rules; but this needs to work the other way round too."

How The RIAA Battles Piracy: Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing

Reuter's Susan Butler wrote an in-depth account of the RIAA.'s efforts to curb piracy that is well worth reading. Whether their efforts will have any long lasting effect is debatable. By all accounts, the music industry is doing well. It's the record / CD business that's broken. The business model hasn't worked since Armageddon arrived: broadband, high quality compression, and inexpensive storage.

Despite the RIAA's efforts, data suggest that demand for pirated content remains strong. A recent NPD Group report estimates that 19% of U.S. Internet subscribers 13 and older download free music from P2P services, barely less than the 20% reported when the RIAA began its user litigation campaign in 2003.

As noted in these pages, similar efforts by the MPAA are inaccurate. Researchers recently got them to accuse three laser printers of piracy. Perhaps toasters and coke machines are next.

Colligo and InterTrust Fingerprinting and Watermarking Patent Applications

On Thursdays, the USPTO publishes new patent applications. Today's Spotlight applications address the use of watermarking and fingerprinting. Assigned to Colligo Networks, the first application discloses techniques for codeword-enhanced P2P authentication. The second application is another divisional (same specification, different claims) of the InterTrust trusted and secure item delivery (including e-mail) application (one of mine).

Annals of Privacy Protection: The NGS Genographic Project

A friend mentioned contributing DNA to the National Geographic Society's Genographic Project "which is seeking to chart new knowledge about the migratory history of the human species by using sophisticated laboratory and computer analysis of DNA contributed by hundreds of thousands of people from around the world."

I got curious about the privacy implications of providing genetic materials to the project, whose goals are certainly laudable. Having reviewed the project's privacy page, it was unclear to me whether the DNA would have to be made available in response to a lawful subpoena related to civil or criminal proceedings for personally identifiable genetic information. So I asked them via email. They were kind enough to respond as follows (which I have their permission to publish):