Author Topic: AT&T Invents The Ultimate Anti-Piracy System (Read 1212 times)

silicon_toad2000 · « **on:** July 14, 2013, 01:54:12 am »

http://torrentfreak.com/prism-for-pirates-att-invents-the-ultimate-anti-piracy-system-130713/

Quote

...The patent in question is named “Real-time content detection in ISP transmissions” and focuses exclusively on tracking and deterring online piracy. According to the telco, copyright infringement is a “recurring problem in Internet usage” that is hard to police without the proper tools.

“Policing such unauthorized transmission is difficult for copyright owners, because the sources of copyrighted materials may be elusive, or indeed may be legitimate possessors of copyrighted materials but do not have authorization to permit copies to be made,” the patent explains.

“Pursuing the illegal distributors of such materials is problematic because the users are often numerous and diffuse and individual legal action against multiple small users is expensive — as well as unsympathetic from a public relations standpoint when the users turn out to be teenagers or others whose motives are seldom to make a criminal profit.”

AT&T’s system can overcome these challenges by monitoring the traffic of users in real-time, and comparing the data transfers with a database of “pirated” or otherwise illegal files. When the system spots an unauthorized transaction, it can then take a variety of actions in reponse.

“The present invention preferably uses a currently available real-time network data management device which is capable of analyzing the complete flow of data packets in a data stream.”

“If the content of the identified data stream is a positive match with a database item, e.g., is a copyright infringement, then a responsive action is taken,” the patent explains.

GhostShip · « **Reply #1 on:** July 14, 2013, 02:21:52 am »

And how does it deal with encrypted datastreams as most are these days?

I must say this hardly befits the grant of a patent in this day and age, this is far from non-obvious in fact its the first thing anyone thinks of when network management aka throttling is mentioned, its a common sense hop to send out a warning/ infringement notification or network message to the customer as I believe many anti-piracy teams already do in some countries, it seems they have done little to earn a patent, if anything.