New anti-piracy technology : a threat to "fair use"?

Read this interesting piece in this week's Economist about a new anti-piracy technology developed by NEC. Apparently it can scour 1,000 hours of video per hour and spot copyrighted material in clips as short as 2 seconds. What is missing from this article is any discussion of fair use of copyrighted material, and the nature of "transformativeness". Using copyrighted material for piracy is in a very different camp from using elements of copyrighted works to comment upon, critique and transform them into new forms of creative expression.


Science & Technology

Spotting video piracy
To catch a thief
A new way to scan digital videos for copyright infringement

May 13th 2010 | TOKYO | From The Economist print edition

ONLINE video piracy is a big deal. Google’s YouTube, for example, is being sued for more than $1 billion by Viacom, a media company. But it is extremely hard to tell if a video clip is copyrighted, particularly since 24 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Now a new industry standard promises to be able to identify pirated material with phenomenal accuracy in a matter of seconds.

The technique, developed by NEC, a Japanese technology company, and later tweaked by Mitsubishi Electric, has been adopted by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) for MPEG-7, the latest standard for describing audio-visual content. The two existing methods do not do a very good job. One is digital “watermarking,” in which a bit of computer code is embedded in a file to identify it. This works only if content owners take the trouble to affix the watermark—and then it only spots duplicates, not other forms of piracy such as recording a movie at a cinema. A second approach is to extract a numeric code or “digital fingerprint” from the content file itself by comparing, say, the colours or texture of regions in a frame. But this may not work if the file is altered, such as by cropping or overlaying text.

NEC’s technology extracts a digital signature that works even if the video is altered. It does this by comparing the brightness in 380 predefined “regions of interest” in a frame of the video. This could be done for all or only some of the frames in a film. The brightness is assigned a value: -1, 0, or +1. These values are encapsulated in a digital signature of 76 bytes per frame.

The beauty of the technique is that it encompasses both granularity and generality. The 380 regions of interest are numerous, so an image can be identified even if it is doctored. At the same time, the array of three values simplifies the complexity in the image, so even if a video is of poor quality or a different hue, the information about its relative luminance is retained. Moreover, the compact signature is computationally easy to extract and use.

NEC says the system could be used to automate what is currently a manual procedure of checking that video uploaded to the internet is not pirated. The technology is said to have an average detection rate of 96% and a low rate of false alarms: a mere five per million, according to tests by the ISO. It can detect if a video is pirated from clips as short as two seconds. And an ordinary PC can be used with the system to scour through 1,000 hours of video in a second. There are other potential uses too, because it provides a way to identify video content. A person could, say, use the signature in a clip to search for a full version of a movie. Piracy will still flourish—but the pirates may have to get smarter.

Making Your Media Matter Conference 2010: Participant Media and its social action and outreach campaigns

John Schreiber Executive VP of social action and advocacy, Participant films, described the social action campaigns/ NGO partnerships that Participant has developed around its films. The first film he discussed was The Informant—a departure for Participant given that it was a comedy about whistle-blowing "a decidedly unfunny and an incredible brave and difficult thing to do". Recognizing this, Participant decided to try do something serious around the film. The action it came up with was to partner with The Paley Center to have a whistle blowing panel including some of the country's most famous informants – this had such a positive response that a film/whistleblowing festival has been curated and will begin touring campuses with Informant as a central piece. Next up he described the novel way that The Visitor has been used – Participant worked with an NGO to use the film to train lawyers in how to represent detainees in bail hearings. He went on to describe the NGO partnership used for the Crazies – the Romero remake horror where biotoxins turn people into zombies. Participant worked with Greenpeace on publicity stunts featuring hazmat suited Greenpeace volunteers at cinemas where film was opening to draw attention to the Hazardous Toxin Bill, currently stalled in Congress, and the power of doing this with a male 18-24 audience who wouldn’t normally hear this message. One of the most impressive examples of NGO/film partnerships to effect change was for Kite Runner. Recognizing that Afghanistan has the world’s 3rd worst literacy rates, Participant partnered with an NGO to use the film to raise funds, create libraries and train teachers in the country: to date 87 libraries have been created and 1000 teachers trained.
As a takeaway Schreiber describes how at Participant they have identified 5 types of social action – awareness, education, action, advocacy and solutions.

Making Your Media Matter Conference 2010: the documentary 'Lioness' and its outreach

Producer/director of Lioness, Meg McLachlan, spoke about her funders and her outreach: Fledgling NYSCA, ITVS, Chicken and Egg provided $100,000 outreach funding for her film on returning female VAs. Since its release in 2008 the film has had impact in: activating a discussion on veteran health care and needs of returning women combat soldiers and is lately being used as a training tool in rural health centers. The editorial decisions that the filmmakers took ie. not taking a line on the rightness of the war gave her better access to subjects, also enabled her to go in with an attitude of discovery, but moreover has also increased the potential partnerships for the film– e.g. women groups, network of women’s VA groups, staffers on capitol hill. For Lionness’ outreach plan, traditional devices have played a bigger part --face to face meetings and bringing returning VAs featured in the film to these meetings has been very important. In getting into the Dept of Defense circles women sitting on these committees have been key, many of them having a military connection, as Vietnam nurses etc, and because of the age of these women, face time was an effective tool-- more so than say, social media. Cultivating these relationships proved to be a key move, through them the Lioness team were able to access the DOD circuit, conferences, eventually got invited onto their panels. In a later development their partners e.g. VA offices, eventually became their distribution partners. They are now at the point where they are starting to break the film into clips and where these are being used as a curriculum in North Carolina primary care health centers. McLaghlan ended with several take-aways: try embed your film into institutions. Be credible with your subjects. Be flexible in terms of opportunities – and cultivate good funder relationships.

Making Your Media Matter Conference 2010: Not in Our Town

This session was a roundtable featuring documentary filmmakers who had created content and a social action campaign around their film. First up, Not in Our Town, a documentary about the residents of Billings, Montana who responded to an upsurge of anti-Semitic hate crimes in their town by taking a stand, through a partnership of religious groups, unions, artists and newspapers people made change – one of most dramatic symbols of this when the local newspaper took decision to print a paper menorah and 10,00 people in the town displayed it in their window. Since then the filmmaker has traveled the country documenting how the film being used – igniting change in communities.
Filmmaker, Patrice O Neill talks about this as a new model – this is not outreach – rather, this is making change by showing how others have done it. She talked about the importance of partners – in her case facing history/ and PBS. There is a sequel to Not In Our Town (as yet un-named) that will focus on the Long Island murder of Marcelo Lucero and the town’s attempt to take a stand against hate-crime directed at new immigrants. She talks about the intent of her work having an impact on her aesthetics -– story told by a chorus: a community of voices – discomfort is part of the landscape. She ended with a plug for BAVC producers institute – this is an intensive program offered by BAVC that pairs a documentary with a team of developers/interactive media designers and together you work to devise/prototype multi-platform tools to support the film and actions. not in our town.org emerged from this – a key feature is of the site is a map where hate crimes / positive actions / facing history sites are plotted, another is the bank of 35 amateur videos that are made available for people to download and use – e.g. Gunn High School – now there have been 200,000 uses of the film.

Making your Media Matter Conference 2010: Ethical dilemmas in making media

Pat Aufdeheide speaking on the Center’s new publication Honest Truths. For this publication, the Center for Social Media interviewed many documentarians on ethical dilemmas that they have encountered in their work. Though there was no common vocabulary and lots of insistence on the particularities of their situation, 3 common views emerged.

- do no harm (to vulnerable subjects)
- give viewers an honest (but not necessarily accurate picture)
- be responsible to your project/contract/vision

These 3 ethical concerns frequently come into conflict with each other.

The center’s study found that the filmmakers didn’t have a good vocabulary to describe these ethical dilemmas. Reactions to this report from the documentary community have been: “I see in this report what is wrong with my field.”

Failure to resolve these issues leads to a ducking of responsibility:
e.g. – “Discovery made me do it”

In the publication, call is made for discussions, code of ethics, standards and practices, and in view of this, the Center has been looking at where such best practice exists. One that has been v. inspiring to the Center is ‘Safeguarding Trust BBC website’ – Do check this out – it’s fascinating.

The site is an interactive guide for independent filmmakers who contract with the BBC – site gives common situations, and the ethical expectation that the BBC has of you. On the site, various scenarios are give for different types of programming, reality, nature etc and potential BBC hires record their decision – the site tells you if your decision accords with what the BBC does and why. At the conference we used TurningTechnologies.com clickers to record votes in real time.

Making your Media Matter Conference 2010: Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media

The third session of The Making Your Media Matter conference was a roundtable on new research and tools.
Alyce Myatt ED of Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media GFEM made a case that the biggest take aways from today for social issue media makers should be 1. establish your NGO partners from outset and 2.funders are not interested in your film per se, they are interested in advancing their cause. She pointed out recent changes in funding landscape: 1.Disappearance of big funders who might in the past have underwritten total costs, and 2. Council on Foundation’s recent focus on social justice – shows a real change from older situation where foundations not interested in funding advocacy. This said, a lot of funders don’t understand new media: though this could be changing – Myatt gave an example last year she took a handful of funders to South by Southwest Interactive sxswi --this yr she took 31 funders to sxswi – she recorded seeing tangible change -- funders began to change funding priorities to fund new media. A further change that media makers need to consider, is that today you need to have a strategy not only for production, and distribution but dissemination. Myatt stressed this as distinct from distribution—dissemination being what plans you make for people to make use of your media. Ended with a plug for www.media.gfem.org a new resource offered by GFEM for filmmakers/media makers to share work in progress. She also highlighted a report just released by GFEM report just issued Funding Media, Strengthening Democracy—designed for funding community – the report (available as a download from GFEM's website) makes 10 recommendations for funding in the 21st century. Among principal recommendations is to devise a system where all grants can be viewed in real time. Funding Media, Strengthening Democracy … looks to be really useful.

Making your Media Matter Conference 2010: What Makers Quest can teach us about impact assessment

Jessica Clark Center for Social Media – project manager for future of public media.net – spoke on new models for impact assessment. Talked about a recent action research project that she had overseen. She initially described the process – 1. Conduct 7 summits,in various cities. 2. Invite RFPs from producers for demonstration project where they were asked to use social media for impact: Result 8 multiplatform projects were funded at around $48K —one that really took off was mapping main st – Jessica and her staff were able to use this project to map the ripple of the impact. Read about projects at: www.MQ2.org

3. Best practice – tease out best practice from the demonstration projects.

What is really altering traditional ideas of impact is the notion of networks / what she describes as ‘publics’… rather than through festivals, networks are the new way that information is moving …networks also changing with the way you engage with your potential audience/disseminators during project construction/production.

Jessica was the first of the presenters to pose the question: Why assess impact?:
Came up with some familiar answers:
- to make sure you are serving your mission
- -benchmarks for strategic planning
- to be engaged with your users

She also described the elements of impact: reach…relevance…inclusion….engagement….influence

Jessica argued that what is now needed for us to assess impact is new tools

- unified social media dashboard
- social issue buzz tracker
- models for impact reporting
- a model for tracking network growth


Lessons learned:

- be solution orientated
- know what you don’t know
- seek partners
- self promote