Apple Patents Anti-Piracy Technology

Greg Tito

PR for Dungeons & Dragons
Sep 29, 2005
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Apple Patents Anti-Piracy Technology



Your iPhone might soon detect whether you are recording that concert and shut itself off.

Piracy is a bad thing. We all know that, right? Right? But I'm also not a big fan of corporations taking away the rights of consumers to use their products in ways the designers might not have intended. Apple is patenting technology which will add the ability for future iterations of the iPhone to automatically detect whether the user is capturing video of a musical performance or a film presentation and disable the camera.

The technology involved is somewhat ingenious. Movie theaters, for example, already use infrared signals broadcasting to individual hearing-aid devices and Apple intends for future iPhones to detect these signals, clueing the device into the fact that its user is watching a film. If you decide to take out your iPhone and perhaps record the X-Men: First Class this weekend, and then possibly upload that file for everyone to see, then you are violating IP law. The proposed technology would prevent you from ever transferring the movie into bits stored on your phone.

The same goes for music concerts, except that performers would have to start blasting infrared signals out into the audience for it to be effective. This I'm actually in favor of, because the amount of schmucks holding up an iPhone at concerts has got to be reduced somehow. What happened to actually enjoying the show? What's with all the freaking pictures, people?

Another, even wierder possibility is for the iPhone to automatically place a watermark over any image taken, instead of disabling photographs altogether. So you might be able to snap a shot at that Lady Gaga show, but the URL to LadyGaga.com will be emblazoned all over it. Ugh.

Now, on the other hand, this tech could be used for good and not for evil, by allowing museums or other landmarks to blast infrared data to the iPhone so that you could get a description of the landscape or historical document you are seeing. Kind of like a digital tour guide without the dirty headset.

Source: Patently Apple [http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2011/06/apple-working-on-a-sophisticated-infrared-system-for-ios-cameras.html]

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Sight Unseen

The North Remembers
Nov 18, 2009
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I don't like this patent personally. I like to film the concerts I go to for my own uses and so I can go back and watch it again some other time. That's not illegal, or at least I don't think it is. I would be pissed if they prohibited us from doing that just because some people might try to pirate it.
 

Icedshot

New member
Jul 13, 2009
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This is pretty much ridiculous, id refuse to buy one of them if they did this

I mean, infra red is extremely common. Whats to stop a troll from setting up a large IR transmitter and screwing up everyones iphones?
 

manythings

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Nov 7, 2009
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... I hope someone pirates it.

OT: I wonder how long it is before some turns the watermark into cocks and such.

More importantly I can understand the why but how long before this kind of thing starts creeping into your tv? It won't be the same thing of course but I mean an anti-record so you have to buy the DVD's, or radio that automatically scrambles at the first hint of you enjoying music for free.
 

Truly-A-Lie

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Nov 14, 2009
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Is recording gigs illegal? I mean fair enough if you start distributing or whatever, but I know I've wanted to at least capture a bit of an event on camera as a bit to remember it by. The recordings are usually too fuzzy and horrible to actually pass as a copy of the song.
The thing about the cinemas however, I definitely approve of.
 
Apr 5, 2008
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Wow! What amazing and revolutionary technology! I hope for Apple's sake no consumer realises that all they would have to do to bypass such a restriction is to not use an iPhone.
 

Cousin_IT

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Feb 6, 2008
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Cameraphones are the worst thing to happen to gigs since...well they just suck. It doesn't sound quite as satisfying as shoving a phone up the owners arse when they stand up/push infront to record the show. But we can't have everything, I suppose.
 

Thaluikhain

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 16, 2010
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manythings said:
... I hope someone pirates it.
I was going to make a similar joke.

But...it knows if you are pirating something? How?

Now, maybe if you could get cinemas to broadcast a signal to tell devices not to record, maybe that would work.
 

josemlopes

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Jun 9, 2008
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Oh no, now i cant listen to my songs coming from low quality shaky sound recorders. [/sarcasm]

This is so stupid, now I cant record something (like the experience of going to a concert) to later watch and remember the good time spent at the concert. People arent recording to put it on pirate bay.
 

koroem

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Jul 12, 2010
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Apple patents your face when you sell your soul to "rent" an iphone and use the camera.
 

thedeathscythe

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Aug 6, 2010
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I don't really see why someone would record a movie with their iPhone, I mean that's a lot of space for it to take up, of decent quality, but still pretty bad. I also thought there was a recording time limit but I may be mistaken. As for the concerts, it is annoying when people film it, but at the same time, it doesn't really ruin my experience. I've always wondered why they have to record it though. Can you not enjoy the experience and remember it like that? Or do you have Alzheimer's and you have to film it or else you'll probably forget you ever saw Elton John play (which I did recently, very good!). That being said, it's not really "piracy" in my opinion to film them playing live, I guess record holders would but I thought that live performances were sort of open grounds?
 

NLS

Norwegian Llama Stylist
Jan 7, 2010
1,594
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Wait, who would actually use their iPhone to record a movie at the teather? I'm pretty sure those distributing day 1 movies recorded from cinemas use better gear than that. The real threat won't be affected by this at all...
 

matrix3509

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Sep 24, 2008
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Yet again, Android wins so hard. Its starting to get a little sad.

Also, queue Apple fans lining up to take the piss so hard they'll look like R. Kelly groupies.
 

CM156_v1legacy

Revelation 9:6
Mar 23, 2011
3,997
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I loathe piracy for all that it is.

That being said though, I don't think this is really a good idea. And people will jailbreak it, or buy another recording device.
 

Baldr

The Noble
Jan 6, 2010
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lotr rocks 0 said:
I don't like this patent personally. I like to film the concerts I go to for my own uses and so I can go back and watch it again some other time. That's not illegal, or at least I don't think it is. I would be pissed if they prohibited us from doing that just because some people might try to pirate it.
It is against US civil law to "record" copyrighted "performances", but it is up to the Artist/Copyright holders to enforce their own copyrights.
 

SaintWaldo

Interzone Vagabond
Jun 10, 2008
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Greg Tito said:
What's with all the freaking pictures, people?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/livingroomcomedy/502849246/

I dunno. Some of us like to save a memento that we were there.
 

TsunamiWombat

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Sep 6, 2008
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Raiyan 1.0 said:
Aaaand this gets hacked. Yesterday.
Pretty much this. I laughed my balls off when I read the headline.

Also, isn't Android kicking apples ass right now because they're less pyscho controlling?
 

Sight Unseen

The North Remembers
Nov 18, 2009
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Baldr said:
lotr rocks 0 said:
I don't like this patent personally. I like to film the concerts I go to for my own uses and so I can go back and watch it again some other time. That's not illegal, or at least I don't think it is. I would be pissed if they prohibited us from doing that just because some people might try to pirate it.
It is against US civil law to "record" copyrighted "performances", but it is up to the Artist/Copyright holders to enforce their own copyrights.
Well I'm not an american so phew :p does that apply to concerts though or is that for like re-recording movies/CD's (cue image of FBI warning on every VHS/DVD ever) how can a concert be copyrighted? And also why is it a big deal if I have no intent to use it for pirating or selling, but just for my own personal use (and of such bad quality that nobody would buy it even if I tried)

I've been to some concerts though where the security guy at the front gate checks me and sees I have a camera with me and they didn't care.

On the other hand I've also been to a Green Day concert where a security guy came to me in my seat and said that someone had reported me for filming and told me to stop or they would take my camera away... (...and the guy one row below me kept filming for the rest of the concert without being told a thing) Seriously who reports people for that? I don't think I was being invasive or disrupting to anyone ( I was in the seating portion of an arena, like an ampitheatre and was holding the camera close to me)