The end for porno pirates?
We all love to get something for nothing but where do you draw the line? Do you have pirated copies of software programs, Windows, Photoshop, games? Yes I guess that most of us have something that we have not purchased from the copyright owner or have ripped off from a web site.
Just at the moment there are a plethora of sites out there packed with spanking films and porno films pirated from the member’s areas of some of our best known web sites. There are other sites who just host the links to material which is then placed on so called FREE servers such as send space or rapid share. It seems that the pirates think it is open day on other people’s property and when questioned about it think that because they are hiding there grubby little activities behind so called anonymous e-mail addresses and proxy servers no one can take them to task on it.
Well, we have news for them; certain companies’ are now trialling a piece of very clever software that puts unbreakable hidden code into movie downloads. The object is to go after the pirate, the one who originally downloaded the material. This code tells the copyright owner exactly who downloaded the material and therefore who has breached the copyright. As the designers say “By using advanced steganographic techniques our download management software encrypts in real-time, using a client-unique key, within the wmv or RealMedia® video file the membership username, the date, time and IP address of the downloader. With this information the originating site owner can identify the person responsible for releasing their film into the ‘wild’.
Our advanced steganography system imprints in every frame of your film the encrypted username and download date/time information. Our systems can still retrieve this information even if the film has been converted between various film formats (wmv-avi, wmv-mpeg, wmv- rm etc.) and in many cases even a single frame-grab, in several formats, is sufficient for us to retrieve the information you need.
At the moment these companies prefer to remain anonymous until they have had their first successful prosecutions for copyright theft and breach of contract. ‘Breach of contract’ you ask, well yes indeed, when you pay your money to join a web site and agree to the terms and conditions it will be part of those terms and conditions that you do not distribute the material or share it with others and that you do not use it on any free sites, this you agree to when taking on your membership. We have it on good authority that certain individuals who make a habit of this will be getting delivered to their home address rather large invoices for the illegal use and distribution of copyrighted material. It then becomes a simple case; they either pay the invoice or have to defend their actions in their local court. How many porno pirates will want to do this?
As far as the web site owners are concerned it is easier for them to prove breach of contract in almost every country than to challenge the copyright laws in some of the obscure countries that the servers used by these pirate sites are located. The penalties are also higher.
Is this the beginning of the end for web pirates? We don’t think so but maybe when the trials of this software are complete their demise will be a little closer.
