IP: more on "Tivo is Theft"

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Ross Stapleton-Gray <Ross.Stapleton-Gray () ucop edu>
Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 12:17:47 -0700
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: re: "Tivo is Theft"

Two thoughts on marrying TV and the Net...

Firstly, one could think of advertising like viruses, and certainly like
spam; we've got anti-viral tools that work by detecting viruses by
signature, and there's a new service launching that's supposed to work by
sharing spam signatures in a P2P architecture, so that others can alert you
to impending spam (as they've seen it already).  Somebody might create a
means for taking "commercial signatures," i.e., detectable bit string
patterns, and distributing them via the Net to users of Tivo-like devices,
so that your box could automagically know to excise that "John Basedow's
Total Fitness" ad.  A bit harder problem than developing spam signatures,
as the TV feed is continuous, so "edge detection" is a bit more of a
challenge.

Secondly, I'm surprised that we've not seen someone promoting alternative
audio channels, delivered via the Net, to complement the primary and (in
some cases, most often, I suspect, in Spanish) secondary audio signals that
accompany video programming.  As broadly as the Net is reaching, I could
imagine a potential market for, say, a dubbing of "E.R." into Korean, or
Tagalog, given that the tracks could be fetched, as needed, nation-(or
world-)wide, to be married up to the video coming in via cable, or over the
air.

Ross


Ross Stapleton-Gray
IT Security Officer
University of California Office of the President
510-587-6152




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