CopySense Sleek Predator, or White Elephant?
Written by Ben Jones on September 26, 2008If you believe the anti-piracy lobbies, Audible Magic’s CopySense system is the absolute best system you can buy, protecting Universities, and more importantly, their students, from copyright violation accusations. However, the question has to be asked, “Does it really work?”
We recently reported how Ohio University spent more than $75,000 on the CopySense anti-piracy system, and we promised an insight into how the system works. CopySense is the network equivalent of the Eye of Sauron, watching over the lands it controls, looking for something of interest, and attempting to kill it. Instead of Orcs, however, it uses RST packets.
As stated previously, for your money you get a box that you plug into your network as close as possible to the Internet connection. Here it monitors all the traffic it can see, looking for data that matches the fingerprints stored in it. If it detects a transfer matching a fingerprint, it terminates the connection, in the same way Sandvine does , by sending RST packets to both ends of the connection, spoofed to look like the other sent it.
Audible Magic’s illustration of a typical installation
Although it seems like a fairer system than the Sandvine box Comcast used, it still has some significant flaws. Perhaps of greatest interest, is that it can be configured to act just like Sandvine, but more so. Literature for the system claims it “automatically filters copyright infringements, operating in a manner similar to a virus filter, without disrupting legitimate file trades.” But does it live up to the hype?
Audible Magic’s support site contains the answers to the basic questions most of us have about CopySense.
Q: What P2P protocols/programs are recognized?
A: The CopySense Appliance recognizes signatures from over 150 popular P2P applications and their derivatives. As new P2P applications are introduced, additional recognition capabilities are provided as software updates under your maintenance agreement
Q: How does it block traffic?
A: The appliance can be instructed to block all P2P traffic or to block only copyrighted content from P2P applications. The CopySense Appliance uses a patented packet-resetting process, and it sends a packet reset to both the requesting and sending IP addresses each time they attempt a P2P transfer that is to be blocked. The P2P application is thus forced to time out with an unsuccessful transfer.
Q: How does it recognize copyrighted content?
A: The CopySense technology examines the perceptual characteristics of a media file and compares that signature with those contained in a database of protected works. Publishers of media content register their works in Audible Magic’s database. The database is regularly updated in the CopySense Appliance as part of a content update subscription.
As the name of the site is TorrentFreak, and the main protocol in use is BitTorrent, let’s start there. Torrents are non-sequential downloads (illustration), that take ‘random’ (generally rarest first of what’s available) pieces from peers on the torrent, in 16KiB chunks. Also, although chunks might be sequential, pieces rarely are. A data stream may consist of 5 chunks from the start, then 2 from the back, and 1 from the middle. From just that 128KiB of data, Audible Magic claim they can identify a copyrighted work, and then terminate the connection.
If it sounds implausible, that’s because it is. It may work with systems like DC++, or possibly eD2k (as well as SoulSeek and KaZaA), but there is no way it can be accurate or effective with BitTorrent. Such methods would work better with HTTP (like Rapidshare) or FTP transfers, but aside from CopySense saying they don’t interfere with anything non-P2P, there is another problem.
As highlighted in the recent case involving the baby dancing to a Prince soundtrack, fair use is a perfectly adequate defence. This system makes no allocation for fair use at all. In the case, the judge ruled that before copyright enforcement can take place, the copyright owner is required to consider if the usage is fair use. An automated system is incapable of that. There have also been doubts surrounding the effectiveness of the streaming content version, which is based on the same technology.
So, in essence, CopySense does not (and can not) work to inhibit the most popular p2p protocol out there. If it could, then we would simply see a resurgence in passworded RAR files being torrented, with the passwords posted either on the torrent site, or even in the comment field of the torrent. CopySense also fails to check if a copyrighted file that it might identify (if you’re using a protocol that it can actually detect) is being used in a way consistent with fair use, or is licensed for use (although extremely improbable, the possibility exists, especially if copyrighted recording is right at the start).
In part two, we will look at claims that have been made from those who have used CopySense, and how that affects copyright infringement cases already in progress, and just how you get your content protected.
Previously: Pirate Bay Wins Court Case, Italian Block Lifted
Next: RIAA’s Week of Hell
23 Responses
lol thats what 75k gets ya..
Powerless to stop us.
as i read it the first teaser paragraph in bold doesn’t make much sense – “If you believe the anti-piracy lobbies, Audible Magic’s CopySense system is the absolute best system you can buy, protecting Universities, and more importantly, their students, from copyright violation accusations. However, the question has to be asked, “Does it really work?””
Anon, the meaning is, does it actually work to stop copyright infringement, or are universities getting less notices, because the RIAA sends less to universities that have bought in to the system. Basically is any reduction down to the system, or down to something else?
aha, gotcha. sorry :)
Buying Audible Magic CopySense is done more for protecting oneself from legal attacks than from a perspective of “does it really work”.
By showing that they took the time and bore the often-considerable expense of trying to prevent P2P copyright infringement, that helps them in court — as they know they are all walking the tightrope of avoiding expensive litigation by the copyright cartel.
So even if universities are just buying snake oil, Audible Magic CopySense serves a very useful and valuable purpose.
Not really. As service providers, they had no obligation until this just passed education bill, to try and curb it and if they did nothing, nothing would happen.
Of course, Part 1 is only a buildup, part 2 is where things are interesting.
It seems like skynet is true after all.CopySense seem to have made a fool of the copyright holder from being to able to deem whether the files in question are actually he’s/her’s.And also if CopySense is filtering other data types, It may also incorrectly weed out legitimate
transfers.
So far well written… with informative links.
Want to write a longer and more detailed comment but will wait for part two just incase you are covering it there.
Nice job!
Cheers!
http://www.eZee.se
Great article, I’ve been waiting for someone to shed a little light on Audible Magics snakeoil to the wider community. Its a joke as technology goes.
This is stupid, if there was really a way to block this traffic there would be an open source answer, the fact as bittorrent’s protocal is widely out there. it’s a ‘hardware’ solution so an LED light flickers on and off every second just so you know it’s working :D
As for ‘patterned packet system’ means fake mumbo jumbo in a big metal case (with an LED of course). The RIAA might as well just get Y shaped sticks and start wobbling them in the direction of computers… “We’ve struck lawsuits”…
this is dumb give up all anyone has to do is rar the files with a password or put them in a truecrypt container and they will go right past. you wasted money better spent on something else.
Interesting, it does look terribly bad :)
We should make our own protection software, it will be just as effective – whenever a user connects to the network a message will appear saying, “Please do not download any copywritten material, Thank you!”
We can cut them a deal since it’s for educational institutions at, say, $50,007.
We’ll be rich!
“In the case, the judge ruled that before copyright enforcement can take place, the copyright owner is required to consider if the usage is fair use. An automated system is incapable of that.”
Does this mean that people who used the connection couldn’t get in trouble for attempting to “pirate” if the connection were blocked?
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -i eth0 –tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP
And the system’s defeated. :)
No doubt that the “rules/hashes/ect” are based on a Subscription model.
Well congrats for wasting all that money simply to find that “*.avi” has now been converted to a “*.rar” ;)
Hey can i get a job with ya creating all the hashes, etc… dont forget tho, i would have to leech them first to generate the new checksums/rules sets !!!
Like we have said before… FAiL.
Look at it like this, you may as well ban the whole .net. Everytime i see a nice picture in my browser i “right click” & “save as”. YES I AM INFRINGING COPYRIGHT. Stop me.
Next please!
Looking at the internet is violating copyright. Every time you see a web page, the web page is downloaded to your computer. Might as well block the entire internet.
Roze
http://www.28chan.org/apstdt/
@16
Not to mention that every time, it is automatically in your cache. Even if it isn’t, having it display on your computer screen is still “another copy.”
This will fail. But it will CYA. Like the caliper I bought recently that said to wear safety goggles (to take measurements!?!), all it has to do is exist to CYA.
RIAA: “User XYZ on your network is a pirate! We sue you!”
NETWORK: “But, Judge, we used our CYA magic box! We did due diligence to stop nasty pirates by buying magic box. We are CYA.”
JUDGE: “They did due diligence. They are not responsible for nasty pirate. You must sue the pirate.”
RIAA: “We’ll be back!”
Etc.
Is anyone else here afraid there is a hidden agenda here?
WHO determines what is legitimate and what is illegitimate?
Perhaps streaming content from competitor’s sites are depend illegitimate. Perhaps, cretin information sites are illegitimate, wikileaks etc…
This is not about limiting your roommates copyright enforced barley 18 Henti access…
this is about FREEDOM OF INFORMATION. If they can turn off one aspect of information, they can certain start adding more filters to “protect” the university.
Tiananmen Square? that never happened! Happy face, its Beijing 2008! NO ONE died here in 1989 :)
Trail of tears? Whats that? Andrew Jackson? Wasn’t he our president or something? What?
1933 US Steel bulkheads in the Bismark? What now?
Well…
Most colleges I’ve been too just block the bittorent ports. So this I suppose takes care of the frostwire downloads that were getting through.
My solution is to remote logon to my home computer
secure.logmein.com remote access the home pc. Start the download; set an auto shutdown run–>”shutdown -s -f -t 7200″. (”shutdown -a” to stop it) And close my laptop down. Return home with a USB drive.
I have some protection I’d like to sell you. Wouldn’t want that new library to burn down now, would you. All those wooden shelves… paper books… bet you have some classics. It’s be a shame it anything were to happen to em.
This is just plain and simple STUPID. The fact is that the only thing you have to do to get around Audible Magic is password the files in question in archives like .rar, .zip, etc.
Audible Magic is LYING to their customers, and I think that is illegal by both federal and state law, now isn’t it?
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