Friday, September 30, 2011

The Ongoing Battle with Digital TV Piracy

My topic proposal for my final project will look at how advancements in technology have affected digital TV piracy, and how the media corporations have had to adapt and deal with that. Digital TV Piracy is very common today, everyday millions of people illegally download and stream TV shows onto their computer. But now, with the advancements in technology people are not only able to watch TV on their television and computer, but on their smart phones and tablets. Technology is always changing which makes it hard for media corporations to keep adapting to new technologies.

Lobbyists for the big media corporations are lobbying too politicians saying the laws for TV piracy were made before the Internet era, but companies like Google are saying that the laws are fine and should not be changed. There is an ongoing battle that is occurring everyday to combat digital TV piracy. Questions that I am interesting in answering have to deal with how these media corporations can stop TV piracy. Would that be through updated regulatory measures? Would it be through advancements in technology that the media corporations can use to stop piracy? Watermarks are a type of technology that could prevent online digital TV piracy. Watermarks will prevent unauthorized viewing of copyrighted material. Digital watermarking is the process of embedding information into a digital signal, which may be used to verify its authenticity or the identity of its owners (www.digitalwatermarkingalliance.org). The DWA, the Digital Watermarking Alliance, has been involved in commercializing digital watermarking solutions. Watermarking is a tool that would be useful to media corporations in the fight against online digital TV piracy. Another question I have is why this watermarking technology is not in use right now? I also don’t understand why the government is allowing online digital TV piracy to continuously occur everyday, it doesn’t seem right. Through extensive research I should be able to find the answers to these questions.

2 comments:

  1. These are all really good questions, I'm interested to see all of the solutions that the television industry are looking at.

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  2. I like this idea because of its impact in our daily lives. As we've seen in class, the majority of us download movies and tv shows illigally, and it has become an issue that our generation cannot ignore. I'm interested to see what spin you take on your research and how you go about looking into possible ways to change the way we become robbers when we download these tv shows and movies illigally.

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