Forget about pay-per-view TV: Microsoft patents pay-per-viewer technology with your TV as the enforcer
Microsoft wants to know how many people are watching your TV – and charge you accordingly.
Back in June, Jeremy Phan wrote that Intel thinks that your TV should be watching you. And it seems that Microsoft thinks so too. A recently published patent titled Content Distribution Regulation By Viewing User details technology that would enable a camera-equipped device – such as a TV with a built-in camera or an Xbox Kinect – to regulate content on a per-user-view basis. The technology could limit the number of people able to simultaneously watch, restrict content based on age or enforce limitations on the number of times that media can be viewed. From the patent:
The technology, briefly described, is a content presentation system and method allowing content providers to regulate the presentation of content on a per-user-view basis. Content is distributed to consuming devices, such as televisions, set-top boxes and digital displays, with an associated licence option on the number of individual consumers or viewers allowed to consume the content. The limitation may comprise a number of user views, a number of user views over time, a number of simultaneous user views, views tied to user identities, views limited to user age or any variation or combination thereof, all tied to the number of actual content consumers allowed to view the content. Consumers are presented with a content selection and a choice of licenses allowing consumption of the content. In one embodiment, a licence manager on the consuming device or on a content providers system manages licence usage and content consumption. The users consuming the content on a display device are monitored so that if the number of user-views licensed is exceeded, remedial action may be taken.
In other words, the current pay-per-view system would be replaced by a pay-per-user-view model. Want to have some friends around to watch a movie? You’ll need a multi-user license. Want to watch a movie more than once? You’ll need a multi-view license. Want to invite your buddies over and share the cost of a pay-per-view sports event? Forget about it!
Think the technology sounds insidious? It gets worse. The patent also covers mobile devices:
In the case of the mobile display device, the display 105 is generally designed for use by one person but it is possible that more than one person may be able to view content on the display 105. As such the consumer detector uses data from the camera or capture device 102 to determine the number of consumers. In one example, camera 102 is an RGB imaging camera and the consumer detector analyzes one or successive images from the camera to ensure that the licensed number of users per view is enforced.
Now, it should be noted that this “content distribution by regulation” technology may never actually materialize. It’s not at all unusual for companies to patent daft ideas that never end up as products. However, with the ad revenue stream under threat, this could well be a technology that TV networks are keen to embrace. Even if the technology isn’t brought to market, the patent certainly provides an interesting insight of the ideas being discussed within Microsoft – and what they’d like to do if consumers were to allow them to get away with it.
To digress slightly (okay, a lot), I recently discovered the comb over had been patented. Interesting. I wonder why the holders of the patent haven’t sued Donald Trump yet?
Anyway, what do you think about Microsoft’s Big Brother technology? Will pay-per-user-view eventually replace pay-per-view? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
[Source: Kotaku]
WOW! this is totally insane, we are being invaded into our own homes the only thing that is left as far as our own privacy is concerned and they wanna be there for control, what’s next, will it comes to the point that they will be putting camera’s in toillet bowls now to see how many times i flush my toilet everyday and charge me if i go over the limits, i know that it sounds ridiculous but when you really think about it is it really that ridiculous ? i don’t think so. Shut this world out i wanna get out.
Extremely insane. In my household, there is my husband (extremely rarely watches TV), 9 cats, 4 fish (the 4 fish are always in the room with the TV and I can have up to all of the 9 cats in the room with the TV at one time) and myself. Unless the technology is geared to only count TV viewers that sit there for the entire time of the showing of the content that it is charging for and will only count human viewers, I can see me getting charged for up to 15 viewers if my husband wanders by for a minute or so to discuss something while I am watching a pay per type show and the 9 cats wander by and the technology manages to pick up on the 4 fish as well as picks up myself with myself being the only active watcher of the entire showing. Just another reason for keeping only older technology in the household!
So how will it enforce age? By checking height? What about short people? Or what about if a pet is mistaken for a user? Or a lamp?
We can even expound on your theory and include furniture and stuffed animals/dolls in the count. Heck, I have about 20 or 30 stuffed animals, add the stuffed animals to the 15 residents in my house (13 of which are animals) and I can foresee me getting charged for 35 to 45 viewers with only one being a valid viewer.
Maybe it will detect if you are fat and charge you more to encourage overweight people to go outside and get some excercise!
I have been using Ubuntu (linux) for 5 years. This O.S.is free and I have never had a problem. I feel free from the money grab Microsoft. The sooner you learn to use Linux the sooner you dont have to worry about such money grabbing industry as MS. So keep dishing out MS users.
This was predicted so many years ago in all those campy B movies and then it became more sophisicated and really scary … now it’s time for total 24 hour access … on ourselves by invitation into our own homes … hows that for reality t.v.?
Well….. For Microsoft to let people know that they think this way is pretty dumb. Let’s face the reality of all the evidence. They are not about ethical business. Where MS is missing the boat is our younger generation is interested in ethical business. As today’s newest generation becomes of age… MS will need to reinvent themselves. Yes… they need to be in the home entertainment business… and they have made the corporate decision to so so by Windows 8. Windows 8 also shows their lack of ethics towards value…. no one needs that on their work computers, yet now when you buy a computer you need to pay prince included then uninstall Windows 8. Windows 8 is about fun with computers.
This week I begin the migration to Ubuntu…. We have written our own business software as Microsoft no longer represents productivity… it is just a product to drain our finances… (That is why companies promote Windows 8…. to sell their services solving problems that did not exist in pre Windows 8 OS.)
Microsoft lost it’s moral compass a long time ago, now it is time for us to loose Microsoft. When they start thinking about ethics and value, that will be the time to give them one last chance.
With Ubuntu and Android, I no longer need to be a victum of Microstoft or other companies that think it is profits first, and ethics second.
This is the dawning of a new awareness. Get some ethics or you will need to get out of business.
Dan White
Very well said. Where can I buy your software? kidding
But I do agree with you with all my hardware.
Hi Carol,
Thanks for your support.
I see no place for Microsoft thinking in our business. The software we developed for our own use… which will soon be taken to market for others… is cloud based to enable small business to be able to manage their business from the ground up. I could not find any commercial software that started at the base collection of information being good corporate governance and audit ready. It has been a very expensive journey but has dramatically affected the productivity of our firm.
When we take our software to market, it will be from the perspective of what is good for the customer. If it is good for them… AND good for us, then we have a winning combination.
Sofware as a service does not have to follow the model of big prices but rather it needs to be as close to free that it can be while still showing a small profit.
I have become so jaded with many businesses that charge what they can, because they can get away with it. There are lots of customer driven suppliers versus profit and control driven suppliers such as Microsoft, that change is happening.
I look forward to a brighter and more ethical future.
Dan
Nice dialogue … keep it up. I’ve enjoyed this very much.
Now if only the school boards would take this line of thought. Houses with multiple children should be paying a boatload more school taxes compared to houses with a few kids or no kids at all.
One step closer to Big Brother watching your every move.
1984 – it was a good book maybe Microsoft didn’t see it as a warning but a goal. Are they going to monitor our conversations too? All I can think of is that story, how does microsoft ministry of love sound to you?
Old news..couple years ago a journalist got a rumor of cameras hidden inside digital boxes so went and checked them out..Rogers was caught with many others.
Yep..cameras hidden in several brands of the digital boxes, was on the national news. Then of course suddenly as it appeared the story dissappeared..:) Big Brother been around a long time and will get ever more intimately ingrained into your daily digital lives..
We need to ressurrect that old stand by shaming tool. Awards for the Consumer F**KERS Associatioon of the ..Planet and hand them out with great hoopla and media coverage.. start with the NEWS Media :)
Personally any day now I am going to give my 30 days notice for shutting down my over priced sneakily multi paged (5 Pages) accounted, Consumer F**KER ASSOCIATION WINNING, ROGERS internet, then recycle MY hardware.
So, if these telecom milking freedom hating parasites will enclose a camera into their digital hardware cases by stealth, what else are they capable of ?? I say Bloody near any thing at all for a buck, for power and for fascistic control..YOUR BUCK, your life, your FREEDOMS.. !!
NWO…time to wake up..go to an internet recovery house and regrow the imagination software of your subliminally drugged brains again.
There is a way to create a new net..one that cannot be bastardised by the corporate crime familes, long ago passing the merely annoying stage of the grab for every fictional cyber dollar never printed.:)
Yes new technology WE control open sourced and kiss the corporate tether good bye…and it will be free.:)
Wait for it..cut your credit cards, pay down or unload the mortgages, blow up your tv and eat peaches..:)Dump the financed cars, over draft accounts and send a message and fight the fiat fascists in their bank accounts rather than volunteer to have them empty yours every month on every nebulous excuse they constantly dream up..wake up before the Chinese troops hit your streets and apply their own brand of governance at the end of an assault rifle!
Tear down the micro wave towers and park the planet killing cars and walk free again..free..imagine that..free. Wow what an idea !
Ground the planet hopping planes and fascists in the TSA Zonist Terrorists from Skull and Bonesmen before the mass exterminations start in full.
MIllions starve due to greed driven bankster economics and fraudulent de facto criminal dictators ( Legalist Papist sucking Mafia Dons)traitors robbing us all blind..or go shoot your selves and give the rest of us a chance at regaining our God given rights and dominion over the planet and our lives.
Other wise the ultra rich mysanthrops will be quite correct in their perceptions that humans as a whole are just dumb animals to use like cattle for their grandios slaver mentality and extreme megalo maniacal Satan worshipping superiority complexes.
Inibred bunch of slime balls from the Vatican to the Royals to the corporate city states and the corporate shadow govts who own the shills you vote for to no avail.
Don’t drink the water, eat their corporate toxic foods and stay away from hospitals and medical politicians impersonating physicians these days or they will kill ya.:)
They will kill ya anyway under the NWO..get up to steam on the hundreds of ways they are setting us all up daily for their fatal globalist fascist blows.
Good on Palistinian membership in UN and a new dawn for the evolution of peace and sanity in spite of war mongers and identity thieves controlling the planet today by ANY means.
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