Optical network technologies for future digital cinema

Digital technology has transformed the information flow and support infrastructure for numerous application domains, such as cellular communications. Cinematography, traditionally, a film based medium, has embraced digital technology leading to innovative transformations in its work flow. Digital cinema supports transmission of high resolution content enabled by the latest advancements in optical communications and video compression. In this paper we provide a survey of the optical network technologies for supporting this bandwidth intensive traffic class. We also highlight the significance and benefits of the state of the art in optical technologies that support the digital cinema work flow

Live Sports Virtual Reality Broadcasts: Copyright and Other Protections

As virtual reality rapidly progresses, broadcasts are able to increasingly mimic the experience of actually attending a game. As the technology advances and the viewer can freely move about the game and virtual reality can simulate the in-stadium attendance, the virtual reality broadcast nears the point where the broadcast is indistinguishable from the underlying game. Thus, novel copyright protection issues arise regarding the ability to protect the experience through copyright. Although normal broadcasts may be copyrighted, virtual reality broadcasts of live sports could lack protection under the Copyright Act because the elements of originality, authorship, and fixation are harder to satisfy for this type of work. If the elements that formerly protected broadcasts through copyright no longer apply, the virtual reality broadcast of the game will lose copyright protection. The virtual reality broadcaster can receive protection for the work in several ways, such as (1) by broadcaster-made modifications to the transmitted broadcast, (2) through misappropriation claims, or (3) by inserting contract terms. These additional steps maintain the ability of virtual reality broadcasters to disseminate works without fear the work will not be protectable by the law

Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

Circumventing Authority: Loopholes in the DMCA’s Access Controls

In a world where digital pirates freely roam the internet, seemingly plundering at will, the providers of digital content must find a way to protect their valuable assets. Digital fences afford that protection--but not very well. Fortunately (for content owners), 17 U.S.C. §1201, passed as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, was designed to fill the numerous gaps in those fences by forbidding activities designed to circumvent them. In its present state, however, §1201 does not adequately serve that purpose. Substantial flaws in the language of the statute render it virtually powerless to thwart piracy. If §1201 is to fulfill its intended role (without the need for creative judicial interpretation), it must be amended to rectify the discrepancies between Congress’ supposed intent and the language it chose

Scene-based imperceptible-visible watermarking for HDR video content

This paper presents the High Dynamic Range - Imperceptible Visible Watermarking for HDR video content (HDR-IVW-V) based on scene detection for robust copyright protection of HDR videos using a visually imperceptible watermarking methodology. HDR-IVW-V employs scene detection to reduce both computational complexity and undesired visual attention to watermarked regions. Visual imperceptibility is achieved by finding the region of a frame with the highest hiding capacities on which the Human Visual System (HVS) cannot recognize the embedded watermark. The embedded watermark remains visually imperceptible as long as the normal color calibration parameters are held. HDR-IVW-V is evaluated on PQ-encoded HDR video content successfully attaining visual imperceptibility, robustness to tone mapping operations and image quality preservation