[itu-sg16] Q22 Question - SATC

Paul E. Jones paulej at packetizer.com
Thu Sep 4 21:50:24 EDT 2008


Q22 Experts,

 

While reviewing the Q22 meeting report, I was intrigued by a comment related
to AVD-3541.  This contribution proposes that SATC can be used to block
illegal content from being transmitted over the Internet by examining the
media flow and comparing that media flow (or some signature thereof) against
a database.  SATC would then block content as appropriate.

 

I would like to comment:

1)      I could easily circumvent any such measure, so any such system would
prove to work only temporarily; and

2)      While a given copy of a digital copy of some content, such as music
or a movie, will have a clearly recognizable signature, the same media can
be "substantially" altered by merely using a different encoding method
(e.g., a different video codec or compression scheme); and

3)      Actually attempting to create a database of all known pirated media,
including all variations, would result in the creation of a massively huge
database; and

4)      Maintenance of such a database would be a never-ending chore; and

5)      Notwithstanding the foregoing, while such a database could be
constructed and flows could be examined, inspecting flows in real-time and
trying to positively identify a given flow is a monumental task that will
result in significantly negative impact on packet transmission performance,
even if a bank of specialized network processors were employed per router or
switch

 

In short: do we really want to attempt this?  While it's all technically
possible (at the risk of turning a 1Gbps pipe into a 1Kbps pipe), I would
argue that it's not going to work.  I would be happy to be first in line to
write the software necessary to circumvent such a system.  And I would do it
just because I can ;-)

 

Having said that, the meeting report said that, the meeting report said that
"if SATC finds a data stream carrying content failing to match a known
signature, it will block the stream or mark it as being suspicious."

 

I underlined the text of significance.  This suggests that the database
would only be populated with signatures of known good media flows and would
only block unrecognized flows.  This seems different than what I read and
understood from AVD-3541.  What the meeting report suggests would be a
simpler problem with a substantially smaller database.  So, what was
actually discussed and decided for SATC?  A system that blocks unrecognized
flows or a system that blocks recognized flows?

 

Thanks,

Paul

 

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