Streaming cyberlockers -- which allow direct streaming of pirated content and are beginning to dominate video piracy online -- involve a vast ecosystem of web servers and aren't susceptible to many detection methods copyright enforcers use against torrents, Queen Mary University of London said Thursday. A small number of networks, websites and junctions host a disproportionate amount of content, which could point to a possible strategy for copyright enforcers, it said.

The HDR10+ Technologies company of Fox, Panasonic and Samsung took six months longer than expected to begin licensing its HDR platform “because it was lot more difficult than I think we anticipated putting a certification program together,” Samsung's Bill Mandel told a company-sponsored event Wednesday in West Hollywood, California. A week after starting the certification program (see 1806200047), HDR10+ has no formal “adopters,” but “there’s a full list of companies already requesting” technical materials as the first step toward acquiring a license, said Mandel, Samsung’s HDR10+ project manager. “Everyone’s very sensitive about which TVs will pass” the HDR10+ certification tests, “and how, and so every parameter was went over with a very fine-toothed comb,” said Mandel. All HDR content shown on the Amazon Prime service since December has been rendered in HDR10+ using Colorfront cloud-based mastering tools, said Mandel. “There’s more hours than I know how to count” of HDR10+ content on Amazon Prime, he said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee should advance the Music Modernization Act (S-2823) Thursday during markup (see 1806210043), said Internet Association CEO Michael Beckerman. “Bring mechanical licensing out of the era of player pianos and into the digital age,” Beckerman said Wednesday. “The entire music ecosystem will benefit from the increased choice and availability of music under the new system created by the MMA.”

Amazon Technologies got a U.S. patent Tuesday for a system of detecting “hostile takeover” of drones and returning them to friendly hands. As drone use increases, "so does the likelihood” of hostile takeovers, said the patent, naming Glen Larsen, an Amazon hardware and systems architect, as its inventor. "Nefarious individuals and/or systems may be able to obtain control” of the drones by hacking communication signals, it said. During normal-operating “mission” mode, the device receives a “heartbeat signal from a controller,” it said. If a preset timer expires without the drone receiving a new heartbeat signal, the device automatically switches into a “safety” mode in which it “performs one or more preprogrammed actions designed to reestablish communication with the controller” or lands safely, said the patent.

The Copyright Office is extending the comment deadline for its NPRM on a proposed new fee schedule by 60 days to Sept. 21 “to ensure that members of the public have sufficient time to respond,” it said Thursday.

Pay-TV operators often rely on conditional access fingerprint techniques such as VCID or HashCodes to "fingerprint" their content for tracing piracy leaks to the source, but a rapidly growing number of HashCode removal tools can in real-time strip away those visual marks from a video feed, blogged Irdeto Senior Director-Cyber Services and Investigations Mark Mulready Wednesday. This tool is often available online for as little as $2,000 and falls into "a legal grey-area'" since it doesn't actively enable piracy but helps pirates mask identity, Irdeto said. The solution is covert watermarking, where a unique user ID is put into the stream, but pirates can't see the watermarks and have difficulty obscuring them, it said. Irdeto said most film and TV studios already use covert watermarking for high-value content, and sports rights holders increasingly are requiring it in new licensing deals.

Toy companies met Senate Finance Committee, Customs and Border Protection, Consumer Product Safety Commission and Alibaba and Amazon representatives June 14 to discuss intellectual property issues, the Toy Association said Tuesday. "Participating toy companies spoke about their experiences tackling infringing toys sold online and discussed possible solutions to improve toy safety and IP protection on e-commerce platforms." The committee is looking at online counterfeit good sales (see 1805300068). "CPSC’s director of import surveillance said that the volume of e-commerce packages, lack of data, and enforcement procedures designed for ocean containers (not de minimis shipments) have collectively resulted in numerous challenges," the association said. CBP reportedly is interested in training association members to identify counterfeits.

The Patent and Trademark Office issued U.S. patent number 10,000,000 Tuesday to a Raytheon invention for a frequency-modulated laser detection and ranging system with possible applications in autonomous vehicles, medical imaging devices and national defense, said the agency. “Given the rapid pace of change, we know that it will not take another 228 years to achieve the next 10-million-patent milestone,” said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, referring to the first U.S. patent issued July 1790 to Samuel Hopkins for a process of making potash for fertilizer. When inventor Joseph Marron, a Raytheon engineer, applied for the patent three years ago, little could he predict he would land the milestone number in 2018, he said in a company statement. "It's equivalent to a guy who buys a lottery ticket every month," he said. "Eventually, it hits."

Criminal prosecution of violations is "a necessary alternative means" for stopping digital piracy, given its huge economic scope, and Congress should update criminal copyright law to make online piracy via streaming a felony, Free State Foundation President Randolph May and Senior Fellow Seth Cooper wrote Monday. They said criminal prosecution of copyright violations isn't common, with seven such prosecutions in the 12 months ended in mid-2017, and 23 annually on average over the prior five years. They said willful copyright infringement via online streaming is a misdemeanor, though willful infringement via download is a felony when statutory minimums are satisfied. FSF said Congress should give federal law enforcement officials more tools such as authority to seek wiretaps to obtain evidence of suspected criminal copyright activities.

A second U.S. House member from North Carolina went to bat for Cree’s attempt (see 1806110033) to fend off Trade Act Section 301 tariffs on U.S. imports of LEDs from China. The company produces LED wafers at its plant in Durham, North Carolina, exports them to China for making them into finished packaged chips and re-imports those chips to the U.S., said David Price (D) in a June 8 letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer posted Wednesday in docket USTR-2018-0005. Cree would be forced to pay 25 percent higher duties on the devices, “despite the fact that approximately 70 percent of the value of these LED chips and components" is based on U.S. IP, Price said.