Re: Why is Microsoft watching us watch DVD movies?

From: Konrad Rieck (krat_private)
Date: Fri Feb 22 2002 - 07:26:50 PST

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    On Thu, Feb 21, 2002 at 11:42:13AM +0100, Patrick M. Hausen wrote:
    > > and a cookie which uniquely identifies a particular WMP player. With
    > > this two pieces of information Microsoft can track what DVD movies are
    > > being watched on a particular computer. 
    > 
    > _This_ on the other hand is an unfriendly attack on anyones privacy.
    > Does someone know if CDDB does similar things?
    
    The Compact Disc Database (CDDB) protocol is used to query the database at
    cddb.com (http://www.gracenote.com) for information on audio tracks, but it
    is software independent and several different players and libraries make use
    of CDDB.
    
    A query includes the following components related to privacy
    
        hostname
        login  
        libname       # Name of the player or library   
        libver        # Version of the player or library
        cddbmail      # cddb-testat_private
    
    See the perl package CDDB-1.08 for more information at
    http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local/authors/id/R/RC/RCAPUTO/CDDB
    
    In my opinion the above information are not sufficient to generate profiles
    about individuals, although they allow the generation of general statistics.
    But this is rather normal for a database service. ;)
    
    Regards,
    Konrad
    
    -- 
    Konrad Rieck <krat_private> -------------- http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/~rieck
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