Adamya Sharma / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Sony has filed a patent for an anti-piracy monitoring app on media gamers and TVs.
- The app would block or degrade the efficiency of sideloaded apps that permit pirated content material.
- This might doubtless be for Android TV as Sony makes use of this platform for its good TVs.
Sony isn’t any stranger to combating piracy, be it on the PlayStation aspect of issues or within the music and video landscapes. Nonetheless, the corporate’s newest anti-piracy measure may goal Android TV.
The Japanese large filed a new patent application to dam piracy apps on good TVs and streaming gadgets, Torrent Freak reported. In fact, Sony makes use of the Android TV platform for its good TVs, suggesting that this anti-piracy measure may certainly come to Google’s platform in a restricted trend.
So how does this anti-piracy characteristic work?
The corporate describes the usage of a system-level “monitor” utility that might kind a part of the working system. This utility comprises a block record of identified pirated community sources (e.g. URLs and IP addresses) and would then determine third-party apps accessing mentioned sources. From right here, the monitor app would block the third-party app from working, throttle it to supply a degraded expertise, or pause the content material at irregular intervals to frustrate viewers.
That is only a patent proper now, so there’s no assure this anti-piracy characteristic will really land on industrial Sony gadgets. However, it nonetheless raises loads of questions. For one, it’s a must to wonder if this monitor app may hog system sources, leading to a chugging expertise on Android TV. There’s a precedent for this too, because it’s not unusual to see choppier efficiency in PC video games with anti-piracy measures.
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Torrent Freak additionally factors to the corporate’s CD rootkit scandal from 2005. This noticed Sony secretly set up software program on PCs after customers inserted an audio CD into the disc drive. The software program was meant to stop CD copying but in addition shipped with vulnerabilities that have been exploited by malware. Moreover, the software program would report on the person’s listening habits and would show to be tough to uninstall.
In different phrases, you actually have to wonder if a future anti-piracy utility on Sony’s Android TVs would introduce these similar points.