Re: Why is Microsoft watching us watch DVD movies?

[Konrad Rieck <kr () roqe org>]

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-test () submit cddb com

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

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