Bokhari: Microsoft and Friends Want to Destroy Online Privacy
www.breitbart.com
Microsoft has teamed up with a number of tech and media companies to create a system of tracing content around the internet that could destroy online privacy and anonymity, radically transforming the nature of the web.

Ignore the fact that it’s coming from Breitbart. This is really freaky in more than one way.

FTA:

Against stiff competition, the alliance of tech and media giants has devised a plan that may constitute Big Tech’s most brazen power-grab yet.

According to Microsoft’s press release, it has partnered with several other organizations to form the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA).

Put simply, the purpose of this organization is to devise a system whereby all content on the internet can be traced back to its author.

The press release states that it will develop these specifications for “common asset types and formats,” meaning videos, documents, audio, and images.

Whether it’s a meme, an audio remix, or a written article, the goal is to ensure that when content reaches the internet, it will come attached with a set of signals allowing its provenance — meaning authorship — can be detected.

  • ufra
    20•3 years ago

    Here’s a copy of MS blog post if anyone is interested: https://outline.com/tkP36M

    Microsoft and the BBC have teamed up with Adobe, Arm, Intel and Truepic to create the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA). The C2PA is a standards-setting body that will develop an end-to-end open standard and technical specifications on content provenance and authentication. The standards will draw from two implementation efforts: Project Origin’s (Origin) efforts on provenance for news publishing and the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), which focuses on digital content attribution, basically content auditing.

    It does seem to line up with other initiatives for corporations to sanction content according to source, in way reminiscent of google’s call for strict auditing of source code to avoid supply chain vulnerabilities.

    Breitbart probably has some serious bias as a prime target of these initiatives, but thanks for bringing it to our attention and providing an excerpt. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some more coverage of this down the road from better sources.

    edit: took a closer look at this ms blog post and as servicing as it is of would be content police, it is for MS a giant cloud play. horvitz uploaded a copy of their whiteboard session and all over it is “cloud service”, “azure” ( https://1gew6o3qn6vx9kp3s42ge0y1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/5/2021/02/disinfodp1.jpg )