Gough's Tech Zone

There is an update, Netflix have replied and said they're investigating. The original post is on goughlui.com, the PetaPixel link is a reblog and hasn't yet been updated: http://goughlui.com/2017/11/22/netflix-uses-my-vhs-cassette-images-without-permission/

The Netflix reply (pasting here so the website isn't crushed by HN clicks):

Dr. Lui,

First, my sincerest apologies that no one has gotten back to you until now.

Your blog post was brought to my attention so I wanted to reach out and let you know that we’re currently looking into this matter with the creative agency that worked on the product design for the tapes.

Will update you as I know more. Feel free to reach out in the meantime.

Best,
Marlee

Also worth pointing out that the image in question is also being used on dozens of other websites (including BuzzFeed). You can find them by using a reverse Google Image search, and noting the specific camera tripod reflection:

https://www.google.com/search?sa=X&tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSmQEJhkcoXhoqXF4ajQELEKjU2AQaBggUCAAIAwwLELCMpwgaYgpgCAMSKI8BkAHADPQM8wyOAdMBiwGeDNUM4TbiJs81xDPzNfk8qDOhM6kz9iYaME0_1ihVVC6cA94hW9YExtwebm0AHiGr55VyaUrh4yCS-Hfxq6O3dlLffDuzaQfvWmSAEDAsQjq7-CBoKCggIARIEVtCQWww&ved=0ahUKEwiLkoT72uDXAhXJJpQKHUhRC6AQ2A4IJigB&biw=1280&bih=800#imgrc=9gVQ44zkeOJT4M:

I love the data, but I'm a little mad that Hitachi had to die as a company and got sold into pieces.

I'm not sure if I trust what you guys did, calling the old Hitachi Drives as HGST. Technically, the 3.5" drives from Hitachi got sold to Toshiba.

For example, the Toshiba DT01ACA300 is allegedly the same design as the Hitachi 7k3000.

In the following link, note that the "HDS723030BLE640" is the model number to the 7k3000 with ridiculously low failure rates in the Backblaze study.

http://goughlui.com/2013/02/26/toshiba-dt01aca300-aka-hitachi-hds723030ble640-drives/

I don't know if HGST drives are related to the old Hitachi models at all.

Again, I hate to criticize such awesome research that you've given away for free in your blog. But I'd definitely would like some research and clarification on the Hitachi -> Toshiba or Hitachi -> HGST situation.

> This vulnerability is due to a missing authentication process within the firmware upgrade function. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by upgrading an affected device to a crafted version of firmware.

> There are no workarounds that address this vulnerability.

Just crack the thing open and hard-wire the Write-Enable line to high and you’re good.

Here’s a tear down: https://goughlui.com/2016/02/14/review-teardown-cisco-spa112-2-port-analog-telephone-adapter/

And here’s the data sheet to the flash chip:

https://www.mxic.com.tw/Lists/Datasheet/Attachments/8448/MX30LF1G08AA,%203V,%201Gb,%20v1.5.pdf

Pin18

Voilà, enjoy your discount SPA112s!

(Or set pin19 write-protect to GND, can probably do that without even cutting a trace. Pin 20 is “NC” and might be wired to GND anyway so blobbing the two together might do it).

It is literally the first result when I do an image search on Google for "VHS Cassette". And when I go to the "Contact me" page on his site [1] I read a lot of passive-aggressive "Don't talk to me, bro" language ;-)

Also none of the pictures have any kind of license or copyright info. I cannot even see from the article at [2] that he took the pictures himself.

In conclusion my opinion is yes, the designer should have asked for permission. But also the author should add copyright/license info to his site and make that info easy to discover.

I'm sure Netflix will do the right thing and we all live happy ever after :-)

[1] http://goughlui.com/about-me-a-short-bio/contact-me/
[2] http://goughlui.com/the-vhs-corner/intro-inside-the-vhs-cassette-vcr/

Flash level checksums are an integral part of wear-leveling and flash block allocation strategy. So they are also used for block migration/retirement controls. In other words, it's not trivial or desirable to remove flash level ECC or other checksums from physical flash management layer.

I cannot find the article now, but the flash storage is way less reliable than it seems and it's correcting bit errors silently without reporting most of the time.

This article [0] shows some of the things behind the curtain in flash storage configuration and lifetime. I'd edit or add the other article if I can find it.

[0]: https://goughlui.com/2015/04/05/teardown-optimization-comsol-8gb-usb-flash-stick-au6989sn-gt-sdtnrcama-008g/

This may not be exactly what you're asking for but every re-encode introduces additional noise (generational error). Over many re-encodings (even at same high bitrate/quality) the noise will accumulate in a predictable manner. See [0] for an interesting deep-dive blog post on the subject.

Now, as for whether or not you can distinguish the re-encoding from it's original source.... difficult but plausible in certain scenarios? Perhaps if the content was heavily re-encoded to the point where you can statistically determine the presence of the generational noise. With only a single re-encode it may be impossible to determine.

[0] https://goughlui.com/2016/11/22/video-compression-x264-crf-generational-loss-testing/