Sony’s new tech could block sideloading of pirated apps on Android TV

Sony is no stranger to fighting piracy, whether it’s on the PlayStation side or in the music and video space. However, the company’s latest anti-piracy measures may target Android TV.

A major Japanese company has filed a new patent to block piracy apps on smart TVs and streaming devices. torrent freak report. Of course, Sony uses the Android TV platform for its smart TVs, suggesting that this anti-piracy measure may indeed apply in a limited way to Google’s platform.

So how does this anti-piracy feature work?

The company describes using a system-level “monitor” application that forms part of the operating system. This application contains a block list of known pirated network resources (such as URLs and IP addresses) and identifies third-party apps that access these resources. From here, monitoring apps can block or restrict third-party apps from running, degrading the experience, or pausing content at irregular intervals to annoy viewers.

Since this is just a patent at the moment, there is no guarantee that this anti-piracy feature will actually make it into a commercially available Sony device. For one thing, you should be wondering if this monitoring app can consume a lot of system resources and cause a chugging experience on your Android TV. There is precedent for this too, and it’s not uncommon to see poor performance in PC games with anti-piracy measures.

torrent freak It also points to the company’s CD rootkit scandal of 2005. This indicates that Sony secretly installed software on the PC after the user inserted an audio CD into the disc drive. The software was intended to prevent CD copying, but it also had vulnerabilities exploited by malware. Additionally, the software reports on users’ listening habits and proves difficult to uninstall.

In other words, one really has to wonder if Sony’s future anti-piracy application for Android TV will cause these same problems.