Watermarks, Holograms as DVD CSS Replacement

andyo writes: "Given all the discussion of technical anti-copying measures recently, it might be interesting to see the replacement technologies that the industry is working on after the DeCSS embarrassment. Watermarks (which came up in an earlier Slashdot discussion) and holograms are mentioned in this article on Planet IT."

Comments

Watermarking and fines

[meldroc]

Putting a unique watermark on a DVD or MP3 could work, but I'd do it a bit differently. Say I was the evil overlord of an online subscription based music company and I wanted to deter piracy, I would do as follows:

1. Make the customers sign a legally binding agreement (snail-mailed & signed with a pen if necessary) before allowing them to use my service. The contract would make them responsible for preventing copyright infringements, and make them pay a $100.00 fine for each infringement traced back to them.
2. Every time a customer downloads a song or album, it would have a unique watermark attached to it (ideally using heavy encryption and steganography to prevent cracking and prevent altering of the watermark,) so each track can be traced back to the downloading customer.
3. The customer is now free to use the music however he/she wishes. He can even copy it and use it in any way permitted by Fair Use. There is no copy protection in this scheme, just copyright protection. Thus, there is little incentive for most people to crack the watermark.
4. If a track is found on the net or on the streets in an obvious copyright infringement situation (on a warez site, or found in the hands of bootleggers,) the company uses the watermark to trace the song back to the original customer, and adds a $100.00 fine to his bill. The amount is important. $100.00 is high enough to be irritating and an effective deterrent to home users, but low enough to make it not worth fighting. Legally speaking, this kind of offense should have the seriousness of a minor traffic ticket. Most infringers will gripe and grumble, but pay the fine without a big legal battle. The customer did sign a contract, making it harder to break this system with legal action. A bonus to this system is that the company and artists get a new source of income from fines. The idea is that the company issues lots of fines as a routine part of the business, rather than spending thousands of dollars trying to get a small number of pirates hung, drawn and quartered in court.

The idea here is not to bankrupt people or create drawn out court cases, we want a simple deterrent, while still allowing fair use of copyrighted works. There should be a limit to the fines - a customer shouldn't have to pay $100,000,000 if the company catches 1,000,000 infringing copies of his track on the net. Also, there should be a fair appeals process in place, preferably through a disinterested 3rd party so the customer can contest the fine, but the process should be quick, cheap and final.

Of course, depending of the evilness of the people implementing this plan, there are probably lots of ways for this plan to be abused. But maybe it can be turned into a fair way of fighting piracy.

Ok, I think I just let something evil loose, flame away!