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DivX and MP3 Developers Work Together on Watermarks
An Anonymous Coward writes: "The DivX and MP3 developers are working on digital watermarking techniques together... Ogg anyone?"
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We have Vorbis... Now we have to wait for Tarkin and hope it is as good as/better than DivX
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
here's another fascinating article about this sort of "digital watermarking". Ogg is looking more impressive too, but mp3's are just so entrenched it'll be tough to get the average user to convert.
But isn't Beta the one that evolved into a professional standard, while VHS has stayed the same lo-res crap it was from the beginning?
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
well, i though divx was intend for underground purpose, now, marketing, business, cie are fooling around with that
All we need is another digital media security scheme. There are already too many now. By the time these all shake out they will be irrelevant.
...there will ALWAYS be a way around it until we have big brother inside of all of our equipment. So don't be concerned about any of this.
Start getting concerned when all video card manufacturers are forced to include rights management firmware, and when you can't get a PC DVD-ROM without (more) intrusive/limiting firmware.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Let the "I am switching to OOG!" posts begin. The real point is that ANY watermark that they divise will be cracked. Sooner than later. All this is, is two companies trying to polish their public images in order to acquire lucrative licensing deals with big name media producing companies. They need to shed the 'your product is only good for piracy' image. That is all.
Do a google search before posting.
Actually, no. Why bother converting everything when I've got a perfectly good copy of LAME?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
How many hours before someone cracks it?
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
I don' think its a bad idea to have a watermark as long it can achieve the following:
Integrity of source
Playback on any system
How the watermark can be useful is if it is treated like a serial number not a lockout device. Suppose I am a musician and I want to sell some MP3s. If I can uniquely mark all the songs I sell, I can track which user decided to violate fair use if I see that unique mark on a peer to peer network.
It is only by giving away our rights to companies such as these that we can reasonably expect freedom. I, for one, trust all companies and don't understand why anyone would support OGG, Gnu/Linux or any GPL software when anyone can change it.
they are preventing the wrong kind of piracy. sure, it will prevent the piracy of content that was originally intended for divx, or officially released divx, but they are missing the target. this will be cracked within a matter of days, and besides that, it does nothing to prevent copies of television shows or movies that were independantly decoded from getting out on the net.
I say let 'em try. I am always up for a challenge.
Still, DivXNetworks and Fraunhofer are confident that they can jointly develop a digital rights management system that provides content owners with a secure means to distribute copyrighted works over the Web.
It doesn't matter what they do, sooner or later someone will break it, it's just a matter of time. There is no ultimate "secure means", as there is no 100% secure system!
Wasn't it low-res/high capacity crap? Not that I'm claiming to be fully versed on VHS vs Beta, but I do remember somebody saying that Beta tapes could only record like an hours worth but VHS could do up to 6.
In any case, the demand for MP3 is being fueled by the sheer numbers of songs for it. If Ogg is so much better, then what is inhibiting is content for it.
"Derp de derp."
A: Someone will break the watermark.
B: If they know its watermarked, then someone will get it from another source.
C: Rip it off a CD in your format of choice.
good try though.
thelikesofwhich.com
Is it? We have tons of beta decks here and I don't think you can play home beta on these decks.
According to the article, the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics is in on this too. But really, we knew that this was coming. Someone was going to do it. Would you have preferred that that someone was hired by Hillary Rosen (RIAA) or Jack Valentini (MPAA) ? This might be the best we can hope for. At least vorbis will provide a way out for those in the know.
If you have a good FM receiver, it is easy to record the music you like. I don't know why more folks don't do this. If you have good clear reception of an FM station, a good recording off the air will sound fantastic. Try it. You'll like it.
Ogg will never work because 5 people use it.
First, open source could be criminals theme, then DVD playback on Open source prohibited in U.S., then this watermarking.
I'm going to sleep an maybe tommorow all articles will be nice as high tech beer glass and no politics.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
piss on watermarks!
I know replying to sigs is lame, but why would your commie ask you to press record and play when you issued a LOAD command? I think it just said PRESS PLAY ON TAPE. I never had the cassette interface for my c64, so I don't really know, I just have the 1541 drive. I actually have my c64 set up right now, so I could show my friends the game "Save NY" which was very ironic, you could fly the jetliners into the buildings in NY and make them collapse. If you have ever played the game then you know what I mean.
Anyway
Gigs - Posting anon because this message is way offtopic.
Step 1) Create a system or product that, while having some legitmate use, also enables a much more popular illegal use.
Step 2) Gain a huge user base while fretting and pretending to "study solutions" to the illegal use.
Step 3) Once your system or product has become a leader in the marketplace, throw a switch and make the illegal use much harder.
Hey, it worked for countless companies throughout the ages. I mean, when did AOL enable the features that prevented users from e-mailing warez to each other, before or after they became the number one ISP in the US? So, it's not surprising that DivX and Frau. would be following the pattern like everyone else.
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
I thought anyone with half a clue had already switched to ogg.
Think about it, if they can do that, then they don't need all this stupid other shitty laws out there. Then they can do what everybody on here says.. Only go after the people that are violating copyright, and all us out there that still use MP3s legally for our portable players and such don't get screwed.
Free Mac Mini
No more screw-ups (as in early cracks) like last time.
There will never be a truely secure method until someone creates one.
I hold that there will always be a way around, but then the cost of getting around it may get too high.
Many of us Christians believe that one day the government will track every single in-duh-vidual with an implanted chip, or some other type of imprinting device (Mark of the beast and all that).
Hard to copy music when the government is watching everything you do.
Even if you say it won't happen, you'll be wrong one day just like your great-great-great-grandpappy was wrong when he said they wouldn't be tracking you via your SSN.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
DiVX is a very close variant of MPEG-4 and no longer has its source open. H.26L is open and already provides for 1.5 x better compression than DiVX. XViD is also about 10% faster and is open source and nearly all GPL at this point.
DiVX will just fade away the same as MPEG-4 due to it's too greedy nature.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
You're right, but video card manufacturers are already including DRM firmware - it's called DVI. DVI creates a secure link between the PC and the display to prevent digital copying of decoded streams (e.g. DVD).
BTW, I'm surprised no one has yet challenged the DVD regional licensing scheme under US antitrust law. The Sherman Act makes such geographic price discrimination illegal.
I think it's about time we simply boycott all stuff that uses the "Digital Watermark" technology. If the companies won't trust us as a consumer, then I simply won't buy their stuff. I'm usually honest about software. I usually buy all my software from legit sources. Why do I have to be treated like a criminal?
MP3 music watermarking is BS anyways. If they put that on songs, then all I need to do is tape the radio for whatever song I feel like hearing. Why do corporations have to leer over us?
All I know is that a full boycott of media from these companies will hurt them MUCH more than a few bad apples downloading media that they never paid for.
I have friends who work in the security industry and crack codes for a living. Every time a watermarking scheme is publically proposed, they laugh long and heartily. The simple fact of the matter is that a system designed to check for a watermark can easily be changed to invalidate the watermark. Watermarks are necessarily little bit-flipping programs that don't alter the outward appearance of the media they are attached to, so what makes record execs and PHBs so sure that they can't be removed?
The only watermark that can't be removed is the watermark that can't be detected. And that doesn't help the digital rights management fascists one bit. So why do they bother?
Well, they still think it's a "deterrent." Just like Macrovision is a "deterrent" when you can buy filters to block it for under $25 on eBay. Sooner or later, though, the world is going to have to learn that information wants to be free, that trying to restrict the flow of bits on the information superhighway is futile, and that selling simple numbers and calling it "property" is patently absurd. Mathematics is a part of nature, and nobody owns nature; the sooner our laws are brought into line with this simple truth, the better.
~wally
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
watermarking only affects future content. Legacy content is watermark free, and with mp3 encoders freely available (lame, etc) future content will be watermark free as well.
A side note on how some watermarking systems work (or have attempted to work): a popular method is to encode a heavy watermark and a light watermark in the content. By dicking with the stream, you end up destroying the light watermark but the heavy watermark remains. This is an easy way for a vendor to flag pirated content. Of course, actually implementing a robust light/heavy watermark is considered difficult.
Now if you were talking fingerprinting, it'd be a different story...
...find a new business model!
Omnicontrol of every unit/viewing/hearing of copyrighted material is simply not possible without total hardware control (and halting technical innovation forever).
How long can the media and entertainment industry push this before the market forces the new realities of the medium? Once a "title" is realeased, it is already "out there". Forever accessible and reproducible with minimum effort. No matter what encryption/watermarking scheme they come up with, somebody somewhere will always bypass it.
Copyright infringement will happen no matter what. Companies and people will simply have to adapt to the idea that there will be new ways of making money with entertainment.
It is not going to be just a new way of selling CDs online. It won't be charging for download or by viewing. It will simply be different, new. Media companies should spend more time shaping their futures by helping define that "new" than trying to keep their unsustainable business model alive.
Unfortunately, the only way to get this through to current senior management in this industry is...actually, there is no way. We're just gonna have to wait until today's 12 to 18 year olds are running these companies and in a position to understand the new market.
Do you want to live in a world where there's Draconian DRM or a world where there's DRM that makes casual piracy hard?
OK, there's the third, remote possibility that we'll end up in an another world in which "information wants to be free" rules, but the sorry, true fact is that whatever information wants, people want to own information and charge other people for it. Especially people with lots of money. And therefore power, and therefore clout to shape the world.
There's a growing body of opinion that holds the best way to keep us from getting draconian DRM is NOT to shrilly scream about free information/content and drop into a frenzy of distribution violations, but rather, to show how a mild solution can give us the best of "fair use" and "new economy" rules while not totally threatening the status quo (just enough to keep 'em on their toes).
In that light, digital watermarking for mp3 and divx is good. 5 letter acronyms introduced to congress are bad....
Tweet, tweet.
I haven't bought a cd in many, many, years. In fact, I have Nirvana Unplugged sitting in my cd tray right now.
Looks like I won't be able to go out and get the latest Brittany Spears albumn *darnit*.
The sad thing is that the music industry is killing themselves with this shit. Oh well, that's capitalism.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
I don't know that it would apply, as DVD price fixing is constant in the US... It only changes outside the US, where US laws (theoretically) don't apply. After all, I can go to Mexico, get some Cuban cigars, smoke them, and not get arrested for violating the Cuba embargo when I re-cross the border into the US.
Don't get me wrong, I would like it if DVD region encoding when down the tubes, so I could get more foreign DVD's (anime, primarily). But, I just don't know if the argument applies.
There's really only one reason: hardware support.
I can take my MP3s virtually anywhere and be able to play them, whether it's a computer, a CD player a flash player or something else, it's almost universally supported on digital audio gadgets.
I like Ogg, I'd say at the [high] bitrates I encode at it's as good if not better than MP3, but it just doesn't have the hardware support to make encoding for it worth my while, it's more time-effective for me just to rip to MP3 directly.
C-X C-S
There is a big difference, going from a 256 colour GIF (big (file) and ugly) to a millions of colours jpeg (small (file) and purdy) is a very big improvement.
Going from mp3 to ogg for most people is of no advantage.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
The watermark would only show which user you originally sold the copy to; it might have been sold secondhand, for example. Or simply stolen. And if users leave the files on their Windoze machines, then expect the next SirCam-like virus to target .mp3 instead of .doc.
How long will it be before the music industry claims that Ogg's Vorbis codec is a tool designed to circumvent copy protection by allowing users to encode audio in an unprotected format? You know it's going to happen sooner or later.
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
Maybe you live in interesting times
it really seems to me the ONLY point of all your discussion on this subject is that you will be pissed if u CANNOT break an established copyright...
it is exactly THAT: a right to copy or NOT copy...u might not like it, but it is defined by the ppl who make the software/format. all the other LAWS are indeed stupid, but all a watermark can do is help them track down illegal use: im not particularly a corporate fan, but they are strengthening their defense in an intelligent way: WITHOUT THE USE OF POINTLESS LAWS!!!
if you are doing something illegal, either be discrete about it, or stop doing it, but most definitely (not to sound like a troll...) stop whining. sure, ogg will remain oss, and so will all the oss video codecs, but if NO stupid laws are being passed, u are setting a bad example for potential users, making ppl think they SHOULD make laws...
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
And maybe they could use this information to track more than piracy. For example, they could use it to gather data on what listeners like to hear, and keep their customers updated on other products that are sure to appeal to them. They could even do it automatically, via e-mail of some kind of machine generated snail-mail. Think of it, no more being annoyed by ads that don't apply to you. Let some corporation do the grunt work of tracking your habits and maintaining a database of your activities. Why, eventually, this method could become so advanced that companies would send you products and deduct your accounts without you ever having to hassle with shopping or making any decisions at all!
Man, what a wonderful world that would be. Of course, you can bet that a bunch of criminals who are bent on hiding their nefarious activities will object. What kind of country is this where criminals and paranoid cranks are allowed to stand in the way of progress?
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
At some point it has to come out analog... can we all say mic in front of a speaker? Hey it is all just 0's and 1's, get them in the right order and shazam! no copy protection.
flinging poop since 1969
(famous words from every developers meeting ever scheduled)
DivX was supposed to be free! Free! Freeeeeeeee!!!
Guess not.
Of course the "If you use use DivX commercially" (translation: if you have ever or will ever make money with a computer) "then you must contact us" (because publishing the real price means no customers) "for permission" (permission is a convenient corporatism for NO)
But, somewhere, somehow, the checks have to go out on the 1st. I hope the Internet gets past this "never pay, no matter how cool it might be" approach to business. Think there's a lot of unemployment now? Wait till the value of information becomes zero because nobody can make even a modest living selling it.
Conclusion at the end of the paper:
I'm so H-A-P-P-Y to be here today.
"Still, DivXNetworks and Fraunhofer are confident that they can jointly develop a digital rights management system that provides content owners with a secure means to distribute copyrighted works over the Web. "
How many god dammned times are we going to have listen to this kind of wishful thinking kinda crap?
Look, you clowns. I'll explain this one more time. What you are trying to achieve is mathematically and logically impossible short of the installation of a global quantum crypto key distribution infrastructure.
Go ahead and lock up all the PhD's ya got in a building for a year or more working on your "secure means" product. Let's say you use the total intellectual capacity of these 100 PhDs for two years to develop this shiny new toy. (We'll quantify this intellectual capitol expenditure as 200PhD Intellectual Capitol Annum Units - ICAU.) The day you release this code booger to the world, AT BEST, you can only LOGICALLY expect it to remain secure for the amount of time that an inferior amount of intellectual capital has been applied to breaking it.
In REALITY, the amount of intellectual capitol that will be brought to bear upon cracking your toy will VASTLY exceed your puny 200 ICAU investment. The amount of willing, ready, intellectual capitol available on the web is an awesome power that must be acknowledged and respected. This "Intellectual Capitol Differential Equation" CAN NEVER be swung toward your favor. You will ALWAYS lose.
Worse, every time you, Hollywood, the RIAA and whomever the info-nazis of the week are, start spout this kind of blinkered, pig-ignorant drivel, you piss us all off. Get a frikken clue.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Funny, I though half a clue was all you were left with after encoding it to ogg.
Or
Everyone with half a clue has switched. It's the people with a whole clue who haven't.
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
Too bad they can't work on a digital technique to make Voyager not suck my cock.
The "LOAD"*",1,1 means load the first program from "1" (the tape drive). The second "1" means to load it into it's original memory location (very likely a machine lang. program). If the "PLAY" button is *NOT* pressed you will get asked to "PRESS PLAY". If the "PLAY" button has already been pressed the C-64 will just turn on the player.
;-)
Commodore Trivia what a way to kill karma.
Hmm, will I use the new encoder to encode the videos with a watermark, that I want to distribute P2P, or will I use the old encoder? Boy, that'll sure stop piracy.
Is anyone distributing movies in DivX, other than pirates? I mean, are the studios releasing stuff in DivX? Am I out to lunch?
Excluded are open source software developers, researchers, and independent creators of content.
Watermarking is pointless. All they can hope to do is degrade sound quality in order to make the signal recognizable, as if it wasn't already trivial to recognize a recorded track!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
And then be hammered in Metamod! HAHA!
-(Not "Gigs")
I've always wondered if the authors of articles put quotes like this totally out of context, or if the quote sounds so stupid and irrelevant because that is the language spoken by the marketing-erati.
You know what?
AOL has a vested interest to keep a free format like Ogg down!
No, AOL has a vested interest in people using the internet. They have nothing to gain from helping the RIAA make music sharing difficult or irritating.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Watermarks can't do shit until they are coupled with a DRM app. Until then, can we lay off "the sky is falling" and the self-righteous "we'll crack the watermarks because music just wants to be free!" posts.
so what? watermarking Divx/MP3.. that won't stop me using iTunes to rip legit CDs and pass them over to my friends, or share over p2p's. and who actually downloads legitimate divx? would the watermarking affect DVD-Ripped Divx movies at sites such as this? if not, the, this won't really affect piracy very much, and like many of you have said, it simply a matter of time before it is cracked. I download Divx movies all the time, and if i like one very much, I'll go out and buy the DVD. Same with MP3s. BTW, theres always Digital > Analogue > Digital - although the loss of quality would be the price to pay for that.
Fight Crime - Shoot Back!
Or you could just buy your Cuban cigars from Canada (over the internet) shipped in a nice little box that says "Canadian Cigars".
When video tapes came out, "they" though it would crush tv and movies. Fortunately, the industry was way ahead of the consumer, as most people didn't have access to, nor the means to afford the equipment to partake in the thieving orgy that the VCR made possible. I hope the price of not being ready to keep one step ahead of the public is that all the precious, huge artists that fill the major labels coffers, are suddenly having to work for a living. Soon after VCR's became a household commodity, and it was totally feasible to be able to afford several VCR's and tape the shit out of everything you rented. The industry steps in with scrambling on all tapes.
Likewise, once descrambling was something everyone had fairly easy access to, (though not many people cared at this point because the VCR was "old news") the DVD was on the horizon, if not yet available.
The way I see it, the music/movie industry is in a real pinch here because as of now, they have no "next step". Everything you hear about as far as 'regulating digital this-and-that' is in concept /research phases.
So what are they left with? Since they can't stop the copying/piracy/duplication at the source (the media itself) they are left with doing their best to limit the ways we can use our own, purchased content.
And since the only artists worth the cost to implement this limiting are the big ticket, top 40 type, I for one, hope that whatever comes of digital rights, it help to fuel the independant movement. Remeber the free videos and cassettes the record store used to give out of bands you had never heard of? I'd love to see the indy labels capitalize on this by proudly distributing shiftable content.
You know what?
Ok where to begin (all AFAIK): /. then.
1. They still haven't got it that DivXNetworks didn't create DivX - they just grabbed the name to bring out DivX4 which has nothing to do with DivX;-) (the beginning of DivX as a codec a hacked m$ one).
2. The part of Fraunhofer which licensed DivX (Fraunhofer IGD) has nearly nothing to do with the one developing mp3 (Fraunhofer IIS) - Fraunhofer is a vast organization with over 50 different institutes
3. DivX was licensed by Fraunhofer IGD months ago for "streaming technologies and software development within research activities" (http://www.igd.fhg.de/actual_divx.html)
There was already a big discussion on
4. http://www.divx.com tells us that one of the goals for the future of the DivX-codec is to implement DRM - they do this for months, too.
Now, what's the "news" remaining in that article?
Oh yeah, Fraunhofer wants to use the DRM part of DivX too.
Wouldn't have thought they want to use that in streaming solutions.
Now that was informative!
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
it's not "its" when you mean "it is".
according to this very informative article,(An introduction to compressed audio with Vorbis) it would seem that ogg offers better sound than mp3 files, anyone care to comment on any diffrences if they have tried ogg? if in fact it does offer better sound quality, i would be willing to go home tonight, and start encoding new cd's i have in the ogg format.
Avoid The Rush, Start Thinking NOW!
--
Any Spelling Or Gramatical Errors In This Post Are There On Purpose.
I look at the headline. I look at it again. I see the word "watermark." I don't see copy-protection, I don't see crippling CD-RW or DVD+RW drives, I don't see the MPAA and RIAA going on a lawsuit spree, I just see "watermark."
A watermark is just that: A watermark. A way of determining the integrity of the watermarked object that is prohibitively difficult to duplicate. It doesn't prevent duplication per se, it just causes the ducplicate to proclaim that its a duplicate through the absence of that watermark.
Yes, there are all sorts of immoral and possibly illegal things hardware manufacturers can do by automatically scanning for watermarks, but the watermark itself is pretty much morally neutral. In fact, I can think of many good things that can be done with such a tool. If the RIAA ever got their thumbs out of their asses and realized they should be selling media instead of mediums, a watermark would give those consumers that care about such things a way of finding out if what they have is genuine.
This is going to bring ogg out on top... people will switch. They wont use a format that will restrict them..
DiVX ;-) flourished in underground movie distribution.
:) have fun. go ogg.
If the new DiVX will be troublesome for the underground movie scene, DiVX may very well find itself to be replaced.
And then again who knows, the new replacing format may gain momentum, and go for the big bucks.
..and a new format may be introduced.
When we are talking formats and components we all rely and depend on for interopability, open source is the only way to go. And no BSD as it will not be protective enough (though my favourite license is BSD in most cases though I support back on free will (I'm corporate myself)). A GPL type of license which allows integrating with proprietary is the only way to go to protect the standard.
Keep it open I say.
As for DiVX, the author sure pulled a major stunt here. In Denmark we could call it "en narrefisse" which means a lady that on purpose turn you on pretending they are up for something, only to walk away. Yeah thats a bitch
People, people, people. We should really all be supporting this technology. This really is the answer that we want.
Let's make a few assumptions.
1. Someone can make a non-trivially breakable watermark technology. One that stands up to peer review without threats of legal ramifications.
2. Content providers can then use this watermarking technology on a reasonably fine scale - probably not individually watermarking every CD, but perhaps broken down into regions. Digital downloads could be individually watermarked, given enough CPUs.
What would this do? It gives the content providers ammunition and evidence to go after the big time copyright violators. Those that are burning CD's and turning around and charging money. Granted, a lot of these folks are probably overseas...
It allows us to use our digital media as we see fit. We can listen to it on our PCs. Download it to our Rios. It still allows us to swap digital media among friends. Content providers aren't going to go after the small fry, there's no return on investment.
This allows us to say to our congressmen, "Yes we care about and value copyrights. But we also value fair use."
This is a happy medium ground.
And being the crazy optimist that I am, this is the way I see things eventually settling down. The question is will it settle down in 1-2 years, or 10-20?
> A GPL type of license which allows integrating with proprietary is the only way to go to protect the standard.
Just to be safe, you could watermark the source code or make it crash the user's computer if someone tries to include it in a closed source program. You should also try the new GNU Digital Source Rights Management package for extra protection.
Nono I agree with Vspirit on that one.
Let them integrate/use the GPL'ed formats in proprietary products.
interoperability is a matter of userbase, and thats what matters for the formats and components.
Its the same strategy as BSD, only when it comes to components and formats they can not be embraced and extended exlusively by one vendor.
There's really only one reason: hardware support.
I can take my MP3s virtually anywhere and be able to play them, whether it's a computer, a CD player a flash player or something else, it's almost universally supported on digital audio gadgets.
I like Ogg, I'd say at the [high] bitrates I encode at it's as good if not better than MP3, but it just doesn't have the hardware support to make encoding for it worth my while, it's more time-effective for me just to rip to MP3 directly.
Exactly!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the music industry trying to invent a good watermarking technology. As long as they fight illegal copies with technical means i am all for it.
The problem starts when they buy legislation instead of using technology to protect their stuff. My problem with mandatory DRM is *not* that I can no longer get britney spears songs for free, but that I am no longer allowed to own a general purpose computer.
Private property is the central institution of a free society (David Friedman)
OK...
.
Watermarking is not a Bad Thing. A lot of people have talked about hacking this or that it is DRM.
You are missing the point.
Even if you could remove the watermark... why would you do this? It doesn't make any sense.
The point of the watermark is to encourage a micropayment industry to pop up.
For example... Alice downloads Bob's MP3. Alice's MP3 player is smart enough to pick up the watermark.
Alice's MP3 player is smart enough to mention that she has not paid Bob for this song. Since Bob is a poor starving artist, we want him to get paid.
Alice them pays Bob and everyone is happy. If Alice doesn't want to pay then she doesn't have to
A lot of people are talking about similar systems. For example you could do this based on a Hash of the content but this has a number of problems (different bitrate encoding would change the hash).
A watermark would be portable from CD, MP3, OGG and back to CD...
This is a Good Thing and has a lot of potential for us to proove that a digital and robust economy is possible.
Now all this is changes if the RIAA tries to force this on people...
The only one that doesn't sells multiregion, AFAIK, are Sony Shops, but then I think they don't sell many DVD players. I guess people here have a little more common sense and voted with their wallets.
Of course, importing the DVD player to the US is illegal.
Signatures are supposed to be funny?
They will not make the system used to check for watermarks an open one ... in fact in case you have not been paying attention thats what the CBDTPA is all about, they want to put black box hardware in everything to perform the checks. That doesnt preclude it from being hacked even without reverse engineering the black box (which they can make very hard) as last years debacle has shown ... but it does make the question about wether it can succeed a little less open and shut.
Whether or not there will be a way is not the important issue here...
/. and similar sites will be able to find a way but that doesn't matter. What will matter is that if these types of technolgy are put into place WE here on /. and other sites would be BREAKING THE LAW by using our own hardware and media...
/. does NOT run linux and DOES use AOL or whatever other 'easy' ISP...
Of course all of us here on
The MOST IMPORTANT issue here is that jope user will NOT understand... an average user does NOT read
My point is this, the average user will be left behind as all of us here try to run and hide in our corners with our open media... we need to stand up and defend those who do not understand what this will mean or those who cannot defend EVERYONE'S rights...
So get out and get involved... spend some time or money (or both) on helping defend EVERYONE'S rights... make sure that you are not abandoning others for your own personal use of media...
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
... as long as the money goes to the artists and not the record companies. I have no problem sending money to XYZ band for their album turned mp3 but I do have a problem giving the record comapany $8 and the band 75 cents.
To be serious, I could care less about DivX. It used to be a decent, fun, and "non corporate" codec but now they have gone down the prime shitter. With the release of DivX 5.0 and all of its spyware, I ended up saying "forget it" and stuck with 4.12. I guess it happens to everybody... started off being a couple of guys in their free time doing it for the love of the community (even if they totally ripped off the Micro$soft MPEG4 codec) and turned into a bunch of greedy, wannabe suits.
Sorry DivX Networks.. your time in the limelight is over. Time for a better codec to come around. adios
...to be the next biggest thing, we need more hardware support for Ogg Vorbis players. Please sign this petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/vorb123/petition.htm l which aims to convince hardware manufacturers to include ogg vorbis support in their products. Many people are complaining that they can't make the move to Ogg Vorbis unless it gets hardware support. If we can get enough signatures to convince manufacturers to start supporting Ogg Vorbis, this is the biggest barrier overcome.
Just like how no one will use DVDs that have region codes since they restrict use of the disk?
The competition is "going to be a tough area to crack..."
:)
It's pretty bad when the DRM people want to crack stuff too.
-Jeff
From the original post
... due to it's too greedy nature.
Granted he should have been more specific, but you should have looked closer.
true, but what you are saying that nothing that can POSSIBLY come to any harm should be allowed. by that rule, just about EVERY modern programming language, operating system and useful piece of software should be thrown out and bashed, because it can be used for harm.
yes, you should watch these people so they dont DO anything bad, and try to make sure nothing happens, but there are also plenty of legitimate uses.
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
It would be really dirty, but I can imagine software makers and library makers putting your MAC in the watermark. Nice universal way to find the originator.
What would this require? Some sort of ID that people could activate and assign their own ID to. It would also require the cooperation of all technology manufacturers. And an unbreakable ID encoding. The only problems are: People won't buy products with the ID chip understandably. The tech companies won't cooperate. And no system is unbreakable. On top of this, it shouldn't be a government mandated, spawn of the RIAA/MPAA, system. It has to be developed with the cooperation of the consumer.
Your thoughts.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
thats it im going back to midi music.
.it, .s3m, .mod, .xm and the likes
1300 songs, in a meg, cmon!
but on a more serious note, the music i listen to most ends in
aka. mod music, consult your local search engine for best results. there are a few mod archive/download/competition sites around
they also look pretty when you play them in players such as openCubic
but the again... mod authors make the music free anyways (and sometimes for competition), what the hell is the fun in downloading free music!
the only fact is that everything is an opinion
No fucking way!
I want to do with my media whatever I want whenever I want. Once I've bought a CD, whether I want to play it or felch it, that's my problem - and I don't want the government or a company to know it's up my ass or in the slot.
To really stretch a point... If the US Gov't was really pissed at you, you could probably get nailed for smoking said Cuban cigars in Mexico... just as one of the charges against John Walker stems from supporting the Taliban, which was on our (US) list of embargoed countries/terrorist supporting... Just as Cuba is.
But for them to care, you'd probably have to do a whole lot more than post a few mp3's tothe internet.
Sorry... just felt like nitpicking/..
en narrefisse == cocktease for future reference
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
Hello "divxnetworks" has nothing to do with REAL DivX ;-)...since DivX was a hack it's name isn't protected, so these freeloaders came on and try and take credit witha rip off fake product. Of course most people are morons and don't realize it.
The DiVX developers are not idiots. They know that watermarking won't work, and they know that this move wouldn't forward well with it's followers. I have a theory that they might be doing this, just so that if they were ever legally threatened in the future, they would have something to say about piracy. "We're not about piracy, look we tried watermarking!"
Just a thought, anyways. I'm probably wrong.
Oh, and BTW, Franhaufer or whatever is a stupid kaiser that came up with one of the 50 million audio codecs out there, that just happened to become the standard by random choice, and nobody gives a damn what he has to say about any of this.
Is why I'm not particularly interested in new versions of DiVX. It's obvious that they're trying to gear up for making a huge commercial splash with it - a far cry from the "video codec for the masses" as it was first introduced.
Network users are fickle - as soon as they start putting watermarking, and other crap into the video, people will migrate to the "next big thing", which may be open-source GPLed work.
And then DiVX's business will be no more.
EOL
RIAA-approved headphones are the next logical step.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Have to laugh. I read the article and the in-page advert on news.com is for cheap CD burners... love it!
The reason why people can't sell "information" is because there is so much of it available on the net. If people try to sell MP3 technology somehow instead of giving it away, people *will* switch to the cheaper or free alternative (OGG).
The internet is huge and there will always be someone willing to give away information for free. The open source movement is a prime example. If Microsoft ever make a secure protection system for Windows, people won't use Windows.
VHS=pr0n, Beta=dead
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
Thus MP3 = pr0n ?
bit for bit copying process?
How can it not be copied trough standard UNIX "cp"? What is it about these watermarks that makes it "disappear" in copied files?
Or will all software have to be rewritten as to understand and ignore the watermark when copying a file?
1) is that pr0n really did push VHS along! (mentioned in other posts.)
2) is that Sony for all purposes the only manufacturer of the Betamax format (closed format) and didn't allow any other comers. VHS, by comparison, was available from several makers.
The length of play was a small issue, as I think the early beta machines could do 90 minutes compared to the 2 hours for early VHS machines. Both formats ramped up playback time by slowing the tape dramatically, resulting in lower quality for both.
Better tapes and even slower formats allowed betamax playback to reach 4.5 hours, but tape play duration never really entered into it.
http://www.high-techproductions.com/betamax.htm
Yes, I am a terrorist!! I'm going to blow up the empire state building this weekend......right after I fuck your mother!!!
They are trying to "outlaw" speakers.
They want all hardware in the loop -- the PC (sound card, hard drive, processsor, removable media controller), USB, Firewire, speaker wire, stereo components, and yes, the speaker itself, to have digital and analog copy control built in. And any non-complying hardware would be illegal to manufacture.
Thought you should know.
What is wrong is that the watermark is there for the corporation's benefit, not the artist's.
And the corporation is immortal, claims eternal ownership of the material, can never be defeated in court by a mere mortal's legal resources, can crush you like a bug, can change the rules at any time, will never reimburse the artist for his/her work, and has no personal liability as an "individual" for legal abuses of consumers to match the "rights" that it claims as an "individual" under our laws.
OK?
People creating compelling content have rights. There are certainly policies that could be used that blend their need to guard against a wholesale giveaway of their property with the wonderful conveniences copyable media bring with them.
Any effort to impose new DRM methods would be wise to spell out a sample charter of what rights they extend to the projected customers of these files (keeping in mind the fact that stinginess on this account will only increase the proportional rate at which people do a D/A ->A/D pass and convert it into a high fidelity format that is entirely unprotected).
tone
The DMCA is the key. We like to think the content-providers are technologically stupid, but strategically they aren't. The DMCA makes cracking their little watermarks illegal. I think they realize that the cracking will happen; but the chilling effect of the DMCA slows it down and gives them the ability to keep up with the rate of technological innovation (there's that word again).
IANAL but it seems to me that all this money being spent may be a waste. The way the DMCA is worded, they could simply program a few bits to be at the front of whatever digital content they sell, and force the hardware manufacturers to make their hardware look for just those bits. The wording of the DMCA is broad enough to allow that ridiculous excuse for a tpm under its definition. Maybe the content providers' lawyers don't agree with me, but maybe they're the ones who don't know the tech.
To understand what's right and wrong, the lawyers work in shifts ...
porn isn't underground anymore.
While that was a very nice intro to audio compression, I fail to see your point in reference to my original comment about lack of hardware support.
C-X C-S
As far as piracy goes, nothing will change. People who know how to encode movies and shows will do it using the latest and greatest codec available, and you can bet that even if they have the option to stick a watermark in it, they won't do it.
Of course, one reason why "moviez" folks would want the industry to standardize on watermarked DivX rather than watermarked .WMV is because once you hack off the watermark, in the former case you get a clean DivX movie, where in the latter, you get something much uglier.