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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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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
...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.
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?"
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.
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.
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."
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
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.
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 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
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...
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
Let the "I am switching to OOG!" posts begin.
Speaking of which, where is OOG THE CAVEMAN these days? He had some pretty funny posts...
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. . .
(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.
I'm so H-A-P-P-Y to be here today.
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."
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."
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
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.
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?
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...
...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.
If it does not play, the watermark is there.
If it does play, the watermark has been removed.
If these idiots really wanted to do anything, they would put in a secret watermark but NOT make it control playback. Then they could use that watermark to track down the initial source of who started copying it (since that person did not have the ability to test if they removed it).
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
Except for the large masses of people who use modems... And also figuring out who owns equipment with a particularly MAC address is no small feat, as they would have to have that machine directly hooked up to the ISP, with no sort of gateway in between (NAT networks hide this), and that ISP would have to track this info and provide it to the media industry, which may violate privacy agreements with customers... If this were widely deployed and known, you would see the minority using NICs directly connected to the world putting some sort of gateway between them and their ISP...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
In theory, I suppose you could create an "out of band" watermark by encoding the information as a supersonic or subsonic signal that wouldn't necessarily play through the speakers. I say in theory because as far as I know all sound formats out there are tuned to human hearing and aren't all that likely to be able to encode such streams.
Just food for thought, really...
/brian
The difference is that we never had much of an opportunity to get region-free players; it was only something that people in the know could get, and the supply wasn't big enough anyway.
/Brian
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/..
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!
No, you couldn't care less about DivX.
Sorry DivX Networks.. your time in the limelight is over. Time for a better codec to come around
You should check out XviD - developed from the open codebase that DivX4 also came from, but completely free (GPL, even). It doesn't have B-frame support yet, so it doesn't compress as well as DivX5, but it's easily a match for DivX4.
The best place to find information about XviD is to read the XviD forum at Doom9 - many of the XviD developers are active participants there.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
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?
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?
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.