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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?
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...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.
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.
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
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
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.
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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
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....
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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.
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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"...
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?
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Excluded are open source software developers, researchers, and independent creators of content.
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.
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.
Except for the fact that AOL owns the fourth largest record label in the world, this would be a really insightful point.
Not to mention that that sentence could be read to suggest that AOL has a policy of making the Internet less annoying.
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?