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RIAA Unveils Net Tracking Tag for Online Sales
openbear writes "A story over at MSNBC talks about the Global Release Indentifier (GRid). It is a code akin to the Universal Product Code (UPC) bar code found on a CD or cassette tape in stores. Each track will be distributed online with an individual GRid serial number and will be reported back to rights societies and collection agencies sold or transferred."
Look at the header from the article:
A music industry trade body launched on Monday electronic identity tags to keep tabs on Internet music sales in a bid to compensate musicians and song writers as more of their works become available online.
If that isn't leading I don't know what is. They specifically do not mention the RIAA and are trying to portray it as compensating the poor artists as opposed to saving music industry executive's asses.
It sounds like an industry-approved ID3 field. I'm assuming this 'net barcode' would be paired with some new file format, something that weaves the ID into the music itself rather than tagging it on as an afterthought.
I'm not sure how they plan on compensating artists with this plan, since there doesn't seem to be a *payment* mechanism. It strikes me as a first step towards 'Music Audits' in which a hard drive is scanned for the works of particular artists.
--v
and thats why having a nice firewall that blocks programs from outbound transmission is crucial.
Industry "fact sheets" make reporting so much easier. Now I have time for another nap.
"Jessop cautioned that GRid is not designed, nor is it intended for, keeping track of songs that wind up on online file-sharing networks, a major source of music piracy."
All this is is a way to track online sales of individual tracks. Nothing to do with CDs, P2P, etc.
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
the same folks who still can't develop a business model that allows for quick and easy digital delivery of songs.
the mp3s i make from discs i buy, on the other hand, will have no Grid tags, so this really isn't a threat to p2p music sharing as we know it; it means that we (theoretically) won't be able to trade tracks we've downloaded from sony.com.
well, who needs them anyway?
besides, this stuff is pointless, they'll never be able to close the anolog hole.
disponibile
What's preventing users from transcoding the audio file into another format which doesn't have this serial number "feature"?
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
These "tags" will be stripped out the day this hits the wires.
These people seriously underestimate the resolve of teens.
My kid is 17. Here is what he tells me. He won't buy CD's because if a CD has a song that he likes there will be 12-15 songs on there that he thinks SUCK. In other words he's paying ~$15 for ONE SONG. He would rip that one song to HDD and compile his own CD to use in his car with only the songs that he likes.
But, at ~$15 each and being limited by law to only working a max of 20 hours a week at minimum wage he can't afford too many CD's.
Thus enter Kazaa. He can leech all the songs he wants for free and burn his own mixes for his car that suits his taste.
And forget that stuff about buying music online, he can't do that as a kid and I don't have or use any form of banking system. I live strictly by GREEN CASH ALONE and have nothing at all to do with any financial institute in any form. Despite that fact, even if I did have credit cards or bank accounts I would never use them online for any reason, ever. Nor would I permit him to use my accounts.
Kids are smart, far smarter than the people that try to maintain their grip on the music industry.
NOTHING that they can devise will stop piracy, ever. If something must be paid for there will always be someone that will find a way to get it for free.
The digital age is Pandora's box. It's been opened and there is no closing it now.
I predict to see a tool to strip the tags on freshmeat the next day..
Estimated time before a "DeGRid" app appears on the 'net, completely removing the offending number from the file?
I say 6 days from first retail release!
He just wants to find out what nifty stuff he can do with it.
sheeeesh!
Seeing how the media companies solutions are always half-baked, it'll be quite interesting to see how this bites them in the ass. And who they point the finger at while trying to deny their own crapulocity.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Anyone got the bookie odds on how long it'll take to figure out how to strip this off a downloaded file?
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
This isn't designed to stop piracy. All it is is an inventory/sales tracking mechanism. The unique ID is generated and saved for each download of a particular song. So at the end of the month they can say song "X" had such and such amount of sales. From there they can divy up the money.
The problem with electronic files (say MP3) as commodity isn't just piracy. A retailer could easily sell of 4 copies of a song and only report selling one. 3x free money. Or an interrupted download might be counted twice. Etc.
You would think there is a better way, but this is what they came up with.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
Anyone actally read the article? Either the article is missing some information or the listed planned usage for this thing is far from what they actually plan on doing with it.
It appears this is supposed to be used so that a retailer can be charged correctly for every download they offer. Meaning a standard method of keeping track of online retail sales. To do this they will encode some unique bits in every file sold online. Sounds bogus already. I do not see the connection between me having a unique coded file and tracking total sales from retailers. Where is the discussion about how my number is reported or disclosed to anyone? Seems to me the real goal is to track a specific file after it is downloaded. They find your file on KaZaa, track it to the retail source, they release your name and bingo, full swat team visit. Maybe you would become the retailer and they will charge you the original downloader for every instance of the unique indentifier they can find online.
I'm not some consipracy theory nut but I can not honestly see the connection between tracking sales and a unique number embedded in a file.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
...until they embed this Digital Rights Restrictions nonsense into WinXP as an essential service that you can't disable. Just try blocking WinXP's access to the 'net through your firewall.. No internet==no problem. Except that you might want to get networked things done eventually.
Best to wait for the crack.
So when a track is sold, the appropriate media conglomerate and artist are credited. This is basically the same thing as a UPC code on the products you buy in a store. At the point of sale, the UPC is scanned so that inventory is known on that item. Likewise, when an online retailor sells a track, the ID is read and fed into a database that will keep track of the cut for the music companies. Didn't you read the article?
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
What retailers? Why would they need retailers to sell electronic copies?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
It puzzles me to realize that most of these people (RIAA, etc.) would blame file sharing as THE ONLY reason why the industry is experiencing a down turn. I realze that there would be some economic fall out. BUT! How about the fact that 10's of 1,000's of people being laid off has a significant impact on any economy?!?! If my 10 year old son can figure it out, why can't the RIAA figure it out as well? I guess it must be the NEW math they are teaching in school these days...
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
How does that work? MP3's have lossy compression who's goal is NOT to reproduce the bits precisely, but just good enough for human listeners to not be able to tell the difference. I would have thought that this would make it impossible to embed a key (or watermark) in the audio data since bits will come out garbled.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
You are assuming the RIAA actually is trying to stop pirates. Past experience shows they also despise fair use (like for example, taking your favorite ten songs from different CD's you own and burning them onto a "best of" CD for yourself, or converting them to MP3 for your portable player.) They want you to pay for every copy of the song you have, and I see this as a means to get there. Until I see the mechanism by which they will ensure they DON'T flag fair users as pirates, I'm not believing them.
They lost their right to have me give them the benefit of the doubt years ago.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
These geniuses can't even keep their website online, and now they plan to keep an track-ID database running? I'll believe it when I see it.
My god, from reading this thread you'd think this identifier is the work of satan or John Ashcroft (redundant?). People, before posting the standard knee-jerk reaction to something, why not do a little research.
This is a harmless number & metadata scheme that is intended to identify electronically distributed content since the existing identifiers (e.g. UPC and ISRC) have limitations that don't satisfy the needs of content owners, publishers, and retailers. I was involved in the project so I know first hand this has nothing to do with P2P or consumer tracking.
Yeah but how long will it take someone too compare a couple of files that differ by onyl the Global Release Indentifier and write a 300KB program that strips out the unique number and replaces it with random garbage? Then if some gets told they a file sold to them appears they just have to point out that someone else took a copy ran this utility and it put in their number. Problem solved, unless the RIAA can PROVE that it is their file, then the perosn isn't guilty.
It still wouldn't be a good idea. Even if I were very careful not to make any unauthorized copies of material myself, it would be too dangerous to have it around. Suppose I leave my iPod out while I go to the restroom: some joker copies a file while I'm gone, and two weeks later I get a call from the RIAA informing me that the reason no one is buying Britney's new single is that everyone is p2p-ing my copy, and would I mind paying them $2 million. Too dangerous for my tastes, thanks.
Unfortunately the music industry is stupid and will insist on making this somehow do copy prevention. That has the totally counter-productive result of providing a pirate with a fast and easy and foolproof method of determining if they have removed the watermark (ie if it plays they have succeeded in removing it).