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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."
... be embedded in CD audio tracks and used to track piracy or... Used to show which versions of songs are crappy quality, RIAA Fakes, etc....
What, me Tweet?
and exactly what kind of file format can this tag be imbedded into? in order for it to work you have to have a transport medium. Yet another brilliant idea from the people who brought us Hillary Rosen.
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.
The G stands for Get, as in GetRid of the RIAA.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
the code to remove the tag has already been written and is avilable for distribution.
Yet another reason not to buy CD's anymore!
Not that there is much worth buying these days anyhow
Wonder whats next?
"Sir, we're happy to sell this new album to you - just piss in this specimin jar and supply a drop of blood on the application provided..."
Jeez!
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
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
Indentify? What, is the unique ID so that the RIAA can indenture you while you work off the money you owe from your MP3 collection?
Did you read the article? This isn't an attempt to curb piracy. While the MSNBC article is a bit unclear as to why this needs to be done, here's what was said, "But music officials have complained that sales-tracking systems in place at the moment need to be standardised so that online sales, though small at the moment, can be better recorded." This isn't a way to put a tracker in an mp3 so the RIAA can track down the person who is distributing it but merely a way to keep track of sales.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
and thats why having a nice firewall that blocks programs from outbound transmission is crucial.
"This mp3 was stolen.
This mp3 was stolen.
This mp3 was stolen.
This mp3 was stolen... and she loves me!"
http://www.remix.net/
Industry "fact sheets" make reporting so much easier. Now I have time for another nap.
The article seems to get the basic premise of this wrong. A UPC code describes only the product; the buyer is still anonymous. The only reason a reseller would have to buy millions of GRid's would be if each track sold was unique (as opposed to each type of song sold). Either the RIAA's layers did a good job of fooling Reuters, or they just didn't understand the implications of this... and the implications are exactly what they deny-- that songs bought on the internet could be tracked to the buyer if they ever end up being shared.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
"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
its not for tracking files on file networks, so far. But if this is used to track files downloaded from a certian place, say www.my_cool_site.com and it ends up on Kazaa or whatever, would my_cool_site.com get charged more?
But honestly, once it hits P2P, that doesn't matter since it'll be all over the place in a matter of hours.
What, me Tweet?
Jessop cautioned that GRid is not designed, nor is it intended for, keeping track of songs that wind up on online file-sharing networks
So really, they have just figured out a way to do this:
resellers would be charged an annual fee of 150 pounds ($245.10)
Yeah, that sounds about right.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
On Monday, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) reported a 3.7 percent decline in recorded music sales in the fourth quarter of 2002...
When I first read that, I thought it said British Pornographic Industry.. that sure changed the tone of the article...
Nothing! RTFA!!! This isn't an attempt to stop piracy!! This is a means of tracking sales - so once it has been sold from an online retailer, the ID number isn't an issue. You can encode it into mp3, upload it to Kazaa, and distribute it to your heart's desire. Why can't anyone read the article???
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
The basic idea (because I know you didn't read the article) is that online retailers can issue unique IDs to track online sales. If used properly, this could prove that internet sales DO work and MP3s are GOOD for the industry. The article also states that it's not an attempt to curb/track file sharing.
Now, the flipside is that this is the RIAA. They probably have a devious use for the ID, probably just so they can prove they have a system in place. Whether or not they'll be manipulating the numbers in their favor and implementing a tracking system is another question, but knowing their past history, it wouldn't surprise me.
And finally, was I the only one, or does "International Federation of Phonographic Industry" look like "International Federation of Pornographic Industry" on first glance?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
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..
Could this be similar to a custom watermark on each individual song or piece that's sold?
How tamper-proof will this be? If all of the on-line sources that will be selling musing/videos/whatever are to be expected to issue these watermarks, the standards would have to be public, or at least very darn near public.
If the standards are even close to being public, perhaps someone could figure out how to remove and or alter these watermarks.
Hmm, very interesting. I buy a song from MSN. I read the file into a scrip that I hacked. I change the watermark in some way. I then turn around and sell it under the table. The buyer takes the song and then in turn sells it, or whatever.
Sometime later, someone gets raided by the SPA,
MPAA, or whatever. They audit the songs. They find a few with the watermark that I altered. Their trail will be lost or steered into some poor victim whose watermark I 'stole' to alter my songs.
A possible solution to this would be to have a secret algorithm to generate the watermarks. This would have to be implemented in tamper-proof chips or, perhaps, a tamper-proof device that goes between your computer and the network; ie; a special NIC card. The card would know who you are and what song you are about to release. It would then generate and record the water mark in it's secret way before the song is sent on its way.
The logistics of this solution would be challenging. The devices would have to be distributed, cataloged, and recorded. Who has which special NIC card would have to be recorded in RIAA'a TIA infrastructure. Of course, this same infrastruction would have to record each subsequent sale/disposal of the card. The security of the cards would have to be impeccible.
Good luck to you all!
Luv
Mark
Cleara
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!
Everyone here is freaking out because this is another way to track people, and man it's a blatantly obvious one. But do you really believe that the techies and people working at the RIAA are that stupid? Like really?
The RIAA wouldn't do something so obviously usable as a tracking method and then deny it. They didn't in the past. When they were violating your rights, they were up right and in your face about it. That's why so many people despise them. They don't try to hide what they do.
I think this may be a legit way for them to just track for internal records and all, and yes, I am pretty sure they as well as you have thought about the possibility of tracking individual downloaders with this. But like someone already said.
MP3 -> Wave -> MP3 , no more tracking code.
Or even better
Clean CD -> MP3 , No tracking code.
I think that logic would be clear to anyone. Including the RIAA.
The sky isn't falling, the RIAA is just playing some games.
~ kjrose
We run an ASP with music sales where they are watermarking mp3 files during the encoding process. That way they can see if their files make it onto file trading networks. Since the watermark is encoded into the actual track, you can't remove it by converting to Ogg. It's already an mp3.
I don't think it is a bad idea. At least they are selling the files in MP3 format. The only people who would have anything against this would be those who download music they haven't paid for.
IMHO.
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
True enough, the RIAA spokesman reportedly said "This will have no effect on the quality of the recording".
The GRid is a point of sale identification so that the seller can identify which track has been sold and then send the appropriate $ to the recipient (RIAA member).
You can view this as the thin edge of the wedge in a scheme that will probably work to get a "Palladium" like system in place.
Bob buys track 9 from CD X from Amazon. Amazon records the GRid and forwards the appropriate share to RIAA member reponsible for producing the track. Bob is happy because he was able to access the track.
Later Bob will be investigated for file shareing. He will not have the GRid's to prove he bought the file. The GRid's are not part of the music track. The RIAA will say but "Palladium" can solve that. Bob will ask to have "Palladium" implemented so that he does not have to go to jail.
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.
and zero out the tag.
Problem solved.
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.
I believe this is why some software includes a key on a sticker that you have to type in. The CD will recognize a whole bunch of keys, but by entering the one on the sticker, you give your software an ID number.
This being said, I don't think we are in immediate danger of getting unique ID's on CDs. Unless someone knows if there's a manufacturing process for writing small amounts of data on a mass-produced CD?
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
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.
I am looking forward having MY (as a customer) personal tracking number assigned to me and embedded in my body as a microchip - courtesy of RIAA.
I think, as someone mentioned in reply, that the difference is one of scale - if they were to only go after the big fish, it would effectively weed out the pirates from the multiple site users. One brightline would be a P2P server - that can pretty much be assumed to be piracy in most instances (if the RIAA can SEE the server, it's public)
Naturally, what this comes down to is "will they EVER endorse fair use." My plan assumes they do, or would - after all, if they can nail pirates, what's the harm in fair use? It completely negates all their arguments except one...namely, that they want us to buy a separate copy for every place we want to listen to the song.
I didn't express it well in my original post, but if the community accepts the tags, it would serve as a perfect litmus test for where the RIAA stands on fair use when the spectre of piracy has been dealt with. In other words, I like the tags idea because it strips them of excuses. We know that "anti-fair-use" is already the position of the MPAA, as Jack was kind enough to provide great quotes like "What is fair use? There's no such thing..." and "If you lose your copy, you buy another..." Let's see where the RIAA stands on this when piracy goes out the window.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Have you heard me sing in the shower lately?
The RIAA now knows that you do this, and tomorrow you will be joined in the shower by Hillary Rosen, who will be there to collect royalties on the songs you sing.
I'm the urban spaceman babe, but here comes the twist... I don't exist
No and yes. This is simply a way for the INDUSTRY to track what the hell they are selling. Like the article says, it is akin to a UPC code. UPC codes are not unique across all boxes of cereal, but only across specific SKUs, like between 20 oz Cheerios, 40oz Cheerios, and 16oz Count Chocula, for example.
For you geeks out there, it is a CLASS_ID, not an OBJECT_ID, meaning that the number will be the same across all instances of the class.
For example, when a consumer goes to hoohaa.com and purchases an audio track from the latest Hoodies album, hoohaa.com's product database will contain an SKU number to track the PURCHASE so that they can report to the vendor how many tracks of that song were sold so that the artists (the "manufacturer") can get their money. It MAY be included in the track itself, but it would make it easier to automate the process, since the product itself can be polled when they put the track up for sale online, and no one has to manually enter the number. The number should not vary from track to track of the SAME EXACT song. They may put in a serial number in the download, but that would be something completely different than what they are talking about here (and easily foiled for piracy tracking purposes).
All they are doing is Standardizing the domain of these ID numbers across the entire industry so that the money from the sale goes into the right pocket. This is ESPECIALLY important where there is no tangible object being sold, and thus, no purchasing audit trail from the reseller to the vendor.
Sounds like a smart system to me, and one that has nothing to do with our "online rights"; at least no moreso than the computer industry standardizing on Tech Data's SKU numbers for ordering computer parts. Hmm. Wouldn't that be cool?
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."