Startup Tries Watermarking Instead of DRM

Loosehead Prop writes "A U.K. startup called Streamburst has a novel idea: selling downloadable video with watermarks instead of DRM. The system works by adding a 5-second intro to each download that shows the name of the person who bought the movie along with something like a watermark: 'it's not technically a watermark in the usual sense of that term, but the encoding process does strip out a unique series of bits from the file. The missing information is a minuscule portion of the overall file that does not affect video quality, according to Bjarnason, but does allow the company to discover who purchased a particular file.' The goal is to 'make people accountable for their actions without artificially restricting those actions.'"

Comments

Re:re-encode the movie

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried removing an industrial strength watermark (e.g. DigiMarc)? I tested various watermarks in a course project (Steganography) and it's not so trivial. A large number of watermarks were resistant to encoding, cropping, affine transformations, rotations, etc.

The only way I could successfully remove the watermark without making the image unusable was by diff'ing the original with the watermarked. But where are you going to get the original?

Re:Ohhhhh...

[Omestes]

Quick correction, MPAA, not the RIAA. It is easy to confuse your media giant defenders of.. er... themselves, I know.

I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with this, though. I do like it better than nasty DRM, but it seems... Underdone, and perhaps still a step in the wrong direction. I think the various **AAs should learn that the problem isn't piracy, but that piracy is the symptom of a larger underlying problem, that their business model is outdated and self-defeating (may I add draconian?), and their prices are unfair.