Audio Watermark Web Spider Starts Crawling

DippityDo writes "A new web tool is scanning the net for signs of copyright infringement. Digimarc's patented system searches video and audio files for special watermarks that would indicate they are not to be shared, then reports back to HQ with the results. It sounds kind of creepy, but has a long way to go before it makes a practical difference. 'For the system to work, players at multiple levels would need to get involved. Broadcasters would need to add identifying watermarks to their broadcast, in cooperation with copyright holders, and both parties would need to register their watermarks with the system. Then, in the event that a user capped a broadcast and uploaded it online, the scanner system would eventually find it and report its location online. Yet the system is not designed to hop on P2P networks or private file sharing hubs, but instead crawls public web sites in search of watermarked material.'"

Comments

Re:*cough* robots.txt *cough*

[TCM]

Don't forget to blacklist a client as soon as it violates the robots.txt.

Re:So what

[PopeRatzo]

The sad thing about this episode is that digital watermarks could be a wonderful tool, used by artists and their customers to guarantee a given work's authorship. Instead, it's used to punish the very people who make it possible for the artists to survive: their listeners.

I work in an academic environment, and I can't think of a single person in my life who has not violated a copyright or user agreement. If your job is to teach, it's almost inevitable. If you're an enthusiast or fan of a particular artist, it becomes a statistical certainty that you've broken the "law" regarding intellectual property.

I contacted Digimarc once because I wanted to find out about ways to add an identifying mark to a digital file that would let a user know that the file was the authentic work of a particular artist. Not to prevent copying, mind you, because the files in question were meant to be shared. I just wanted the users to be able to know with some certainty that what they were hearing was actually produced by who they expected.

The reply I got from Digimarc (I still have the email) was that they weren't interested in such uses of their product, and anyway "it's priced out of reach of the individual artist or production company". Real sweethearts.

In the last few days there have been lots of stories about people and corporations who make their money off the backs off creative folks. There are those who provide a real service (like the guy who delivers pizza to the recording studio, or the woman who fixes my digital mixing console) and there are those who live to suck the life out of what should be a source of joy for both the artist and the user. Like I've said before, parasites need to live, too. But what really galls me is when they act like they're really doing something of value to anyone but themselves and their accountants.

Seriously, to paraphrase Jesus or Steve Albini (it's one of those religious dudes, I forget which): "It's easier to drive a Range Rover through the butthole of a camel than for a label executive or booking agent to enter the kingdom of heaven."