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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.'"
So if the watermarks are public, they can be identified and scrubbed before posting?
This isn't aimmed at the home use or small time crowd. It's ideal role is aimed at finding big name corporate offenders that have unlicensed PR crap on brochers, websites, or ads and making sure that the guy whose's content it is gets his cut. It's not worth it to go against small time folks. Think of professional photographers making sure their photos aren't run in mags or on the web without them getting their cut.
I have a Web Newspaper rolled up, waiting on it.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
Blur the watermark and they are screwed.
Assuming the watermarks are public or traceable. If all you're doing is identifying the fact that it's copyrighted, you could have a thousand different watermarks. Their location at any of half a dozen places in the audio stream would indicate infringement. That means that the pirate needs to search for any of 6000 possible spots for the watermark, and remove it. If the watermarks don't try to distinguish some copies of the work from other copies of the work, you can't use a simple diff to root them out.
A better way. Put a bunch of legitimate sound clips out on the internet, but change it to have the watermark. Make sure your files get spread all over the place. A lot of false positives would render this useless.
And on a more sick note, you could find the "I am browsing gay porn" wav file and modify it. Can you imagine the poor schmuck who has to go review each report to see if it is true?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Don't forget to blacklist a client as soon as it violates the robots.txt.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Why does everyone here want this not to work? Seems to me this could be the alternative to DRM. It doesn't interfere with fair use at all; it only detects when copyrighted works are made widely available.
If we want to dissuade the entertainment industry from using DRM, it seems incumbent upon us, as technologists, to propose alternatives that at least partially answer copyright owners' legitimate concerns. Seems to me this could be one of them.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
No wait... I think I've got it... Isn't it called a "computer"?
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."
You are welcome on my lawn.