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Watermarking to Replace DRM?
An anonymous reader writes "News.com has an article on the announcement of Microsoft and Universal to introduce watermarking technology into audio files. The technology could serve several purposes including tracking file sharing statistics and inserting advertisements into audio tracks. The article goes on to suggest that watermarking could possibly replace DRM in the near future."
All we have here is an attempt by microsoft to shuffle quietly away from the failed strategy that was drm.
One teensy problem. Microsoft don't have the power to force other media file players to enact its scheme, and even if they could, no-one in their right mind is going to require that people re-encode their current collections to work with the new system. Hell mine is almost 150gb, most of that audiobooks, with individual files up to 30mb in size, I'm blowed if I'm going to redo it to use media player, which I don't use in any case, because its a bloated tool (not because its made by microsoft, just because its horrible to use). Audible and the apple store, where I shop, use their own protection systems, and both have 'rip th audio cd' in their options for anything I purchase.
This scheme is ultimately unenforceable except for new purchases, and that from people who agree with microsoft. All it will give them is a way to quietly wrap drm in a blanket and heave it off a bridge late one night.
And there's certainly no watermarking that isn't noticeable that can't deliberately be removed.
I assume "They" want to catch the sophisticated pirates distributing tons of material, not the unsophisticated share-1-song with a friend people. Oh wait... that would make sense in a sane world.
If you use the watermark to trigger a banner ad on a player, it could convince the RIAA that there is an ad-revenue stream and cause them to drop the DRM and lawsuits.
Unfortunately it will be used to connect specific downloads to individuals allowing the RIAA to target their lawsuits more accurately. It will still be as impossible to prove in court but will drive an even deeper wedge between the RIAA and reality.
The only way the RIAA will stop suing is when someone wins a countersuit big enough to affect the bottom line of the corporations supporting them.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
The DMCA makes it illegal (or legally difficult) to remove DRM. But any watermarking and advertising is fair game...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I see this as a positive step. DRM limits the devices and/or software you can use to play back the media you've purchased. It affects our fair use rights as consumers and therefore it needs to go. I think watermarking is a better solution for those of us who want to purchase our media in an unencumbered format to use in accordance with our fair use rights.
The only potential problem I can see is what happens if a device that you've got your legally purchased media on is stolen and the person who steals it uploads some or all of that content? What happens if, say, you buy a new PC, copy all of your legally purchased media to the new PC, delete it from your old PC and either give the old PC away or sell it and the new owner runs an undelete program and recovers the media and then uploads it?
I can see a lot of ways that watermarking could bite someone in the ass if they aren't careful with their files.
"You could even be legally responsible if a virus happened to alter the file"
I love the smell of FUD in the morning...
Seriously. Watermarks are progress. You disagree, that's fine, but lets debate it on its merits and not base our opinions on fear-mongering and FUD.
I don't whether this has ever been tried with audio files, but the techniques used in CDMA radio communications might work here. Essentially, you would need to add a small amount of noise to the audio signal, however it's not true random noise and can be decoded to reveal a signature, or watermark. If you combine two files with different 'noise' signatures, then both signatures can still be extracted with a high probability of a correct result. Only as you combine a large number of similar files does the probability of correctly decoding the signatures of the components decrease. However by that time, you've added a large amount of noise to the audio file and it will probably sound bad anyway, so no-one will want to download it.
The downside is that by definition the noise you add has to be audible. Note that for a long time audio cassettes sold very well despite their awful noise characteristics, so this may be acceptable to all but the strictest of audiophiles.
43 - For those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe and everything.
i think the hole point of watermarking is that you can not detect it, meaning you can not remove it by rewritting it. And neither by converting to analog and recording it again.
Should you succed in detecting one watermark, who says that they have not many watermarks in the sound? Can you prove that you have removed ALL watermarks from a file?
A sound file might be small enough for just having a few watermarks, but a movie should be big enough for each file to have several watermarks in it. Happy sharing.
Examples are numerous of how digital files can leak away from you. You would need to be paranoid and skillfull to properly secure music files which would become very personnal and sensisitve data (or have a user-controled DRM that does it for you...).
Watermarking in a file the name (or an id) of the legitmate buyer is just a stupid idea, period. Filesharers will happily go on sharing watermarked files who identify someone ELSE or unmarked copies, while only the one who has PAID will be bullied by the **IA lawyers.
Hmmmm what if pirates get multiple copies of an mp3? they examine the differences between the files, minimally alter all the places where the differences occur (i.e. making the average of the sound when in phase), or even worse make an audio collage of the song from watermarked mp3s stolen from unprotected computers so it includes marks from multiple owners.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
As I understood, one of the entertainment "industry" proposals was to watermark everything then convince or require by law that consumer electronic manufacturers put watermark detection into their hardware. Such hardware wouldn't copy or play "unauthorized" watermarks. In fact, wasn't this put into the SSSCA?
Actually such a system seems to be in place for banknotes and photoshop... I also heard some printer drivers do this. Seems to require lots more CPU time as one would expect. Here are some interesting articles: Adobe anti-counterfeiting code trips up kosher users. Currency Detector Easy to Defeat.