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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."
People will find ways to remove those watermarks. The only impact will be on the people who still buy the stuff; those who share it online won't have any problems.
This certainly sounds like a preferable solution to any kind of Draconian DRM scheme, but my bet is that it'll be circumvented so trivially that content providers will soon shun it and go back to the bad old days of DRM. I hope I'm just being cynical though.
Firstly, there is nothing wrong with Watermarking and steganography.
its just a way of hiding information.
reading up on it says nothing bad.
Situations may arise when it will be used incorrectly.
To be certain though we should filter out the bad stuff.
Perhaps a better way would be doing nothing.
or maybe we can filter them out
Suppose we find multiple files and merge them.
That would work wouldn't it?
liqbase
Which is precisely why it won't work. What one tool can detect, another can circumvent.
Oh, and it's detectable and not detectible. Don't know what moron at news.com.com hired Taco...
This message is brought to you by the Bureau of Massively Distributed Peer Review, Department of Free Culture.
The Banjo Players Must Die!
Maybe I'm the only one, but I've reached a saturation point regarding advertising. It now makes me react strongly negatively. I fully expect any day now companies will start tattooing adverts on the inside of babies' eyelids.
We live in a world of massive information-availability. A consumer who wishes to consume is equipped to find the "best" product for the job, and often will. Brand-recognition is a weakening force and it's high time we stop polluting our senses with invasive advertising.
"Oh no... he found the
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.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
You have absolutely no fscking idea what you're talking about, do you? ... It has absolutely nothing to do with advertising whatsoever.
I'm guessing that he actually read the article.
FTFA:
Activated Content hasn't explained exactly how it'll use the Microsoft technology, but the company's Web site promotes a very interesting service called ActiveNow. The idea: whenever a watermarked file is played on an ActiveNow-enabled device, the service could dynamically insert some sort of advertising--presumably audio, but perhaps video or text depending on the device being used.
Douchebag.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
The good news: Watermarking does not restrict the freedom of personal use and transferring from one device to another. If this could make online music shopping truly feasible I'd prefer it over DRM. I want to do whatever I like with the media I buy.
But the question is how the media companies will use this newfound power... I support the idea of companies having the option to trace leaks, but this could make it possible to determine exactly who shared the 500 000 copies present of Band X's single Y on P2P network Z. Ensue more lawsuits?
.: Max Romantschuk
DRM: Limited in who can run it. (see BBC iplayer for an example of an OS dependent implantation). Must have the right hardware, software, ect.
Watermarks: Anyone can run it.
Whether it can be hacked around or otherwise... time will tell, but from a accessibility standpoint, at least its looking like anybody can at least play it. That has to count for something. If I have to accept restrictions, this is better then what we had before.
It's not absurd. Welcome to the article:
"FTFA:
Activated Content hasn't explained exactly how it'll use the Microsoft technology, but the company's Web site promotes a very interesting service called ActiveNow. The idea: whenever a watermarked file is played on an ActiveNow-enabled device, the service could dynamically insert some sort of advertising--presumably audio, but perhaps video or text depending on the device being used."
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
Congratulations, record companies, for coming up with yet another reason not to buy your products. To a consumer that is toying with the idea of buying a song rather than downloading it for free, watermarking could potentially be an even larger disincentive than DRM.
- DRM: If you buy this song, you run the risk that you won't be able to play it on the hardware that you have now or will have in the future. Total risk exposure: 99 cent
- Watermarking: If you buy this song, you run the risk that it somehow ends up on the filesharing networks with your name written all over it, and you get sued to smithereens by the RIAA. Total risk exposure: a gazillion dollars
Why would consumers find this so much more attractive?Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
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.
Also, watermarking pretends that people have control over their files. Millions of people whose computers that are controlled remotely in botnets don't.
There are numerous other ways files are moved around. If you take your computer in for repair, it is possible the repair person will copy any files he or she wants.
The RIAA did go after used CD shops and lately they are winning.
In Florida, the new legislation requires all stores buying second-hand merchandise for resale to apply for a permit and file security in the form of a $10,000 bond with the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. In addition, stores would be required to thumb-print customers selling used CDs, and acquire a copy of state-issued identity documents such as a driver's license. Furthermore, stores could issue only store credit -- not cash -- in exchange for traded CDs, and would be required to hold discs for 30 days before reselling them.
This is now in Florida and Utah trying for Rhode Island and Wisconsin (and potentially elsewhere).
In my (completely non-expert) opinion, I can't see how watermarking can ever work as a way of tracing duplication of content because it can be very easily worked around
Watermarking is designed to embed something into the audio that does not get noticed by the listener, but contains various information.
At the same time, most audio codecs are designed to save space and one way they do this is to drop things from the stream that would not be heard by the listener anyway.
So one would imagine that re-encoding, whilst perhaps sometimes unadvisable for various unrelated reasons, would do a fairly good job at removing or at least severely damaging a watermark.
Any codec exports got a view on this?
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
2: No they won't. If they don't complain about the quality of MP3 relative to uncompressed, and can't tell the difference between the different bitrates, they won't complain about something more subtle. I know some people on here can and do the above, but those are a small minority in the world at large.
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.
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.
That you can track down the original owner who the files were stolen from?
not saying that DRM is the answer either, but you cant run around blaming the people that leased the file in question for it being 'released'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sorry, but I had to say something here. It's not the artist's permission 99% of the time - it's the permission of the record company that coerced ownership away from the artist.
I don't approve of copyright violation as a general rule, but in this one case, why not? The record companies are basically evil incarnate these days. Want to predict how they'll handle a given situation? Ask yourself What Satan Would Do. Given that they're working to change the law to steal from me (by effectively revoking copyright expiration) and don't care whom they destroy or bankrupt in the process, I see no moral reason whatsoever why it's wrong to copy their stuff.
Frankly, I wouldn't care if someone flat-out stole CDs from their warehouse. I think they've reached the point where it's no longer possible to violate their rights. As far as I'm concerned, they no longer have any.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Quite correct. If you buy Hillary Duff's latest single today, and are sick of it in two weeks, and decide to sell that MP3 to someone who isn't yet sick to death of hearing about her crap, and then that buyer uploads it to all the P2P networks (I'm still trying to figure out who the hell is buying her crap in the first place but bear with me) the RIAA would go after you. They'd insist that in addition to not having Fair Use, you do not have the Right of First Sale. It SHOULD be simple to squelch their argument but unfortunately they have deep pockets with which to buy the courts.
But: that is where watermarking can be harmful. If you buy an MP3 and resell it legally (destroying all copies you have) you're LEGALLY in the clear, or if you purchase it as a gift (and again, destroying all copies you have) the "evidence" would point back at you, but the evidence really isn't proof of ANYTHING in this case. It's like a crime having happened in a subway with no witnesses, and you get charged because your fingerprints happen to be on one of the handrails. That fingerprint is simply evidence that you were there sometime in the past, not that you had anything to do with the incident.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I posted a comment at news.com with basically the same idea.
If the bits and bytes can be adjusted in an undetectable manner to put a watermark on, say, an audio or video file, why can't someone just come along after and adjust the bits and bytes again in some random manner to effectively erase the watermark? I mean, if they can't read the bits and bytes that they put on the media because they've been altered, they wouldn't be able to track it, and the watermark would pretty effectively be broken.
It just seems to me that although having a bit-for-bit identical copy of the original would be nice, they've already altered it so that we can't get that. Altering it a bit more (no pun intended) wouldn't really be harmful, and it would still meet the end goal of distributing the media untraceably.
But you're right, another option would be to have two (three? four?) accounts get multiple copies of the same file and do a bit-by-bit comparison, either averaging the differences or picking from one of the two copies at random. If you have multiple copies, you might even be able to derive a highly probable copy of the original.
I might be in a small minority because I can discern a difference between a 128kbps MP3 and an original recording, but I'm in a fuckin'huge majority of people who get very angry when they hear ads in songs, or when songs are incompletely ripped, or when they pop, click and hiss (as if CDParanoia code had not been ported to Windows years ago.)
Watermarking audio? What for, anyway? Transcode once, lose watermark. Re-burn and re-rip, lose watermark. Transmission error, lose watermark. (Watermark in the sense that it can be batch-calculated on massive quantities of files. OF COURSE an human will recognize it.)
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
2. I don't think any slight quality loss would be that big to most people since they put up with the very outdated and inferior MP3 format. What would bother me is how the article headed said about placing advertisement in the audio. The would be real bad IMO. You are listing to your favorite song and then in pops some annoying voice about buying the amazing mop as seen on TV, just $9.99 (+ $15.99 S/H+).
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
For example, can you tell the difference between regular FM, High Definition FM, and FM with embedded PTY signals? I can't. taking a 128 bit signal down to say 126 bit (or 256 to 250) is not enough of a difference to distinguish, even for high end gear and computer analysis. People argue about the difference between 160 and 192 and unless you have really high end gear, only a fraction of people can tell, and usually only when listening to music that highlights the weaknesses of one of the lesser frequency. a watermark (a few Kbits our of a 5MB song) is subtle enough that you won't be able to tell.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Watermarking is quite frankly fantastic. If these companies are moving to watermarking instead of DRM then more power to their balance books! I'm not interested in downloading music or movies. I want to buy them. DRM stops me doing that and from getting the product that I want. Watermarking doesn't stop me from doing anything I'm legitimately allowed to do so if it satisfies their requirements to go and catch people who do make illegitimate copies, then I would very much like them to use Watermarking. Hopefully it will lead to more products that I can buy online.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
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.