Slashdot Mirror
MP3 coalition wants to watermark MP3's
Fang wrote
in to send us a link to a CNN article that talks about
the MP3 coalition's new plan to
WaterMark MP3s
so that they can be better protected by the owners. Hopefully
this is a step closer to online music distribution, but it
doesn't look like a leap. Will someone leap already?
Continuing the moronic tradition......
I don't see why individual artists couldn't just PGP/GPG sign their MP3's before they put them online. Then some open-source MP3 player (like ***amp) could just add some hooks in to look for a valid signature. The artists can make their sigs available on their website, or just register them with one of the key servers someplace.
Something like this "Digital watermark coalition" would be useful, IMHO, primarily as a group that would independently sign the artists' signatures, allowing some sort of second-hand verification of authenticity.
I'm happy digital watermarking will be widespread on MP3 files. The standard will continue, Winamp will still play, piracy will be down... But best of all, MP3 will become a legitimate, recognized method for distributing music. Bands will be leaving the labels and setting up their own servers in droves, selling some and giving away others. The price of music will go way down, the profits to the bands will go way up, and everyone (well, maybe not the labels, the distributors or the music stores) will be very happy. :-)
I consider this to be half lost battle.
:D... but thats not why this battle is lost...
It is good... it will stop all the newbies who know jack squat... but we all know of carding...
by embracing mp3 they lock themselves in an inferior technology. MP3 is superior because it provides same compression, but doesnt worry bout watermark..
On their place I would recommend getting onto the mp4 or other formats where they could promise higher quality over lower bitrate... Then they become better.. and ave joe will prefer to go to them and get a song that is 1.5 meg, instead of searching (what can take hours already) for the same song and then waiting for it to come (what would be larger)..
Also... Creating a digital watermark for an mp3 file would mean a really fast cluster of stations encoding the songs with the watermark.. Otherwise it would be too simple to remove it as it can be inserted so easly.. (watermark in the id3 tag?) LOL...
and to become powerfull they cant hide their players and make it all obscure.. Look.. There was RealAudio.. and the availability of that is so scarce no one wants it for home use.. and then there is MP3... how many players are there? encoders? other utils?
They would need to create an appeal to users / players..
Unless the songs with digital watermark are same to any mp3 player... (I think thats what is supposed to be)... but that will not limit the already going on piracy...
Quite frankly those who are already pirating mp3's could care less about weather it has a watermark. I download significant numbers of mp3's and find i spend as much or more on legitamate cd's as ever because i'm constantly able to check out new artists/genre's I previously wasnt exposed to Given the sad, bland monotonous state of the current distribution model. Mp3's and warez sites may be proliferating but most of them carry the same top 40 garbage as all the other's. If the RIAA had a brain they could use the mp3 to its advantage by lowering distribution cost's and consequently improve it's tarnished image by giving there second tier/ less conspicuous artists due financial reward
Illegal copying. Unlawful reproduction. Or, simply, theft. None of those have the connotations of violence that piracy does.
But your (and, by extension, RMS's) word games won't get you very far, really. The fact is that most people beleive intellectual property is in fact a perfectly valid form of property that should in fact be protected. Even an awful lot of people here. Even those that are very strongly pro-OSS.
Most of us think that those who create something, or those that pay for the creation of something, should have the right to decide what to do with it.
--randy
the RIAA thinks watermarks're a magic wand that'll make the world act like they want. obviously they're gravely mistaken in this belief so it's sort of good news because it'll waste some time before they try another lame scheme which might be more destructive.
watermarks aren't useful for preventing piracy unless all computers've already been lobotomized to prevent copying. if you've copied your mp3 a watermark won't stop you playing it, it just means the watermarker can prove he signed the damn thing.
i think the deluded people who came up with the scheme want to add a different watermark every time they sell an mp3 file, so if someone copies it, they can track the buyer down and kill him. but if you have thousands of files floating around with different watermarks, you can just decompress them and take the average of the plaintext data, then recompress them again. removes the watermarks, thereby improving the sound quality.
A lousy watermarking algorithm will damage the quality of the sound, yes. A good watermarking algorithm will be unnoticeable, at least to the same extent MP3 encoding is unnoticeable.
Cds are printed by the 1000s at once. It's almost impossible to mark each CD individually.
Also, some CD players are not capable of reading CD-r media. It's NOT identical. They don't last as long, the media melts at lower temperatures, (goodbye to leaving CDs in the car) plus, would YOU want to sit there for 20 minutes while the music store has to burn your CD for you?
I admit it opens up new possbilities for custom CDs containing only the songs you want, but I can create those myself now. I think it'll be more likely that stores will have machines around to load your MP3 (or whatever the format of the future is) into your handheld player for a tiny fee. (assuming that new players will *feature* the ability to save songs to disk, so you don't need to keep going back to the store)
Fine by me. Believe what you want. You're wrong.
The fact that "most people believe" in something doesn't make it true.
The fact that "intellectual property" is trivially copyable is proof enough that traditional property arguments don't apply.
Make an argument that doesn't boil down to "Most people agree with meeee!" and we might have something to discuss.
Perhaps "most people" are wrong? Wouldn't be the first time.
"A lot of consumers actually care whether music is pirated or not," says Fleischman. "Most people, when given the opportunity to do so, won't take pirated things."
Uh, personally, when presented with the choice of buying one CD with perhaps 1-3 good songs from a one-hit-wonder group for $13-$17, and the choice of clicking a button, downloading a file and playing it until I get sick of it for free....I tend to go with the free option. Of course, in the rare instance a group proves that they're capable of putting together a quality selection of CDs (Pearl Jam's "Ten", for instance), then I merrily go ahead and make the purchase.
I have no problem paying for music, but only the songs I want to listen to. If I can sample full-length tracks online in MP3 and the album in general sucks, I might only be willing to shell out $3-4 for that single track. And given the fact that singles sell for $7-$8.....hah. Watermark all you want, people....the _REAL_ MP-FREE is here to stay.
It's possible to watermark the MP3 before selling it. For instance, information about who purchased the MP3 can be stored in the audio stream.
Fortunately, it's unlikely that companies would do this. It takes far too many CPU cycles to watermark each MP3's for every purchase.
I wish we had a convenient way to vote on articles. I think the above poster makes a lot of good sence.
Now that the distribution of music can be done cheaply, the industry must evolve or die. The RIAA wants to make it difficult to copy 'their' music. Fine. Get music from someone else. Support sites like mp3.com and products like the Diamond Rio. It will happen.
Now why is it that I need this "feature" on my MP3s again?
Now, pardon me while I go add a Macrovision track to all my VHS tapes and "upgrade" my CDRs to "audio-grade" CDRs. Next I'm gonna inline that internet trackable serial number dongle in my parallel port so my ecommerce will improve, then I'm gonna register that 1908 Winchester'94 I got from my great grandfather. Oh yeah, and I'm going to make sure I mail all of my encryption keys to the feds just in case they're needed and finally I gotta remember to get my DNA on file with the FBI so that we and our children will be safe.
Man! All this great new technology sure is making my life great!!!!!
It's all part of The Plan. The gov't knows that more and more of the legislation it signs into law will be widely ignored. But that's the whole point; to shift the laws in such a way that everyone can be defined to be a criminal in some way or another. This makes it far easier and actually "legitimate" for the gov't to swoop down and whack someone and sieze all their land, assets and possessions whenever they decide to target you. "Say... we suspect you're dealing drugs. We will jail you now, sieze and auction off your house, car, and possessions, and confiscate that drug money you have in the bank. And even if, after years and $$$ later you finally win against us in court, you still will not get back what was taken. Welcome to Amerika, komrade.
Ummm. I must be missing something, but how the hell is watermarking going to help combat pirating?
I mean... I got out a buy the watermarked mp3, and then do:
cp greatwatermarkedsong.mp3 greatpiratedsong.mp3
What am I missing here?
Ken
Shut up, troll.
leap
Play a watermark backwards and you hear satan repeating Monica Lewinski's grand jury testimony.
BTW, I have a new signature method. "Peckertrax". Right across the face of a CD 'o' pR0n baybee...
lates.
All the music industry has to do is embrace online music distribution and their secure format can take the market away from MP3. Why, you ask, would anyone use the proprietary format when they could pirate? What advantage could the new format have?
Popular music would be legally available in that format. Joe Consumer could go searching the net looking for that new Madonna hit, or he could go to warnerbros.com and download it for a few bucks in their format. He'd spend the money so he didn't have to search the net. Of course, part of the legal agreement when you download the song is that you won't convert it to any other format. Even if Joe broke the law and used a program that could convert the song to MP3, he wouldn't be able to mass-distibute it.
Of course, they'd have to step up anti-MP3-piracy initiatives.
In the end, the vast majority of people would buy music in the shitty format so they wouldn't have to make the effort of finding an MP3 warez site.
Repeat after me, IP buffs:
car != information
Cars are objects. Objects can be stolen. Information is ideas. Ideas cannot be "stolen" -- only used.
A watermark, in essence, is unremovable. If you have an unadulterated version of the non-watermarked audio, removing it is trival. Delete the MP3 and encode another. :-) But the watermark itself contains no way to tell what the data was before the watermark was applied (usually, unless the method is flawed). The message is in the data of the song itself, and actually degrades the song to a minor extent.
MP3s as we know them will continue to thrive without watermarking. There will always be the same compressors, the same CD Rippers, the same players being distributed. People won't move on fromt he way things are done till something better comes along, like higher quality with less space, etc. But it is an established format, no matter how many record companies and the like try to make some bastard child based off of it in an attempt to create a new standard they control.
A lot of people are misunderstanding the intentions. I posted this in a sub thread, but i'll put it here for all to see.
The watermarking is not designed to prevent piracy. There is NO way to prevent copying of audio, for reasons as stated above.
Watermarking is to allow companies to trace exactly WHO copied the file the first time. Perhaps an example.
Say MegaDodo records decide to sell an MP3 on the net. Every time someone buys it, they download the MP3. It's watermarked with.. say.. a single 128-bit number. This number/guy who buys is are unique. Every person gets a different number, all names go into their database.
Now, Bob Bitchin' buys it. He get's watermark number 278349. He then gives his friend the MP3. It then goes nuts, all over the 'net, until every joe has a copy.
MegaDodo records downloads one of these, and checks the watermark, which is 278349. They look it up in the database, and sue the shit out of Bob Bitchin', thereby making an example out of him.
THAT is what it is for. The watermark survives a lot of conversion as well. Your little shell bit, a broadcast over the radio, whatever.. Eventually, it would be too degraded, but not at first. And with digital audio copying so prevalent, it would last a lot longer time.
Watermarking, in this case, is absolutely USELESS for anything else. It doesn't prevent copying/playing, it would be useless to put it on the audio CD's (since everyone who buys the album has the same watermark), etc...
otto
In the event that they actually get people to use these watermarks, the embedded information should be the person's name, credit card number, and its expiration date :) That way nobody would think of spreading it.
:)
Then the record companies don't have to prosecute anyone
Yes, i'm ignoring fake cc#s
In the event that they actually get people to use these watermarks, the embedded information should be the person's name, credit card number, and its expiration date :) That way nobody would think of spreading it.
:)
Then the record companies don't have to prosecute anyone
(Yes, i'm ignoring fake cc#s)
%subj%
The only reason it hurts artists at all is because record companies don't give them a very large percentage to begin with. Also, like I'm supposed to feel sorry for an artist. What made these guys so special that I'm supposed to care how they won't get their 50 cents from me for doing what is essentially nothing. Sitting around and playing an instrument or singing, something they obviously enjoy. Poor them, not being quite as rich as they could be. To them I say, if you feel like you're being ripped off, get a real damn job.
The record companies aren't losing as much as they'd have you believe. They seem to want everyone to think that for every mp3 copied, it's a cd they didn't sell. This assumes that everyone who gets an mp3 would buy the cd if the mp3 weren't there. I find many people just get mp3s because they are there and convenient. Like myself and my friends, we will buy cds, and then there might be a good one every now and then, and I'll rip the song and send it over. And he'll be like "Yep, that sure was a good song" but it doesn't mean he would have went out and got the cd had I not sent him the file. I hardly get any off sites anyhow, they're all the lame latest songs that are on the radio a billion times a day anyhow. To me, mp3s are like making a tape of favorite songs for a friend, only in this day and age, friends aren't always right next door, so mp3'ing them is better than mailing a cassette...
I work at a college radio station; people send me records for free on occasion. The least I can do is give them feedback. If their music is passably good, I give it exposure, I play it on my radio show and let my friends listen to it. After a little while I put it into the libraries of the radio station to serve whoever wants a listen in the future.
Most importantly, I am at least TRYING to give something back. You fellows with your little "information wants to be free" hacker attitudes don't give anything back. The slimy, glad-handing label personnel I talk to on the phone are doing more for the artist than you are; at least they're trying to promote the music, to get it out into the world and let people listen, even if the artist is paying their bills (which is, by the way, the artist's choice).
You are in no position to bitch and moan about watermarking while some musicians are struggling to pay the bills because you choose to listen to their life's work for free. Justifying your actions because some of the people you steal from are already rich beyond imagining does NOT change the basic intent of your actions.
No, but you would still expect a visit from the friendly constabulary, and you would have to explain that the car had been stolen.
Quick question off the subject,
NASHVILLE CATS????
BSC
Hey, all those businessman and soccer moms who keep all that data on their laptops. Why not some of your favorite music to listen to while you're cooped up in some Ramada?
Those laptops are regularly stolen at the XRay machines and in the bathrooms. Voila, distibute those MP3s over the net.
So what happens if I add just a touch of reverb?
Please stop stealing my air - I cannot breath!
I am a communist and do not want to bow to
the capitalist dictator, I will not bow!
We could meet and I could sing You can record
and You may copy. Mp3 or tape it's the same to me
as long as you don't hurt anyone by making the
bits fall on his head like acid rain.
I know you feel you are doing good, but every
now and then realize you are as stupid as me.
"Fleischman argues that audio technology
could be used to make watermarked music
more attractive to consumers, by virtue of
sound quality, for instance."
How? The format precludes quality, that top
and bottom end of the music's range is
chopped off in order to compress it. They
claim it only cuts off the part people don't
hear. MY ASS... just jpeg only blocks sections
of color the average person can't differentiate.
I can definately hear the difference.
The photoshop plugin gives you a range of visibility. Even at the lowest visibility setting it creates "static" in your image by shifting the rgb channel values up or down by one. For someone with good visual acuity this is completely visible and looks like someone doesn't know how to get a descent scan.
The watermarking system included with photoslop is not intended for the creator to have to keep the original for comparison. It uses a repeating pattern of bit shifts.
First of all, I do believe in intellectual property. However, recording labels have enormous profit margins. The average musician will see less than $1 for every $15 CD sold in stores. That same artist can sell his album over the internet using the MP3 format for, let's say, $5. Of that $5, he'll easily see $2-3 profit. You see how it's to his great advantage? Of course, hugely popular musicians like Garth Brooks get a bigger piece of that $15, so it might not be to their advantage to see the popularization of the MP3 format. It's a great boon to the little guys.
As someone else mentioned, with the price as low as $5 and some practical MP3 hardware, the vast majority of people will pay the small fee rather than try to scour the internet for illegal MP3 warez sites. Imagine if you could get that single you want for $2! Of course there will be die-hard pirates, just as there are die-hard software pirates now, but the reality is that the great majority of consumers will pay for a reasonably priced product WHEN IT'S EASY.
As an afterthought, I'm still surprised at how many people buy that "1 pirated copy = 1 lost sale" argument. In my experience, less than 10% of the instances of software (and especially MP3) piracy result in a lost sale. Many people use software products they would simply do without, or listen to songs they would otherwise find on the radio. A true appraisal of the "threat" of piracy would involve statistical analysis.
Brock Arnason
M.Eng. Physics
United Bank of Switzerland
Just download two copies under different names and compare them. The difference between the two are their respective watermarks. You can remove it using a simple DSP noise-cancellation algorithm.
Maybe if I was advocating CPUs being Free instead of data, this would make _some_ sense. I fail to see your point. Yes, cars are built with information. But they are made of raw materials, which cannot be duplicated without a) going to a factory and buying them or b) digging them out of the ground, then fabricating them yourself. On the other hand the "raw materials" of information -- the 0's and 1's -- *can* be copied with no cost. Therefore any arguments to "property" fall.
Luke Francl
fran0382(a)tc.umn.edu
"when many people invest in the infrastructure for unlawful music distribution, the infrastructure for lawful distribution gets smaller and therefore less efficient, which raises prices there."
Which, in turn only encurrages *more* "piracy" since people still have the same dollar amount to spend on music as before the price increase. If the music industry raises prices above their already absurd levels, fewer and fewer people will pay them.
If I want to rip some songs off the CD I just bought for $17 and give them to a couple of my friends, that's my business.
Personally, I think mp3s have helped rather than hurt *deserving* artists. Now, I can check out 3 or 4 songs per CD before I buy them (because, as I mentioned earlier, CDs are more convient and nice to own). But if there is a band that sucks, but has one catchy song, hell no am I going to buy that album now. I think that empowers consumers. Consumers should not be "tricked" into buying an album for one song.
Luke Francl
fran0382(a)tc.umn.edu
i think people are focusing on the watermark too much here. fact is, there are still methods for one to create an mp3. so basically, there'll be people who have a watermarked mp3 and then trade it and have a finger shook at them, but then there'll be the people who generate the mp3's from their own collection to trade with other who do the same.
this watermark changes/solves little. all it does is put a mark on people who got their digital music legitmately since any mp3 created by an individual will have NO traceable mark whatsoever.
if theyre keyed to the purchaser, and are embedded in the audio signal itself, doesnt that mean the audio must be stored uncompressed somewhere and encoded every time someone downloads it?
sounds like a huge pain in the ass and waste of resources, not to mention the files will sound poor if they use a realtime encoder.
but if its not, there are two options: (a) watermarked songs can only be played in "safe" players, which encode the information into the audio upon playback, making the files nonstandard like fraunhofer's dead mmp format, or (b) the "even analog copies will still have the watermark" claim is just FUD.
have liquid released their alleged source yet? this will be interesting to watch.
The RIAA has never said that MP3's are bad. It's morons who make their own and distribute them on the net who are going to ruin legitimate music creation and distribution. Banks make money by selling music. Period. OK, a very few make money by playing concerts but the vast majority lose money on these and they are solely a method for marketing the sale of packaged media. You fools who continue to distribute bootleg mp3s will eventually make it so nobody can make a living by selling music and then it will stop. What you will be left with is the utter CRAP that so called "artists" give away in mp3 format on mp3.com and the like. If you listen to that garbage, you deserve it.
No it doesn't. You are obviously unaware of the technology available. Anywhere up to about 10 bps is completely undetectable by even the trained (i.e. payed professional listener) ear.
I agree, CD's would not need watermarking as the physical piece of plastic is proof that you bough it. If the FBI raids your house and find un-watermarked mp3's on your hard disk, you point to the CD and say I bought it and was making legitamate copies. If they find watermarked mp3's, they can trace the purchase to you.
If however your little brother used your CD collection for frisbee's, and all you have left is your mp3's...
I believe he meant to "sign" the Mp3s instead of "encrypt" them. Both options are viable as they solve different problems, but like you say encrypting them makes it difficult to play my songs in real-time.
In addition to all the other replies, what if I legitimately buy a song with my CC# imprinted, then I get tired of listening to it and sell it to someone else who then starts distributing illegal copies? Am I still responsible? Or do I need to go to some special place and have the song re-imprinted with the new owner's CC# (and probably pay a fee at the same time)?
How is watermark supposed to stop piracy? how does it work?
alex
---
OK, so assume I like one song on a CD. I'd be willing to pay $3 for that song. I'm utterly uninterested in the rest of the songs on that CD. And they aren't willing to sell me that song for $3. So I can't buy it at an acceptable price. Instead, I "pirate" it. How does this hurt anyone? Explain, please?
1) What if I buy the CD at the store with cash? They have no idea who bought the CD with that particular watermark in that case.
2) How do they prove in court it was me that pirated the CD? How do they know it wasn't my brother? Or one of my friends that I let borrow the CD?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Posted by stefaanQuix:
is an invention of the devil
Posted by korto:
they're going to do THAT?
why not brand'em in iron?
- The record companies don't create. They're middlemen with lots of cash and more-or-less divine power over the industry. They don't give a damn about creativity unles they think it's something they can sell, but most artists go along with this because, well, until now it's been the ONLY way you could make it.
- When you get your big break, you lose all your rights. That's right -- almost all "big break" contracts have language in them that signs over all rights in the recordings to the label, leaving artist with a percentage of that (if anything above and beyond the initial advance for cutting a pro-quality album) for their trouble. Allright, I guess I can give you this one, since it is the label cutting the check, but still, you do lose the rights to that album. This is why so many groups go on tours -- they couldn't make it on the peanuts the labels throw at them, and they can't redistribute the songs themselves without handing over all the money, so they go gigging and get the money from the ticket prices and merchandise sales. Oh, and lest I forget, the labels also stick their fingers into the sheet music -- the majority of the music publishers out there are affiliated with labels (MCA, EMI, Sony, BMG, Warners and PolyGram -- the same Gang of Six responsible for the RIAA).
This is the real problem. The piracy issue is just an attempt to distort the issue, and thwart what is going to become a revolution in music distribution: digital music, distributed over the Internet by the artists themselves, with them setting the rules as to the prices and distribution (they could even give away some songs if they wanted). The record companies are harping about it because their decades of total control over the industry are (hopefully) almost over, and they want to scare people into thinking their way of doing things ($11-16 CDs, and maybe $2 or less per going back to the artist) is still the Right Way.The RIAA model is not the only way for musicians to make money. It is the only way for the *studios* that the RIAA represents to make money in the huge amounts that they do as middlemen.
It's also the only way for a composer to make money. The song writer, who is not a performer, cannot go out and make money without getting paid for a song.
In the current system, the copyright holder gets half of the money from ASCAP or BMI everytime the song is aired or performed publically. The convenience of this is that songwriters cannot create licenses for the songs. Anyone can cover any song, and while the songwriter will get paid, he cannot stop the song from being performed.
But getting back to where I came in, how, in a make-money-by-performing-it model, does a song writer make money? Nobody wants me to sing an R&B ballad, but maybe, I want to write one and sell to somebody. Should I just not bother, since I won't be performing the song?
in 5-10 years, bandwidth and storage will be such that it will be just as economical to trade in stolen .aiff files as .mp3 today, and no loss in sound quality.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Suppose I purchase 2 copies with different CC# and compare the differences (after decompression, of course). That should tell me which bits to twiddle to obscure the existing CC#, shouldn't it?
Not necessarily. It's quite possible that what you'd find if you did this is that all of the bits are different. (Well, not *all*, really, just randomly setting bits won't generate more than a 50% difference. I just mean that the entire data stream may be different. Not just a few bits in a header.)
The point is that the meta-data about your identity will be merged holographically into the audio data stream.
By "holographically", I don't mean "with lasers" or anything like that. I'm referring to the fact that removing a chunk of a hologram does not remove a chunk of the holographic image it can create, it merely degrades its resolution. You can't mask out part of a holographic image by masking part of the hologram, you have to affect the entire hologram in a way that's difficult to calculate. The same type of data storage could be done digitally with mp3.
The watermark will be much more like analog data storage than digital. It could be really hard to filter it out.
The way I understand it, watermarking could only stop piracy if *everything* was watermarked, including ordinary CD's.
Not everyone in the world is ready to switch from CD's to mp3's. There's still a hell of a lot of audio equipment out there which is built to play non-compressed CD's and there's still a demand for traditional compact discs.
The problem is that the entire music distribution industry isn't set up for this. CD's are stamped im mass production. Making each CD unique would drive up the cost immensely, and getting and recording a valid ID from all the teens buying CD's in the mall seems like an impossible task.
But if this is not done, if there is an easy source of non-watermarked data, then pirates will be just as easily able to create non-watermarked mp3's for trade as they are today. Warez site and piracy will not be thwarted in the least.
Forget about trying to remove the watermark. Just buy one CD, compress, upload/download to your heart's content.
I listen to a lot of music from mp3.com. Here are my Python scripts to manage my MP3 collection: http://wildgoose.tandu.com/~zooko/ PythonHacking/
Of course, 90% of the music on mp3.com is crap, but then, 90% of everything is crap..
Among the best mp3 selections are Goss amer and Manifest Vision.
Regards,
Zooko
First of all an MP3 relies on the use of lossy compression. What this means is that information is encoded and statistically ranked, anything that is viewed as 'statistically insignificant' during the ripping process is discarded. So when you play it back you hear something that approaches 'almost, but not quite the original'. This isn't necessarily fatal, digital media like CD players do the same thing by quantizing the amplitude or loudness of a signal. In practice I find that MP3's are fine for listening to through cheap headphones at work, or if I had a car player, would be fine in that environment. I don't like the sound quality that comes through my home system however. Everything sounds like a ghetto blaster or annoying bass-o-matic car stereo system.
Anyway, a digital watermark doesn't have to be audible. It could be a 1 bit difference in the amplitude of a signal at certain instances, which would be a 1/65536th difference in volume.
This is pretty similar to steganography, the technique of imposing a piece of information in another piece of information. Like hiding a secret message in an audio stream, or an image etc. Steganography wouldn't work if it was obvious that 'something was amiss' about the audio stream or image.
Any artifacts of the watermarks in DIVX is only proof that the engineers behind that particular implementation are morons and should be retrained as 'custodial engineers'
In Linux, it is theoretically impossible to protect an audio file from copying. If it were't for the ioctls, anyone with basic shell experience could do something like "mv /dev/dsp /dev/realdsp; mkfifo /dev/dsp; tee savedmusic.wav /dev/realdsp" to intercept sound. In any case, anyone with C/Unix programming experience can make a kernel module to do the same for any app. (if ALSA doesn't make that possible already, of course...)
I think you can do the same in Windows - don't the "MP3 radio stations" work by intercepting sound from any player on the system?
Exactly how do these "secure MP3's" plan to do the technically impossible, in spite of the fact that "audio I can play once" == "audio I can record (or recompress) and redistribute/play as often as my conscience lets me?"?
... because you guys have bought into the meme that the RIAA is spreading by using the words "piracy" and "theft".
Theft implies the loss of the item being stolen from the possession of its rightful owner. The owner does not lose music when it is copied with or without permission.
Piracy combines theft with personal violence. There is no violence involved when music is copied with or without permission.
By accepting those emotive words in a context to which they do not naturally apply, you have in large measure already lost the battle for unrestricted online distribution for which so many are fighting.
In a community that appreciates the benefits of OSS and regularly comments on the harm caused by IPR and patents, that really sucks.
The RIAA model is not the only way for musicians to make money. It is the only way for the *studios* that the RIAA represents to make money in the huge amounts that they do as middlemen. There is a difference between those two things, but that difference is obscured quite effectively once the music-buying sheep can be made to think in terms of piracy and theft as if those terms were at all valid in this area.
I expected better from the folks here.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Appealing to higher authority rather than to logic is bunkum. You know very well that the copying of music without permission is not piracy in the classical sense, yet the word still carries its old stigma despite everyone (including Websters) using it in its new computer-age context. And the RIAA and studios are counting on precisely that, because if it sounds nasty then they must be right.
> if someone creates something, they should be
> able to do whatever they want from it: give it
> away for free or charge a billion dollars
I agree. Unfortunately, that does *NOT* happen with music, because the middleman acquires the rights and then feeds the musicians peanuts, and of course the musician has NO say as to whether it can be given away for free or for billions, and there is NO possibility of passing on copies along with the same rights we acquired when we obtained our own copy. The entire structure is contrary to the freedoms that seem so natural on the net.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
> If I "trivially" borrow your car, drive it
> around the block and return it to the exact
> same position should I be in trouble?
> Assuming I refilled the gas tank to the same
> level, I have done no damage to you.
You're totally missing the point that the car is no longer available to its owner once you've "borrowed" it. Material and intellectual "properties" are utterly different in this respect. In fact the term "property" is downright misleading when applied to something that can be copied for free without loss of the original, and may be the source of so many of these problems.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Alternative distribution channels *ARE* being shown to musicians, not just mp3.com's "take 50%"-style but also self-promotion and direct patronage.
It's happening, but very slowly because of the inertia of a century of doing things the old way.
Meanwhile, it doesn't help when folks that are vastly more clued up on things like OSS and on the potential of the net still fall for the RIAA's use of emotive words that simply do not apply here.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
What it really comes down to is that the price of CDs is massively overinflated, does not reflect the huge drop in cost of CD replication, and does not reflect the fact that there is now competition in the form of trivial online replication.
If the free market were working normally here, the studios would have dropped their prices to the point where they could view MP3s as a highly effective channel of popularization, just like broadcasting. *Everyone* likes jewel cases and sleeve notes of their favorite artists; they just don't like being ripped off by an industry that feels it is above market pressure.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Is it me, or is the thought of the recording industry having control over mp3 a little scary? The implementation of a "watermark" system would mean that the mp3 player (winamp and the like) would have to write in special code to check for the watermark and reject anything that lacked it. This gives the record companies immense control over the format, in my not-so-humble opinion. Watermarking is not good. It does degrade quality. It also will stop me, as an everyday consumer, from making MP3s from my CD collection for my own personal use. CD's get scratched and generally mutilated. MP3s are an easy way of maintaining a backup. 'nuff said.
the amazing bc
just another guy doing IT
webnaut, music junkie, holes-in-head
I see your point and you're probably right... it was just my 8am paranoid ramblings. If given the option of paying a buck to download an mp3, i'd probably opt to that as well. 99% of my mp3 collection is ripped from my own cd's (i own over 400 cd's). i like the medium as a form of backup and i get a little paranoid about having that option taken away from me... 13 albums on one disc is great... now i have to figure out a way to play them in the car. *grin*
the amazing bc
just another guy doing IT
webnaut, music junkie, holes-in-head
What's to stop someone from lifting an MP3 device that has MP3's on it tagged to someone's credit card number, and then blasting *these* all over the net?
Why would they encode credit card numbers in it?! It'd be more like how cookies are used on web sites; a seemingly random string that identifies the download.
I miss Meept.
well, we've been doing it for a few months, all free downloads, and now a SHOUTcast station to boot
/. crowd may like crypto outlaw
...check out http://curvedspace.org
in particular, the
Have you seen Ironstayn vs Supergovernment yet?
If you could download an mp4 that was like the first 45 seconds or minute and a half or whatever and a full cut was like less than a dollar. I usually buy a cd based on three or less tracks- this would maybe lure me to spend money on music online. hmmm.
The ideas are really applied steganography. That is, one tries to perform undetected communications. Only, if you were to do this without telling people, they'd denounce you as sneaky. So how is it done? ... preferrably with the correct error model). ...).
Firstly, we want it to be transformation-proof. I'd say turning it into analog and back should preserve the watermark, though it might "smudge" it. So what do we do? We create some piece of data that is seemingly random and forward-error-correct (introduce redundancy so that it can be perfectly reconstructed in the presence of errors
Then we encode it into the "analog" data. How do you encode info? You modulate it. Frequency modulation and amplitude modulation are familiar from the radio, phase modulation is in every modem. Pick and choose, I'm not an expert, so I don't know what would work best with music.
Now add this to your music and encode the music as an mp3. This could pose a problem, since mp3 uses compression, knowing what the ear (and psyche) pick up on and leave out the bits we don't notice so much. So some of the info might get lost, but if you try to encode 128 bits, which FEC-ed turn into maybe 2k, into something that is uncompressed maybe 20mb, that should be quite well spread, un-noticable, unless you know what you're looking for and fairly indestructible (depending on your FEC you might be able to chop parts off or out
Now how would you go about extracting this? You turn the mp3 back into 20mb of raw data and perfrom some signal processing. U-Boats are found by doing a convolution of the data against itself, GPS uses similar techniques to extract the spread-spectrum very-low-bitrate data from the noisy background.
Once you have it, extract the original data and hey presto.
Now, I'm into databases, not security. I'm just trying to apply *from memory* what I *should have learned* half a decade ago.
Please excuse any inaccuracies and those cryptographers, please feel free to correct me.
I now hope people see how this could be used, un-noticeably, to identify some signature. My scheme depends on a secret, making it impossible for users to detect forgeries. I don't know whether that would be useful, but it should be enough to get a litigation going.
I'm suprised no one has yet spoken up about the quality issues with watermarking. Watermarking is audible. You can take this technology, watermark something, broadcast it over FM radio (or AM radio) and analyze the signal from somewhere else and tell what the watermark is. This destroys the integrity of the signal. That is, you can hear the watermark, and it sounds like someone did something to your MP3. It sucks. DIVX does this to MPEG-2, and it looks like waterdroplets on your picture. Watermarking is simply not the answer.
my dad has a saying "Locks only keep honest people from taking your stuff".
and secondly will I be able to sign the tracks that i rip off my own CD?
--
When she told me I was average, she was just being mean.
Are they going to require IDs on all music purchase? If not, what will stop someone from buying something and paying with cold, hard cash?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
copyright law allows me to distribute copies of Open-Source Software (OSS) but forbids my distributing copies of most songs.
I do not want to spend the time to try to convince you to stop unlawfully distributing songs, but please do not suggest that the use of OSS is similar to your illegal copying of songs.
I would think part of the 'problem' in embracing the MP3 music standard is the lack of people trying to use it in order to gain ground in an entrenched industry!
I think you've got this completely backward. The reason it's being fought against is because people ARE using it to gain ground in an entrenched industry.
thinks to highly of people and underestimates the ability of the average person. Why are MP3's so popular - I would suggest they are because they are *free* and easy to share. Even if I'm wrong, what's to keep someone from writting a utility to remove the watermark (if it can be added, it can be removed). I love MP3's and I hope more artists will release MP3's of thier albums, but I don't think digital watermarks are going to stop those that want to pirate.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
People who wish to violate copyright will continue to do so. Besides, will this watermark survive a conversion to and fro and back again across formats?
Gee @%@$%#%ing wizz.... I guess I won't be able to use the existing mp3 format or dump the watermarked raw version of the sound file to my harddrive.... guess they really got me!!! I call this an extremely lame and ignorant way of trying to control people which is doomed to fail miserably. I laugh in the music industry's face.
People have fore years tried to find ways around theft of copyright and intellectual property as well as everyday common thuggery and where doe sit all go? The crooks just dfind some way to circumvent it, so we develop a new way to keep it safe, ad infinitum.
This watermarking scheme is no different. As well (from my knowledge on the subject) it would be incredibly irritating just to try and keep track of all of them and where they went and whom they were licensed to. MP3 may very well be a valid medium for musical distribution (ignoring the fact that at aroun 2 MB a song I wouldn't have near as many as I do CDs), but a strategy like this.... doomed to failure
How difficult would prosecuting
this be? despite the watermarking,
it would seem to be one huge job
to simply *find* who's breaking
the law, let alone do anything
about it.
The whole idea about watermarking is that each instance of the file has a unique serial number embedded in it. The watermarking agency will have an id for each watermark, as to get the MP3 file, you will have to use a credit card (E-commerce only; no cash allowed.), giving the copyright holder a target to drag into court when they find that watermark blasted all over the Net.
MP4, on the other hand, apparantly uses a one-time decrypt key as part of the copy-protect standard. You get the file for free, but each one-time-use decode key costs, like, $0.50 or so. It would not surprise me in the least if the RIAA companies are spending billions to make this happen.
-C
So far the hubbub is over piracy of mainstream distributed music and labels, the Mariah Careys, Whitney Houstons, Elton Johns, etc. If the digital revolution and the internet is so empowering, where are the good homegrown music stars? The rock bands? The techno artists? This would be a good medium under which to get exposure and name recognition, right? I would think part of the 'problem' in embracing the MP3 music standard is the lack of people trying to use it in order to gain ground in an entrenched industry!
As such all the music I listen too is well represented on CD, and the only impetus to switch to MP3 is to store all my music on 1 or 2 CDs, as opposed to 10 or 15, but there are otherwise no real advantages; none in sound quality, none in value, none in pc friendliness, just convenience. Why would established artists even care about the MP3 standard if the current industry works for them? Only the disgruntled and the newcomers would care, and they don't have the resources or the 'quality' to be comfortable with the mainstream industry, because if they were, they wouldn't be trying to push MP3 or something...
Any comments? Is the garage band dead? Are there modern equivalents in this digital age? Midi Rock? =)
-Twinkie
When was the last time you used cash to buy something on the Internet?
I still don't see what prevents people from implementing a filter that removes the watermark. Suppose I purchase 2 copies with different CC# and compare the differences (after decompression, of course). That should tell me which bits to twiddle to obscure the existing CC#, shouldn't it? If they are relying on security though obscurity, than nobody will be able to implement players for it, and it will go over like a lead balloon.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney