I think the main source of confusion here
is the media's simplistic tendency to present fingerprints
(ie: the oily ones on then ends of our fingers)
as some kind of inbuilt ID number,
but the forensic science reality (as usual) is a little more complex.
Fingerprint identification consists of a system for categorising
the various shapes seen in the fingerprint,
from larger stuctures like whorls, loops, forks and scars
right down to tiny little details.
The forensic expert can then take this list of shapes and compare it to
a database of such shape lists, using the larger structures
to quickly home in on a list of likely candidates for a match.
When a possible match is found (or a suspect is arrested and fingerprinted)
the expert can use the number of "points of similarity" between two prints
to statistically calculate a probability that the
two prints in question came from the same person
(then a jury pre-selected to not understand
what the word probabilty means ignores the evidence anyway)
Law enforcement agencies are devoting much attention to
developing software which can categorise large numbers of fingerprint images
without the intervention of human experts.
This is what these Tuneprint people are trying to do with audio
(I think, I mean I've only read the same website as you guys).
They want to develop an algorithm which can automatically categorise the shape of a sound,
from short little time segments (ie: the details)
right up to larger audio structures.
Tuneprint will produce a description of the audio file
(using the same tricks as mp3 compression to pick out features
which are important to the human ear)
that can be used as a basis for comparison with
other such descriptions of audio files.
What you end up with is not some magical ID number for a file
but a measure of the relative similarity of two audio sequences.
Now if two files contain an identical track then they'll have
similar tuneprint descriptions, even if there are small differences
in recording quality, eq or whatever.
If you are looking for an existing software analogy, don't think checksum, which, as you all know very well,
is a method of checking if two files (or parts thereof)
are bitwise identical.
And don't think watermark, which, as you all know very well,
is a way of subtly embedding data in a file,
and is of course mangled by lossy compression codecs.
The best analogy I can come up with is that tuneprint is the audio equivalent of OCR.
You could scan the same document at two different resolutions,
change their colours, store one as a gif and one as a jpeg,
and yet these two files would still produce very similar OCR output.
These tuneprints seem like they'd be very amenable to search engines,
given that you could use the larger structures of the sound
to quickly home in on a list of likely candidates for a match.
I think Tuneprint's site is responsible for some confusion here,
when they talk about "embedding" lyrics, ads, urls etc:
this is not true, this information would be attached to
the database entry for that tuneprint.
And yes, of course, this tuneprint info can be used
to track the movements of copyrighted music files.
But so what?
Have faith in the spirit of the open software/copyleft approach!
Sure, right now people are mostly using file-sharing ware
to dl the churned-out unimaginative (& incidentally copyrighted (feh!))
top 40 crap produced by giant media corporations...
But napster gnutella et al are opening up new lines of communication -
hopefully you will begin to hear about new music
in the same way that you once first heard of Linux:
from other people like you, from your friends etc,
not some fucking TV commercial!
That's what this movement is all about - community. Human feedback, sharing resources, consensual decision making, freedom.
All very scary words to the power hungry marauding gangsters
we call nation states and corporations.
The important thing to remember is that THEM IS US.
We work for these fuckers, we buy their products, we obey their laws.
WE ARE THEM!
So get real values: shop black market.
What this means for music is simply this:
WHEN you hear a song you like at a party,
and you go home and hum a few bars to napster,
and it uses a tuneprint search engine to find the.ogg file for you,
and you like the song so much you play it all the time on xmms,
THEN you'll go back to the search engines and find out how
to send a couple of bucks to all those people who worked hard
to bring that sound to your ears.
Not because you feel you "owe" them,
not because of some fucking law,
but as a gift, to say thank you,
and to help feed, clothe and shelter those people
who gave you pleasure, so they can keep up the good work.
That simple.
Slashdot Mirror
recognising a face,
you probably wouldn't dispute
that this has already been demonstrated
albeit in a limited fashion.
So why can't you believe that
a computer could recognise a sound
or hold a tune?
As others here have pointed out,
there has already been some success in this area.
I think the main source of confusion here
.ogg file for you,
is the media's simplistic tendency to present fingerprints
(ie: the oily ones on then ends of our fingers)
as some kind of inbuilt ID number,
but the forensic science reality (as usual) is a little more complex.
Fingerprint identification consists of a system for categorising
the various shapes seen in the fingerprint,
from larger stuctures like whorls, loops, forks and scars
right down to tiny little details.
The forensic expert can then take this list of shapes and compare it to
a database of such shape lists, using the larger structures
to quickly home in on a list of likely candidates for a match.
When a possible match is found (or a suspect is arrested and fingerprinted)
the expert can use the number of "points of similarity" between two prints
to statistically calculate a probability that the
two prints in question came from the same person
(then a jury pre-selected to not understand
what the word probabilty means ignores the evidence anyway)
Law enforcement agencies are devoting much attention to
developing software which can categorise large numbers of fingerprint images
without the intervention of human experts.
This is what these Tuneprint people are trying to do with audio
(I think, I mean I've only read the same website as you guys).
They want to develop an algorithm which can automatically
categorise the shape of a sound,
from short little time segments (ie: the details)
right up to larger audio structures.
Tuneprint will produce a description of the audio file
(using the same tricks as mp3 compression to pick out features
which are important to the human ear)
that can be used as a basis for comparison with
other such descriptions of audio files.
What you end up with is not some magical ID number for a file
but a measure of the relative similarity of two audio sequences.
Now if two files contain an identical track then they'll have
similar tuneprint descriptions, even if there are small differences
in recording quality, eq or whatever.
If you are looking for an existing software analogy,
don't think checksum, which, as you all know very well,
is a method of checking if two files (or parts thereof)
are bitwise identical.
And don't think watermark, which, as you all know very well,
is a way of subtly embedding data in a file,
and is of course mangled by lossy compression codecs.
The best analogy I can come up with is that
tuneprint is the audio equivalent of OCR.
You could scan the same document at two different resolutions,
change their colours, store one as a gif and one as a jpeg,
and yet these two files would still produce very similar OCR output.
These tuneprints seem like they'd be very amenable to search engines,
given that you could use the larger structures of the sound
to quickly home in on a list of likely candidates for a match.
I think Tuneprint's site is responsible for some confusion here,
when they talk about "embedding" lyrics, ads, urls etc:
this is not true, this information would be attached to
the database entry for that tuneprint.
And yes, of course, this tuneprint info can be used
to track the movements of copyrighted music files.
But so what?
Have faith in the spirit of the open software/copyleft approach!
Sure, right now people are mostly using file-sharing ware
to dl the churned-out unimaginative (& incidentally copyrighted (feh!))
top 40 crap produced by giant media corporations...
But napster gnutella et al are opening up new lines of communication -
hopefully you will begin to hear about new music
in the same way that you once first heard of Linux:
from other people like you, from your friends etc,
not some fucking TV commercial!
That's what this movement is all about - community.
Human feedback, sharing resources, consensual decision making, freedom.
All very scary words to the power hungry marauding gangsters
we call nation states and corporations.
The important thing to remember is that THEM IS US.
We work for these fuckers, we buy their products, we obey their laws.
WE ARE THEM!
So get real values: shop black market.
What this means for music is simply this:
WHEN you hear a song you like at a party,
and you go home and hum a few bars to napster,
and it uses a tuneprint search engine to find the
and you like the song so much you play it all the time on xmms,
THEN you'll go back to the search engines and find out how
to send a couple of bucks to all those people who worked hard
to bring that sound to your ears.
Not because you feel you "owe" them,
not because of some fucking law,
but as a gift, to say thank you,
and to help feed, clothe and shelter those people who gave you pleasure,
so they can keep up the good work.
That simple.