Digital Watermarks to Replace DRM 374
palegray.net noted a wired story about an
industry trend towards watermarking and away from DRM. It says "With all of the Big Four record labels now jettisoning digital rights management, music fans have every reason to rejoice. But consumer advocates are singing a note of caution, as the music industry experiments with digital-watermarking technology as a DRM substitute.
Watermarking offers copyright protection by letting a company track music that finds its way to illegal peer-to-peer networks. At its most precise, a watermark could encode a unique serial number that a music company could match to the original purchaser. So far, though, labels say they won't do that: Warner and EMI have not embraced watermarking at all, while Sony's and Universal's DRM-free lineups contain "anonymous" watermarks that won't trace to an individual."
Here is a
Technical discussion on AudioBox and PSU.edu's Abstract Index
I don't really care. (Score:5, Insightful)
But watermarking? Eh. I don't care. You're supposed to not be sharing music you bought, and unless someone actually breaks in and steals it, there's really no legitimate reason to find music that you bought out on the net somewhere.
That's a big "unless", though. Are we coming to the point where we're going to have to file police reports when you get hacked so that you won't be liable for the distribution of stolen music? What about liability insurance for watermarked music?
Something to think about.
Give and Take (Score:4, Insightful)
analog hole (Score:2, Insightful)
Tracking Flow of Watermarks (Score:5, Insightful)
Are we talking per-customer watermarks? (The article didn't seem to say.) Aside from the usual privacy implications, that would have its own problems, since it would allow for unbounded downstream prosecution of anyone who ever let even one copy go free, including through malware. It would make it quite a liability to even buy such stuff.
Trust (Score:4, Insightful)
So we trust Sony now, do we? Why does that not seem like a good idea? Not that Universal is likely to be more trustworthy, but they're more of an unknown than Sony.
Ho hum (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't really care. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't really care. (Score:2, Insightful)
Like, duh. For watermarks to work they have to be different between different copies of the same file; that's the whole point of a watermark. And that design requirement guarantees they can be trivially found by a simple byte compare, whether or not they're encrypted.
It's no wonder you're not concerned when you don't even understand the issues.
Re:Watermarks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't care either. (Score:4, Insightful)
!new (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There's an easy tecnhical solution... (Score:5, Insightful)
The proposed solution is DRM-free high quality tracks, where *if* you leak it onto a file-sharing site, then you can be traced. How is this a bad thing?
You seem to think this is a problem, but I can only see this being a problem from the POV of pirates, and people determined to leech music for free.
You would have a reasonable argument to suggest that the law needs some safeguards, and that the record companies should not throw the book at someone who stupidly emailed a song to a friend, who then must have leaked it, but assuming the record companies only target the hardcore who upload entire albums, or are traced to p2p music on multiple occasions, what exactly is bad and wrong about this?
DRM-free music was supposedly what slashdot readers want? Or was it just 'free' music all along, and the DRM thing was just a way to claim justification for piracy while it lasted?
People complained that they pirated because the music had DRM, and the DRM is going. People complained the music was too expensive, and itunes led to way lower prices. Now what is the excuse?
Re:I don't really care. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sophisticated watermarking techniques protect the watermark IF there is only one, ie all copies have the same watermark. Then you can't compare multiple, differently watermarked copies and so you can't find the watermark. It makes it much harder to mess up when you don't know where it is.
Re:I don't really care. (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, even if watermarks weren't considered foolproof evidence by themselves, they could still be used to support the kinds of RIAA cases we see today. I doubt a jury would care whether they could technically be faked.
Re:Transcoding (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone is suggesting multiple transcodings to remove unheard information i.e. the watermark. Tiny differences in not what, but when, would be harder to remove.
Re:Only A Short Time (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that would make it easy to detect if you successfully removed the watermark (assumming the iPod/Zune will play a song without any watermark in it).
If the players only play correctly-watermarked data, that is equivalent to them only playing "signed" data. Well that is the RIAA wetdream, not only do you have working DRM, but you have also made it basically impossible for anybody other than "professionals" to produce content (since they will not have the license to sign their songs).
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How does that work? (Score:3, Insightful)
Attempted import of an unauthorized copy.
Re:Give and Take (Score:3, Insightful)
Either the article writer or somebody who talked to him is an idiot. I'm not saying this won't happen, but that is NOT "watermarking" in any useful way. That is DRM.
If you make a device that refuses to play a song with the wrong watermark, you have provided everybody with a cheap and foolproof method of figuring out if their software has successfully removed the watermark. Watermarks will be stripped and their purpose is defeated.
The problem is that it is almost impossible to explain this to some of the clueless people who are managing these organizations. So I would not be suprised if such a watermark-stripping-detector showed up on the market. The watermark detecting program should be kept in top secrecy with very little access down in a vault in the RIAA or whoever is doing this. But they are idiots and won't do that and the managers there will dictate that the thing that should be top-secret be instead available for $30 at Best Buy.
Re:Watermarking won't stop piracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't care either. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is what is wrong with the law. I was listening to Radio 1 (the largest UK radio station, run by the BBC) the other day, and one presenter had made a compilation CD for other presenters. A mention was made of the legality of it and dismissed, because the legality of it is dumb. They were breaking the law, on the largest radio station in the UK. No one cares, save idiotic music lawyers. If you care about people making copies for friends, you are dumb too.
Re:Cinea v. Watermarking = Inconvenience v. Parano (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't really care. (Score:3, Insightful)
Funniest thing would be if they overdo this and start bordering on the audible domain. Then the pirates can average it away and deliver superior quality. Given their ability to shot themselves in the foot, it's not entirely unlikely...
This is a genius. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I don't really care. (Score:4, Insightful)
But it just occurred to me that simply combining two different watermarked copies, perhaps switching every GOP (to use MPEG as an example) would create a third set of data that didn't make sense when decoded.
But I my just be (probably am) oversimplifying.
Xesdeeni
Re:Subject to a Huge Failure (Score:3, Insightful)