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."

Won't help

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.

Re:Won't help

Exactly. They've been trying to watermark audio media for as long as I can remember. Either it doesn't affect the audio, in which case whatever reads the audio can re-write it without the watermark, or it does affect audio, in which case, well, it affects audio.

Re:Won't help

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.

Re:Won't help

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.

Re:Won't help

there might be other reasons for why the files differs.

Suppose that you have multiple watermarks, some are identical from files to files, some specify the server they comes from, others the buyer, and some the music company?

And finally, not being a watermark expert... there might exist water mark technology that can survive such behaviour.

Still, if it was you who bought the file, i would very much dare you to prove that even after you did what you describe that after that, there are NO watermarks left.

Re:Will Help

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.

Watermark detection may prevent copying...

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... [slashdot.org] 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. [theregister.co.uk] Currency Detector Easy to Defeat [wired.com].

A better idea...

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.

Re:Won't help

What if pirates get ahold of multiple MP3s? Why bother? Pirates can hijack the ships that carry CDs across the sea and rip the CDs themselves, making MP3s that don't contain watermarks.

Yeah, there's a joke in there, but I have a serious point. It's likely that someone with a lot of technical knowledge will be able to remove watermarks, it's also true that a person with a lot of technical knowledge will be able to bypass DRM. Someone who's serious about distributing copyrighted material will be able to find a loophole somewhere, and the only realistic purpose of a DRM scheme or watermarking scheme is to discourage casual sharing.

Even though people will find a way to remove this watermarking, most people won't bother to figure out how to do it. It might succeed at discouraging casual file sharing without impeding customers from using the content they've purchased.

Re:Won't help

It will be difficult to remove watermarks without destroying the original content.. watermarks are very advanced these days...

Its VERY easy to remove watermarks, no matter how sophisticated. Don't believe me? Take two or more originals, uncompress the format, compare the difference, null the offending part, and re-encode.

This cat-mouse game will continue until the end of time.

I don't think it's that easy. Mp3 is already lossy, once decompressed and re-encoded to compare with a watermarked version, it will lose quality and the binary information will be different so comparing won't be easy at all.

Even if you have the original CD, and you rip the track from it, encode it into the exact Mp3 format (same bitrate and all) as the watermarked one, what guarantees that iTunes used the same disc to encode it? What guarantees that iTunes rip the same exact way as you? Nothing, so the Mp3 file will be different even if encoded with same parameters.

Re:Won't help

The MP3 is already different from the original CD track by definition. It's lossy compression. Those of us who aren't FLAC monkeys (dear god, I've been waiting to use that turn of phrase for about three years) tend not to be bothered so much if there's a slight change in the "true" audio data as long as it still sounds good - or at least tolerably so. Any tiny generational change imparted by removing the watermark is unlikely to faze most media pirates. These are people who rip out or recompress the music and movie files in games so they can fit them into Usenet posts, vise MP3's down to 92 kbps so they can share them en masse on Limewire, compress the hell out of dual layer DVD movies with DivX so they'll fit on a single CD-R, and so forth.

Re:Won't help

... and the impact on those that buy the stuff? Pretty minimal I'd say, if they aren't planning to share it. Watermarking is so much better than DRM.

Re:Won't help

I agree. The main reason I don't buy MP3s from iTunes or whatever is that I play them in more than just my iPod, sometimes xmms, winamp or my Squeezebox, none of which support DRM. I'd live with a watermark that basically says "if you share this, we know who you are and where you live", because I don't plan to share it.

Obviously, the information watermarked needs to be limited to an identifier rather than encoding the name in for privacy, but if they know that the MP3 with the watermark 19584202984512903 was sold to me, they can track it back if they find it on P2P without exposing my personal information.

Great idea if properly implemented...it won't be

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.

Re:Great idea if properly implemented...it won't b

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.

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.

Re:Won't help

Absolutely. The people ripping and uploading are doing it with pre-release CDs, not with their latest iTunes that they burned and ripped. I'll buy music if I can play it wherever I like, and watermarking doesn't stop me from doing that. It conceptually deters piracy since your name is attached, but doesn't lock things down to prevent it and stop people from legitimately using their purchases. Everyone has a valid reason to worry about DRM; only people who are doing things that (theoretically) harm profits by uploading might worry about the watermarking.

Re:Won't help

This is true, the only way to make a watermark that can't be removed easily from video for example is to imprint a visible watermark directly onto your video frames, anything subtle such as using Steganography [wikipedia.org] probably isn't going to make it through a re-encode due to the lossy nature. The same I would imagine will apply to audio.

Re:Won't help

Actually, some forms of water marking can survive some reprocessing. However, I am not aware of any watermarking techniques that can survive multiple passes. Even more dangerous yet to watermarking is combining two or more files. For instance, if your friend bought the same track as you did, new software could digitally combine the two files, filtering out any differences. Some bits would probably remain from the watermark, for example, if time 0:01 through 0:02 had the recording artist's name embedded, it would be identical between both tracks. The software could even take a more aggressive approach and simply drop frames or drop partial seconds of audio to remove suspicious data altogether.

Watermarking isn't good in my view, even compared to DRM. There will still be legal restrictions on what you can do. You won't be legally allowed to do ANYTHING to the file except play it. You could even be legally responsible if a virus happened to alter the file.

This won't affect pirates. It won't affect file sharers. It only hurts the consumer and hurts everyone in the long run.

Re:Won't help

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.

Watermarking pretends people have control.

Also, watermarking pretends that people have control over their files. Millions of people whose computers that are controlled remotely in botnets don't [itnews.com.au].

There are numerous other ways files are moved around. If you take your computer in for repair, it is possible [blogtoplist.com] the repair person will copy any files he or she wants.

Re:Won't help

"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.

What about the techniques used in CDMA?

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.

Re:Won't help

But doesn't that pretty much give everyone what he wants?

DRM has also never been a tool to eliminate filesharing. I guess in the meantime even the RIAA has understood that. It's a tool to reduce it. Just like copy protection on software is. If someone wants to crack it, he will. But Joe Average won't.

I think watermarks would give everyone what they want. You can actually buy content without fearing that it won't work in your application. The RIAA gets the limitation of sharing because the watermarked stuff could be traced. And well, if you can remove DRM you can remove watermarks.

It's actually win-win all over.

Still a reason not to buy

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?

Re:Still a reason not to buy

RTFA. The watermark doesn't identify the name of the downloader, just which CD the song was ripped from. They sample from the P2P stream and see which of their CDs are getting pirated the most.

It's drafting us for market research, not preparations for lawsuits.

A nice idea, but short-lived?

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.

Re:A nice idea, but short-lived?

Actually it would be interesting what loses you more sales: Crippling your songs in a way that a good deal of your customers will cease to do business with you because they either simply cannot use your content at all because your DRMified version of the song does not play in their player, or the "weak" watermarks that allow easy transcoding to remove it.

Personally, I'd say the first. If someone's a "heavy P2P user", he doesn't care about either. Someone WILL have removed that DRM or watermark for him. No matter how tough, no matter how good, DRM has always been broken and will always be broken.

So what's left? The market for the Joe Average users who do not know how to circumvent DRM or watermarks, and who do not know about P2P. And those people will buy, as long as it works in their players.

Won't stop piracy

This isn't the silver bullet you're looking for. Unless the watermark is intrusive into the content itself, in which case the idea won't sell, it can be removed by re-encoding.

Just What We Need...

Just what we need, even MORE advertisements! As if I'm not already bombarded with advertising via spam, TV, radio, theaters, etc.

So you'll be listening to a MP3 and halfway through the song you'll hear an advertisement for Vista?

Re:Just What We Need...

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.

Merge the files

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?

Re:Merge the files

Shame you spent so long working on your acrostic that you missed the 1st post ;)

Next time I suggest your starting point be "Eighth Post"

Same as with DRM

Instead, the data is inserted into the audio track itself. It's inaudible to human ears, but detectible by various other tools.

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.

Tired of advertising

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.

no problemo

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.

A double-edged sword...

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?

Sounds better

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.

There are other ways ...

to prevent piracy from being a problem. This has been said before, but since it's a decent idea it's worth repeating.

Instead of the current market where any whore can get on stage, prance around singing other peoples songs (if they are in fact signing at all), then market a CD and demand millions of sales, why not allow the market to decide.

1. Seed the market with your wares. Apply for a business loan from a studio, get a CD or two out there, do live performances, etc.
2. Promote new album under the premise that it'll be re-distributable (but still copyrighted) once $X dollars have been collected through whatever channels.
3. Release album on the web, and don't look back.

Not only does this cut out the CD producing middle man, but it also only floods the market with music that people apparently want.

The studios keep [incorrectly] assuming that sales that don't grow as much as they want (and let's not forget the problem isn't that sales aren't high, it's that they're not *growing* as fast as the want) is because people can pirate the media, as oppose to lower demand. Demand problems due to quality and price aren't unheard of. Why pay $30 for a movie when in a couple of years it'll be in the $6 bin [as new] at your local walmart/zellers/target/whatever. That's what I do. For the price of one new movie, I can usually pick up 4 older ones, usually ones that I actually like, and build my library. Like recently I got forest gump, constatine, the devils own, and another I can't quite remember, each were around $6 or so. Not B-rated movies, got some quality actors in them, etc.

Anyways, point is, the current "mass produce a million CDs and pray they sell" method of marketing audio is out dated and it's about time they realize that.

Can be removed LEGALLY

The DMCA [wikipedia.org] makes it illegal (or legally difficult) to remove DRM. But any watermarking and advertising is fair game...

Cool new distribution way for virii and worms

Great, it isn't audible and Joe Sixpack doesn't know that it is even there. What better way of distributing new rootkits. Maybe MS should contact Sony and get their source code. Honestly, the technically inclined will remove it and the other have another official way of getting security wholes for their system...well thought

Not likely to work

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?

Jailhouse Rock

> the announcement of Microsoft and Universal

I don't understand Microsoft. Here's a company that wants to sell you an operating system, then spends the rest of its time collaborating with other companies that want to throw you into jail.

A Positive Step with One Downside

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.

Water marking proves what?

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'.

in other news

Watermarks replace DRM and waterboarding replaces lawsuits.

Repeat after me

Watermarking *IS* DRM

It's just a passive form, not an active one.

Watermark cracked in 3... 2... 1...

1. Buy two copies of a song.
2. Find the bits that are different.
3. Randomize those bits.
4. Post to LimeMuleKazDonkeyTorrent.
5. Profit!

A good step, but also won't work

First, replacing DRM with watermarks is a very nice step. It changes those companies position from support a future like Right to Read [gnu.org] to merely accusing people on baseless evidence. So, we can stop acting like they want to leat us to an Orwellian society, and just ask for a better judicial system.

Now, watermarking also doesn't work. If it is audible, people won't like it. If it is not audible, it is useless information, what works against compressors and will be removed on every possibility. With time, all watermarks will be removed.

Pattern Recognition

Just like in the William Gibson novel...

Rappers have been doing this since Run DMC

Just listen to any rap song. How does it begin? By letting the listener know who's rapping, the year, and who they represent (label, city, neighborhood, etc). Audio ID3.

Computing Surveys

The latest "Computing Surveys" has an article on Image watermarking, and while most of the methods won't apply to audio or video, the technology is interesting and the article well worth a read.

How long untill google can read these watermarks?

It would be cool if seach engines could read these watermarks. That kind of information could filter out low qualify versions of a song etc and aid the browser in finding the content they want.

watermarking

I believe that the theft of intellectual property is only a part of the reason for this partnership. At some point, the lowered cost to purchase the content (respond to the ad, get the song free) will outweigh the time/hassle it takes to pirate it, at least for the majority of consumers. On a more interesting note, watermarking could be the beginning of buying any and all content ala carte, by the piece (buy a single show on Showtime)and trade it with a friend who is then billed by their ISP - kind of like the old phone bill where your calls were billed on a cents per minute basis. This model utilizes the web as a well, web - a personal distribution network. Cool -

More Importantly

More importantly, if they watermark audio, then the audio has changed from it's original form - is it no longer subject to copyright since no one 'owns' the changed materials?

It doesn't matter...circumvention

It doesn't matter, because measures implemented to protect or otherwise control digital media will eventually be circumvented and eventually in a way that is convenient for those wanting to share it.

Later,
-Slashdot Junky

re-encode

The first way I can think to remove a digital watermark would be to re-encode the file. Because these formats are lossy, watermarks should be eliminated. Lossy formats are also the reason comparing two originals to find watermarks will not work; that is, unless they are all sourced from the same master with bits replaced, rather than re-encoded on the fly.

What's wrong with...

Perhaps I am naive and have an overly simplistic view of the situation, but why wouldn't this model work:

1. Purchase a song on the Internet
2. A digital transaction ID is assigned to your unique customer name. Pick your favorite transaction ID scheme and method of uniquely identifying the user. (purposely ambiguous, I'm going after the socio-economic problem, not the techincal one at the moment.)
3. Give the user a copy of this transaction record, so they can prove that they purchased the song legitimately. This is their receipt. If you must, put the song name or some identifier when the user's credit is charged, so that the user can also present the credit card reciept to match up the purchase. Not essential, but just another nice thing to have in the paper trail.
4. Keep a copy of the aforementioned purchase record on the vendor's server.

Case 1 - Music vendor goes out of business, no more database.
You still have a transaction record. (you do keep backups, right?) You present this evidence if audited and are left alone to enjoy your purchase.

Case 2 - You don't do your backups and lose your receipt
You login to the vendor's website and re-download your receipt, which is available to you for an indefinite amount of time. You're responsible for protecting your login. If you get hacked, you initiate fraud protection, they move your confirmed purchases to a new secured account, and you go on your merry way.

Case 3 - Vendor goes under, transaction database is gone, and you lose your receipts and your backups.
This may sound overly harsh, but at that point it's your word against theirs. I'm okay with being held to the task of keeping records for what I purchase, and being required to present them *infrequently* for inspection. If they take a random sample of 5% of those people who purchase digital music players and audit them every year, they'll probably catch enough idiots to make them happy. I don't like it, but it's preferable to the witch hunt they're doing now.

Again, I'm probably naive, so shoot me down. What have I missed? Maybe validity of the receipt vs. identity being questioned (no really, I'm John Smith #426, and here's my credit card receipts to prove that I purchased it on this date/time) , which I'm still trying to figure out.

Also, I hate the current model of music production and distribution. I would love to watch it all come crumbling down and go back to a simpler design, but I don't think that's going to happen soon. Hence, the solution mentioned above.

You know what really bugs me?

Based on the amount of money the music companies are spending on DRM, copy protection and watermarking research, if they just put the money into making the cost of music a little cheaper, they might end up encouraging more people to legally pay for it in the first place.

Even if it works it will be legally useless.

The idea seems to be to sue anybody who has their watermark distributed over the net. This will never work in the long run because:

a)The studios will be too damn stupid to encrypt the download, thus making it trivial for somebody else to get hold of a video with your watermark on it (just wait and see, you know it will happen ).

b)The studios will not be able to prove that it was the person they sued who uploaded the file. In particular, they won't be able to prove that it wasn't THEY who did it. They can create the watermarks, thus they can frame you if they find they are short on evidence. Sooner or latter a judge will realise this.

c)Viruses, trojans... etc can upload a copy of a video with somebody else's watermark.

d)First sale. You are legally allowed to sell a copy to somebody else, at which point it becomes impossible to tell who uploaded the file. Just blame one another and they can't do shit.

e)Even if American courts would accept watermarking it only takes one infringement, anywhere in the world, and then it hits the internet. Want to start trying to use watermarking as evidence in Norwegian, Canadian, Japanese, and Dutch courts ? Yea, good luck with that ...

f)This is just another incentive to get your media of P2P networks rather than from the studios.

Basically, it is doomed to fail. Won't stop them trying thou.
 

Now we know why Universal is excluding iTunes

From their DRM free downloads. Microsoft is involved. I'm sure Universal love to strip some of the power iTunes/Apple has over the music download market. They're just leveraging their existing partner ($1 per Zune sale to Universal anyone?) to help them do it.

Watermark Rewetters?

I don't know if this is technically possible, but it would seem to be possible to eliminate any watermark by simply "rewetting" -- or smoothing -- the music by combining it with a unwatermarked track.

In other words, you simply find the method of encoding, encode your own unwatermarked track, and then merge that track with the watermarked track -- and perhaps spit the differences into a file. These differences are the watermark and could be dissected. The watermarks, I assume (but again, I might be wrong here) would have similarities -- and a comparison of the watermarks over, say, hundreds of tracks -- would probably yield the ability to rewet *any* track without having to generate your own unwatermarked track.

Obviously, if you're going to generate your own track, you don't need the watermark in the first place. So the only reason to generate the tracks would be to build up a library of streaks -- or watermarks or whatever you want to call them -- and then use these for the rewetter application.

Ultimate Targeted Marketing

This is just another way to provide hooks to advertising, which Microsoft is exploring in order to compete against Google. The ultimate targeted marketing will reach its zenith when your toilet performs urinalysis in order to provide you with appropriate advertising, emergency services, and insurance quotes.

NO DRM = Good for LINUX

It does sound useless, but if it is compatible with existing stereo equipment / computer software, then this is a step in the right direction for the benefit of consumers.

Moving away from [useless] proprietary DRM schemes will be good for Linux, because right now, DRM represents a substantial threat against the acceptance of FOSS [wikipedia.org].

On the other hand, watermarking does very little to curb Joe Schmoe from copying his friend's media, so I don't see why the industry would embrace this. DRM, while proven very breakable, does - with some reasonable effectiveness - prevent 'casual' copying between Joe and Jane Schmoe.

Watermarking will identify it online

With a watermarked signature or a portion of it or if the file has something which looks to be watermarked at some point in the past... it can be identified as such. This means that an ISP, Google/YouTube, and P2P applications can be held accountable for NOT filtering these files out of the network.

With DRM they would only be able to do so if they also knew the encryption key, which would put it in the hands of too many and defeat it's purpose.

With a watermark signature they (RIAA/artists/whoever) can publish their watermark which means that those who can filter it will have to or be held liable when files are found on their networks. This avoids placing blame on individuals for uploading to the network but protects the interests of the copyright holders as well.

Additionally ripping programs could be required to put in their own watermark including the serial number associated with the purchaser. These means that ALL publisher's (including individuals) using commercial encoding software would fingerprint their output files. This could also be a requirement for using various encoding algorithms as part of the license agreement.

Once this happens all files traded online will require a watermark whether from an individual or from a corporation, otherwise they will be filtered out as Spam/Virus/Contraband.

You can trade anonymous files anonymously, but not on a public network using the combined resources of public and private utilities. If you want to do so you'll need to do it on a private network or offline.

Well that's my prediction anyways. Let's see how it plays out.

"inserting advertisements into audio tracks"

inserting advertisements into audio tracks

Now kidding, it's like they didn't do enough already to make people not to want to pay for legal music. People surely will only buy legal music for watermarked tracks with embedded advertising...
 

This is a repurposed idea

back in the late '80's, Columbia/CBS experimented with watermarking to short-circuit our rights to make archival backups on early consumer digital recorders. Anybody remember the Philips digital cassette, or MiniDisc? The CD was to include a "watermark", which was basically a notched frequency in the output, that was supposedly inaudible. Problem was that it was 1) audible to anybody that wasn't tone deaf; and 2) detectable with the right equipment (e.g., scope). The idea was that when recording a "protected" CD, the device would detect the "notch" in the output and proceed to not comply with recording. And then there was the SCMS circuit (Serial Copy Management System) which wouldn't allow more than 2 or 3 (i don't remember) successive generation recordings . In those days, people that cared just bought professional DAT machines that didn't have this stuff (at first anyway).

I think the really interesting thing is the lack of full disclosure of these "use bombs". I don't think i'd buy a device if I knew it wouldn't work for its intended purpose, and I doubt the manufacturers would sell many of them. I just love the schizophrenia in this industry...

Watermarking illegal?

Couldn't watermarking be considered illegal according to the various anti-subliminal laws on the books around the world?

Virus Perhaps?

Some of the comments got me thinking about how these watermarks have to get decoded from the audio at some point, right? Someone mentioned advertising inside the audio - I suppose this would be some banner or whatever which shows up on your media player when you play the song back, for example. How long until someone creates and 'watermarks' your mp3s with viruses instead of some advertisement? This is the worry I have about such technology. One more way for malicious software to make it onto your system.

However, speaking of decoding, if there is a decoder within your (future) audio player to interpret these watermarks, then that is already step one to hacking the watermarks out of the media. As for the comment regarding that the watermark would persist if the audio stream was filtered through analog, I highly doubt this would happen as the watermark would then have to exist in the audio itself, and not just embedded in the file - resulting in a reduction of audio quality. The data would have to be encoded into tones outside the range of human hearing, but decipherable by the audio player - but these bits of information representing the watermark tones would take up part of your audio stream's bandwidth, resulting in less room for the actual audio (although most likely a minuscule amount).

More likely this would be a digital stamp, which means a knowledgeable person would be able to remove it if they desired (much like you can remove DRM from your audio, if you know how).

There's an unspoken threat here

There's really nothing wrong with the idea, until..

whenever a watermarked file is played on an ActiveNow-enabled device, the service could dynamically insert some sort of advertising

..they bring up the seemingly-unrelated idea of intentionally crippling their player application. Why the hell would I want to use that player application? The only reason I can think of, is that they're going to try to find some way to lock me into it: in other words, these will be proprietary formatted files. If people aren't locked into the defective player, then no one is going to hear the ads.

So, yeah, this smells fishy. Leaving out that detail would have resulted in a much better press rele^W^W news story.

Oh, and for people who are talking about watermarks being removable: who cares?! That's not your problem; it's theirs. And if you think that the watermark is somehow going to degrade the quality of the encoding, I guarantee that anything you do to remove the mark, is going to be even worse. Sheesh, just don't worry about it.

A lot of misconceptions

Glancing quickly through the comments makes it seems a lot of people don't really understand the idea behind watermakring, so I thought I'd try to help out.

Most people understand that watermarking is embedding data in a piece of media so its source can be proven at a later date. This means there has to be some way to take an existing file and add the data in such a way that it can't be removed without seriously compromising the original song/movie/whatever.

Some people have mentioned that just by recompressing or otherwise manipulating the bits at a low level you can remove the watermark. Of course you could remove any watermark by just replacing the file with random bits, but then you would have destroyed the music in the file. Typically watermarks are designed to be linked as closely as possible to the human-noticeable component of the media, so by changing that which someone listening to a watermarked song would not notice, you would not remove the watermark itself. For instance, with music, the watermark is tied into the frequencies produced by the song which would be copied along with the rest of the song when it's recompressed.

Others suggested comparing two versions of the song in order to remove the watermark. This is a common attack against watermarks, and most watermark systems are designed to prevent at least the simple version of this. The problem is, given two versions of a song, can you create a third version which does not have the watermarked keys of either the first or the second one, and is not itself significantly broken. While I do not know the details, know that any watermarking system will at very least make it difficult for such attacks to succeed.

In terms of my personal opinions on its use, it matches those of DRM; When mandated by the government, they are both repugnant ideas, and should be prevented. When required only by the music sellers I don't have a particular problem simply because I can choose not to buy from that particular seller. Ultimately DRM and watermarking are just technologies at that point.

Now, I do think DRM is fundamentally broken. You can't lock something in a safe, warn them that they're not supposed to unlock it without you around, then hang the keys on a hook and just assume everything will go well. Watermarking is different, since the embedded code doesn't need to be extracted by the listener, there is at least an argument that it can't easily be extracted. It may still be vulnerable, but it's not flawed at its base.

Watermarking to include audio advertisements?

Wait, wait, wait just one second!

I PAID FOR the music, and they're STILL inserting advertisements? The whole point of advertising, is to offset the cost of the property itself, in lieu of actual payment.

We see commercials on television, because it helps pay for the actual programming you watch for free.

We hear commercials on the radio because it helps pay for the airtime you listen to for free.

But when we BUY a product (such as music, a DVD, etc.) it should NOT contain those ads, because guess what... the purchase price I just paid, went to offset the cost of the property itself.

If you still need to insert advertising into a product I just purchased, your pricing model for the item is incorrect, and needs to be rethought.

If I hear one advertisement in the middle of a song on a CD I purchase from the store, you can bet I'll be bringing it back for a full refund price, no questions asked. If they decline to issue a refund, I'll just dispute the charge with my credit card company, forcing a refund + costly chargeback fee to the store itself.

If this trend continues, the independent artists will get my money, not the big, money-hungry conglomerates.

How does one detects a watermark anyways???

How could you detect a watermark?

Let's imagine a simple watermarking scheme.

Take the original file, and introduce LSB errors in it.

To read the watermark, you need the original file, which you substract from the watermarked file, yielding the watermarked information, which could then be further encrypted or whatnot.

Now, how could you detect such watermarking?

You could scramble it by adding other LSB errors, though.

Watermarking in Pictures

From what I can see watermarking audio would have the same problems as watermarking pictures. The watermarks you don't see can be easily corrupted to the point of being useless simply by saving the image in a different format, let's say from jpg to png then resave it again from png to jpg. There's also the watermark you can see, like a small logo, those are really easy to deal with as well. But audio files can contain a ton more data then pictures and would make hidding stuff in it a bit easier, but again save it in another format and boom done and dead. That's just my simple 2 cent thought on the subject.

Do not take watermarking lightly.

Do not take watermarking lightly. This has been a research topic for video for at least a decade, by the companies that store 50GB video data using invisible to the naked eye pits on 12cm discs using blue light - not the RIAA. This is *analogue* signal processing not bits and bytes and bar codes. One aim has been for the watermark to survive cinema screen->camcorder->avi... its not about hiding the information in bits and bytes in the stream, its about hiding the information in the image (or audio). Its a challenge, but its only a very small amount of information that needs to be hidden, 64bits would be more than enough, and over a 2 hour film, it can be hidden *many* times. Its not unimaginable that imperceptible low frequency variations could be inserted into the image and extracted several times overlayed with high frequency variations. Of course it would have to be adapatable to the type of film, it may only encode during dark scenes, it may only encode duting light scenes, in a dark corner... and then add a similar mechanism in the audio. This is done in the mastering. You might filter some of it out, but certainly not all. Diff it? You're having a laugh. The only way to guarantee removal would be to have access to the profile used for the master of that particular movie. You could get hold of a pre-master. But would you know it was 100% clean?

This could prove to be interesting

If there is a watermark embedded into a song I purchase, does that mean it is a new and unique work? Would it stand alone and separate from another purchased copy of the same song? Does this also mean that I paid the company to produce an original work for me, and now I own it and the copyright?

Re:Watermarking doesn't prevent plagarism

Watermarking didnt help the authors of Minix when that loud-mouthed scandanavian guy ripped off their operating system.

Creating an original work that implements the same functionality as another work is not "ripping off" because U.S. copyright does not apply to functionality per se. However, what is the "functionality" of Universal's works?

Ideas!!

1. Easily removed if passively embedded into the file.
2. People will complain if the "watermark" is placed into the audio stream and causes any sort of even momentary distortion in the playback, even at high frequencies.

Re:Ideas!!

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.

Re:Ideas!!

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+).

Re:Still doesn't deal with Reselling

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).

Re:wait a minute...

Subliminal messages are entirely bunk.