Audio Watermark Web Spider Starts Crawling

DippityDo writes "A new web tool is scanning the net for signs of copyright infringement. Digimarc's patented system searches video and audio files for special watermarks that would indicate they are not to be shared, then reports back to HQ with the results. It sounds kind of creepy, but has a long way to go before it makes a practical difference. 'For the system to work, players at multiple levels would need to get involved. Broadcasters would need to add identifying watermarks to their broadcast, in cooperation with copyright holders, and both parties would need to register their watermarks with the system. Then, in the event that a user capped a broadcast and uploaded it online, the scanner system would eventually find it and report its location online. Yet the system is not designed to hop on P2P networks or private file sharing hubs, but instead crawls public web sites in search of watermarked material.'"

Scrubbing Watermarks?

[Skewray]

So if the watermarks are public, they can be identified and scrubbed before posting?

Web Spider?

[Sneakernets]

I have a Web Newspaper rolled up, waiting on it.

oh no!

[matt328]

Because, yeah, I store all my potential copyright-infringing materials on my public web server.

Re:So what

[MyLongNickName]

A better way. Put a bunch of legitimate sound clips out on the internet, but change it to have the watermark. Make sure your files get spread all over the place. A lot of false positives would render this useless.

And on a more sick note, you could find the "I am browsing gay porn" wav file and modify it. Can you imagine the poor schmuck who has to go review each report to see if it is true?

Questions

[fluch]

Does it respect robots.txt?
Does it run on Linux?

Re:So what

[Ash Vince]

Nice theory, but in reality the watermark will be copyrighted so they will sue you for copyright infringement anyway. :)

Re:So what

[McFadden]

the pirate needs to search for any of 6000 possible spots for the watermark, and remove it.

I'm trying to think of a nifty device that would be able to search 6,000 possible spots in a file to look for a watermark, but the name escapes me just at the moment...

No wait... I think I've got it... Isn't it called a "computer"?