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.'"

"is" scanning, or "will be" scanning?

[User 956]

A new web tool is scanning the net for signs of copyright infringement ... '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.

So, basically, their web tool is scanning for things that don't yet exist. Bully!

Ahem!

[Stanistani]

Time to examine how this works, and how to block it from your website.

You are allowed to protect unwanted use and access of your copyrighted information, after all!

*cough* robots.txt *cough*

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Ahem [wikipedia.org]

Corporate IP infringements

[kabocox]

This isn't aimmed at the home use or small time crowd. It's ideal role is aimed at finding big name corporate offenders that have unlicensed PR crap on brochers, websites, or ads and making sure that the guy whose's content it is gets his cut. It's not worth it to go against small time folks. Think of professional photographers making sure their photos aren't run in mags or on the web without them getting their cut.

Misdirection

[j00r0m4nc3r]

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

For all you know they have been doing this for the past 10 years.

Re:So what

[ZachPruckowski]

Blur the watermark and they are screwed.

Assuming the watermarks are public or traceable. If all you're doing is identifying the fact that it's copyrighted, you could have a thousand different watermarks. Their location at any of half a dozen places in the audio stream would indicate infringement. That means that the pirate needs to search for any of 6000 possible spots for the watermark, and remove it. If the watermarks don't try to distinguish some copies of the work from other copies of the work, you can't use a simple diff to root them out.

I hope it works!

[5pp000]

Why does everyone here want this not to work? Seems to me this could be the alternative to DRM. It doesn't interfere with fair use at all; it only detects when copyrighted works are made widely available.

If we want to dissuade the entertainment industry from using DRM, it seems incumbent upon us, as technologists, to propose alternatives that at least partially answer copyright owners' legitimate concerns. Seems to me this could be one of them.

Re:I hope it works!

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Why does everyone here want this not to work?

Because my friend, the way the world is going, one of these days you'll have to consult a lawyer before taking a dump, just in case the toilet seat scans your ass print and reports unauthorized use.

You see, the entire world is slowly being privatised. All of it, including obvious commons like the air we breathe and the water we drink, and innocuous things that everybody take for granted suddenly "belong" to someone, or aren't allowed to do because some "rightful owner" says so one day. You might wander, what does music or pictures have to do with it? Sure it doesn't, but it's just the trend. Watermarking music is fine, but what if some day some digital camera manufacturer decides that you can't shoot pictures of specially painted federal building because of some anti-terrorist law for example, and you happen to take a picture of your friend with the local FBI building in the background and post them on your website? Suddenly the camera goes "tsk tsk, can't do that pal...". Would you like that?

It's the trend that's worrying. People making machines decide for you what you may or may not do. It might be a legitimate use now, but I can see plenty of cases where this kind of technology would simply curtail civil liberties.

Re:So what

[cheater512]

Whoa. Deja Vu. Didnt they say that about HD-DVD and Vista's new security?

Re:So what

[Lumpy]

no you don't. simply find a way to obscure the watermark and place it everywhere. Digimarc's watermarking for Images can be thwarted incredibly easy. simply bi cubic resize the image down slightly smaller AFTER you rotate it 1 -5 degrees. Poof their watermark is no longer detectable as it has been munged hard all over the image.

I guarantee their audio and video watermark will be as easy to defeat, Digimarc is as innovative in technology as Macrovision.

And yes, that is a slam on them.

Re:So what

[ZachPruckowski]

The problem isn't checking each spot for any of a given set of watermarks, it's identifying all the watermarks and all the spots they could be. You need to do a lot of work to build that database. You'd need tens of thousands of music files to even get started.