DivX and MP3 Developers Work Together on Watermarks 235
An Anonymous Coward writes: "The DivX and MP3 developers are working on digital watermarking techniques together... Ogg anyone?"
"Don't drop acid, take it pass-fail!" -- Bryan Michael Wendt
Well... (Score:1, Insightful)
more information (Score:5, Informative)
Re:more information (Score:1)
Re:more information (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not so sure I'd agree. Remember when GIFs were all the rage? I thought no one would ever convert to JPGs because GIFs were so popular. Now, you hardly ever see them. I know, JPGs are better at compression, so maybe that's the reason.
Maybe a better comparison would be PNGs compared to GIFs or JPGs? I use PNGs all the time, but I don't have a feel for how popular they are in general.
I guess my point is that if there's a compelling reason, people will switch file formats in a heartbeat. For that matter, I know people who switch MS Word formats every few years or so. Oh, wait...
No comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
Going from mp3 to ogg for most people is of no advantage.
Re:No comparison (Score:2)
Currently, yes. But once it's a choice between ogg (no watermarking) and mp3 (with watermarking), then there will be a big advantage. If mp3's become crippled so that people can't do the things they want with them, but they can with ogg, they'll switch.
Re:more information (Score:2, Informative)
Re:more information (Score:2)
Re:more information (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:more information (Score:2)
Limiting I know, but the alternative is a "best viewed with Mozilla or Konqueror" in the alt attribute
Re:more information (Score:3, Informative)
way to go nullsoft... havent checkt the linux version recently though
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Not really. (Score:3, Informative)
Except for the fact that AOL owns the fourth largest record label in the world, this would be a really insightful point.
Not to mention that that sentence could be read to suggest that AOL has a policy of making the Internet less annoying.
Re:more information (Score:2)
But knowing Nullsoft, it's probably less an issue of whether or not AOL/TW has allowed them to do it, and more of whether or not they know how to stop them from doing it.
Re:more information (Score:2)
Amen to that, i am not the average user, but i know from personal experience that it is difficult to move from mp3s. I have a large collection of MP3s that took me many hours to rip and encode to MP3. I do not fancy re ripping them and moving 100% to OGG. I try to ensure that any new CDs i get i rip to OGG, but even that can be difficult to remember to do. And support for OGGs as far as Hardware players, ripping/encoding software is in the case of H/W players not readilly available, and ogg based software is not quite mature enough. It is also hard to try and convince someone to go with something new, when "everyone else" uses mp3s!.
Just an aside, would it not be possible to impliment watermarks in OGG any ways? I mean it is an open, free and more importantly PATENT free audio compression algoithm. (Not that I support watermarking, just a thought).
Re:more information (Score:2, Interesting)
What many people here seem to be missing is, the question is not "wouldn't everybody switch to ogg vorbis" but "why wouldn't people stick with the version of mp3 they already have?"
Many people already have mp3 files, tools and players that do exactly what they want. Why would they "upgrade" to a deliberately crippled version that limits what they can do? To persuade people to upgrade, you have to provide them with something new of value that they didn't have before, not less.
Re:more information (Score:2)
If you can't listen to Metallica's new album, or watch porn, or do your homework because your old computer is obsolete, then you might consider buying a new one, and then you have to take whatever they give you.
Microsoft's goal is to just hit you with an IE or MSN Messenger upgrade, but they know they can't get everyone with everything that way.
Want new emoticons? How about a free codec with that?
Re:history may repeat itself - scenario (Score:2)
Re:more information (Score:2)
What a mess (Score:1)
The real mess (Score:2)
I'm so H-A-P-P-Y to be here today.
Digital rights management won't work this way.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Start getting concerned when all video card manufacturers are forced to include rights management firmware, and when you can't get a PC DVD-ROM without (more) intrusive/limiting firmware.
Re:Digital rights management won't work this way.. (Score:4, Informative)
BTW, I'm surprised no one has yet challenged the DVD regional licensing scheme under US antitrust law. The Sherman Act makes such geographic price discrimination illegal.
Re:Digital rights management won't work this way.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I would like it if DVD region encoding when down the tubes, so I could get more foreign DVD's (anime, primarily). But, I just don't know if the argument applies.
Re:Digital rights management won't work this way.. (Score:2)
But for them to care, you'd probably have to do a whole lot more than post a few mp3's tothe internet.
Sorry... just felt like nitpicking/..
No, get concerned NOW... (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, there's the third, remote possibility that we'll end up in an another world in which "information wants to be free" rules, but the sorry, true fact is that whatever information wants, people want to own information and charge other people for it. Especially people with lots of money. And therefore power, and therefore clout to shape the world.
There's a growing body of opinion that holds the best way to keep us from getting draconian DRM is NOT to shrilly scream about free information/content and drop into a frenzy of distribution violations, but rather, to show how a mild solution can give us the best of "fair use" and "new economy" rules while not totally threatening the status quo (just enough to keep 'em on their toes).
In that light, digital watermarking for mp3 and divx is good. 5 letter acronyms introduced to congress are bad....
Re:No, get concerned NOW... (Score:2)
the right people.
Re:Digital rights management won't work this way.. (Score:2)
Re:Digital rights management won't work this way.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's make a few assumptions.
1. Someone can make a non-trivially breakable watermark technology. One that stands up to peer review without threats of legal ramifications.
2. Content providers can then use this watermarking technology on a reasonably fine scale - probably not individually watermarking every CD, but perhaps broken down into regions. Digital downloads could be individually watermarked, given enough CPUs.
What would this do? It gives the content providers ammunition and evidence to go after the big time copyright violators. Those that are burning CD's and turning around and charging money. Granted, a lot of these folks are probably overseas...
It allows us to use our digital media as we see fit. We can listen to it on our PCs. Download it to our Rios. It still allows us to swap digital media among friends. Content providers aren't going to go after the small fry, there's no return on investment.
This allows us to say to our congressmen, "Yes we care about and value copyrights. But we also value fair use."
This is a happy medium ground.
And being the crazy optimist that I am, this is the way I see things eventually settling down. The question is will it settle down in 1-2 years, or 10-20?
Nothing to see here (Score:1)
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:2)
Let the "I am switching to OOG!" posts begin.
Speaking of which, where is OOG THE CAVEMAN these days? He had some pretty funny posts...
"Ogg, anyone?" (Score:2, Troll)
- A.P.
Re:"Ogg, anyone?" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Ogg, anyone?" (Score:2)
What're these guys going to do, somehow magically eliminate all the 'clean' copies of codecs and encoding software in the wild?
While the occasional video post on Usenet is encoded with DivX 4 or 5, the majority of them are still encoded with the good-ol Microsoft-ripped DivX 3.11a!
Got LAME Source? You've got watermarkless MP3 for as long as you want. And, let's face it, DVD-audio maybe great for I-can-hear-the-difference-between-catgut-and-shee
Re:"Ogg, anyone?" (Score:2)
- A.P.
Re:"Ogg, anyone?" (Score:2, Informative)
The difference between LAME and other encoders is that the makers of most other encoders buy a MP3 license, so you don't have to worry about it. LAME, being a free program, can't afford to buy licenses and therefore is illegal if used the way it is usually used (by home users who've paid nothing).
Companies can use LAME for anything they want as long as they have a MP3 license.
Re:"Ogg, anyone?" (Score:2)
- A.P.
Yawn... (Score:1)
Would it degrade audio quality? (Score:3, Insightful)
Integrity of source
Playback on any system
How the watermark can be useful is if it is treated like a serial number not a lockout device. Suppose I am a musician and I want to sell some MP3s. If I can uniquely mark all the songs I sell, I can track which user decided to violate fair use if I see that unique mark on a peer to peer network.
Re:Would it degrade audio quality? (Score:1)
Why don't these huge companies get it that if they change the license and not the product they will be able to protect themselves? If you could track the download of the song (the watermarked data could be a hash of your name and/or account number) and then that could be used to bill you for copies that you illegally distribute. Granted, it wouldn't be that long before someone would figure a way to easily remove the watermark...
It's not that easy (Score:2, Insightful)
The watermark would only show which user you originally sold the copy to; it might have been sold secondhand, for example. Or simply stolen. And if users leave the files on their Windoze machines, then expect the next SirCam-like virus to target .mp3 instead of .doc.
Re:It's not that easy (Score:2)
Great idea! (Score:3, Funny)
Man, what a wonderful world that would be. Of course, you can bet that a bunch of criminals who are bent on hiding their nefarious activities will object. What kind of country is this where criminals and paranoid cranks are allowed to stand in the way of progress?
they hit the wrong target (Score:2)
They will never learn (Score:2, Redundant)
It doesn't matter what they do, sooner or later someone will break it, it's just a matter of time. There is no ultimate "secure means", as there is no 100% secure system [slashdot.org]!
Watermark all you Want. But.... (Score:1)
B: If they know its watermarked, then someone will get it from another source.
C: Rip it off a CD in your format of choice.
good try though.
a good thing? (Score:1, Informative)
According to the article, the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics [igd.fhg.de] is in on this too. But really, we knew that this was coming. Someone was going to do it. Would you have preferred that that someone was hired by Hillary Rosen (RIAA) or Jack Valentini (MPAA) ? This might be the best we can hope for. At least vorbis will provide a way out for those in the know.
Re:a good thing? (Score:1)
Frankly, I don't care who develops this technology, whether it's someone the RIAA or MPAA specifically hire, or whether it's existing format owners. The net effect is that it adds signal to the pro-DRM thought stream. What's annoying is that this isn't going to help at all.
They can't possibly expect watermarking to do any good since it is so easily defeated either with filter software, D-A-D re-encoding, or simply purchasing with a shill buyer (i.e. untraceable violation). It only takes one re-encoded, filtered, or shill-bought file, since P2P sharing can quickly take a single file and turn it into millions of copies.
Oh god, what a day (Score:1)
I'm going to sleep an maybe tommorow all articles will be nice as high tech beer glass and no politics.
Not surprising... (Score:5, Interesting)
Step 2) Gain a huge user base while fretting and pretending to "study solutions" to the illegal use.
Step 3) Once your system or product has become a leader in the marketplace, throw a switch and make the illegal use much harder.
Hey, it worked for countless companies throughout the ages. I mean, when did AOL enable the features that prevented users from e-mailing warez to each other, before or after they became the number one ISP in the US? So, it's not surprising that DivX and Frau. would be following the pattern like everyone else.
- JoeShmoe
.
Re:Not surprising... (Score:3, Insightful)
AOL isn't a very good example of this. AOL became popular because of marketing and ease of use--they still continue to attract new subscribers despite how hard it is for users to email warez to each other. Many web-based email sites better exemplify this scenario. One in particular started with no restrictions on inbox size or outgoing message size, for example. However as its userbase grew, restrictions were implemented so that a small few couldn't ruin the service for everyone.
Re:Not surprising... (Score:4, Informative)
However, for broke teenagers, there was one reason to use AOL...it was free. Thanks to the easy availablity of sign-up disks, anyone could get online. All you had to do was sign up, fill in bogus payment information, and enjoy a month or more of free service. This went on for years. There were even tools written to automate the account generation process. From 1991 to about 1996 there was absolutely no authentication of payment information before activating an account. AOL would simply let the account run and then after a couple of months of sending "your payment information is invalid" messages it would finally close the account.
Each of these AOL accounts had five screennames. Each of these five screennames could have 550 e-mails stored on AOL servers. Each of these 550 e-mails could have up to 10MB in attachments. So here's how it worked. Someone would get online to their local warez BBS and download the latest warez release. That person would then repack the release into 10MB pieces and send them to himself via AOL (uploading the files to AOL). From there he would forward the e-mails to everyone else, essentially e-mailing gigabytes of warez to you with a single click. This also went on for years. AOL warez groups were flourishing right up until around 1996.
Surely this couldn't have escaped AOL's knowledge. In these days, you were lucky if an ISP let you keep 10MB on a server and here AOL was giving you basically 2.5GB of online storage. As long as you kept forwarding to fresh accounts before your old ones expired, you had access to all the programs you could ever want. But they had to be kept somewhere...and AOL had to pay for that storage not...to mention all those countless modems and dial-in access minutes.
So why would an ISP allow such rampant abuse of their account and mail system? Well from 1991 to 1996 something else was happening...AOL was growing. On the books, they went from about 100,000 members to 1,000,000 members in about two years. They surpassed Compuserve a couple years later. I seriously doubt that at any time during this era that more than a 1/3 of the accounts on AOL were actually valid paying customers (besides all the fraudulently generated accounts, there were boatloads of AOL4Free Macintosh customers). But on paper, I'm sure it looked good to investors to see how the membership was growing. And I'm sure it looked really good when they had more members than any other ISP.
Most telling to me is the fact that right around 1996 when they were working on getting, IIRC, their sixth millionth customer...AOL suddenly implemented a raft of policies that killed the AOL warez community. First, they started actually trying to verify payment on what was entered during sign-up. That did away with the fake generators...now you actually had to have stolen credit cards to get online (much harder to come by). Two, they started deleting files after they had been downloaded a certain number of times (people estimated it to be about between 250 and 500 times) or the account that uploaded it was cancelled. Last, they started blocking the private rooms where people met to trade mail forwarding with each other. These things happened boom, boom, boom within months of each other.
But by then, AOL was the number one ISP, and if I remember correctly, this was right around the time they moved to flat rate unlimited access so they could no longer afford to have a huge population of floating freeloaders when they didn't even have the capacity to support all of their legitamately paying customers.
So, call me a conspiracy theorist if you must, but to this day I belive that AOL turned a blind eye to piracy to enjoy the rapid growth that it encouraged, and then once they had grown as much as they good, they easily were able to disable the piracy. So do I think it took a major corporation six years to notice the problem (despite the BSA and others constantly launching tirades about AOL warez scene) and figure out a way to stop pirates (despite e-mails where techies suggest inplementing call-backs during the sign-up process to counter theft and their bosses responding it might scare off legit customers)? Or do I think they didn't really want to stop the problem until the potential risk for getting caught was suddenly higher than the potential gains from it?
- JoeShmoe
.
Re:Not surprising... (Score:2, Interesting)
Excuse me? What illegal use are you talking about? I have a right to fair use reguardless of what any law says. Its perfectly legal for me to use technology to use the music and movies I buy in the same way I used them for years. The only difference now is that we have laws like the DMCA which threaten fair use. That only means that anyone who wants to sue me for using and sharing my content the way I have always done will get a fight destined for the supreme court. And boy would I love the courts to throw away my rights to fair use. That would be the last day I'd ever pay for content again. But as thing are right now, as long as the MPAA and RIAA don't sue me, I'll continue to purchase my DVDs and CDs and rip them onto open unencrypted media formats that are portable and give me access to my content when I want it. No matter what you say there's nothing wrong with that.
this is great! (Score:2)
Think about it, if they can do that, then they don't need all this stupid other shitty laws out there. Then they can do what everybody on here says.. Only go after the people that are violating copyright, and all us out there that still use MP3s legally for our portable players and such don't get screwed.
Now everybody repeat after me... (Score:5, Funny)
No more screw-ups (as in early cracks) like last time [com.com].
Never say never... (Score:1, Offtopic)
I hold that there will always be a way around, but then the cost of getting around it may get too high.
Many of us Christians believe that one day the government will track every single in-duh-vidual with an implanted chip, or some other type of imprinting device (Mark of the beast and all that).
Hard to copy music when the government is watching everything you do.
Even if you say it won't happen, you'll be wrong one day just like your great-great-great-grandpappy was wrong when he said they wouldn't be tracking you via your SSN.
DiVX is Falling Behind the Times (Score:5, Interesting)
DiVX will just fade away the same as MPEG-4 due to it's too greedy nature.
Re:DiVX is Falling Behind the Times (Score:3, Insightful)
Much like Microsoft has faded away due to its greedy nature.
Greedyness has nothing to do with a product's death. If they can make more money and convince more people to use their solution rather than "better" Open Source products, then they will. In fact, a company that is more "greedy" is more likely to survive, since they'll have more money to push around.
Wow... (Score:1)
MP3 music watermarking is BS anyways. If they put that on songs, then all I need to do is tape the radio for whatever song I feel like hearing. Why do corporations have to leer over us?
All I know is that a full boycott of media from these companies will hurt them MUCH more than a few bad apples downloading media that they never paid for.
Ah, the futility... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have friends who work in the security industry and crack codes for a living. Every time a watermarking scheme is publically proposed, they laugh long and heartily. The simple fact of the matter is that a system designed to check for a watermark can easily be changed to invalidate the watermark. Watermarks are necessarily little bit-flipping programs that don't alter the outward appearance of the media they are attached to, so what makes record execs and PHBs so sure that they can't be removed?
The only watermark that can't be removed is the watermark that can't be detected. And that doesn't help the digital rights management fascists one bit. So why do they bother?
Well, they still think it's a "deterrent." Just like Macrovision is a "deterrent" when you can buy filters to block it [ebay.com] for under $25 on eBay. Sooner or later, though, the world is going to have to learn that information wants to be free, that trying to restrict the flow of bits on the information superhighway is futile, and that selling simple numbers [utm.edu] and calling it "property" is patently absurd. Mathematics is a part of nature, and nobody owns nature; the sooner our laws are brought into line with this simple truth, the better.
~wally
Re:Ah, the futility... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not true. Information doesn't want anything, and if it did, who gives a damn?
_People_ want information to be free, and that's more important, business/govnt should care about what people _want_.
Re:Thats where obscurity steps in (Score:2)
If it does not play, the watermark is there.
If it does play, the watermark has been removed.
If these idiots really wanted to do anything, they would put in a secret watermark but NOT make it control playback. Then they could use that watermark to track down the initial source of who started copying it (since that person did not have the ability to test if they removed it).
Posted by typingsux on Thursday April 04, @06:18PM (Score:1)
watermarking is dumb (Score:2)
A side note on how some watermarking systems work (or have attempted to work): a popular method is to encode a heavy watermark and a light watermark in the content. By dicking with the stream, you end up destroying the light watermark but the heavy watermark remains. This is an easy way for a vendor to flag pirated content. Of course, actually implementing a robust light/heavy watermark is considered difficult.
Now if you were talking fingerprinting, it'd be a different story...
Somebody please help the Media Industry... (Score:1)
...find a new business model!
Omnicontrol of every unit/viewing/hearing of copyrighted material is simply not possible without total hardware control (and halting technical innovation forever).
How long can the media and entertainment industry push this before the market forces the new realities of the medium? Once a "title" is realeased, it is already "out there". Forever accessible and reproducible with minimum effort. No matter what encryption/watermarking scheme they come up with, somebody somewhere will always bypass it.
Copyright infringement will happen no matter what. Companies and people will simply have to adapt to the idea that there will be new ways of making money with entertainment.
It is not going to be just a new way of selling CDs online. It won't be charging for download or by viewing. It will simply be different, new. Media companies should spend more time shaping their futures by helping define that "new" than trying to keep their unsustainable business model alive.
Unfortunately, the only way to get this through to current senior management in this industry is...actually, there is no way. We're just gonna have to wait until today's 12 to 18 year olds are running these companies and in a position to understand the new market.
Oh well (Score:2)
Looks like I won't be able to go out and get the latest Brittany Spears albumn *darnit*.
The sad thing is that the music industry is killing themselves with this shit. Oh well, that's capitalism.
Why I'm not using OGG (Score:5, Interesting)
I can take my MP3s virtually anywhere and be able to play them, whether it's a computer, a CD player a flash player or something else, it's almost universally supported on digital audio gadgets.
I like Ogg, I'd say at the [high] bitrates I encode at it's as good if not better than MP3, but it just doesn't have the hardware support to make encoding for it worth my while, it's more time-effective for me just to rip to MP3 directly.
C-X C-S
Re:Why I'm not using OGG (Score:2)
I haven't seen this happening at all.
I have a AVC Soul Player with upgradeable firmware, and while a few updates have been
released, AFAIK there is still no Ogg support.
I've had the player over a year now, I'd say that's plenty of time to write a codec if they were so inclined.
I'm also pretty sure the player has a generic DSP, as it can play WMA as well as MP3.
Most of the time, I only play music on my computer, so I want to use the format that is better compression/sounding for me. I don't care about the guy who wants to copy it from me over Gnutella. He can get the ogg plugin if he wants my music.
Playing Ogg on computers is really a non-issue, even mainstream players (like Winamp) have official Ogg plugins.
On the other hand, the only mobile device I've ever seen that supports Ogg is the Iomega HipZip.
C-X C-S
Re:Why I'm not using OGG (Score:2)
You are irrelavant. (Score:2)
C-X C-S
Ogg violates DMCA??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ogg violates DMCA??? (Score:2)
Dev work would continue underground and over the 'net.
Re:Ogg violates DMCA??? (Score:4, Informative)
It is simply an unprotected format.
Now, should the SSSCA pass (CPFDFJKFJSKD or whatever), it will be illegal because it won't have any protections built in.
Re:Ogg violates DMCA??? (Score:2)
You mean the Corporate-Bought Disney-Trashes-the-Public Act? :-)
That would be both scary AND irritating - "Free" Use (both "Gratis" and "Libre") was the whole POINT of the Ogg file format and Vorbis sound codec. This bill would make this goal ILLEGAL. (shudder)....
Re:Ogg violates DMCA??? (Score:2)
---From a good ol' Simpsons episode...
Comic Guy: Oh yea, then everyone's REAL happy then...
Lady: Do I detect a note of sarcasm?
Prof. Frink (mad scientist): (reading sarcasm detector) Are you kidding me, this baby's off the charts, mmhay!
Comic Guy: Ooh, a sarcasm detector... well that's a REAL useful invention.
(detector blows up)
---
But I thought (Score:2)
DivX was supposed to be free! Free! Freeeeeeeee!!!
Guess not.
Of course the "If you use use DivX commercially" (translation: if you have ever or will ever make money with a computer) "then you must contact us" (because publishing the real price means no customers) "for permission" (permission is a convenient corporatism for NO)
But, somewhere, somehow, the checks have to go out on the 1st. I hope the Internet gets past this "never pay, no matter how cool it might be" approach to business. Think there's a lot of unemployment now? Wait till the value of information becomes zero because nobody can make even a modest living selling it.
Yeah, this'll work (Score:2)
Is anyone distributing movies in DivX, other than pirates? I mean, are the studios releasing stuff in DivX? Am I out to lunch?
dangerous for open source, open content (Score:3, Insightful)
Excluded are open source software developers, researchers, and independent creators of content.
Re: (Score:2)
The old cliches over and over again (Score:2, Insightful)
1. They still haven't got it that DivXNetworks didn't create DivX - they just grabbed the name to bring out DivX4 which has nothing to do with DivX;-) (the beginning of DivX as a codec a hacked m$ one).
2. The part of Fraunhofer which licensed DivX (Fraunhofer IGD) has nearly nothing to do with the one developing mp3 (Fraunhofer IIS) - Fraunhofer is a vast organization with over 50 different institutes
3. DivX was licensed by Fraunhofer IGD months ago for "streaming technologies and software development within research activities" (http://www.igd.fhg.de/actual_divx.html)
There was already a big discussion on
4. http://www.divx.com tells us that one of the goals for the future of the DivX-codec is to implement DRM - they do this for months, too.
Now, what's the "news" remaining in that article?
Oh yeah, Fraunhofer wants to use the DRM part of DivX too.
Wouldn't have thought they want to use that in streaming solutions.
Now that was informative!
... and the problem is what exactly? (Score:4, Interesting)
A watermark is just that: A watermark. A way of determining the integrity of the watermarked object that is prohibitively difficult to duplicate. It doesn't prevent duplication per se, it just causes the ducplicate to proclaim that its a duplicate through the absence of that watermark.
Yes, there are all sorts of immoral and possibly illegal things hardware manufacturers can do by automatically scanning for watermarks, but the watermark itself is pretty much morally neutral. In fact, I can think of many good things that can be done with such a tool. If the RIAA ever got their thumbs out of their asses and realized they should be selling media instead of mediums, a watermark would give those consumers that care about such things a way of finding out if what they have is genuine.
Mod this up! (Score:2, Insightful)
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the music industry trying to invent a good watermarking technology. As long as they fight illegal copies with technical means i am all for it.
The problem starts when they buy legislation instead of using technology to protect their stuff. My problem with mandatory DRM is *not* that I can no longer get britney spears songs for free, but that I am no longer allowed to own a general purpose computer.
Re:... and the problem is what exactly? (Score:2)
So scanning machines to see which are watermarked and which are not don't help. Now with checks and money, watermarks do mean stuff that doesn't copy easily, but in the multimedia world, it is used to preserve copyright information (little logos at the corner of images are also called 'watermarks')
Re:... and the problem is what exactly? (Score:3, Insightful)
I beg to differ. Given the purpose of electronic watermarking (locate illegal copies in the wild and be able to track it back to the specific customer who leaked it), imagine the consequences. The entertainment and software industries already calculate losses on a per-pirate-copy basis. A thousand illegal copies is a thousand lost sales and $price*1000 lost income.
If you leak a watermarked product, you're pretty much done for economically if they prosecute (which they have no reason not to, since it's the entire idea of the watermarking to start with). Try to tell their minion of lawyers that your copy was stolen, for an exercise in futility.
You'd damn better guard that watermarked product with your life, lock it in somewhere safe, never talk about it, cause you don't wanna deal with these guys if you "pirate" it by accident!
What is wrong (Score:2)
And the corporation is immortal, claims eternal ownership of the material, can never be defeated in court by a mere mortal's legal resources, can crush you like a bug, can change the rules at any time, will never reimburse the artist for his/her work, and has no personal liability as an "individual" for legal abuses of consumers to match the "rights" that it claims as an "individual" under our laws.
OK?
This is *not* a Bad Thing (Score:2)
Watermarking is not a Bad Thing. A lot of people have talked about hacking this or that it is DRM.
You are missing the point.
Even if you could remove the watermark... why would you do this? It doesn't make any sense.
The point of the watermark is to encourage a micropayment industry to pop up.
For example... Alice downloads Bob's MP3. Alice's MP3 player is smart enough to pick up the watermark.
Alice's MP3 player is smart enough to mention that she has not paid Bob for this song. Since Bob is a poor starving artist, we want him to get paid.
Alice them pays Bob and everyone is happy. If Alice doesn't want to pay then she doesn't have to
A lot of people are talking about similar systems. For example you could do this based on a Hash of the content but this has a number of problems (different bitrate encoding would change the hash).
A watermark would be portable from CD, MP3, OGG and back to CD...
This is a Good Thing and has a lot of potential for us to proove that a digital and robust economy is possible.
Now all this is changes if the RIAA tries to force this on people...
If you want Ogg Vorbis... (Score:2)
Irony! (Score:2, Funny)
It's pretty bad when the DRM people want to crack stuff too.
-Jeff
Why the SSSCA almost gets it right... (Score:2)
What would this require? Some sort of ID that people could activate and assign their own ID to. It would also require the cooperation of all technology manufacturers. And an unbreakable ID encoding. The only problems are: People won't buy products with the ID chip understandably. The tech companies won't cooperate. And no system is unbreakable. On top of this, it shouldn't be a government mandated, spawn of the RIAA/MPAA, system. It has to be developed with the cooperation of the consumer.
Your thoughts.
psxndc
Outlaw Speakers! (Score:2)
RIAA-approved headphones are the next logical step.
TWW
Already being taken care of (Score:2)
They want all hardware in the loop -- the PC (sound card, hard drive, processsor, removable media controller), USB, Firewire, speaker wire, stereo components, and yes, the speaker itself, to have digital and analog copy control built in. And any non-complying hardware would be illegal to manufacture.
Thought you should know.
love those adverts (Score:2, Funny)
How will a watermark not be copied by a (Score:2)
How can it not be copied trough standard UNIX "cp"? What is it about these watermarks that makes it "disappear" in copied files?
Or will all software have to be rewritten as to understand and ignore the watermark when copying a file?
This news leaves me indifferent (Score:2)
As far as piracy goes, nothing will change. People who know how to encode movies and shows will do it using the latest and greatest codec available, and you can bet that even if they have the option to stick a watermark in it, they won't do it.
Of course, one reason why "moviez" folks would want the industry to standardize on watermarked DivX rather than watermarked .WMV is because once you hack off the watermark, in the former case you get a clean DivX movie, where in the latter, you get something much uglier.
Re:Ogg = Beta, MP3 = VHS (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ogg = Beta, MP3 = VHS (Score:2)
In any case, the demand for MP3 is being fueled by the sheer numbers of songs for it. If Ogg is so much better, then what is inhibiting is content for it.
Re:Put your MAC in the watermark? (Score:2)
Re:as evil as i am.... (Score:2)
Just food for thought, really...
/brian
Re:DVD Region codes not restrictive? (Score:2)
/Brian
Re:DivX.. bah (Score:2)
No, you couldn't care less about DivX.
Sorry DivX Networks.. your time in the limelight is over. Time for a better codec to come around
You should check out XviD - developed from the open codebase that DivX4 also came from, but completely free (GPL, even). It doesn't have B-frame support yet, so it doesn't compress as well as DivX5, but it's easily a match for DivX4.
The best place to find information about XviD is to read the XviD forum at Doom9 [doom9.org] - many of the XviD developers are active participants there.