EGeezer
Summer is passing
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join:2002-08-04
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|  Watermarking and other DRM
Well, the media industry may be responding to customer complaints about the troubles with past and present DRM technology, but not necessarily in the way they had hoped.
said by George Ou's article :
... One other potential usage of watermarking is user tracking. A. L. Friedman (writer for Contentinople) says that there will be no user tracking. That may very well be the case initially since music would have to be individually encoded for each customer, but it doesn’t rule it out in the future. Friedman noted that some of these fears are rooted in Apple’s embedding of the buyer’s name in the DRM-free music from EMI. ...
Link to article here. |
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OZO
Premium
join:2003-01-17
| The more money you invest into them, the more things like this one they will invent and implement.
Just think about it and do the right thing.
Thank you EGeezer  for the link! |
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Caution
@netcarrier.net
| reply to EGeezer
It is this sort of thing that may actually cause even more "ripping'........it sure wont prevent it. If the public would just stop purchasing their products for thirty days that would deprive them of enough revenue to make them stand up and listen.....but these days just try to get the public together on such issues is worse than pulling teeth. |
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swhx7
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join:2006-07-23
Elbonia
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to EGeezer
I agree with George Ou in this case: if it's robust it will affect quality; if really won't affect quality it will be fragile.
Obviously if a "watermark" were only in a header or footer part of a file it would be easily strippable. But if it's in the content, it is necessarily a kind of distortion.
I'm especially skeptical of the proposition that you could convert thru an analog stage and the watermark would still be in the re-digitized file. This really contradicts the claim that it's not audible/visible.
Finally, if files are individually watermarked - "purchased by customer C on date D" - then won't the clever pirates just take copies of the same file bought by multiple people and diff them to detect and analyze the watermark? |
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EGeezer
Summer is passing
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join:2002-08-04
Country!
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| reply to Caution
said by Caution :
If the public would just stop purchasing their products for thirty days ...
I'd say that when sales drop off for months or years because people have discovered alternate entertainment, the industry will change. Short term "protest" style actions are like those one day gas boycotts one periodically hears about. They only defer revenue until the time frame is over, then buyers return to their normal habits and purchase what they'd put off during the protest period.
As for myself, I just got tired of the problems with stuff not playing properly or at all on a player because of format or country code. The Sony rootkit thing was the nail in the coffin. I've found lots of other things to do with the money I'd been spending on purchasing music and movies. I haven't acquired any of that stuff - legally or not - for a couple of years. No iPod either  I may get a generic MP3 player to play what I've ripped from my relatively old CD collection. I also intend to archive them in case the CDs degrade or are damaged.
I'm no Luddite, I just believe in market forces driving choices. When a discretionary product like commercial entertainment media becomes burdensome or unattractive, I spend my dollars and time elsewhere  |
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Caution
@netcarrier.net
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Geezer, you said it much better than I ever could and I totally agree with your points.......sadly, it seems the public has lost the backbone to stand together on such issues until its to late then everyone hollars....
I have not purchased any new nedia in years and don't intend to.........when a person begins bowing and bending over to such people....they best watch whats coming from the rear. |
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Blackbird
Built for Speed
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join:2005-01-14
Fort Wayne, IN
 ·Verizon Online DSL
| reply to EGeezer
Computers are superb at precisely repeating pre-defined operations, whether this be executing code or copying files. This is what they were created to do. And this is why program code must be so carefully written and debugged... otherwise, a computer will excel at repeatingly making errors or corrupting data. For the recording industry to pretend that such a versatile and powerful "reproducing" tool can be controlled in some magical way so as to prevent it from doing the very thing it was inherently designed to do is simply an exercise in irrationality. Either the "protection" scheme will fail, the computer will be crippled, or the data itself will be corrupted to some degree... and depending on the scheme, perhaps all three - and perhaps spectacularly!
DRM, watermarking, unlocking keys, pseudo-encryption, hidden tracks... all of them represent a denial of reality: digital media can and will be computer-copied effectively by anyone sufficiently determined to do it, whether he purchases the media or not.
In the end, it's really the same thing as trying to copy-protect written media in this era of univerally-available copy machines and scanners. There is simply no iron-clad way to prevent the copying and dissemination from occurring in the first place. Imagine placing some kind of semi-invisible watermark on printed matter, forcing inclusion of a special sensor array in all copiers to prevent copying watermarked media, and expecting everything to work transparently, then or otherwise. In fact, all that can actually be done by media copyright owners is to attempt strong prosecution of violators as they are uncovered, and digital media is no exception.
In the case of watermarking, it's as the article notes: no good will come of it, it can be end-run technologically, and it can only lead to privacy invasion and abuse-of-the-innocent over time.
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If God wanted us to work with electrons, He'd make them big enough to see... |
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