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

[saibot834 (1061528)]

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

[digitig (1056110)]

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

[ion++ (134665)]

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

[marcello_dl (667940)]

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

[ion++ (134665)]

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

[h4rm0ny (722443)]

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...

[sowth (748135)]

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...

[KingSkippus (799657)]

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

[nine-times (778537)]

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

[nyctopterus (717502)]

... 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

[larien (5608)]

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

[aurispector (530273)]

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

[kimvette (919543)]

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:

[Just Some Guy (3352)]

I happen to think it's unethical to share copyrighted work without the artist's permission (regardless of whether it's legal or not).

Sorry, but I had to say something here. It's not the artist's permission 99% of the time - it's the permission of the record company that coerced ownership away from the artist.

I don't approve of copyright violation as a general rule, but in this one case, why not? The record companies are basically evil incarnate these days. Want to predict how they'll handle a given situation? Ask yourself What Satan Would Do. Given that they're working to change the law to steal from me (by effectively revoking

Re:Won't help

[Firehed (942385)]

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

[baadger (764884)]

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

[daeg (828071)]

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

[WPIDalamar (122110)]

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.

[Futurepower(R) (558542)]

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

[encoderer (1060616)]

"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?

[DFJA (680282)]

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

[Opportunist (166417)]

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.

Re:

[Lloyd_Bryant (73136)]

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.

You forgot about the practical joke possibilities. Such as borrow the mp3 player of a coworker/boss/ex-girlfriend, copy the watermarked tunes out, post them on a P2P network, then sit back and watch a squadron of RIAA attack lawyers ruin his/her life...

The *only* ones who benefit from watermarking are the content distributors - it gives them traceability so they know who to sue. It *does* give the consumer a less restricted product, but at the cost of making said consumer liable if the "wrong person" eve

Still a reason not to buy

[Christian Engstrom (633834)]

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:

[revengebomber (1080189)]

And how, exactly, can you prove to a judge that John Smith actually distributed that file which reads "John Smith"?

Re:

[Rocketship Underpant (804162)]

"And how, exactly, can you prove to a judge that John Smith actually distributed that file which reads 'John Smith'?"

In the US legal system, the burden of proof tends to fall on the person who doesn't a multimillion-dollar legal department at his disposal.

Besides, the RIAA prefers extortion to legal action. They just have to send you a letter stating one of your music files ended up on a filesharing network, and you can pony up a few grand or face the consequences. Heck, they don't even have to be telling t

Re:Still a reason not to buy

[Belacgod (1103921)]

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.

Re:

[dupont54 (857462)]

• MP3 players or burned CDs getting lost or stolen,
• Wi-Fi network hacked,
• tracks purchased with a stolen credit card number,
• files discretly copied by your son's friend on a usb thumb drive or getting picked up by a technician supposed to fix your computer,
• indelicate family member to whom you have lended a track,
• trojan and other malware, etc.

Examples are numerous of how digital files can leak away from you. You would need to be paranoid and skillfull to properly secure music files which would become very

Re:Won't help

[dc29A (636871)]

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

[Zero_DgZ (1047348)]

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.

Merge the files

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

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

[DaveCar (189300)]

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

[JosefAssad (1138611)]

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

[PsychoSlashDot (207849)]

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.

Re:

[Yvanhoe (564877)]

Advertising saturation is one of the main reasons why I never had a TV at home since I left my parents home ten years ago. People say I'm too grumpy so maybe TV hasn't reach most people's limit yet, but they may have to be cautious, they are very close to it.

no problemo

[rucs_hack (784150)]

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...

[Max Romantschuk (132276)]

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?

Can be removed LEGALLY

[mi (197448)]

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

Not likely to work

[MartinG (52587)]

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?

A Positive Step with One Downside

[Luscious868 (679143)]

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?

[nurb432 (527695)]

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'.

Re:

[tepples (727027)]

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?

Re:

[thebdj (768618)]

A 'watermark' in audio or printed media is a slight distortion of the audio or image that is unable to be detected by humans but can be deciphered by a computer.

You apparently didn't read the full summary or the article did you? Though what should I expect from slashdot.

The technology could serve several purposes including tracking file sharing statistics and inserting advertisements into audio tracks.

Here it is, so you don't strain too much. I love you got modded up for not reading. Chalk that one up to slashdot as well.

Re:Just What We Need...

[Scutter (18425)]

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.

Re:

[kabz (770151)]

It's not absurd. Welcome to 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."

Re:

[Aladrin (926209)]

DRM obviously doesn't work, is expensive, and loses customers.

Even if this doesn't prevent piracy (which it's not designed to do, if you RTFA) it doesn't piss off customers and probably isn't very expensive at all, since the file format doesn't change, doesn't require special software or codecs on the users' end, and is generally painless to everyone.

The article talks about this only being used to track where a file came from originally, and not watermarking them individually. Personally, I think it would

Re:A nice idea, but short-lived?

[Opportunist (166417)]

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.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

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 -

Re:Ideas!!

[Belacgod (1103921)]

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!!

[JimDaGeek (983925)]

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+).