Startup Tries Watermarking Instead of DRM 344
Loosehead Prop writes "A U.K. startup called Streamburst has a novel idea: selling downloadable video with watermarks instead of DRM. The system works by adding a 5-second intro to each download that shows the name of the person who bought the movie along with something like a watermark: 'it's not technically a watermark in the usual sense of that term, but the encoding process does strip out a unique series of bits from the file. The missing information is a minuscule portion of the overall file that does not affect video quality, according to Bjarnason, but does allow the company to discover who purchased a particular file.' The goal is to 'make people accountable for their actions without artificially restricting those actions.'"
What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the pirate has to buy three copies now ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:5, Insightful)
I like (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact the only thing that I worry about is how much info they will keep on me to verify at a later point that it was me (or that it wasn't me) who put the file on Kazaa or torrent or whatever... will it be credit card info, linked to your address? will it just be a name and e-mail... and how secure are their systems it?
Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
The authentication will be a problem of course; it means I will not be able to make an anonymous purchase on the web - something that people are quite reasonably concerned about being able to do. What will it be signed with? My DNA? What about identity theft?
A heck, I give up. I was wrong. It's another stupid idea.
Re:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Another business model from this could be "You TV"- upload your own bug, buy content- and it's stamped with YOUR bug and available on a website password protected as you choose for you and your friends. Eventually, the bug becomes a video file in and of itself and a route for advertising- and suddenly we'll have advertiser-supported IPTV.
Re:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:2, Insightful)
They have to prove it "beyond a shadow of a doubt" in a court of law. It's not a perfect system, I'll grant you, but it's better than the alternative.
FWIW, this is a non-issue anyway. Files purchased online are almost certainly not the ones floating around P2P sites. Those are usually either from audio engineers who leak them, or rips of source media like CDs. So in the long-run, such watermarking would only be good for consumers as it would prove that they're more honest than the RIAA gives them credit for.
Or the a*holes will accuse everyone and their grandma (literally) of removing the watermark. One of those two.
Re:Still doesn't solve the real problems (Score:2, Insightful)
Heck, I purchase things now and then, and once in a while I'll rip the media to my PC to be able to keep the original copies safe. When it's on my PC, it's in my media folders which are shared.
They probably thought of that.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, this appears aimed more to stop casual file swapping by scaring the non-tech-savvy than it is at real pirates.
What about the doctrine of first sale? (Score:1, Insightful)
Ohhhhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
See also this (Score:4, Insightful)
The Thompson system for watermarking video and there's also a Fraunhofer Institute system:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,124676-page,1/a
These are all good ideas IMHO. As long as
1. The watermark isn't easy to remove
2. There is uncertainty as to whether the mark is removed
3. It isn't used to apply DRM
1 is obvious, 2 is there because the pirate has to be uncertain if their copy still has the idea, and 3. because the advantages of the system over DRM are lost if they use it for DRM!
Imagine you can freely buy and use the media you use however you like, but if it shows up on p2p, the ID can be pulled and traced back to you.
Since the DRM doesn't work, (not a single piece of media has successfully been locked up by DRM yet, a 100% failure rate). And since the DRM is already so restrictive that it puts off genuine sales, and is causing competition problems as inter operation is non existent. Then watermarking scheme will take over.
This one, I'm not so keen on, since the watermark is too easy to remove compared to the more mathematical approaches. The key point of any watermark approach is the mark must be difficult to remove and there must be uncertainty that the mark has been successfully removed.
My 2 cents.
Re:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:4, Insightful)
More importantly, that only applies to criminal prosecutions, not civil ones. In Civil lawsuits, you only have to prove you're 51% likely to be right. Admittedly, the amount of your judgement is lower if you're only barely correct (usually...), but still, it's not all that hard of a standard.
In addition, good lawyers cost $150 or more per hour. Defending yourself against an RIAA action will take any lawyer at least 10 hours of time, almost certainly more if it goes to trial. And no, you don't get reimbursed if you get found to be the winner (except in certain very difficult to prove situations, which almost certainly would rarely apply here).
Re:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, not at all, at least in the US. The **AA's are filing civil suits, where the standard is "preponderance of evidence", i.e. the jury thinks probably, yeah, the defendant did wrong the plaintiff. BTW, in the US at least it's "beyond a reasonable doubt", and that standard only applies to criminal cases.
Re:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds reasonable. But then how does the copyright holder distinguish between the purchaser engaging in illegal distribution vs being the victim of theft?
Since you're comparing this to theft, let's compare with what happens when it turns out some physical property you bought was actually stolen. You don't get to keep it -- you're not a "victim." You have to give it back. Translating back to this case, they'd probably ask/require you to delete your copies.
Of course, comparing copyright violation to theft isn't legally valid, so the analogy doesn't help much.
Basically the media companies would be asking people to treat their files as if they were national secrets which is too burdensome. They are NOT being marketed as state secrets - they are being marketed as a replacement for music CDs. If you leave music CDs on the seat of your car and a thief breaks your window and steals them, you are a victim. Under this scheme if the thief breaks your car window and steals your iPod (and shares your music files), you are a criminal. Big difference.
Re:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:3, Insightful)
They can't.
But if you happen to be the victim of "theft" a lot of times, then they could reasonably start asking questions.
Re:They already do this in theaters (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So the pirate has to buy three copies now ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, if you have n bits missing from each file and you want to reconstruct the original, you will need at most n-1 records since at most n-1 bits that are missing could overlap.
I like this idea. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ohhhhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically if the RIAA says "we found copies of Titanic and Spiceworld in your online data store on June 15", you can come back and show them your official copy bought on May 12 so they'll leave you alone. Assuming forgeries are difficult, this might allow technologies like managed online media storage to get off the ground without the legalities dragging it down. Basically this gives you a portfolio of "legally registered" works that another entity can help you manage without imposing additional restrictions on what you can do with the content.
DRM kind of does this, but it locks up the portfolio and leaves someone besides the end-user with the keys. Under a scheme like this, you're less fencing in your property, and more just making an outline that says where the property boundaries are...
Re:Ohhhhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually think this is just about right in terms of copy protection. You're right, really professional pirates won't be stopped, but they never will be. However, it discourages individuals from posting their purchased copy online.
So long as you don't have any moral issues with piracy, anyone can buy a CD, rip it, and put it online. It's easy, doesn't require any expertise, and loads of people do it. That's part of the reason why there's an absolute flood of music online. However, if you knew that every copy online could be traced back to the first guy who purchased it, far fewer people would do it.
So, if you accept that hard-core professional pirates just can't be stopped, and your goal is to discourage casual piracy without preventing people from doing valid things, watermarking is a good solution.
Like door locks... (Score:4, Insightful)
re: DRM (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Its just too much work to crack/reencode etc... Not impossible, just a pain in the ass (probably more of a pain in the ass then running a disc through DVD Shrink)
2. If something has your name on it, they hope that you will be more likely to keep everything honest. They don't have to come after me, or even threaten to, because if I see a file with my name floating around I might be worried what others think etc... This doesn't mean that no one will distribute, but many would think about it twice. They are basically saying that if you are the only one using it then you have nothing to worry about
Re:So the pirate has to buy three copies now ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, I understand the "I need to break the copy protection scheme to use my media!" mentality we all have - because this *isn't* "copy protection". it's "copy indication". You can still do whatever you want with it.
hell, you can still even share it with your friends!
just don't put it on a p2p share.
rip the audio for an mp3? go for it.
recode it for your ipod? sure.
want to ditch your ipod and get some other media player? you're able to without having to jump through hoops.
none of that is restricted.
this is exactly the kind of copyright "protection" we've been begging for - so why WOULD you immediately try to break it?
hell, even better is they only have to store a hash of my watermark on file to re-send me the video as often as I want it wherever I want it, and it's up to me not to abuse it. this is a *good thing*
Piracy is a Social problem that DRM can't solve (Score:2, Insightful)
Any Crypto-based DRM can be bypassed. RIAA/MPAA give the person the DRM'ed data and give them the key to play it, and then they tell them they are not allowed to copy it. I have news, if you can play it you can read it. Period. Failure guaranteed. The problem is that by making it unusable by DRM'ing it they actually ensure that someone will be pissed-off enough to put it out on a p2p share.
Watermarking on the other hand addresses the Social issue and is only a deterrence to sharing the file, not to using it anywhere or anytime the purchaser chooses. The drawback is that one takes a chance of the media getting into the wrong hands and then getting blamed for willingly violating the copyright laws. Yes, you can easily remove or destroy a simple watermark, however the watermark can be done in such a way that when repeated with several variations of bit flips during encoding the water mark can still be recovered, much like using parity bits to correct a memory storage error. The question the p2p sharer will have to face is whether they have sufficiently removed the redundant copies well enough to prevent the recovery process from revealing their identity. Of course you can buy it under false pretenses/name and then its all a moot point. Just being a deterrence to keep the honest person from sharing without suffering undue problems during its use is definitely a step in the right direction.
The dark side of this is that DRM could be added in such a way that the player would refuse to play without a second watermark being present. If you destroy the first then the second won't allow the media to be used. Thats only a speed bump for a true geek. You can count on the MPAA/RIAA to jump on that band wagon before long, and we will see more of the same until they come to their senses. They don't learn very quickly after all.
Content proveiders don't just want to stop piracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone with a copy of even the most basic video editing software could completely obliterate any identifying information in the file simply by cropping off the first 15 seconds, and converting the file to AVI or MPEG.
Re:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Ohhhhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
This will make an interesting comparison to iTunes... iTunes sells music online with DRM that can, in principle, be defeated [wikipedia.org] (or 1 person could buy an un-DRMed CD and upload it to the rest of the world). But by putting just enough hassle in front of the typical consumer, combined with pricing that is generally perceived as reasonable, iTunes has managed to be quite successful. Consumers could engage in piracy, but most choose not to.
What's interesting about identity watermarking is that instead of using a digital control like iTunes, they're using a more social one -- making people feel accountable. (As was pointed out, it's unclear yet whether people will actually be held accountable.) If that is effective, critics of the **AAs could make a more effective argument that DRM, which restricts legitimate fair use, is not necessary.
Where... (Score:3, Insightful)
The watermarking system disallows my LEGAL right of selling that object to somebody else.
Now, what would be interesting would be an online database of all the media conglomerates coming together to create a Ownership Library, in which one can buy a copy right, so that downloading it would be legal. Simply verifying if requested downloader has a copy provided to them could potentially make users on p2p legal.
For example, I'd like to download a new album. I'd go to the ownership library, buy a copy "right", then download from any source I wish (legit provider, or piratebay..). To keep these shares legit, it would potentially request that I have a copy right to access that file share, and after checking that I can own it, allows download. It could keep the users AND sharers from turning into copyright violators.
Re:Ohhhhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
So is the risk that someone would hack into your computer reason not to use a service like this, which has definite benefit if you were in the market for downloading videos? No. People who hack into your computer can fuck up your life a lot worse than just stealing your videos.
Re:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:4, Insightful)
But this is all beside the point. The watermarking in and of itself will be enough of a deterrent for most people, which is what they're really after. The watermarking will also help the authorities to more comprehensively understand exactly what goes on with filesharing (how many original copies are being shared? How far is the reach? What is the lifecycle of a file? etc.).
I, for one, think it's a great idea. Nobody's actions are being restricted; just a bit more information is being made freely available, as it wants to be. We just have to make sure to combat the "it has his name on it so he must have distributed it" reflex.
Re:Ohhhhh... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think I can agree with the prices. The only 2 prices I can think of that would be unfair would be anti-competitively low pricing used to undercut small start-up competitors until they go out of business so that they can jack them up again. Or, monopoly pricing a necessity out of people's reach.
But since this is a luxury good, it should be fine for them to price however they like. At higher prices, they'll get less sales, and lower prices, they get a lower return on each sale. If they're pricing higher than the profit-maximizing point(i.e making less money than they could by pricing high rather than pricing low), that's their loss, but also their business.
Buying movies after they've been out for awhile gets a cheaper price too, since you pay a premium to see a movie as soon as possible.
Re:So the pirate has to buy three copies now ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether these codes are actually implemented, I have no idea.
Re:Flawed in Principle (Score:3, Insightful)
But the world contains billions of people, millions of computers, and I guess I'm just used to the idea that - one way or another - eventually the content is just going to leak.
Being first to provide the content or being well-organized about making it available in the long-haul, and with full legal sanction, (like libraries and movie rental stores) is the best strategy to living in the world where piracy occurs. Fighting it directly just doesn't strike me as a practical element of the content business model. I guess they might be hoping for enough deterrance, or perceived deterrance, to deter.
Perhaps that's just enough, in most cases, to give them what they [seem to] want: The appearance that some additional enforcement could be linked to the person who copies & distributes content.
Re:Ohhhhh... (Score:4, Insightful)
I won't say that music and movies are luxuries. I agree that HDTV and 5.2 surround are luxuries, stupid ones to be fair. But visual and audio arts are a primary need for people. Humans play music and drama when they don't have enough food to eat, they built instruments and wore play dresses before writing was developed. You can't honestly say that simple entertainment is a luxury and, since we don't have a lifestyle that allow us to gather every evening around the fire to sing and play, listening to music and watching a movie is a real need for us, not as important as eating and having sex but not much less either.
Not buying it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether or not people are "fundamentally" good or evil isn't an argument worth having, in a way, because it's impossible (or nearly so) to take a person completely out of their environment and away from the threat or fear of consequences. However, I suspect that if you gave the 'average Joe' a Ring of Gyges [wikipedia.org], that he wouldn't help himself to the contents of the local bank/liquor-store/etc. (at least until the novelty of being able to possess anything wore off).
While you, in fact, may be so constrained by morality -- and if that is the case, I salute you -- but to assume that most people are, seems a bit of a stretch. Most people don't commit crimes, because the perceived risk/reward doesn't work out in their favor. I could go out tonight and hold up the 7-11 on the corner, but I'm not going to; the few hundred bucks it might gain me (at best) wouldn't be worth the strong possibility of spending the next decade or so in prison. However, to someone who was poorer, or strung out on crack, that equation might come out differently; the possibility of a small amount of cash might be more than enough to make the risk worthwhile.
We can argue about the fundamental nature of humanity all day -- after all, if it was good enough a subject for Plato, it's good enough for me -- but in the end, what matters is whether your philosophy produces a model that predicts how people actually act, rather than how they wish they acted, or how they justify their own actions to themselves. The risk/reward model does this fairly well, at least with economic and property crimes, and therefore seems far more likely.
Resale rights will die... (Score:3, Insightful)
As distribution becomes entirely free of physical media it was going to be hard to resell your copies anyway. What did you want to do - have people that popped over to your garage sale stick a usb drive in your computer and mv the copy over??? On the one hand we want physical media to die so that we can time shift and format shift to our hearts content, and on the other hand we want to maintain resale rights. I'd say be reasonable.
Resale rights have been dying for a while. A lot of new computer games come with cd keys that get linked to online accounts ala steam. You could try to resell them, but the guy at the other end would be buying a limited copy. Try reselling your itunes downloads recently? http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5072842.html [com.com]. Old record stores were my favourite way of getting old music because you couldn't waltz into Tower records and buy it. Then emusic came along and I switched.
Availability of older material won't be so much of an issue if you have distribution thats free of physical media. That itself reduced the value of your resale rights in a way. Digital distribution with watermarking will very effectively kill the resale market. This will probably lead to nasty pricing issues with older material. But the point is they were bound to die ever since I could make a copy of a CD and sell the original at a garage sale. Or borrow a dvd from blockbuster and burn a couple of thousand copies with dvd decrypter and resell them in paper envelopes. In the process though I get dirt simple format, place and time shifting.
Now digital watermarking is a much more consumer friendly approach than DRM. You get a copy, do what you like with it except distribute it and if that means you effectively can't resell it then c'est la vie. Nothing by the way prevents you from reselling it - just the risk of getting hauled to court. Sort of what you'd expect in a world where you can keep a copy and make an infinite number of resales anyway.
DRM controls you much more. You cannot format shift easily (and frequently not without loss). Worse how you could use your content were more strongly controlled. I can imagine a world where if you wanted your iTunes to play on your iPod and your mac you'd need a different a different version for both. Or one where you couldn't buy a copy and only lease one on a pay for play. If any company gets a monopoly on online content distribution this will likely happen.
Re:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:2, Insightful)
We can only hope that EVENTUALLY, people will learn from allofmp3.com and others. If you set the price right (~$1/album/dvd/whatever) and don't use any DRM or whatever, you can STILL make money. In fact you'll probably make MORE because you don't have to license insane protection schemes like this, and nobody will bother pirating anything because if the price is reasonable, it is no longer worth people's time to pirate. If I (hypothetically) have to spend 30 minutes digging around some music warez torrent site to find the songs on an album and HOPE it downloads and HOPE its not fake and HOPE I never get sued, or I could (hypothetically) just pay $1 to allofmp3.com and get a good copy in a minute or two.
Re:Ohhhhh... (Score:3, Insightful)
How does it happen? Users can execute attached files, install infected software, be the victim of a OS or browser vulnerability, and so on. It happens literally millions of times a month in the real world.
Any one of these trojans could upload files, especially if a scheme such as this becomes popular.
Re:Ohhhhh... (Score:4, Insightful)
1 evil friend
1 flash drive
1 minute alone with your computer
Re:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this sort of scheme has more potential to go drastically wrong for some innocent person than any other sort of DRM. All it takes is one person you share with (or yourself, for that matter) to be careless, and your name is plastered all over the internet as a pirate, and you have a hell of a time convincing a jury otherwise.
Re:Ohhhhh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. If they just want to screw you over, sending threatening emails from "you" to various
Re:Simple work around (Score:3, Insightful)
Not at all. Anyone would love to be able to narrow the suspect list to 10. After that, you start comparing IP addresses, check the accounts for suspicious activity, etc.
And if the same account is used for more than one file, you compare the list of possible candidates, and see EXACTLY which accounts appear in both lists. Now you've narrowed it down to 1.
No, you aren't. They aren't going to make the data completely random. While each copy you have allows you to identify one more byte of the signature, there's still 1.99Kbytes left that you haven't indentified. That means you need a ridiculously large number of copies of each video.
Re:XOR (Score:2, Insightful)
How do you know that the watermark is in the color domain? More likely, it'll be in the frequency domain because it holds better when the file is analog copied. Plus, the watermark will be in a random place or somewhere determined by a encyption scheme. It could even be like using a public key! I seriously doubt that you could break a well designed watermark scheme. It is NOTHING like DRM.
Cheers
Ben
Re:Ohhhhh... (Score:3, Insightful)
In times of economic distress (most notably during the Great Depression) the entertainment industry, in whatever form it takes at the time, always does better than at any other time.
It may well be that the worse the economy, the more people have a strong need for a clearly-defined escape mechanism, and entertainment fills that need.
And in terms of how much discretionary budget you have to shell out at once, entertainment is at the bottom end of the scale -- a cheaper "escape" than almost anything else. When people have less cash, they're more likely to spend it in relatively small increments, like movies ($8) rather than on a major toy or a travel vacation.
IOW, I agree with you -- people *need* something on this order, whether it's a communal gruntfest around the campfire after a tough day hunting deer with rocks and clubs, or a cheap DVD after a long day slaving at the Cube Farm. And the need is probably *stronger* with modern urban jobs, since in more-primitive environments people often sing while they work -- so get some "escape" as an on-the-job perk.
Re:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, people will get files with their unique IDs posted on the Internet when they are stolen. No, it won't be an epidemic problem. Are you seriously picturing pirates going around mugging people just to get the media files off of their digital devices?
Then it's a law enforcement problem, and I think we can all get on the same side against such pirates without the need for a discussion about copyright as a social contract (unless you're a Pastafarian).