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)
Re:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ohhhhh... (Score:5, 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, Interesting)
I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with this, though. I do like it better than nasty DRM, but it seems... Underdone, and perhaps still a step in the wrong direction. I think the various **AAs should learn that the problem isn't piracy, but that piracy is the symptom of a larger underlying problem, that their business model is outdated and self-defeating (may I add draconian?), and their prices are unfair.
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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 lo
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.
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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 t
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you forgot ugly, lazy, and disrespectful.
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)
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.
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.
Re:Ohhhhh... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Exactly. If they just want to screw you over, sending threatening emails from "you" to various
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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, Interesting)
As to the theft vs. giving it away, well, there are some easy answers to this. Once a person is a "person of interest", then allow them to keep going, but track them closely. Most ppl will be found to give away the film. It is when it hits the net and is spread wildly, that the issues come in. I would guess that fewer than 1% of all film/music owners are at the core of thefts.
This is overall a win/win.
That's easy: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's easy: Obtain two or more copies and compare them. The watermarks MUST be different, so the bits that are different tell you where they are.
Assuming the watermarks are statistically similar to a fixed number of random bit-flips, two copies identify half of them, three identify 3/4ths, four identify 7/8ths, etc.
Of course with a few samples you might be able to crack the system. If the watermark is a set of redundant copies of something you can identify, from th
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SHHHHH! Don't give it away, patsy!
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I considered (as I'm sure many did) this exact same digital watermarking idea a couple of years ago for movies, images and audio files. Thought it might make a decent idea for a startup. However, within a few hours of researching the topic, it became pretty clear that it wouldn't work without additional DRM. The watermark is destroyed the moment you re-encode the file into a different format format. The DRM was required to prevent the re-encoding, and let's face it,
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Better yet, steal a credit card number, "buy" a copy, and some other guy gets blamed for it.
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*
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.
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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
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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.
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If you're assuming the bits will be in the same place in each file, and it's just a trivial case of doing a diff. you're very naïve. Digital watermarking schemes are generally quite advanced these days, encode the data in many redundant ways thoughout the file, add in chaff with the wheat to foil attackers, and are resistant to many transformations (scaling, transcoding, etc.). That's not to say the watermark can't
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.
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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
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).
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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.
No, they don't have to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt - or even a reasonable doubt (as in a criminal case). The standard for civil cases (like the RIAA cases) is much lower. They would still be able to use their current tactics.
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.
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Even in criminal court the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt". In civil court, the standard of proof is "Clear and convincing evidence".
Standards of Proof [wikipedia.org]
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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 the
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.
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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.
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Keep your network protected, and it won't happen.
The big drawbacks I see here are: 1) Joe Denisovich, downloads movie and distributes it in Russia, immune to legal action from the US (counterable by not distributing to Russians
2) People can still copy to their friends computers. (not really what the MPAA is worried about, IMHO)
Honestly,
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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:What's the enforcement mechanism? (Score:4, Funny)
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So what happens if you decide you no longer like the movie, and sell it to someone on ebay who then decides to upload it on a torrent site? Are you still responsible? What if you sell it for cash to some kid down the street? What if THEY sell it again and the third person then uploads it? Are you liable?
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You've gotta be kidding - at that level of infection the appropriate phrase is "I'm very ignorant".
So the pirate has to buy three copies now ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Re:So the pirate has to buy three copies now ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Whether these codes are actually implemented, I have no idea.
re-encode the movie (Score:3, Interesting)
Could the missing bits affect the movie and be detectable?
Re:re-encode the movie (Score:5, Interesting)
The only way I could successfully remove the watermark without making the image unusable was by diff'ing the original with the watermarked. But where are you going to get the original?
no cigar (Score:2, Informative)
"Because of its design, the watermark even survives most editing changes and format shifts"
Re:re-encode the movie (Score:5, Funny)
Quite clever, really.
Re:re-encode the movie : Not enough (Score:3, Informative)
Thats the whole challenge.
Off course the watermark might not be resistant to extremely destructive transformation such as downscaling from HD to QCIF, but then who cares about pirated QCIF video ? But certainly a very accurate transcoding would not affect the watermark.
Current watermarking technologies are very much dependant on proprietary algorithm.
Compression? (Score:3, Interesting)
From TFA:
I'll assume the people working on Streamburst are clever; but I wonder how susceptible the ghost-stream is to translation and recompression: whether it's possible to corrupt the signature-stream while retaining watchable quality.
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If they do it right, it won't be. A human being can't see the difference between RGB color #FFFFFF white and #FEFEFE white, but a compressor won't change that color number and neither will a translator.
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If they do it right, it won't be. A human being can't see the difference between RGB color #FFFFFF white and #FEFEFE white, but a compressor won't change that color number and neither will a translator.
Why wouldn't it? Video compression is lossy. If it saves bits by representing white by almost-white in a certain block of a certain frame, the codec is free to do it (for exactly the reason you cite -- humans can't tell the difference).
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Bit-stripping (Score:2)
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?
Still doesn't solve the real problems (Score:5, Interesting)
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Heck, I purchase things now and then, and once in a while I'l
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I don't know about you, but I know plenty of people who go to such filesharing sites because they are unable to obtain the media in a usable format if they pay for it. If they can't view the "legal" media for whatever reason (unsupported mobile device, Linux user, etc), then the legal media becomes worth $0.00 to them, and they go the illegal route.
Now, if the legal media were usable to them, then it would actually h
I see this "cracked" in five seconds (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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http://www.eire.com/2005/04/15/irish-bank-launche
If it isn't widespread now, it certainly will become so.
No need to limit it to the first 5 seconds (Score:2)
-Eric
Warmer... but still not right (Score:2)
Something similar to this was featured in a couple Tom Clancy books, the "Canary Trap" where a few key words were changed in versions of a document, without changing the meaning. Find an exact quote and you know who gave i
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Even there, I suppose that eventually with enough work you could undo that by decoding and re-encoding each frame to your own specifications. You'll lose some resolution, and it would take a lot of computing power, but I don't think that'll deter people: they're wil
They already do this in theaters (Score:4, Informative)
However, they already do something similar in theaters. Every so often in theatrical movies you will notice a weird pattern of "cigarette burns" that appears for a brief moment. (Yes, to my eyes at least, they are visible and sort of distracting.) The pattern is different for each copy of the film shipped. The idea is that, if someone sneaks into a movie theater and makes a cam of a first-run movie, the producers of the movie can analyze the video and figure out which theater it came from. That helps them put more pressure on theater owners to enforce bans on video cameras, etc.
But does it seem like there are fewer cam bootlegs out there since they started doing this? They started it maybe five years ago.
Re:They already do this in theaters (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:They already do this in theaters (Score:5, Informative)
Most people don't seem to see them, and they typically try to make it after a bright flash (which makes them a little less visibile). Personally, they drive me nuts, but so do single projector DLPs [dummies.com].
No extra watermarking needed (Score:2)
Not To Bad (Score:3, Interesting)
I have always thought that piracy should be solved through law enforcement, not technology. Much like traffic law enforcement.
DRM is the equivalent to putting a 70 mph speed cap on all cars. This watermarking is sort of like requiring cars to have a license plate.
If they can find a way to make this work I'd be overjoyed.
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.
Blockbuster Watermark (Score:4, Funny)
I'm an idiot. (Score:3, Funny)
Hmmn, that sounds like Unix... (Score:3, Funny)
TiVoToGo uses a watermark strategy (Score:2)
I like this idea. (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple work around (Score:4, Interesting)
2-do a bit comparison
3-modify a copy to reflect a random profile of all removed info
this would make any compairson hard.
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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.
I applaud the idea. Watermark broken in 3... 2.. 1 (Score:2, Redundant)
Purchase two copies under different names.
Compare the two bit-for bit. Anywhere the bits are different, set the bit to a random value.
Watermark destroyed. Video intact.
I had a similar idea (Score:5, Interesting)
To explain what my idea was I'll first give a short reminder of how jpeg works. Blocks of image data are transformed using something based on fourier transformations. The resulting coefficients are then rounded to different scales. For high frequency components a scale with larger steps can be used as errors in these components are not easilly noticed. There is a table of standard steps to be used for each combination of horisontal and vertical frequency. (I left out the part about how to handle colour components, which is not relevant for the following idea).
Making a minor change to one of the step sizes is not going to cause a major difference in the size of the compression or the quality. By picking some of the entries at random and reducing the step size you are going to increase the quality of random parts of the picture. Now what I want to do is to make a redundant encoding of a signature on the text from the watermark and use those bits to choose places to increase the quality. The signed text itself is included in the begining of the file.
First of all removing the signature would means you couldn't compute the step sizes, and thus you couldn't correctly decode the file. And if the file was reencoded, you might still be able to extract the watermark by comparing with the original uncompressed movie. You would just have to find enough of the places where quality was increased. (And enough is a lot less than all of them).
The signature used in the encoding should be performed using the buyer's private key. In addition to this, I would sign the entire encoded movie using the seller's private key to be able to detect if a file is corrupted (as a service for the users). The part about the user signing something could be replaced with just using a hash of the text, but that might weaken the proof of origin of a particular movie a bit.
Now all of this could be combined with features to prevent users from accidentially losing a copy to a cracker/pirate. Since this is not intended to prevent users from intentionally copying the file, it could be a lot better and less intrusive than DRM.
Content proveiders don't just want to stop piracy (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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:Nothing major (Score:4, Informative)
Did you read even the summary? Removing the beginning does not remove the unique signature formed by bit removal.
Of course bit removal or any sort of water mark can also be mucked with.
Still, this would be more user friendly than "hard" DRM.
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Re:Digital Fingerprinting? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (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-organ