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93 Comments
- Jaymoon, on 10/10/2007, -7/+34This is what they should have done all along.
You may not like me for saying it, but if they would have simply placed watermarks in songs without DRM, maybe record labels and the RIAA wouldn't have such a bad reputation they have today.
The idea behind it is simple. Say John buys this DRM-free song with a watermark in it. He can listen to it through whatever means he chooses (MP3 Player, his 5 computers throughout the house, etc.). He can also send it to his friend Bob who can play it like any other normal song. If Universal happens to find that 50,000 copies of John's watermarked song are floating around the net, then they can go after John to see how that happened.
If the songs were tracked back to the consumer... The consumer might think twice about just "giving them away" to friends and/or strangers. - dt40, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11Actually, what Apple does is not a watermark. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermark for some background on what a digital watermark is.
- Scruffydan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10What happens when the songs are lost? If I loose my iPod and the music on it ends up on the net should i be liable?
- KingPhallus, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8Nah, they removed the DRM and replaced it with spyware.
- nightstrm, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8When did fair use extend to giving your friends copies of things they didn't pay for? Fair use is for your own personal use, not the use by your friends.
- smellinator, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5If you are concerned that your music may have a watermark in it, send it to me, and I'll scan it and let you know.
- ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Except watermarks will be unique to the song and not the purchaser. So no dice. Yet.
- mercurysquad, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6"Also, I imagine that you can re-rip the mp3 file and the watermark will go away. Or even, someone will come up with a technique to find the wathermark and erase it"
Actually no. I assume they will use the current state-of-the-art watermarking based on spread-spectrum techniques. These are robust against almost any kind of processing, so much that removing the watermark will entail mutilating the audio beyond recognition (more or less). So it's not really trivial to rip the watermark since it's not based on any programming hacks, but more on perception and DSP theory. Look on Google Scholar or CiteSeer for papers about this. E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_spectrum or http://mack.ittc.ku.edu/cox95secure.html - ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5RTFA; watermarks will be unique to each song, not to each purchase. Doing the latter would require a large change in online stores' structures, something that many of them are not willing to do for a trial-run of this selling model.
- shinelikeitdoes, on 10/10/2007, -4/+9this is actually totally fair. anyone who is opposed to this approach now is basically a pirate anyway. there is no legitimate argument against this watermarking unless it degrades the music quality.
- ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Since so many people missed this point (see above) I think it warrants its own root comment--watermarks will be song-specific, not purchase-specific. FTFA: "to include, say, information about the purchaser [...] is too cumbersome for the trial, as it would require significant retooling of participating online music stores."
So no, they aren't going to be able to track the original purchaser of illegally copied content. At least not with this scheme; but it's clear that they've thought of the possibility. So that may be the next step; but it is not the current one. - skoops, on 10/10/2007, -10/+15That's what a watermark is
- FrugalFreak, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6sounds like they are looking for new "data" to back up piracy claims. Thus I will avoid anything "Universal" labeled, so not to not give them their wishes. They are still hoping to end piracy and convert back to legacy business methods and think they can do so through maneuvering congress, lawsuits, other methods.
- prax, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4But we all complain that we pirate because we want DRM-free music. So when we have DRM-free music... why then will you pirate? If music was free, who'd publish music? The musicians gotta eat too. Sure, the publishers make 98% of the money.. but 2% of nothing ain't gonna pay the bills.
- m00nstone, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4People are way off thinking that DRM is on it's way out. The relative success of itunes and Xbox 360 Live are proof that people will pay the price for DRM'd digital distribution.
In the near future all digital content will only be available from DRM controlled digital distribution. And these services will enjoy the same success as both the cd and dvd. - r3zonance, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3MacSuxWindozSux, you are wrong. Digital Rights Management is about the control and restriction of use of content.
A watermark does not stop you from copying or re-distributing a file, in most people that would be their conscience. - Shorties, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3To me this is a good thing, it allows the music industry to feel safe about their music and you to have all the rights you should with the music. Those of you against DRM are never going to get exactly what you want, you have to compromise with the music industry, and this sounds like a good compromise to me. Now we need it on Movies and TV shows so that I can burn them to DVD's and watch them on my TV. (Without having to play them off my iPod onto my TV)
- Yage2006, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Real pirates no where to get the stuff before it even is available on those online stores anyway .
So why bother ? - RidesAPaleHorse, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Yes, ti is still DRM-Free. There is no DRM to restrict the devices on which you can play your purchased song, there's no authentication that has to happen.
The watermarking simply shows who purchased a particular copy. - BobbyMC, on 07/21/2008, -0/+3How about we ask ourselves why they think piracy works like a "flood" anyway. All piracy, be that BT or Gnutella based clients, stems from very few sources. It only takes 1 piece of data.
Think about a Gnutella based client. Even though you will on average find many more sources independent of each other than on BT, in the big picture it is still a very small number of sources.
They're basically thinking to themselves that music spreads because every single person who has access to a non DRM track immediately throws it on some file sharing network. They seem to think that there need to be lots and lots of different people ripping CDs or de-RMing files for their precious music to spread. That is way off base, and anyone who has used any form of file sharing program for more than 5 seconds knows that no amount of DRM, high or low, will ever make a difference in the way it all works. - dogel, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Prediction: By the end of the trial, Universal will publish their findings which will justify their putting DRM's on their *****. It doesn't matter if their findings are even legitimate, or even if they actually looked for their watermarked songs, all that matters is the publicity the story will receive when they have their 'hard' proof that DRM-free music is 'hurting' the music industry. It doesn't matter if someone exposes their results as false, that story won't be nearly as big and hardly anyone will notice. Soon after their justification, DRM's will be even more strict. Hopefully I'm wrong.
- r3zonance, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Well this is turning into the exact same debate over the DRM-free music on iTunes.
It would appear that 90+% of digg don't want DRM-free music, they just want free music that they can give away to anyone.
That's not how it works, wake up and smell the coffee. Generally (and don't even think about mentioning open source software, that's why I said generally) if you want something you have to pay for it.
That's life!!! - grumpyrain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Absolutely. Including data in the header of a file does not constitute watermarking. Watermarking usually involves some form of Steganography (combining a set of subtle and undetectable differences that carries some information). However, I have never seen Apple actually deny using these techniques with iTunes. They merely confirm they include the Apple ID in the header. It may still be possible to identify who owns the track even if you remove this ID. (You would need to do a hash over two distinctly sourced copies of the file excluding the header to tell).
- mthoringen, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4How the *&#% is giving a copied song to 2 friends fair use?
- corneliusJones, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2if everybody in the whole music pirating community just DOES NOT share these songs, we can "prove" that the claims of piracy are grossly over stated! think about it...what if universal wakes up and finds NO copies of this out there?
- ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2It will be much easier to find a leaked DRM-free copy from the studio than to strip the watermark. Digital watermarking technology these days is by no means trivial.
- CosmicJustice, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Why don't you read the ***** article before you comment?????
- ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2They're not tracking you. RTFA.
- Scruffydan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2not to mention that the original buyer, may not have intentionally shared the song at all. Music is frequently stored on portable devices, which can sometimes be lost. Should someone be sued because he lost his iPod?
- GnuTzu, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5Does this mean they'll be able to calculate damages against the original purchaser based upon the number of copies that have spread though the wild?
I assume that each copy sold will have a unique watermark, and they'll be able to track an illegally shared copy back to the original purchaser and that they may attempt to estimate how many illegal copies were made from a single purchase. - superkendall, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5Meanwhile the execs at EMI continue to sleep on sacks stuffed with $1000 bills thanks to iTunes+.
I don't think the watermark test is a bad idea, I just this the results are obvious and the sample size they are trying to measure is way too small. Not being on iTunes what are the odds they get even one hit as to one of the ten tracks people actually bother to buy? And if selling DRm free music didn't work why does EMI keep expanding the iTunes+ catalog, including John F'ing Lennon songs? - mfalkon, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2cry me a ***** river
- bmwboy2844, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2No, but, seriously, what are the odds that your iPod will be lost, and the person rips the songs, watermark intact, and shares them on (insert p2p network name here)?
Slim. Very, very slim. In my opinion the pros outweigh the cons. - ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1My guess is that a scrambler would have to be audible before it could make the SNR too low to read the watermark.
Ans since the song only has one original source, if you had two *different* versions of the song, just use the one without the Universal watermark. You're not going to find two different versions of the same recording with the same watermark.
Good thoughts, but I suspect it may take more than 2 minutes to counter the research of an entire field / subset of DSP. - GnuTzu, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The article states that it didn't have all the details. Excuse me for speculating beyond what the article could provide.
- ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1There probably is; just no way to test it without access to their methods.
- dadofbrook, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11. Not by cracking DRM control like Hymn, there are mainly other two methods to bypass the DRM control for protected music.
The first method is to burn a copy to an audio CD and then rip/encode it. Some software products take a smarter method which allows user to burn music to a Virtual CD-RW disc and then automatically rip/encode the music stored on the Virtual CD-R. This makes the whole conversion process automatically and faster. NoteBurner (www.noteburner.com) is the typical example which uses this Virtual CD-RW drive method.
The second method is to use a recording software and sound card. TuneBite is one of the most popular software.
2. Clever method to remove the watermark on the music will be soon available. - Genma, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1this is not drm free. just a pointless pr stunt to test a new form of drm.
- MacSuxWindozSux, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1No No No. The DRM is still present in a way. But the Encryption is what is gone.
DRM in the form of a watermark. No Encryption.
Edit: Oh yeah and they're just tracking the songs in this round... next step is customer specific watermarks. - mookieXL, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Calling all DSP geeks:
Any ways to jam it without affecting sound?
Edit: forget it, it's not out yet :) - ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1We already have such things (current DRM technology). This is a response to broad customer dissatisfaction because of it. So no, I don't believe it will lead to such things, it's a way of trying to keep what they want while getting rid of such things.
- ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Again, no. Just like your comment above which has the same text, no. RTFA. Watermarks will be implemented per-song, not per-purchase or per-buyer. You download two copies from the same source and the difference will be a string of 0s.
- ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Limit to the number of reply levels? I can't reply to Shorties...
It's unlikely that the watermark will be in an inaudible frequency range. First of all, most audio files contain just a high enough sampling frequency to contain up to the upper-limit of human hearing, and no more. Additionally, watermarking is designed so that simple filtering cannot eliminate it; putting in in an inaudible range (either high or low) could easily be removed without affecting audio quality by a sharp hi-pass or low-pass filter. - ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Not exactly, the watermark shows where the song came from. If you and I buy the same song, it will have the same watermark (RTFA, it's there)
- ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1That's not the RIAA's current philosophy; hence why the suits that actually go to court cowever many ***** of dollars
- ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1At least it doesn't restrict where/how you can play the song.
- ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Not if they're using any form of modern watermarking technology, which I guarentee you they are.
http://www.cmlab.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~dynamic/AWM/index.html
"The embedded watermark is robust to common audio signal manipulations, such as MP3 compression, time shifting, cropping, time scaling, D/A A/D conversion, insertion, deletion, re-sampling, re-quantization and filtering." - ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Did noone RTFA?? So many uninformed comments. The watermarks ARE NOT identifiable to the purchaser. That's not to say they won't do it in the future; in fact R'ing TFA shows that they clearly thought about it. But the watermarks are PER SONG, not per user.
- ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Current watermarking technology is designed so that said methods do not eliminate the watermark. It's in the audio itself, but imperceivably so. Even downsampling (to a limit, I imagine) won't eliminate the watermark.
as an example, look at http://www.cmlab.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~dynamic/AWM/index.html
"The embedded watermark is robust to common audio signal manipulations, such as MP3 compression, time shifting, cropping, time scaling, D/A A/D conversion, insertion, deletion, re-sampling, re-quantization and filtering." - rxbudian, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1actually they neglected to put into account the natural human behaviour: people will do what is allowed or can be done. If songs can be copied, people will automatically copy; if there's no fence in the yard, people will just walk on the yard if they have reason/interest to do so.
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