Filed under: Audio
As DRM fades out, Watermarking fades in
Thought the reign of the RIAA was approaching its last days as the major labels decided to phase out DRM? Think again, as Wired unveils what the industry has up their sleeve yet: digital watermarking.According to the Wired article, Sony and Universal's DRM-free music already contains anonymous watermarks - how long it's going to stay anonymous is only a matter of time. If watermarking works as the industry heavy-weights hope, each song may be embedded with a watermark that can be used to track the original source of songs bouncing across p2p networks, giving them more "hard" evidence when it comes to pushing lawsuits and influencing policy regarding copyright infringement.
Microsoft, not to be left out of the fray, recently won a patent for stealthy audio watermarking. The patent describes a digital watermark that is embedded inside the audio signal designed to be supposedly impossible to remove.
Invasion of privacy? Maybe. Until the exact implementation of watermarking is known, our guess is as good as anybody's, but it would hardly be a surprise if this is a major issue. Another domain affected might be digital/online radio - as songs taken from those sources would be relatively "anonymous," radio providers might be licensed music with new conditions such as requiring overlays into other songs or only partial airtime of songs.
If watermarking does have any foreseeable pros, it's probably a bit slicker than having voice-overs for pre-release review CDs to prevent early leaking of music. But that's probably where the pros end and the cons kick in.
[via Techmeme]
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Adam said 10:40PM on 1-14-2008
Impossible to remove? Hahahaha, I needed a good laugh.
Reply
Reneer said 6:37PM on 1-15-2008
I could live with digital watermarking. So long as it didn't degrade the sound quality and allowed me to use / move the sound file wherever I wanted. DRM, as it currently stands, is what is keeping a good portion of music fans from going legit - no one wants to have to buy two different copies of the same track so they can play it on their PC and on their MP3 player.
Reply
Morgan said 12:58AM on 1-15-2008
"Invasion of privacy? Maybe."
How is that? Just curious how a passive identifier in a product voluntarily purchased by a person could conceivably be an invasion of privacy.
I wouldn't mind watermarking at all. I think they've every right to sell what product they like, just as the consumer has every right in the world not to buy it. Not that anyone has the willpower to exercise that right instead of just stealing anymore, but whatever.
Reply
Mr. Crash said 7:00AM on 1-15-2008
lol... Impossible to remove.
I'll just continue ripping CD's in flac...
listening to compressed files as mpc...
:) Fun.
Reply