Originally, copy-protection and DRM measures aimed to make it difficult to extract or convert music into a form that can easily be shared out, but with a major drawback that all it took was one successful rip for it to spread like a virus. Over a year ago, SunnComm bought Darknoise in an aim to plug the analogue loop hole and prevent audio (re)compression such as conversion to MP3, but so far we have not heard of any discs sold using this system. Now a pair of invertors from the US Air Force Research Laboratory have worked on a different approach by hiding a 20kb warning message in the music.
As music tends to consist of various random phased harmonics, it is possible to modify the phase shifts to create a pattern for storing information without having any perceivable effect with the music. However, the inventors aim to have a software decoder built into file sharing software and MP3 players that looks out for this phase shift pattern and replaces the section with the decoded message. Thus in this case the actual hidden data will be an audible voice recording such as the recording of a boss within the recording industry or record label. Certainly not something one would like to hear in the middle of their favourite song!
The advantage with this technique is that it will not affect existing playback equipment, however, file sharing networks and MP3 player manufacturers will need to take on this software decoder and the music labels will need to embed the message within their tracks for this technique to work. pipemanid used our news submit to let us know about the following news:
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According to New Scientist reports, the warning -- for instance, a voice from a record company boss, berating the user for piracy -- exploits the fact that the tones of a musical instrument consist of a complex pattern of randomly-phased harmonics. Inventors Mark Bocko and Zeljko Ignjatovic tweaked a few harmonics to shift out of the pattern and then used those shifts to convey a 20-kilobit speech message. Their patented idea is to incorporate a software decoder in file-sharing applications which encourage mass copying and are the bane of the music industry today. The decoder would detect the telltale phase shifts and convert them into the warning message, causing them to boom out through loudspeakers or headphones, the British weekly reports in next Saturday's issue. For legitimate listeners, though, the digital shifts are so small that there is no difference at all in the perception of the music. Previous attempts by researchers to bury anti-piracy signals in copyrighted music and films have run into counter-measures by hackers, who filter out the message, and also compatibility problems in players. A little more info can be found here. |
The one major drawback I see with this approach is that consumers will have to upgrade their file sharing application to a new version incorporating this decoder. Then again, if a major file sharing company does take on this technology, then while some experienced users will refuse to upgrade their software, the majority of novice users will automatically upgrade their software not knowing any better. Assuming the message gets replaced at the file uploading side, this will make it difficult to distinguish between a good copy and a modified version as one would have to listen to the entire track to see whether it contains this message.
Even if just a few file sharing networks go ahead with this approach, many users tend to have more than one file sharing network on their PC all using the same shared folder. As a result, if one downloads a dud from the affected network, then the modified file will end up being shared on the other file sharing networks using that common folder on their PC.
Feel free to discuss and find out more about file sharing and its legal issues on our Music Downloads, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) & Legal Issues Forum.
Source: Yahoo News - Technology
