As we already reported, SunnComm Technologies is about to release a new watermark technology that can be embedded inside music files to prevent unauthorized copying. The Inquirer website has posted a small follow-up article on this technology:
The watermark is embedded into the song itself as binary data which "[takes] advantage of acoustical properties and human hearing characteristics to make it imperceptible to the listener." I could be wrong on this '“ and feel free to correct me -- but I'm not sure how you pass binary data through an analog signal or through the radio, especially given that radio transmission noticeably degrades a signal anyway. Could a watermark signal be integrated into audio in such a way that it survived not only analog transmission but signal degradation as well? |
Even if we assume it's possible to encode a watermark system into a song without damaging the playback sound in any way, and that it can be transmitted with its protection intact over both radio and analog, what's to stop someone from writing software to filter out the protection sequence? The idea of using algorithms to filter data is nothing new'”its how audio formats like MP3 or Ogg work. While systems like Macrovision can only be bypassed via a physical device that disables the copy protection, a computer has considerably more flexibility when it comes to its ability to edit, filter, and manipulate audio. In order to make such a watermark protect against any form of tampering, it would have to be impossible to write a computer program to de-filter the information.
Of course, such an action is illegal under the DMCA, but if the song information is scrubbed clean it shouldn't be possible to tell where it came from. The entire Stealth project would look like little more than another ill-fated attempt to develop a copy-proof system, save for the additional restrictions it places, or will attempt to place, on analog and radio output. Since when is recording songs off a radio restricted? One almost begins to wonder if record players and vinyl are about to come back into fashion.
Judging from the reactions on our previous report of this new technology, our visitors share about the same opinion: this new watermarking technology probably won't last long.
Source: The Inquirer
