Archive notice: This article was originally published on May 28, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
EMI, Apple, Universal Music, Warner, Sony: more and more providers, and increasingly important ones, in the online popular music market are abandoning consumer-unfriendly rights management methods, abbreviated DRM (Digital Rights Management). Dr. Martin Steinebach, the multimedia security expert at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology, welcomes this development: “In the past, we repeatedly pointed out the disadvantages and weaknesses of DRM. Various large and small publishers and distributors have now taken the
plunge and turned away from DRM, making it more flexible for customers to handle data that they have, after all, paid for.”
But Steinebach also knows that DRM-free need not mean “unprotected”. “What is now widespread in the audiobook scene is attracting increasing interest in music and video. Digital watermarks are becoming increasingly popular as an alternative to DRM, as an easy-to-use and reliable deterrent against the unauthorised sharing of media.” SIT can now report customers not only in Germany, but also in the USA, Russia, Indonesia, England, Poland and Switzerland. Talks with further customers literally from
all over the world demonstrate the increased interest in the technology.
Fraunhofer SIT’s watermarking technology for audiobooks and music tracks is based on inaudible differences in volume and pitch that cannot be perceived by the human ear and, without knowledge of the embedding algorithm and watermark code, cannot be detected even with computer assistance. And what cannot be measured cannot be selectively removed. Embedded watermarks therefore do not degrade audible sound quality. Other versions of the digital watermarks are available for image files and digital videos.
Actively Searching for Illegal Copies
“The logical consequence of the spread of audio watermarks is now the introduction of active search systems that can automatically detect content across a wide variety of Internet distribution channels. These include not only file-sharing networks, but also one-click hosters such as Rapidshare”, promises Patrick Wolf from Steinebach’s team. He has already developed software that specifically tracks down potentially illegal copies on the Internet. This software automatically acts as a participant in a file-sharing network or downloads files directly from WWW servers and searches them for the watermark, which, if present, allows conclusions to be drawn about the source of the illegal copies. Unlike other measures against the illegal use of file-sharing networks, which rely on logged IP addresses, it is therefore not necessary to identify individual download-
users. The marked media point the rights holder directly towards those who made them available for download without authorisation, because the non-removable watermark contains all the information necessary to trace the illegal copies.
Together with its cooperation partner Watermark AG, SIT is presenting corresponding technologies, which are already commercially usable, at
this year’s GVU (Society for the Prosecution of Copyrights) industry forum “Prevention and Investigation” on June 5 in Hamburg. The event provides information on interlocking measures and solutions for protection against pirated copies.
