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In Reply to: Not yet. posted by Frank on January 29, 2003 at 11:18:55:
"The technology is not included in any playback device. The mark is completely embedded in the signal itself."Absolutely. But unless hardware recognizes this signal and does something with it, it is useless. There are many ideas on how to use a watermark, but they all require hardware support. A recorder, for example, may recognize that it is allowed to make a certain number of copies of this music.
There are already machines that monitor radio airplay of songs. These machines do not use watermarks, they actually identify the waveforms of popular songs. Watermarks are not required for this application, although Verance claims this as an important application.
I cannot predict the future, but I think the whole idea seems to be dying. Verance wants their product in every CD player, cell phone and DVD player. They want to be the worldwide solution to copy protection. I doubt any of this will happen.
Follow Ups:
The idea of watermarking is a very powerful one, and may be enlisted on the side of the forces of light some day. For instance, you may need a watermark to verify that a message came from a certain party, that a photo hasn't been doctored, etc..Recognizing a waveform is not sufficient to establish "property of..". Personally, I agree with you that the market will likely resist deliberate crippling of recording devices - but if you can extend copyrights to seventy years after the death of the artist, who knows what you can get through Congress?
this has nothing much to do with audio watermarking, but as a photographer you may enjoy this. The link contains 2 pictures of an arctic hare, before and after a picture of an airplane is hidden within it. At first, the pictures look only very slightly different. But the more you look....draw your own conclusions whether these type of differences are important or not.
How long do I have to look for differences between the arctic pictures?I'm sure that if you did not know beforehand which picture was watermarked you couldn't tell which one had the mark applied.
You would be pretty amazed if the picture from the plane was extracted from the watermarked arctic picture.
The picture from the plane suffers noticably but that's the embedded 'watermark'. Still recognizeable after extraction.
Other then a very slight redshift it's hard to tell which arctic picture is the unmarked original.
Amazing technology.
no need to argue. I agree it is amazing.
and watermarking is a subset of this general field. Like any other technology, it can be used for good or evil. Terrorists can embed messages within seemingly innocuous photographs. The CIA can do the same. Certify authenticity, as you say, just as the watermark is used in money. However, this watermark does not affect in any way the usage of the money. What I object to in principle, and I'm not the only one, is a watermark that is embedded directly in audio content, not in a phone call, where the audio quality is a secondary concern, but in a supposedly "hi-rez" format where audio quality is the primary selling point. I still say this is dumb. Verance does not say it is inaudible. I have no personal experience with it, so I don't know, but I object in principle. If a machine can hear it, I strongly suspect at least some human beings can also hear it. Especially because it is supposed to be robust enough to survive ripping to MP3 and broadcasting on AM radio. So watermarking as a generic idea, sure it can have its benefits. It is this specific implementation that seems like a bad idea to me.
A machine can do 100 mph, can you run that fast?In principle you can object. But what's the use if you can't hear it in a practical situation? I'm sure the difference in marked and unmarked content isn't as big as the sonic difference between let's say different sacd player models.
If you obey your principles you can't buy a disc from Sony or any other record company who chose to 'protect' their redbooks.
Let's boycot them all and buy a guitar.
and I would not buy a copy protected disk from Sony if I knew about it. Or from anyone else. But I would buy other things from Sony if they are not copy protected. I am not trying to generally condemn any company or encourage any boycotts.
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