UMG and Sony break the Zune, Watermarking DRM
Posted by Ray @ 3:27 pmMore proof that the record labels hate you: Universal and Sony prohibit the Zune from sharing songs from certain artists. If you’re not in the know, Microsoft’s Zune, their soon-to-be-crushed competitor to Apple’s iPod, can send songs to each other via wireless transmission. It seems like a good idea, until you realize that all songs sent in this manner can only be played either three times or three days. Oh, and Microsoft pays Universal every time a Zune is sold. And now it’s revealed that roughly half of all songs from Universal and Sony can’t even get shared! Way to go, UMG and Sony.
Hot on the heels of this news, a British startup company called Streamburst has decided to do away with DRM altogether. Instead, they inject a watermark into the file, so it can be tracked. While I admire their idealism, I can think of so many ways the system will fail it’s ridiculous. It’s trivial to cut out the watermark. It’s also trivial to just go and download a non-watermarked version. And what happens when your watermarked file is stolen? Do you get sued, too? How do you defend yourself? We all know how reliable computer evidence is.
No, the best way to compete with pirates is to offer something better and personal. Extra content like behind-the-scenes interviews. Making the user somehow attached to the file he pays for - maybe have the artists record a personal message, that sort of thing. These are things media coglomerates can do, but they’re not, because obviously it’s more expensive than developing multi-million dollar DRM schemes that get cracked within a week.
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I don’t know how you can say that all watermarking techniques are “trivial” to defeat. That clearly isn’t true. There are some very robust watermarking technologies currently available. About “losing” your copy, I’d much rather have one negligent person sued than thousands of others. Personalizing content sounds nice, but it’s hardly practical for any kind of mass distribution, unless you want it to sound completely canned and then that would kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?
Comment by pacobell — Monday, January 22 2007 @ 12:48 pm
Pacobell: Point taken… but I was referring to the fact that from what I can read from the article, the purchased video file’s watermark is easily defeated. It consists of two parts, one is a short video before the actual one, and the other is to take away certain bits in the video stream without affecting quality. It seems to me (without actually knowing the details of the technology) that you could just re-encode the file and tada, no more watermark!
I also agree that personalizing content in the manner I’ve described will probably fail. But what about extras? There are things that only a big media company can provide, and if they release extras online for me to purchase, I’d get it! Short snippets per episode, maybe small blooper reels, short comments from the creators, small bits of trivia, etc. All are small things that could be added to an online version.
Of course this doesn’t address the problem of people just pirating the online versions instead. I do realize it’s not an easy issue… the current alternatives aren’t any better, either. Wait and see, I guess.
Comment by Ray — Monday, January 22 2007 @ 3:54 pm
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