MP3 Inventor Develops Tool to Fight Piracy
Posted by Sachin Garg on 9th February 2006 | Permanent Link
PCWorld: Researchers at the Fraunhofer Integrated Publication and Information Systems Institute have successfully tested a software system, based on the group’s own digital watermarking technology, for tracking pirated audio files in peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, says Michael Kip, a spokesperson for the institute. He referred to the Fraunhofer approach as an alternative to DRM (digital rights management) systems, which he says require special players and are prone to hacking.
The Fraunhofer approach differs from others in that it doesn’t monitor the individuals who illegally download music but rather scans for content that has been illegally uploaded. We talked in detail about watermarks for video files some time ago.
Research on compression of music files was conducted in the 1980s by a team of scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits. Their development, the MPEG-1 Layer 3 algorithm, was first shortened to MPEG Layer 3 and later to MP3, which celebrated its 10th birthday on July 14th 2005.
February 10th, 2006 at 12:52 am
It would seem possible yet impossible.
February 11th, 2006 at 3:08 am
It’s been tried before, and it will always be trivial to remove. I don’t see how this is worth a post.
February 11th, 2006 at 5:15 am
Yes, removal is possible, but removal of ‘good’ watermarks is supposed to result in considerable loss of quality.
And, anything which solves piracy without adding DRM like unfair restrictions is a good thing.