New DVD watermark has pirates in its sights

[joepic]

Hollywood has unveiled a powerful new technology which it hopes will help kill the pirating of movies. The system relies on sound – not vision – and was unveiled at a conference held by the international DVD Forum in Paris, France last week.

The opportunity for a novel copyright protection system arose because the Forum is now finalising the standards for the new High Definition DVD system that goes on sale early in 2006. The details of the system were explained by Alan Bell, executive vice-president of advanced technology with Warner Brothers in California, US.

All HD-DVD players will have a sensor that looks for inaudible watermarks in the soundtrack of movies. The watermarks will be included in the soundtracks of all major movies released to cinemas.

If a DVD player detects the telltale code, the disc must be an illegal copy made by copying a film print to video, or pointing a camcorder and microphone at a cinema screen. So the player refuses to play the disc.

Subtle variations
The mark is made by slightly varying the waveform of speech and music in a regular pattern to convey a digital code. The variations are too subtle to be noticeable to the human ear, but are easily recognised by the decoder in the player.

A variation of the system can also prevent the playback of discs made by pointing a camcorder at a home screen while it is playing a legitimate disc sold to individual consumers.

The consumer discs will also have an audio watermark, which differs from the cinema mark. If an HD-DVD player senses the consumer watermark it will check whether the disc is a legal, factory-pressed version and, if not, shut down.

Children’s parties
Alan Bell believes the DVD Forum has done all it can to prevent foul-ups. “We know that there might be a Hollywood movie in the background during a children’s party, and if Dad takes a home movie the watermark might end up on the sound track,” he says. “So the player will only shut down if it is continuous for quite a long time.”

Fred von Lohmann, an intellectual property attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, California, says: “Few may object if you're only talking about the blue-laser DVD drives, but the trouble with watermarking schemes is the scope of the technology."

"For any watermarking scheme to be effective, technology companies have to be forced to re-engineer playback devices to detect the watermarks," he told New Scientist. "The risk is that Hollywood starts dictating the redesign of existing DVD drives, CD drives, hard drives, and personal computers, all to buttress the watermark."

[Supreme2k]

Doomed to failure.

[ROF]

My dogs ears are already ringing from the noise this inaudible audio watermark would have. I'd bet it kills birds and deafens fish too.

[Shadowmistress]

<click> Normalize. <done>

I doubt this will be uncrackable for long.

[kirpen]

So how does this system tell homemade movie from bootleg?

[ROF]

Homemade movies won't have the audio watermark on them unless the home movie is capturing a watermarked videos audio stream from an external source. ie. TV playing in the background.

[GullyFoyle]

This only relates to theater releases. In other words just crappy cam copies would be affected.
Sounds like it would not be a problem with dvd rips.
But if the plan is to release dvd's roughly the same time films hit theaters isn't that kind of shooting yourself in the watermarked foot?

[ROF]

If you read the part about childrens parties and recording of them it would appear this is meant for DVD releases too.

[greymalkin]

well if anything i think its a neat idea..it's easy to say it's doomed to fail but you can't blame them for trying and trying and trying... :P

[nwo]

THE NEW BETAMAX

[Cornucopia]

It's already failed:

In reality there are just 2 kinds of audio watermarks--

1. Watermarks that are audible

and

2. Watermarks that "claim" to not be audible

If they are of the 1st kind, they risk ruining the experience for the audience. Many audio experts can attest to all the numerous failed attempts at "unobjectionable" watermarking over the years.
If they are of the 2nd kind, either they really are audible (in which case, they are of the 1st kind after all) or they really are inaudible.
Let's say they're inaudible...

Let me see, what software has been in common use (and will continue to be for some time to come) that works specifically be getting rid of "inaudible" material?
Oh, yeah, LOSSY AUDIO COMPRESSION! (aka MP2, MP3, AC3, AAC, iTunes, etc). When the codec loses the inaudible material, it loses the watermark, thus any protection.

What's to stop some enterprising "movie pirate" from copying the material to HD, running the audio through a little filtering and a pass or 2 through one of those codecs? Heck, anybody who is actually getting them from a digital cinema is already determined (and probably knowledgeable) to pirate.

What I really don't understand is the stupidity of giving HD-DVD's to the cinemas--unless they're talking about data discs with source files that conform to the DCI spec (but that wasn't mentioned). But then, why worry about the files, as they should be encrypted to only be usable on DCI-approved server equipment?

Scott

[Syco54645]

the billy corgan advanced promo was released with digital fingerprint (watermark). there were only 50 (?i could be wrong) copies each with a different fingerprint. when the label distrubuted the copies of it, they kept a list of who had which one so if it got leaked the label could find who did it... needless to say the album was leaked a month before it came out and noone was busted (at least to my knowledge and i am very into the smashing pumpkins community).

-Syco54645

[smearbrick1]

It appears that this only works if you "CAM" a movie. The birthday party thing is just put out there to keep people from making a "CAM" of a dvd. Like that's going to happen. Besides, a digital copy of the audio (disc to disc) would yield a copy identical to the original. Digital backups problems would not even be an issue.

[pdemondo]

I had an interview with Verance in San Diego (watermark company) about
5 years ago. I almost wish I had taken the job just to divulge all of
their encryption schemes.

[adam]

It appears that this only works if you "CAM" a movie. The birthday party thing is just put out there to keep people from making a "CAM" of a dvd. Like that's going to happen. Besides, a digital copy of the audio (disc to disc) would yield a copy identical to the original. Digital backups problems would not even be an issue.

I don't think that's what they are saying. Like you said, who would cam a DVD?

I think what they are saying is that HD-DVD players will be able to distinguish between a factory pressed disc and a burnt copy, and if they sense the watermark they will only play if its a pressed disc. This would be directly targeted at disc to disc copying.

The birthday party scenario is just to point out the safeguards they have implemented, so that you don't accidentally record the watermark onto your home videos and get them locked out of your player...since they are not being put on factory pressed discs.

[SirReco]

It appears that this only works if you "CAM" a movie. The birthday party thing is just put out there to keep people from making a "CAM" of a dvd. Like that's going to happen. Besides, a digital copy of the audio (disc to disc) would yield a copy identical to the original. Digital backups problems would not even be an issue.

I don't think that's what they are saying. Like you said, who would cam a DVD?

I think what they are saying is that HD-DVD players will be able to distinguish between a factory pressed disc and a burnt copy, and if they sense the watermark they will only play if its a pressed disc. This would be directly targeted at disc to disc copying.

The birthday party scenario is just to point out the safeguards they have implemented, so that you don't accidentally record the watermark onto your home videos and get them locked out of your player...since they are not being put on factory pressed discs.

So what can prevent a DVD Backup tool from removing the watermark of the audio(s) track(s), thus making it a complete home made movie like a Cam recorder?

[Steve Stepoway]

So what can prevent a DVD Backup tool from removing the watermark of the audio(s) track(s), thus making it a complete home made movie like a Cam recorder?

They'll probably claim that would be illegal under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

[adam]

So what can prevent a DVD Backup tool from removing the watermark of the audio(s) track(s), thus making it a complete home made movie like a Cam recorder?

Well what's to prevent any form of copy protection from being removed? Obviously the idea is to come up with something that isn't easily bypassed/removed.

[vitualis]

If it is going to work on cam movies, then the signal is inherently "analogue" in nature... and for it to reliably and robustly survive lossy compression schemes like MP2 or AC3, making it "inaudible" is highly questionable.

As per others it is extremely difficult (i.e., highly unlikely) that it will be all of the following: inaudible, actually works with CAMS, not easily filtered out.

Regards.

[Wile_E]

Okay, do I understand this correctly? Basically, the audio in movie theaters will have this "watermark"? This won't be embedded on direct-to-HD-DVD releases?

What would be better, is to have a readable hologram embedded into the plastic substrate of all HD-DVD's. Then the player could read those holograms, and tell the user if it is an original. Because what's stopping someone from getting ahold of a pre-release HD master disc, and making copies of the film on HD-DVD discs? If all originals had a hologram, the player could let you know if you have a pirated disc. And people's home movies would just be identified as not having the hologram without blocking playback.

[Rich86]

Maybe we could all just take up new hobbies - then there would not be any problems at all - except what new book is worth reading, trail worth hiking, play worth seeing, item worth building, child worth talking to, mate worth . . well, you get the picture . . .with or without watermarks . . .

[GKar]

LightningUK is quietly giggling in his exile.

[Cornucopia]

Okay, do I understand this correctly? Basically, the audio in movie theaters will have this "watermark"? This won't be embedded on direct-to-HD-DVD releases?

What would be better, is to have a readable hologram embedded into the plastic substrate of all HD-DVD's. Then the player could read those holograms, and tell the user if it is an original. Because what's stopping someone from getting ahold of a pre-release HD master disc, and making copies of the film on HD-DVD discs? If all originals had a hologram, the player could let you know if you have a pirated disc. And people's home movies would just be identified as not having the hologram without blocking playback.

That's really the technological state we're in now. Think of it this way...

With DVD, you have CSS "copy protected" Hollywood programs, and SmallBusiness/Home "non-copy protected" programs.

CSS has an expectation of a 2nd, non-copyable/non-Writeable part (the "key"), and without it, the "lock" won't open.
Non-technophiles trying to duplicate the Hollywood type disc can't--well, they actually can but the resultant disc is unusable--without the presence of that 2nd part. But they have no problem with the SB/Home type disc, because of no "expectation".
Technophiles (and smart pirates--not always one in same) get around the problem by getting rid of not only the 2nd part, but also the expectation of it, in essence making it look like a homemade movie.

That's the problem (technologically) with watermarking/encryption. If you give the general populace a lock AND a key on the same disc, it always ends up being the same as giving them an unlocked disc. They both have to be unlocked to be viewable (and salesworthy). Only "phoning home" machines can get around this, and that won't fly with very many consumers (who are the ultimate judges of whether this is worth buying).

Scott