Digital Watermarking: Industry ‘Alignment,’ CE Cooperation Crucial

Digital watermarking is said to bypass some flaws in DRM implementation. The technology inserts a bit of identifying data, imperceptible to sight or hearing, into movies, music, TV programming and other media that may tell “readers” to limit its playback, trigger content filters, trace its lineage to a theater or link to free or paid content elsewhere. Able to survive the analog hole, watermarking already sees wide use in digital imaging, TV broadcasts and drivers licenses, said Reed Stager, Alliance chmn. and Digimarc exec. vp.

The Alliance, MPAA and Distributed Computing Industry Assn. also released a white paper on watermark use in P2P applications. The paper outlines 5 uses: (1) After a user search, a P2P system replaces the “problematic” file sought - - missing authorization or “corrupted” -- with a version authorized for distribution. The system could check the file’s status against a registry or through “some other analysis.” (2) The watermark indicates a file can be used in more than one way -- free when viewing an ad or paid with no ad, for example -- and prompts the user to choose. (3) The file links to other material such as bonus content or software on another website. (4) The watermark determines whether the file is authorized for P2P distribution, with the P2P application perhaps even blocking network upload of files lacking watermarks. (5) The watermark sends anonymous data to a “data aggregation and processing system” that tracks its use and distribution, perhaps to use in setting ad rates and rightsholder compensation or “identifying emerging popular trends,” the white paper said.

Watermarking drastically has limited unauthorized use of content where deployed, said Rob Schumann, Cinea gen. mgr. and Alliance board member. Until 2005, when watermarks went onto every Academy Awards screener, film leaks to the Internet from screeners were rampant, he said. But the technology opens up “copyleft” redistribution possibilities for content owners wanting to expand their audience, he said. As mobile device memory grows, phones likely will have “video outs,” with users porting HD content to TV sets by 2012, a fertile opportunity to protect content through watermarks, Schumann said.

Backers don’t pretend watermarking can end piracy. Outlaw operations are “absolutely stealing us blind,” House Entertainment Industries Caucus Chmn. Watson (D-Cal.) said: “They'll find a new way [to circumvent watermarking] but at least we can stall them for a while.” Watermarking aims to “raise the bar” for pirates, Stager said: “No one in the industry should ever say something can’t be hacked.” Watermarking need not be a consumer frustration, he added -- metadata may satisfy consumer desires for, say, information on actors in a watermarked film.

CE makers’ exact role in watermarking is up in the air. Audience queries indicated a perception that CE intransigence is delaying wider use of watermarks in entertainment media. “There has to be an application somewhere” to interpret the watermark, probably starting on PCs, before a wider CE rollout, Stager said. The chance that adding readers to CE devices will be costly has “drawn the most attention,” he admitted. Watermarking’s success is “really a question of whether the industries can align” diverse interests, Stager added. It’s “exceptionally complex” to settle on standards involving 3 or more industries, but Stager said interoperability hurdles would be resolved “fairly soon.” Schumann seemed to jump the gun on a Microsoft-Apple interoperability deal when he said watermarks could be used to enable transfers between Zunes and iPods -- both closed platforms.

CEA’s Shapiro ended his silence by linking watermarking to biometrics, a subject fraught with policy implications on privacy. Is the technology neutral and simply subject to different govt. uses, some good and some bad, he asked. Stager clarified that the Alliance is “policy agnostic” and takes no legislative positions. Shapiro later told us watermarking is a “system-dependent” technology inevitably involving his members, and said he finds the notion of creating a unique identifier for every PC alarming, but declined further comment.

It’s not simple to “layer” more watermarks on top of marked content, Stager said, playing down the possibility that multiple distribution chain participants will add protections or that pirates will wipe clean a mark and replace it with a fake one. Even if pirate operations use old CE equipment to redistribute content, hoping to evade watermarks, the mark itself creates a trail to the source of the piracy, he said.