Thanks for a very interesting update, Malk!
The paper itself was most interesting reading - a well-written scientific work that gave a good insight into the techniques that are currently being tried to produce digital watermarks of audio material. The final conclusions are worth quoting:
Quote:
|
Do we believe we can defeat any audio protection scheme? Certainly, the technical details of any scheme will become known publicly through reverse engineering. Using the techniques we have presented here, we believe no public watermark-based scheme intended to thwart copying will succeed. Other techniques may or may not be strong against attacks. For example, the encryption used to protect consumer DVDs was easily defeated. Ultimately, if it is possible for a consumer to hear or see protected content, then it will be technically possible for the consumer to copy that content.
|
The whole effort of audio watermarking seems patently stupid. The cryptographical problems stemming from the inevitable closeness to the analog domain are big enough to discourage it. You can only squeeze that much extra digital information into an inherently analog wave before the 'golden ears' start hearing it as a disturbance or a distortion. Add a little more and everybody will suffer from it.
The technical results of the study give also a deeper symbolic lesson in regard to the whole idea and approach behind the effort: you can't really 'glue ownership' onto an audio wave that is meant to be public. The harder you try, the worse it starts to sound.
- tg
