Anti-Copy Schemes May Be Anti-Privacy
Aug. 28, 2001 -- In the post-Napster world, it's clear that artists want and deserve to get paid for their work. So the record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are developing possible solutions to digital piracy.
The recording industry, along with top tech companies, formed the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) with the goal of developing technology that protects digital music. One of the key components of the tech is a digital watermark.
A watermark is like an invisible fingerprint, or license plate, that is encoded into a song. Watermarks are not audible to the human ear, but computers and other players can be programmed to read the information embedded in the song.
The most obvious function of watermarking is to deter piracy. The recording industry is pushing for standards on new audio equipment and players, including chips that will limit or prevent consumers from misusing copyright material.
Fouling Up Fair Use and Air Play?
"One thing that people are thinking about is trying to stop what they call piracy — what some of us might call fair use. Basically stop consumers from copying their music, or sharing it with friends, ripping it on their computers," said Fred Von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"Already we're seeing signs that the record industry doesn't want you to be able to make copies, even for your own personal use," Von Lohmann said. "Hilary Rosen, of the RIAA, would not admit before Congress, when Senator Hatch questioned her, that it was OK to make a copy of your CDs that you legitimately purchased, to take along in your car."
Digital watermarking has other possible uses besides preventing consumers from listening to pirated music. Von Lohmann suggests that watermarks could help record labels keep track of which radio stations are playing their records.
Watermarking technology company Verance offers such services, which it markets as Verance Confirmedia. The service consists of a Web portal connected to a nationwide radio and television broadcast, connected to a network that can provide 24-hour information on where and how audio content is being used.
Privacy Concerns
This has huge implications for consumers. For starters, it's possible that with future distribution models, you may not be able to play a song on your PC and portable player at the same time — even after you've purchased it — in spite of the fact that "all of those uses under traditional copyright law principles are permitted as fair use," Von Lohmann said.
"The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that Congress adopted in 1998 basically said to copyright owners that if you put any technological protection around your content, you then have total control of it," Von Lohmann said. "Nobody is allowed to crack or break into or do anything to tamper with your technological protection device. So all of a sudden it appears, or at least the courts so far seem to think, that fair use doesn't exist anymore."
Moot Point?
"The idea of literally placing an extra computer chip in every consumer device that you own to listen to music to enforce a usage policy on your end, or perhaps to monitor what you do to verify that you're not in violation of federal law, sounds really Orwellian," said Princeton University grad student Scott Craver, who helped Princeton professor Edward W. Felten crack the SDMI watermark.
Last year SDMI issued a public challenge to break the security of four music clips encrypted with watermarking technology, without compromising audio quality. Craver and Felten made all four watermarks undetectable.
"We believe that consumers who buy into this tech have a right to know whether or not it works," Felten said. "One of the things that we learned in doing our research is that this technology in fact is not going to work. We found in our study that it was fairly easy for someone with a moderate level of technical sophistication to break this technology. It's clear that this current technology has serious flaws."
Felten only recently published his findings. SDMI is still evaluating the report and has neither confirmed nor denied Felten's claims.
"The notion of a crack-proof digital watermark is a little bit like the notion of a crack-proof burglar alarm or a crack-proof safe," Verance CTO Joe Winegrad said. "Which is to say, even if it existed, it may not be practical for people to use."
Keeping an Eye On It
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., is currently drafting legislation that would amend 1998's DMCA. Boucher wants to level the playing field for smaller, independent sites that compete online with the major labels.
"We're keeping a close eye on what life fair use has left," Von Lohmann said. "It does appear that the recording industry is willing to resort to the courts in order to maintain their position as being dominant in the music space. So I think we'll see more of that.
"The other thing I think we'll see is more unhappy consumers. I personally think the consumer's always right. I think that's how you build a successful business. We'll eventually see what ends up happening here."