[Ecommerce] Hollywood tunes into anti-piracy audio signals

[Michelle Childs]

<snip>
Legitimate DVDs will also contain a different watermark, Hollywood hopes,
which can be used to look for content ripped from official discs, but
that's going to be harder to square with established 'fair use' copying
provisions in certain territories.

Go to the New Scientist site to get the full story plus a quote from EFF.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=3Ddn8247
Michelle


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/02/hd_dvd_audio_antipiracy_scheme/
Hollywood tunes into anti-piracy audio signals
HD DVDs with movie-stamped watermarks
By Tony Smith
Published Wednesday 2nd November 2005 16:10 GMT
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Pirate DVDs made by copying movies in cinemas could become a thing of the
past in the HD era, if technology presented to the DVD Forum proves
successful.

The system requires film distributors to embed an inaudible watermark in
film soundtracks. HD DVD players will contain a sensor that listens out
for the watermark in the soundtracks of any disc being played.

Since official HD DVDs will not contain the watermark, its presence on the
disc reveals the disc to be a pirate copy.

Playback will then be aborted, and the buyer's name and address beamed to
the nearest law enforcement agency. Just joking.

The watermark comprises digital data encoded in subtle shifts in the audio
waveform that makes up the soundtrack, New Scientist reports this week.
Human ears can't detect the fluctuations.

Whether the pirates digitise a movie print directly, or simply point a
camcorder at the cinema screen, they will still capture the audio and the
watermark with it.

Legitimate DVDs will also contain a different watermark, Hollywood hopes,
which can be used to look for content ripped from official discs, but
that's going to be harder to square with established 'fair use' copying
provisions in certain territories.

If the technique wins the approval of the DVD Forum, the presence of the
watermark detector could be mandated in any player stamped with the
official HD DVD brand. Of course, there will be plenty of machines out
there whose manufacturers use the HD DVD logo without permission, or don't
use it at all, and in either case may ship machines without the sensor.

However, Hollywood presumably believes it would nonetheless create a major
disincentive for most consumers to buy pirate HD DVDs. Buy one that turns
out not to work, and users may go on to buy a second disc. But they won't
buy a third, the argument runs.

It is not clear at this stage whether the rival Blu-ray Disc format will
adopt the technique. The system was detailed this week by a Warner Bros
representative. Now that Warner is backing both BD and HD DVD, there's a
good chance BD will incorporate the system. =AE


--
Michelle Childs -Head of European Affairs
Consumer Project on Technology in London
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