New ‘harmonics’ DRM scheme
p2pnet.net News:- Everybody and his brother is trying to get in on the DRM scam through which wanna-be-rich hopefuls come up with ways to stop people from copying music and/or movies, and then try to sell their ‘protection’ applications to the entertainment industry.
Of course, DRM – digital rights management – is impossible, and always will be.
If you can see or hear it, you can copy it, and often with products made by the likes of Sony which, with partner BMG, has just announced it’s done a deal with SunnComm to use the latter’s MediaMax on some Sony BMG releases.
Now, two New York inventors are getting into the DRM biz – with a slightly more original approach than others, perhaps.
“How would you react if the voice of a record-company boss boomed through your speakers and berated you for pirating music?” – asks Britain’s New Scientist, answering, “You may find out, if the music industry decides to adopt an invention by Mark Bocko and Zeljko Ignjatovic of New York city.
“With help from the US Air Force Research Laboratory, the inventors found they could bury around 20 kilobits of speech data in a song without affecting how it sounds (US patent application 2005/0033579). Their technique exploits the fact that the tones of a musical instrument are made up of a complex pattern of randomly phased harmonics.
“By forcing a few of these harmonics to move in and out of phase with a chosen reference, they can be made to convey a digital message. These phase shifts are so small they are imperceptible to the ear. But a software decoder, which could be built into MP3 players or file-sharing applications, detects the phase shifts and turns them into speech.”
And no, we’re not offering prizes to anyone who can think of five easy ways to get around the scheme.
(Thanks, Andrew in Oz ; )
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See:-
Sony BMG releases – BMG buys into SunnComm DRM, p2pnet, February 28, 2005
New Scientist – THE ANTI-PIRACY REMIX, due out on March 5, 2005
March 3rd, 2005 at 11:00 pm
The only way I can see this working is if I am forced to use a particular MP3 or file sharing app. So is the music industry’s next step is to put pressure on government to make it illegal to use any computer application other than the ones they approve?
That sort of control over people’s computers/lives seems like something you’d expect under Hitler or Stalin, not “democracies” like our own.
March 4th, 2005 at 6:10 pm
Democracies like our own? Where? Here? Let me know when you find it…