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watermarking and piracy
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| Looney4Clooney |
If you are selling on beatport, your music will be pirated, so why not upload a a version on the torrent sites with a matermark in it. And start collecting data on everyone who is using pirated music. Surely labels are not so stupid to think their stuff won't be pirated. So given that every track you released will show up the same day, you might as well have someone upload your tracks but a version with a watermark that you can distinguish from the legitimate files. It would have to be uploaded first before anyone uploads the original. That way you know that the ones stealing will have the watermarked version.
All you would need is to catch 1 big dj, start following him, and if he tours, that means he has income and you have evidence from podcasts and you could actually sue for a substantial amount. |
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| ShabbaRANNx |
| quote: | Originally posted by Looney4Clooney
If you are selling on beatport, your music will be pirated, so why not upload a a version on the torrent sites with a matermark in it. And start collecting data on everyone who is using pirated music. Surely labels are not so stupid to think their stuff won't be pirated. So given that every track you released will show up the same day, you might as well have someone upload your tracks but a version with a watermark that you can distinguish from the legitimate files. It would have to be uploaded first before anyone uploads the original. That way you know that the ones stealing will have the watermarked version.
All you would need is to catch 1 big dj, start following him, and if he tours, that means he has income and you have evidence from podcasts and you could actually sue for a substantial amount. |
It's actually already been done years ago.
Back in the days of Vinyl, one friend who happened to work at a major UK Garage label started doing this with their promos. Their tracks kept getting bootlegged right after the very first promos went out, and in those days you could make good coin of vinyl releases so they were loosing a lot. They would usually only end out about 10 promos to the really big DJ's in the first batch (the guys with major radio shows or who had massive residencies etc).
So they made 10 unique versions (each one with a single different clap or hihat somewhere), then sent them out to the DJ's and waited for the bootlegs to show up.
Well, according to the newspapers, one very big name DJ apparently had a "fall down the stairs" but was out of hospital within a week. It also kind of ed his career little as he got blacklisted with a lot of promo lists and labels.
You could do the digital releases if you're trying to find the source.
Actually one of the major TV studios is now doing this sort of torrent tracker thing.
Broadwalk empire season 1 was upped by the studio and they collected data from the trackers, and everyone that downloaded it got a warning letter from their ISP. |
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| cryophonik |
| quote: | Originally posted by Looney4Clooney
All you would need is to catch 1 big dj, start following him, and if he tours, that means he has income and you have evidence from podcasts and you could actually sue for a substantial amount. |
Trying to track a watermarked version would be a monumental waste of time and effort IMO and, to what end? Piracy happens and it spreads so quickly that trying to track it and nail down the culprits would consume all your time. Then what? Try to find the actual names of the thousands of people stealing your song so that you can sue each of them for 99c?
The big DJs aren't really the problem, are they? AFAIK, the labels try to give the songs to big DJs in the hopes that their support will result in increased sales. The biggest offenders from my limited perspective are the masses of individuals (the vast majority of whom wouldn't even pay 99c for it anyway) and the label/portal system itself.
Show of hands - how many people here think that the actual number of sales is being accurately and honestly reported to you? |
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| Storyteller |
Certain promotional services already do this. I think Beatport at some point claimed to do so as well. Who knows. Problem is you'd need a tool to verify the watermark and I've yet to see anyone making that available for infringement verification.
What if someone would the buy Beatport version and put that online, if I can't verify the supposedly existing Beatport watermark you'd still be left empty handed. Either way you need to provide the mp3 downloads yourself and/or have a verification tool from all external parties involved. |
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| Looney4Clooney |
not really,
the process can be automated rather easily. Yes piracy is there, so why not make sure everyone that is pirating has a version you can identify. Might as well document it.
beatport could easily apply a unique stamp to each download. And that would stop the leaks. IT has worked for unprotected libraries for the last 2 years. Because if your version shows up. your account is closed, they have your details. you are outed, and that just tends to make people not willing to share. It works when a community is small enough, and Beatport is small. Very small. |
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| Storyteller |
| quote: | Originally posted by Looney4Clooney
not really,
the process can be automated rather easily. Yes piracy is there, so why not make sure everyone that is pirating has a version you can identify. Might as well document it. |
Even that can be made complicated. If a watermark is put in the meta-data of an mp3 (inaudible) simple re-recording it would take it out.
If the watermark would be added by changing the least significant bits according to a certain pattern one might be able to track it all. At a certain cost of fidelity.
What I was talking about though is tracking the watermark back to the original copyright offender, for that you would need cooperation of the party that implemented the watermark. If you're merely talking about identifying legal from illegal copies that could be rather easy and straightforward. |
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| Looney4Clooney |
| you can have data anywhere in the file. You won't lose fidelity. |
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| ShabbaRANNx |
| quote: | Originally posted by Looney4Clooney
you can have data anywhere in the file. You won't lose fidelity. |
Not quite as simple as that. Unless you do it the way I explained was done in the old days (all unique versions with musical content which really isn't viable on mass scale) and anyway, a rerecord or tag/metatdata stripper program would remove any watermark. Same with a re-encode to another format. |
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| Trancelover03591 |
What about adding some sort of a music feature someone wouldn't' notice otherwise. Example, many tracks have a impact sound and a crash at the begging of a track.
You could make it so the real version has impact sound + crash. The pirated version has only impact sound no crash. Or something to this effect.
And i am not saying I support watermarking. |
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| ShabbaRANNx |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancelover03591
What about adding some sort of a music feature someone wouldn't' notice otherwise. Example, many tracks have a impact sound and a crash at the begging of a track.
You could make it so the real version has impact sound + crash. The pirated version has only impact sound no crash. Or something to this effect.
And i am not saying I support watermarking. |
Er, that's what I said....
| quote: | Originally posted by RANN
So they made 10 unique versions (each one with a single different clap or hihat somewhere), then sent them out to the DJ's and waited for the bootlegs to show up
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| cryophonik |
| Wouldn't it be easier to just sue Al Gore for inventing the Internet? |
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| ShabbaRANNx |
| quote: | Originally posted by cryophonik
Wouldn't it be easier to just sue Al Gore for inventing the Internet? |
No, I think we need to go further; A posthumous class action against Franklin inventing electricity, and Eddison for making the first pirate bootleg. We wouldn't have have all these problems with piracy if they'd just kept their to themselves. |
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