September 11th, 2007
Microsoft awarded patent for watermarking form of DRM. But can it really work?
Microsoft has won a patent for a digital-watermarking technology that could be used to protect the rights of content owners even when digital music is distributed without DRM protection….Forensic digital watermarking technology like the technology Microsoft has patented doesn’t encrypt files the way DRM technology does or prevent people from unauthorized use. However, it can be used to prove who owns the content of the digital file by encoding a file with a unique digital signature. That means illegally traded songs could be tracked back to the original purchaser, allowing authorities to identify illegal sharers and serving as a deterrent.
First, I’m not sure who the spin doctors are that got a hold of this one. But the idea that a watermarking technology of this sort is not DRM (as the story implies) is simply BS. DRM stands for digital rights management and you don’t have to read too far into the story to figure out that the technology in question is every bit as much about managing digital rights as other bit-scrambling DRM technologies are (what I’ve often referred to as C.R.A.P.)
That said, next comes the question of whether such watermarking technologies even work (or, has Microsoft come up with one that works where others have not)? As I said in a blog I posted last year, Sun’s Director of Web Technologies Tim Bray assured me in 2005 that watermarking technologies are easily defeated. Bray’s no slouch when it comes to software engineering — it’s hard not to take his assessment seriously.
