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Technology Stocks : e.Digital Corporation(EDIG) - Embedded Digital Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mark cox who wrote (11288)	2/26/2000 6:13:00 AM
From: Jon Tara	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18366

Mark, what ARIS is doing is precisely what I suggested in my "B" approach (modulation of some aspect of the audio signal). They seem to discount my "A" approach (addition of tones or other sounds which are inaudible to the human ear due to "masking" by nearby frequencies in the original audio material). FWIW, I came up with both of these approaches in a few minutes, as I typed, without any prior knowledge of how the companies that are currently doing digital watermarking have approached the problem. This suggests that the techniques are rather obvious. I disagree with ARIS on the invulnarability of the approach. The watermark must be detectable if it is to be usable. If it is detectable, then it will be removable. Further, it need not be necessary to actually decode the content of the watermark in order to remove it. Any encryptation approach is likely to be ineffective in this regard. I also disagree on the difficulty of reverse-engineering it. If the company patents the approach, one need simply read and understand the patent. If they choose to keep it as a trade secret - well, trade secrets, particularly in this field - have a way of getting out. (There isn't a satellite broadcast encryptation method that hasn't eventually leaked-out by way of engineers who can't keep their mouths shut...) Your assertion that material that has had watermarks removed will likely not be playable on an SDMI player is patently rediculous. Surely, there will be legitmate sources of un-watermarked material (if nothing else, "garage bands"), and any player that is incapable of playing it will be at a distinct disadvantage. The public simply will not stand for this restriction.

To: mark cox who wrote (11288)	2/26/2000 6:34:00 AM
From: Savant	Respond to of 18366

Mark, an ARIS oldie. And yes, EDIG won't be impacted either way.IMHO. Best, Savant DISCOVER Vol. 19 No. 7 (July 1998) Table of Contents 1998 DISCOVER TECHNOLOGY AWARDS Sound WINNER Aris Technologies' Musicode Innovator: Joseph Winograd Digital recording is a music lover's dream but a music company's nightmare. Since it offers essentially perfect reproduction--on compact discs, digital audiotapes, digital video discs, or even on music sent across the Internet--audiophiles can accumulate vast collections of music, transferring it from one format to another, copying it, and digitally altering it with little effort and no damage to the sound's quality. The same capabilities, however, make it easier for fans to avoid paying royalties to recording companies and artists. Joseph Winograd thinks he's found a way to protect the copyrights of digital music. Ideally, music companies would like to permanently mark recordings as their own, and perhaps even hide a code in the music that would instruct recording devices not to reproduce it. Pirates could easily isolate and destroy such a code if it's inserted before or after the music, and inserting the code in the body of the recording would blemish the music. "The idea of hiding copyright and other information in music has been looked at for close to two decades," Winograd says, "but the codes were always audible to the listener." Three years ago Winograd, who is vice president of engineering at Aris Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, set out to crack this problem. By analyzing what parts of the digital signal the human ear notices and what it ignores, he came up with a way to encode information by subtly modifying the ignored parts of the signal to generate a mathematically derived pattern. A computer monitoring the digital 0's and 1's of the music can spot the inserted code, but a human listener cannot. Polygram Records began making cds with Winograd's digital watermarks in February. Royalty collection societies will be the first to electronically monitor songs being played on the radio and bill radio stations accordingly for royalties. The code may also be useful for storing all sorts of hidden information in music signals. Eventually, Winograd says, music companies might encode the name of the artist and song so that the information could pop up on a display on your radio, even though the dj didn't bother to tell you.