Deakin watermark tech could tackle music piracy

Deakin University researchers have developed a new digital watermarking method for multimedia content that doesn’t compromise the integrity of the file and is robust to circumvention methods.

The press release announcing the development makes the bold claim that “digital music piracy could be a thing of the past” thanks to the new method.

The watermarking method is designed to leave a trail of who illegally downloaded a file. It hides data such as publisher name, signature or ID number into a multimedia object.

The project’s lead researcher, Associate Professor Yong Xiang of the Deakin University School of Information Technology, said the watermark will not affect the file’s normal usage.

“What we did was to enable music file owners and relevant law enforcement authorities to use a secret key to extract the watermark data from the watermarked multimedia object,” he said.

“Watermarking technology can be used to prove copyright ownership, trace the source of illegal distribution and verify the authenticity of files.”

While watermarking technology is nothing new, the latest method has nearly a 100% detection rate, Xiang said. It is also resistant to common watermarking circumvention methods including pitch-scaling, re-quantisation, noise, amplitude, compression, re-sampling and filtering.

Xiang said it is estimated that 95% of music downloads globally are illegal. “In Australia, around 2.8 million people download music illegally via file sharing networks. This causes enormous amounts of lost sales revenue and royalties to producers, musicians and other performers.”

Image courtesy of Gary Denham under CC