Digital Home Thoughts: Digital Audio Watermarking for Fighting Piracy

"The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) here is developing an `audio watermarking tool' designed to aid law enforcers involved in combating music piracy in the country. According to C-DAC officials, the software tool could be used to secretly `embed' copyright information in digital audio products. The embedded information would contain specifics about the copyright owner, the batch number of the product and usage restrictions of the digital content. The hidden digital watermark does not alter the quality of the music content. The digital watermarks are designed to be un-detectable to the human ear."

At first I thought this was a method to detect illegal MP3 files, but that didn't make much sense at first glance, so I'm glad I read the article. ;-) This technology is focused on detecting illegal duplications and forgeries - in some countries, it's actually difficult to find legitimate music albums to buy. What's not hard to find, however, is pirated versions, complete with glossy covers and exact copies of the CD. This audio watermarking will allow authorities to easily (one would hope) detect pirated copies based on the bits in the audio stream, not external copyright protection like holograms on the disc, etc.