[Vorbis] off: Audio CD's and Microsoft

[xiphmont at xiph.org]

On 9/15/07, Rick <cms0009 at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070912/tc_pcworld/137106
>
> Read this, you thought DRM endcoding music was bad... this is sick.
> there "tracking" you...

This has a number of possibly beneficial applications as well... small
artists have been screaming for decades for a way of more equitably
tracking royalties (hell, making any effort to properly track
royalties at all).  Naturally, in Microsoft's hands, one would worry
about the potentially evil applications as well.  Which will we get?
Probably the one that makes businesses the most money.

In general, American legal theory tends to guarantee a right to
privacy, but *not* anonymity, and individual watermarking does not
really violate that precept.  You do not necessarily have a right to
be invisible in public.

Also, steganographic watermarking exists in many other copied media
already.  Eg, there's a decipherable signature buried in many (most?)
photocopies, etc...  How is watermarked music inherently more evil?

Consider these points for discussion.

Monty