Watermarking as a replacement of DRM?
Karsten Gerloff has written about watermarking as a replacement of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM).
I’m against watermarking as i’m against DRM. Replacing an restriction technology (DRM) with an observing or tracking technology (watermarking) is probably even more harmful if people constantly have to life in fear that a file with their signature could sometime appear on a place were it shouldn’t be.
Georg Greve has already described some technical problems in his comment "The fundamental flaw". But even if these technical problems could be solved, the social, legal and ethical problems will stay.
Replacing one technology with another doesn’t solves the problems of today’s copyright. You just walk around the real problems.
What is the meaning of fair use today and what will be the meaning in the future? What is fair use at all? I don’t want to depend on any fair use definition.
I know that at least some years ago in Germany it was OK to borrow a CD from a friend or a video library, make a private copy and than give it back. I’m not sure about today’s situation. I think at least borrowing and copying from a good friend is still OK, but maybe this will change in the future too.
Now imagine a watermarked audio file appears on the net. But who was the person who released it into the net? Myself? A good fried of mine? A good friend of the good friend? Who will be responsible for it? Maybe even it wasn’t someone of the good friends. Maybe someone has taken a copy from my Notebook or USB stick and i haven’t noticed it? Maybe it was a Trojan on my PC or any other security hole? Maybe i just have thrown a CD into the trash bin and someone else has taken it from there?
Personally i would have a bad feeling if i would have a lot of files on my PC and on my data mediums whereby i could be identified as the owner and could be responsible if the wrong person gets a copy of it.
I think the mistake already starts by thinking about copyright as a regulation of users and authors for the sake of the industry. Copyright should regulate the industry for the sake of society and authors.
Technology has changed. Even with all this new technology and despite the bad treatment of their costumers the industry still sells a lot of CDs and i think the industry will have many years left where they can sell records. But even if we will reach a point were the market for records will go down to zero this wouldn’t be an argument to apply DRM, watermarking or any other restriction and observing technology. If the future and technology will make this industry needless than we and above all the industry will have to accept it. It wouldn’t be the end of the first industry in history because of new technology.
For me replacing a restriction technology with an observing technology isn’t a solution. Industry and authors will have to learn to live within this new world. I’m sure they will find a way. In the past already many authors were able to create great works without this kind of industry and without physical mediums. Today’s artists and the artists in the future will have even more options to earn some money compared to the artists of the past. Just think about a "culture flatrate", dues on CD-R’s, radio licence fees, mearchendising, concerts all over the globe, creating something for an special event or an movie and combine this with a industrial regulation which allows only the artist to sell records for a few years.
Let me finish with some words of Eben Moglen: "When everyone can possess every intellectual work of beauty and utility – reaping all the human value of every increase of knowledge – at the same cost that any one person can possess them, it is no longer moral to exclude."