How many of you knew about this?

http://soniccontrol.tv/2012/03/11/california-federal-district-court-awards-cinesamples-llc-379050-in-digital-piracy-suit/

 

*yes*

 

ok like i have said BeFor use any downloaded sample library all you what But'' if you happen to get lucky and sale it to some one/a artist that you know for shore is going release it on CD or ITunes then all you Have do is Buy the Sound Kit you don't have to download it from there site just as long as you have you Digital receipt then No lawsuit and your good it's like you only pay for what you use Simple

 

Basically, he said buy if you get placements or make money from it to avoid legal issues

 

Great info! thanks for sharing

 

Lyric8 knows how to complic8.

 

When you're in the creative process and experimenting you're free from those constraints and use whatever sounds good in a track. However pretty soon you're going to have samples from watermarked libraries all over the place. Then you're going to have to not only keep track of which libraries are watermarked, which you've used, how much they cost and at the end of that you're stuck with a pretty freaking steep bill. Not so simple. *no*

 

Even before I read the complete article I knew such a judgement can only happen in the U.S. incredible to measure the damages from the number of downloads. These mentioned 950 potential purchasers would have never bought these library if they had to pay for it! So the real damage to Cinesamples is only at a fraction as high as court granted! In germany such a judgement would never happen! By the way..it would be interesting how they found out how many people downloaded the library? As far as I know this can only found out when sharing is done by torrent or P2P (what in these days nobody still use). Maybe this also was just a long guess from the judge or Cinesamples.

 

I will never buy watermarked sample libraries.

 

Cant find it now but.
I read that some companies call watermarking a insertion of a serial or code into the .nki's and extraneus files, Not the waves / samples.

Not sure if this it true but there's a article somewhere about it.

 

What spectrum analyser can see watermarks?

 

Not like they all will tell you its watermarked.

Only the analyzer made by the encrypter

 

I wouldn't get too thrown by the size of the judgment mentioned in the article posted by iSwingWood. The article states that the accused didn't show up for the court case. Generally that happens when a defendant is what's referred to as being "judgment proof". What that means is that the guy probably has little or no money, there's nothing to take from him anyway, and so he doesn't show up to the proceeding since it doesn't matter if the judgement is 379 thousand or fifty million -- cinesamples will never collect it from this guy.

One thought I do get from reading this article though, is that it would be good for us to learn more about "watermarked" libraries. I for one don't really fully understand what it is, what it communicates to the company that produced the library, or even how you tell if a library is watermarked or not. I remember one library put up on AudioZ awhile back had the company's webpage saying it was watermarked, and people here on the thread saying it wasn't. It would be great if we understood some method so that we might be able to tell, if that's even possible. It also might be good if we started labeling libraries listed on AudioZ as being watermarked or not if there's some knowledge of that. People should have a choice, based on a better understanding of what they are downloading, if they want to go ahead with it or not, and how they will use it if they do go ahead with it. For example, people here that are downloading a library and then using their material for commercial purposes might want to avoid those particular downloads, whereas people who are just making demos that won't be used commercially might not really care about it as much. As a group, we should explore this further, as it seems to be happening more frequently than in the old days.

 

I don't know what state you're in, but in my state, if you don't have the money, it goes against your credit report. So you can still be screwed if you don't have the money. Jail time is also a definite here. NYC

 

I can't say for sure, but I'm of the opinion that you can't get jail for that---it would be the same as having acquired a debt, and there are no debtor's prisons in the U.S. For a certain number of years cinesamples could claim they are owed the money from this guy, and they could try to get a lien against the guy (if that's even possible for a U.S. company when dealing with a citizen of Chile), but no prison for that. There's even a question mark as to what authority the U.S. District Court has to impose a judgment against a citizen of Chile. He might not have cared about it just on that basis alone.

As for his credit report, most court judgments are listed on credit reports, even simple housing court judgments, however once this guy was sued for this he was screwed anyway -- the credit report is probably the least of his problems. He's forever branded a thief and any search online for his name is going to show that. I don't think his credit report is what's concerning him after this.....

I think the real point of this is that we need to better understand how to protect ourselves when it comes to this watermarking business. Maybe it's just what Lord Gaga frequently posts; don't use audio warez online. The problem, and what I'm confused about, is if watermarking can be picked up on a secondary source, such as a recording you've made using a watermarked library. That would be a real problem!

 

Guy, that is the problem. It is discoverable on a second source. Just like there are frequencies you can't hear, there can be data in your waveform with analytical significance, but inaudible to natural ear. Its inaudibility makes it such a great method because it does not taint product quality in any humanly audible way.

 

That's what I would like to learn more about. Do you have any decent reading resources you can recommend that discuss that particular aspect of watermarking?

 

There is a patent filing on it with involvement of Microsoft. http://www.google.com/patents/US7266697

A wiki on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking

And more http://www.magellanhardware.com/watermarking2.asp

 

thanks, I appreciate it!