If watermarks modify the sound, then how will they be implemented, since I presume it's impossible for a company to know at which "level" other companies' plugins watermark sound files ? In other words, if a Waves' plugin watermark a sound file at a certain "level" (nothing to do here with sound level), how Tone2 will be sure that their own watermarks will not be "superposed" or "mixed" with Waves' one during the sound file export/bouncing process (and, because of that, became undetectable by their respective scanning/control processes) ? Same applies to samples libraries.

If watermarks doesn't modify the sound (if they are implemented at an undetectable "level" for the human ear), then how they may survive to an mp3 - or whatever any destructive compressions -, since those compressions method are based on psycho-acoustic algorithms which erase all data unperceived by human ear because of masking phenomenons and out of range frequencies ?

For those two simple reasons (and other ones related to court arguments, legal procedures and financial costs), watermark is, IMHO, a MYTH created in the sole objective to scaring naïve people.

Watermarking process would otherwise have been described in DETAILS, within an easily comprehensive explanation, instead of remaining always vague and unclear under the fake pretext of "trade secret"...

Please, go ahead, prove me that I'm wrong...

 

"To improve the robustness and fidelity of the audio watermarking (...) The experimental results show that this algorithm not
only has fidelity and capacity of the classical QIM, but also has preferable robustness against the attack from noise addition,
compression, low pass filtering and re-sampling."

Translation : classical QIM algorithm isn't robust nor resist at mp3 compression (as I've said). The new one is better, but still not perfect.

"From the experimental results the following conclusions can be drown:

(4) This algorithm has a certain ability to resist MP3 compression.
(5) This algorithm is highly robust against time delay.
(6) The algorithm is better resistance of random cut, and able to use to recover watermark image.
(7) Compensation factor a for the robustness and fidelity are very important. a is smaller, so robustness
is better, and fidelity is worse; On the contrary, a is larger, so robustness is worse, and fidelity is better.

When compensation factor a = 1 there is little difference. This shows better fidelity of the algorithm."

According to this single statement "This algorithm has a certain ability to resist MP3 compression", I'm pretty sure that in front of a court even a dumbass lawyer will destroy any attempt to use current watermark methods as a valid evidence of compressed audio files sharing (mp3), and even more easily in the case of illegal use of watermarked samples or plugins into a production process.
Can someone name an example of sentencing obtained thanks to watermarking ?...

(BTW, any company can pay four university student to write a thesis based on a complete bullshit theory.)

 

Don't worry about these watermarks. I don't think they will be used to sue anybody. Only in very rare cases maybe, but the juristic ground for that is very very thin. Btw. do you remember this (http://wonderful-tricks.blogspot.com/2009/10/microsoft-used-cracked-soundforge.html)? I only worry about the modification of my audio. I am not an expert, but I simply don't want my audio to be tampered with secretly.

If you want to go really deep into this, just study these papers:

http://www.emo.org.tr/ekler/ecc353586042b6d_ek.pdf
http://cse.iitkgp.ac.in/~abhij/facad/03UG/Synopsis/03CS3013_Muneish_Adya.pdf
http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/elex/6/14/6_1057/_article
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1420377
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165168408001084

@Saint: I don't think watermarks can be removed from audio easily, but the watermarking algorithm can be removed from a plugin.
@villageidiot: I didn't know about the glu. I am not 100% sure. Maybe you are right and it's a customized .dll to find out who cracked or supplied the crackers with his version. I think Native Instuments also does something similar with their Kontakt libraries. But in this case you could simply say you had a trojan on your PC and it was stolen, not given away by you on purpose.

So please dear industry stop active watermarking in plugins if you do this. It's not a good strategy against piracy and as I said above, it also affects all your loyal customers.

 

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL at all those people that seem to be genuinely worried about it on a home user level......
Thanks for the amusing read *yes*
p.s I may get me some waves plugs to see if i get mass paranoia... *no*
p.p.s. ...still laughing...

 

Your avatar is craaazy