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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 7, 2004)
m educ! eh, a najor. f e ab. :realb I olds !nCOU[ : ; styles' lexpec; *s in l maje; lh stait h is in; Sci|Tech Page 3 ♦ Wednesday, April 7, 2004 tiPflOi ceofa Sis to , “It tat total- 'age! cities vice credit cs ? e risssaii ryane-ts e s are sail the ;loc lately t nmt of m when im Digital crackdown Aggies help combat digital piracy through watermarking technology By David Barry THE BATTALION A : Greek king, held captive by his enemies in the fifth century B.C., shaved the head of a trusted servant and tattooed a secret message bn his bare scalp. Once the servant’s hair had grown over the tattoo, the king sent him back to friendly terri- ory, where his head was once again shaved to reveal the iecret message. Why the servant didn’t just memorize iveexd he message is anyone’s guess. This ancient story, recorded by the Greek historian iSfBierodotus, is one of the earliest documented uses of a technique called data-hiding. 2,500 years later, data-hid- ing has evolved into a high-tech science with enormous implications for the future of digital technology. As digital technology has enabled consumers to freely copy and share copyrighted work, copyright hold ers have recognized data-hiding as a means of control ling the distribution of their work. The hidden data in multimedia files, often called a sys digital watermark or fingerprint, could act as a virtual security tag, said Deepa Kundur, assistant electrical re tile) engineering professor at Texas A&M. One of Kundur’s ’raduate students, William Luh, explained how it works: ‘With fingerprinting, you put an invisible serial number in the media. If someone makes illegal copies, you can emaapfjcg where they came from.” The Motion Picture Association of America, which claims to lose $3 billion annually to unauthorized copy- , already uses watermarking to nab digital pirates. The March 1 issue of Electronic Engineering Times reported that traceable watermarks were embedded in each of the DVDs distributed to the nearly 6,000 voters for this year’s Academy Awards. Several of those copies surfaced on the Internet earlier this year, including big- name titles such as “Something’s Gotta Give,” “The Last Samurai” and “Cold Mountain.” Authorities were able to arrest an alleged member of an Internet piracy ring by I Ot B I itiom il M rtierns. sm said.*' ege Sp r, erp illowsit :b site if laymeitt (udersi reading the watermarks on the copied files and tracing them back to the source. Widespread use of digital watermarking is not yet a reality, but the entertainment industry is moving toward a standard technology that could watermark movies, music and other digital media. Even when watermarks are included in digital media, few people will notice. Watermarks must be invisible to be successful. To the human ear, a watermarked MP3 file should sound exactly like a file with no watermark at all. The invisibility of watermarks also means that hackers will have a difficult time finding and weeding out the hidden codes. A typical watermark is a series of a few bits hidden within a media file that may contain millions of bits. Kundur compared the watermarking process to hiding a needle in a haystack. “You’re making use of the idea of uncertainty,” she said. “A third party has no clue of where to begin looking in the haystack. Only an individual with a secret key will know where to look for the hidden data.” Still, watermarks aren’t attack-proof. For example, a hacker could alter a file in a way that damages the watermark. Also, since copy-protection watermarks contain individualized serial numbers, or fingerprints, hackers could compare two otherwise identical media files to locate the hidden serial numbers. Luh is look ing for ways to hide this “fingerprinting” data from hackers. The biggest technical challenge, Kundur said, is to find a balance between security and simplicity. Security measures like watermarking and encryption must be small enough to work on portable, battery-operated devices like MP3 players, yet strong enough to resist the efforts of hackers. Overall, digital watermarking appears to be just another battleground in the war between copyright hold ers and media pirates. In a 2001 report to the journal IEEE Multimedia entitled “Spies, Thieves, and Lies: The Battle for Multimedia in the Digital Era,” Kundur and two industry scientists wrote that they expected a continuation of the “cycle of improving and then break ing improved security.” “Perfect security will probably not occur,” Kundur said. Rather, she said, security measures should provide “an obstacle that most people will not breach.” Such security measures could pave the way to a sus tainable business model for digital media commerce, in which consumers willingly pay to download digital con tent instead of copying it illegally. “I don’t think that people by nature want to steal any thing, and I think it’s more an issue of expectation. When expecta tions settle down, it will result in a business model that is there for everyone’s benefit,” Kundur said. Luh gave another perspective. “Everyone wants free music,” Luh said. But he said he thought a busi ness model for selling digital multimedia over the Internet would be successful if copyright holders made their products cheaper. He suggested 50 cents as a reason able price for a down loaded music track. “There will still bp hackers who think everything should be free,” Luh said. “And there will be at least one detennined team of researchers at Texas A&M working to fend them off. regular houses are boring ... make it a Warehouse. coming august 200-1 www.warehouseapartments.com 3ft dspiinl^ ixampe^' ; Send#* nsiontlW* ding. *7 itialW 1 * 1 569^ F3>:8' asii# 1 ®. $30 f##" NEED A JOB? THE KIDS KLUB IS SEEKING STAFF FOR THE 2004 FALL SEMESTER AH< >Ut>S College Station %*££££, • Are you a fun person? • Do you enjoy working with kids? • Looking for valuable work experience? •Are you available Mon.-Fri., 2:45 p.m. to 6:15 p.m.? • If you answered yes to any of these questions, we may have a job for you. 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