systemshock
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- Mar 30, 2019
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About the business case:
Amazon calls this "Record Company Required Metadata". Here is a thumbnail from the description they provide for U2's Songs of Innocence album (the mp3 version):
You can see the full information on that topic here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=dm_adp_uits?ie=UTF8&nodeId=201438510
I remember reading about it some years ago. The companies require the streaming service/seller to put information, which uniquely identifies your account, into the audio stream, as a watermark. The idea is that if music obtained from your account, leaks on a file sharing service, they can track you down. I am not sure what happens after the fact, as there is always the possibility that your account was hacked, your laptop or external hard drive was stolen, etc. However, I guess that matching an account with its corresponding name, address, credit card number, etc. is not out of their reach. Probably, if they find a specific person to regularly leak music files, even if those were obtained from different accounts, they can push charges.
Back then, the article I read, stated that failing to provide this functionality, will result in the record companies withdrawing the titles from the catalog of the respective service (or to not provide it in the first place). As you can see, Amazon is still watermarking music and describes it as an activity required by another party.
What really troubles me about this practice is that it goes way beyond protecting intellectual rights and breaks your own privacy. Audio fingerprinting is already advanced enough and you can find plenty of proof-of-concept, or even real life examples, where one device listens for others and when it detects them, concludes that they are located in near proximity. Something like this:
"Your TV can tell when it is in the same room with your phone, so, hey, it may not have a GPS and you may not have logged in, with your Google account on it, but you have done so on your phone. Isn't it nice that they can now talk to each other, even without your consent? Hey, there is your laptop there too! Good to know!"
With such a watermark it becomes really easy to tell when a given person is nearby, just by listening to the music they are playing. You don't even have to gain access on both ends. Then again, in the current state of development of Surveillance Capitalism, this seems like just a drop in the ocean.
As for HDTracks and the other companies, I understand that they are required to put the watermark in there, but to me it seems that it breaks the promise they give in the first place. At the prices they keep for albums, I find it wrong to alter the sound quality in such ways. After all, people are paying for a pristine, untouched, high-quality copy of the music.
Amazon calls this "Record Company Required Metadata". Here is a thumbnail from the description they provide for U2's Songs of Innocence album (the mp3 version):
You can see the full information on that topic here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=dm_adp_uits?ie=UTF8&nodeId=201438510
I remember reading about it some years ago. The companies require the streaming service/seller to put information, which uniquely identifies your account, into the audio stream, as a watermark. The idea is that if music obtained from your account, leaks on a file sharing service, they can track you down. I am not sure what happens after the fact, as there is always the possibility that your account was hacked, your laptop or external hard drive was stolen, etc. However, I guess that matching an account with its corresponding name, address, credit card number, etc. is not out of their reach. Probably, if they find a specific person to regularly leak music files, even if those were obtained from different accounts, they can push charges.
Back then, the article I read, stated that failing to provide this functionality, will result in the record companies withdrawing the titles from the catalog of the respective service (or to not provide it in the first place). As you can see, Amazon is still watermarking music and describes it as an activity required by another party.
What really troubles me about this practice is that it goes way beyond protecting intellectual rights and breaks your own privacy. Audio fingerprinting is already advanced enough and you can find plenty of proof-of-concept, or even real life examples, where one device listens for others and when it detects them, concludes that they are located in near proximity. Something like this:
"Your TV can tell when it is in the same room with your phone, so, hey, it may not have a GPS and you may not have logged in, with your Google account on it, but you have done so on your phone. Isn't it nice that they can now talk to each other, even without your consent? Hey, there is your laptop there too! Good to know!"
With such a watermark it becomes really easy to tell when a given person is nearby, just by listening to the music they are playing. You don't even have to gain access on both ends. Then again, in the current state of development of Surveillance Capitalism, this seems like just a drop in the ocean.
As for HDTracks and the other companies, I understand that they are required to put the watermark in there, but to me it seems that it breaks the promise they give in the first place. At the prices they keep for albums, I find it wrong to alter the sound quality in such ways. After all, people are paying for a pristine, untouched, high-quality copy of the music.
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