The good folks at the Digital Watermarking Alliance have put out an interesting white paper titled “Digital Serial Numbers and Piracy Deterrence: The Deterrent Effect of Digital Serial Numbers on Illegal File-Sharing and Downloading.” Here are some highlights from their release:

The study, conducted by Interpret, aimed to determine whether the inclusion of Digital Serial Numbers (DSNs) in online content would deter illegal file sharing. The results showed that DSNs would deter illegal downloading among 33 percent of the 994-person sample and deter illegal uploading among 52 percent.

DSNs represent a new way to track media content by digitally watermarking audio or video content such as music, movies or TV programming with unique, imperceptible digital identification numbers. Unlike Digital Rights Management, DSNs allow consumers to freely access content and make multiple copies for backup use or for different playing devices. Should the content be used illegally, however, the DSN can be associated back to the original buyer.

It makes sense that DSNs would have some deterrent effect, and also that they would not have a deterrent effect for many. They make other claims, which are perhaps harder to quantify, such as a contention that DSNs would encourage more legal, paid downloads among consumers; decrease illegal downloading of music 40%; and decrease 45% the number of P2P users who share copyrighted works. I need to spend a little more time with the study and with Interpret’s methodology before I can fully embrace specific percentages like that.

What is clear, and has been clear for some time, is that watermarking is a valuable tool in a rightsholder’s toolbox. It is not a panacea for all creative works, but it has real value. I can’t speak directly as to exactly how DSNs are deployed across industries, but watermarking is central in visual arts, audiovisual works and other media.

Not all creative works are created equal. Some require far more fixed costs before deployment. Some involve more rightsholders than others. Some have higher or lower resale values. Some are easier to partner with non-digital revenue models than others.

Technology, at the end of the day, is an enabler. It can enable “good” things and not-so-”good” things, as President Obama stated the other day. Obviously, when it comes to technical measures to help ensure a creator’s rights, the more likely the technology is to disrupt a user experience, the more likely a consumer is to object to it. Watermarking has varying impacts depending on its form, but by and large it is not as disruptive as some digital rights management tools — the Alliance likes to emphasize that they do not view watermarking as DRM — but it doesn’t provide the protection that DRM can.

Rightsholders are experimenting in the market, trying to find the right balance of tools with the right balance of rights offerings in the right balance of licensing models. The varying nature of creative works, as outlined above, suggests we’ll see a lot of these various tools, including DSNs, deployed going forward.

Share this:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 at 2:29 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under Obama, creators, drm, licensing, market forces, p2p, piracy, property rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.