You may not have heard of German Melodic Metal outfit DOMAIN but you’re about to. DOMAIN just announced that they were successful in defending their music content from illegal downloading networks by placing inaudible digital watermarks in their songs.

The watermarks identified the songs and pinpointed them to an illegal file sharer who distributed their work over 35 000 times in four weeks. He got sued, the band won.

This may be the first time a band has successfully prosecuted illegal download of their music based on inaudible digital watermarks as evidence.

I for one say: kudos!

While I understand the argument about the music industry changing and the claims that musicians just need to adjust to this new way I also know how costly, in financial and emotional terms, and time spent, music production is. Not everyone has Radiohead’s budget, matter of fact hardly any musicians do.

So taking away the few opportunities for them to earn a living by stealing their music is simply not okay. The same holds true for movies and software. Filesharing is stealing.

If you participate in this currently, ask yourself how you would like it if you spent a year recording your music (or shooting your movie or coding software or whatever) and then somebody just takes it and gives it away for free?

Anyhow, inaudible digital watermarking isn’t totally new but it seems to be gaining momentum now. DOMAIN’s success certainly helps.

Digital Audio Watermarking

Microsoft got their version patented and call it Stealthy Audio Watermarking. There are other ways of doing this. Sometimes this is also referred to as forensic watermarking. Don’t confuse this with traditional DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Forensic watermarking cannot easily be stripped out by thieves. You can’t just convert the watermarked file to another format and be done with it. That’s great news for those wanting to protect their audio content from theft. It won’t stop everyone but it helps.

And before you ask - YES, you can also watermark your visual (video) content and make the watermark imperceptible to the human eye. Video watermarking isn’t quite perfect but it’s getting there. Some content watermarked may look a bit different from the non-watermarked version because the way the digital watermark is embedded in the picture. Think of very slight grain.

In any event, one of the pioneers of digital watermarking is Digimarc. Check them out to learn how you can protect your content. (I’m not paid by or endorsing Digimarc in any way, I provide this link for your informational purposes only. Your mileage with this, or any other technology, may vary.)