Digital Watermarking Alliance Publishes White Paper on Piracy Survey Findings

May 28, 2009

Source: Digital Watermarking Alliance

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The Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA), an international group of industry leading companies involved in commercializing digital watermarking solutions, published a white paper today based on key findings from a recently commissioned survey on piracy deterrence. 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.

The white paper, titled: "Digital Serial Numbers and Piracy Deterrence: The Deterrent Effect of Digital Serial Numbers on Illegal File-sharing and Downloading," educates readers about how 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.

The white paper highlights the following additional survey findings:

-The introduction of DSNs would encourage more legal, paid downloads among consumers;
-The illegal downloading of music would be impacted the most with the introduction of DSNs, decreasing by approximately 40 percent;
-DSNs would result in a 45% decrease in the number of P2P users who leave music and video files in shared directories for others to download;
-The vast majority of consumers who download content find DSN technology "less cumbersome" than DRM and a "better balance between consumer needs and copyright protections"; and
-Many consumers would buy more CDs and DVDs when introduced to DSNs.

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