Ownership Stamping of an MP3 File Options

[Ultra57]

Sorry for the nontechnical terms in this post. My questions are in regards to methods of marking an MP3 with ownership.

• It appears that the primary way of identifying ownership of an MP3 is in the metatdata or ID3 tagging area of an MP3 (from Katashi Nagao's Book on Annotating and Transcoding),
• Years ago, I read information (source unknown) that an inaudible test signal or identification signal could be put into a sound file to identify the "owner."
• If the option to not include ID3 tag information is chosen in a ripping or transcoding procedure, would this ownership information be lost.

Anyone with information or direction to information in these two areas would be greatly appreciated.

This post has been edited by Ultra57: Jun 18 2009, 20:46

[DVDdoug]

ID3 tagging would be the most common.

Years ago, I read information (source unknown) that an inaudible test signal or identification signal could be put into a sound file to identify the "owner."

That would be watermarking. I don't know much about it. (It's been discussed here on the forum, so you might want to search hear and on the Web.)

If the option to not include ID3 tag information is chosen in a ripping or transcoding procedure, would this ownership information be lost.

You can always edit or remove the tags, and I'm pretty sure that transcoding would remove any watermarking (especially if you transcode to a lossy format).

The only way to "lock-in" this kind of information would be to use some sort of copy protection or DRM. DRM creates a hastle for your users, and of course, DRM can be "cracked" or simply bypassed with an analog (or virtual analog) recording.

AFAIK, there is no standard way of using DRM with MP3. You can do it with WMA & WMV, but there might be licensing fees involved. I'm not sure if Apple's AAC DRM is available to 3rd parties.

[Ultra57]

Thank you for the term and additional information. It will allow me to research further.