4 ms·
Over here (Poland) almost everyone does something of that sort. Our ebook market is so fragmented that there's no DRM solution that all (or even most) e-reader
by miki123211 5y ago
Over here (Poland) almost everyone does something of that sort.
Our ebook market is so fragmented that there's no DRM solution that all (or even most) e-readers work with. If you add in smartphones and car stereos (for audiobooks), the situation gets even worse. Therefore, most publishers use watermarking instead of DRM, usually giving you Epub, PDF and Mobi, which you can read on any device you want.
The most common form of watermarking, at least when epub is concerned, is a 1px by 1px div containing a nonsensical hex or base64-encoded string. There are rumors of watermarks in cover images and even the text itself, though. Apparently, sometimes spaces get removed or extraneous spaces are added, lines get split up a little differently, or some common spelling or typing mistakes are made. Considering the huge number of alteration points you have, let's say 10000 per book, even doing two alterations lets you uniquely watermark 10000^2 copies.
Similar things are done to audiobooks, whether by modifying the audio itself in imperceptible ways, or by modifying the internal structure of the mp3 files. From what I've heard, messing with how frames are laid out and what's in-between them is a common tactic.
- darkwater 5y agoBut how do they enforce this watermarking on the "pirate" afterwards? Only for big enough cases?
- s_dev 5y agoProbably a maintained whitelist.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoThey probably disable the account of whoever leaked the copyrighted material.
- newaccount74 5y agoThey could just call whoever leaked the stuff and ask them to stop.
- aqme28 5y agoWhat do they do with them? Are there criminal or civil cases with those watermarks? In the US courts I believe those secret watermarks would be made public at trial, so what’s the point?
- miki123211 5y agoIt starts with a letter that basically says "we know what you're doing, we're keeping an eye on you, please stop or you'll end up in jail". I don't know what happens afterwards; I know one person who got such a letter and stopped their illicid activities. If you were serious about piracy and wanted to release books en masse, you'd probably use stolen credit cards, stolen accounts or something of that sort. I don't think that's the goal here, though, those watermarks are mostly for deterring casual piracy, sharing books with friends and so on.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- amself 5y agoWouldn’t the unique copies be 10000*9999?
- ZetaZero 5y agoFor the purpose here, the difference between 10000^2 and 10000*9999 is irrelevant