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September 24, 2002

[News]
DVD CCA fails to select Consensus Watermark

The DVD CCA has failed to select (as it had planned) a "Consensus Watermark" from among watermark technologies submitted by bidders.

EE Times reports on the failure to achieve an agreement.

We understand that the currently submitted bids will expire on November 2, and that there is currently no process in place to solicit or consider new bids.

The "Consensus Watermark" idea has had a significance far beyond DVD Video. Some studios had suggested that it could be the technological basis for a government mandate on watermark detectors, to address the so-called "analog hole". In addition, several existing private contracts refer to the Consensus Watermark (or related security measures) and provide that licensees would be required to detect and respond to the watermark, if and when it is "declared".

One application of the Consensus Watermark would be to control video data after it had been extracted from a CSS-encrypted DVD (perhaps by using a utility such as DeCSS) and converted into a different format. Equipment which recognized the presence of the watermark within the video data itself might be designed to refuse to play watermarked video streams if they were found "in the wild", outside of the encrypted media through which they'd originally been published.

Reports indicate that MPAA is very unhappy that the Consensus Watermark was not selected.

Posted by Seth Schoen at 05:42 PM