Hollywood studios are preparing to throw their full weight behind new digital watermarking technologies they hope will help them securely sell their movies and television shows over peer-to-peer (P2P) Internet networks.
The effort is Hollywood’s latest attempt to capitalize on the Internet as a distribution vehicle for its content, while trying to avoid falling prey to the legions of online movie pirates who the studios claim cost them as much as $6.1 billion a year in lost revenue.
The movie industry also believes that watermarks—unique digital stamps embedded into each file—would enable content producers to fend off movie pirates without having to rely on digital rights management software provided by groups such as Apple and Microsoft. But analysts and privacy rights advocates argue that watermarking will not prevent internet piracy and could give rise to a number of thorny privacy and legal issues.
“The movie industry is on a very long quest to figure this out. I’m not so sure watermark technology is the answer,” said Aram Sinnreich, managing partner of Radar Research, a media and entertainment research firm in Los Angeles.
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