[dvd-discuss] A TPM without use limitations -- thoughts?

[John Schulien <schulien(at)speakeasy.net>]

Having read the original article that started this thread, it appears to me
that what they are talking about is not adding any sort of identifying
information at all, but devising an algorithm to make an acoustic
"fingerprint" of existing, unmodified songs.  In other words, this
"fingerprint" isn't something that is added to a song -- it is a digital
summary of the song -- used for recognizing a song.  

It isn't a DRM measure at all.

 > Audible Magic's technology aims to get around the problem of
 > matching digital copies of songs that do not use a universal
 > naming convention or format. Audio fingerprinting captures
 > characteristics of a song that can be compared to files found on
 > peer-to-peer networks and elsewhere regardless of the file
 > name or type.

The reason for such a scheme would be to set up computers to
download files at random, and mechanically determine whether
the files are MP3s of one of their songs,  regardless of the
(possibly misleading) filename.

All of this discussion about adding false fingerprints,
removing fingerprints, and adding meta-data to fingerprints is
very interesting, but it doesn't appear to have anything to do
with what the article is talking about.