[nado]

hi all

I've got a few ideas to try and sell (for a very cheap price) a few podcasts. It may or may not work, but will be worth a try.

However the big problem that I've been thinking about is how I would go about stopping people from simply downloading the podcast and either:

A) sharing it with their friends, or
B) uploading or sharing it through bittorrent

By streaming the mp3/podcast online it'll reduce a fair bit of piracy, but people will most likely want to download their own copy. After a bit of brainstorming I thought of a few options:

1) Create some kind of software to stop copying of the mp3's (though very hard to do and yeah very complicated)
2) Do something like Apple does with iTunes. Does anyone know exactly what they use to help prevent piracy?
3) Embed in real-time some personal data of the customer/user into the podcast... so that they will be very reluctant to share or upload it.

Option 3 is looking like the best one so far. Although then it will be a matter of working out which personal data can be verified and put into the podcast. e.g. putting their credit card number in there would be preferable, but won't go down too well

Then there's the HOW would be the best way to embed it into the mp3/podcast...

* As if it is simply added on the front or end, then someone can simply remove those sections.
* If it's added over parts of the podcast/mp3 then it will sound bad and remove parts of the audio.

> Is there a way to actually embed information into an mp3, so that the information cannot be heard, but through a couple of techniques the information can be retrieved?


In over my head, maybe, cheers.

[nado]

I've posted in a few other forums and I think the best option would be to use mp3 steganography... I just have to figure out how to add a unique code to an mp3 in real-time.

Any ideas/programs people know of?

[green]

What kind of information from the customer would you use as a safeguard?
I think it would be technically hard to somehow autogenerate a new MP3 for each customer depending on their name, I.P address etc.

How about just telling the customer that their name/IP/whatever will be encoded into the download (using technical jargon)- and if you find your track online its a violation of whatever user agreement you make them sign- and you will be able to track them and hunt them down (and impose some sort of penalty).

Then just upload the normal MP3 onto your site. Hopefully your user agreement will scare people into not sharing it online. The beauty of this system is that if the people try to decode the track to remove the encoded information- they wont find any- and assume your encryption method is unbreakable/ very advanced.

Now theres heaps of reasons why you wouldnt want to do that (lying to your customers being No 1). But its the easiest way

[nado]

hmm, yeah I guess that could work