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Ask LawMeme: The Intersection of Steganography and Copyright
Posted by Ernest Miller on Monday, September 30 @ 10:57:17 EDT Copyright
Aimee Deep (aka Madster, aka Music-Pundit) has proffered the following query to the LawMeme audience:
I have a question for legal scholars here. I'm interested in steganography as a way of protecting copyrighted works. Let me explain...
Suppose I took a copyrighted work, called Aimee's Music 1.mp3 and I encrypted it (using steganography) inside of another mp3, called Aimee's Music 2.mp3, which was in the public domain. Now, everytime someone copied the public domain work Aimee's Music 2.mp3, would they be violating any law because the copyrighted work, Aimee's Music 1.mp3 was encrypted inside?
What if they didn't know, or couldn't know, that the copyrighted Aimee's Music 1.mp3 was encrypted inside the public domain Aimee's Music 2.mp3 - because, say, it was strong encrypted and the key was not public? Now would they still be violating any law?
Please consider, too, that the steganography is intended as a device for protecting access to the copyrighted work, and in fact would be a very effective device.
There's a lot more to discuss here, but let me start with this to see if anyone has any thoughts.
 
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"User's Login" | Login/Create an Account | 8 comments
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Hypothetical (Score: 0)
by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Monday, September 30 @ 11:31:50 EDT
Of the top of my head: As I understand it, AM1.mp3 (copyright asserted) is encrypted in non-vital portions AM2.mp3 (public domain).

1. If AM1 and AM2 are both 3 minute songs, I don't think you can do this without either a) losing a lot of quality in AM1, b) losing quality in AM2, c) increasing the file size of AM2. Steganography is good at hiding small messages inside large fields of data (think of "A Beautiful Mind"), but doesn't work at hiding one novel inside another.

2. If you are willing to accept that the encrypted AM1 is a copy of AM1 (or a derivative translation of AM1), then, yes, copying the copy is infringement of copyright.

3. The fact that the copier is unaware of the copying makes the infringement legally "innocent," so the copyist isn't liable for statutory damages.

4. There is a latent DMCA issue here (I think, maybe) in whether you can hack at AM1 to figure out if it is an encryption of a copyrighted work and not just an extended bit of garble.


[ Reply to This ]

  • MP3 inside MP3 by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Monday, September 30 @ 12:35:50 EDT
    • Re: MP3 inside MP3 by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Monday, September 30 @ 12:59:27 EDT
Re: The Intersection of Steganography and Copyright (Score: 0)
by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Tuesday, October 01 @ 12:25:47 EDT
Perhaps it's presumptuous to guess at your motivation, but if this were an attempt to allow others to innocently and unknowingly facilitate what would otherwise be illegal, I don't think it's going to work.

That is, I'm imagining a group of people that knows the key to decrypt the copyrighted AM1.mp3 and conspirator #1 stashes it in AM2.mp3 sends it along to "the dupe" and then co-conspirator #2 downloads it from "the dupe" and decrypts it. Now, "the dupe" seems innocent to me, but IANAL. The problem is that IF co-consiprator #2 was not authorized to get the copyrighted AM1.mp3 then it doesn't seem to me that it should matter that s/he got it in an encrypted format buried in another file.

It's like if I'm not allowed to smuggle guns somewhere, then it won't matter that I put a trigger-lock on the gun and stash it in a can of coffee. Smugglers have been hiding things for years and that hasn't ever made their activities any less illegal.


[ Reply to This ]

Re: The Intersection of Steganography and Copyright (Score: 0)
by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Tuesday, October 01 @ 12:41:40 EDT
Mr. Guess At Your Motivations here again.

From checking out your site, it seems this is more about your Fairplay idea. In that case, what you describe could be a good way of defending oneself from Coble-Berman's Media Vigilantes. If we all keep our content encrypted on our harddrives, then the Vigilantes won't be able to find any infringing material and wouldn't be able to hack our home computers.

Problem is, I want to LISTEN to my MP3s, so I need a player that can seamlessly decrypt them for me if this is going to work. Also, it's not clear why it would be necessary to stash the encrypted file inside another for this purpose. If the original is encrypted, then the Vigilantes can't know for sure what it is regardless of its file name. Maybe I name all of my novels after Brittany Spears songs. Weird convention, sure, but it's supposedly a free country, so I should be able to name my encrypted files anything I like.

Also, this still won't facilitate wide-scale sharing because then my private key would have to be very public, public enough for the Vigilantes to get it. It could facilitate sharing among a trusted ring of friends though.


[ Reply to This ]


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