Hands up if you hate DRM. Okay, that's everybody except for RIAA.

Digital Rights Management has been that thorn in our side for some years now; the inclusion of root kits with CD's, limits upon digital music usage and the inability to buy said digital music without any DRM attached. Yes, some providers are starting to strip the DRM from their content, but a new patent application from Microsoft may mark DRM for deletion.

Patent number 7,266,697 begins with the statement "Since the earliest days of human civilization," says the patent, "music has existed at the crossroads of creativity and technology." As I do recall, Beethoven didn't allow for any recording devices during his concerts, and Shakespeare sued everyone when the premire Othello was filmed and cast out onto the web.

But as for the patent, Darko Kirovski and Henrique Malvar of Microsoft have said that their new watermarking process is tougher than anything ever conceived before. In fact, it's said that it lives up and exceed the stringent guidelines that our friends at the RIAA have placed upon digital music security.

• Two successive D/A and A/D conversions
• Data reduction coding techniques such as MP3
• Adaptive transform coding (ATRAC), adaptive subband coding
• Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB)
• Dolby AC2 and AC3 systems
• Applying additive or multiplicative noise
• Applying a second Embedded Signal, using the same system, to a single program fragment,
• Frequency response distortion corresponding to normal analogue frequency response controls such as bass, mid and treble controls, with maximum variation of 15 dB with respect to the original signal
• Applying frequency notches with possible frequency hopping

There could of course still be that ball and chain of DRM, but the watermarking could be applied in such a manner to allow the tracking of ones digital music purchases. Jon Doe buys a song watermarked with his user profile for the music store he frequents. Jon Doe uploads his song to a torrent portal site. RIAA see's the song and looks at the watermark. RIAA sues Jon Doe.

But at least there's no more DRM.

Hmmm, all those digital augmentations to try and obscure the watermark have to be preformed on ones home PC. Couldn't I just play the music file over some really good speakers whilst recording to another PC with a high quality dynamic microphone?