about physical watermarking, redux

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Sun Aug 1 22:45:22 PDT 2021


On 8/1/21, jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> People were to fill out the cards and return them to the manufacturer to
> re-scan.   I think the intent was that it would be impossible to fake the
> card, because the information was embedded in the fibers in the structure of
> the card itself.  If anybody tried to bootleg the album, they could not
> re-create the internal pattern of the paper.

Maybe if a faker wanted to print and sell a vinyl clone... but there would
have had to be a reply from the OEM back to the consumer to [dis]prove the
authenticity of what they bought (postcards were mostly for fanclub
signups and T-shirt and poster merch in those days). And enforcement
would depend on the consumer, instead of just happily playing their clone,
being pissed enough to rat out their lower cost vendor of choice to the OEM,
and for what reward. Big store chains would not risk their OEM distrib
contract and legal to knowingly buy and stock clones on open shelves.
Cards may have been used to detect sales of cut-out lots that were supposed
to be destroyed for credit. But the OEM still had to hunt down the offender,
which they did try to do for bootlegs at concerts and indie stores.
Were vinyl ever really printcloned (a fixed location and capital), vs when
cassette was the real and popular p2p bootleg medium of the 80s and 90s?

> About 40 years ago, I bought the latest Pat Benatar album (yes, vinyl!) from
> Tower Records in Beaverton Oregon.   Get Nervous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXatoCG13tw  official
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ2hSQK8Ak0  advert
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_72dG4B7Mhk  live

Maybe time for new blood to reboot the 70/80/90s genre.


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