Slashdot Mirror
Is SDMI a Consumer's Nightmare?
"1. It appears you can't move the music files around on your disk. They get stored in an encrypted form and if you try and reorganize them other than through the SDMI compliant software, they go boom!
2. At least with the software I have, it appears all your music must fit on one device, there is no provision for multiple catalogs on several devices.
3. It appears that storing your music on read-only media like CDR will not be possible.
4. At least with the software I have, storing music on removable media like ZIP drives may not be possible.
5. It appears that if you have multiple computers, a laptop and a PC for example, you won't be able to transfer your music back and forth between the two.
6. It appears SDMI is a security standard only and doesn't guarantee interoperability between SDMI devices from multiple manufacturers.
7. I have yet to determine if the directory containing SDMI music can be safely backed up and restored.
8. It looks like SDMI might be one of those "standards" that can't be distributed as open source without its security being broken.
If anyone can clear up any of these questions for me I'd really appreciate it. Right now SDMI looks like it will make it terribly easy for the uninitiated to accidentally lose music by moving it in ways that seem innocent at first, but cause the security to kick in. It also seems to give the music less utility than music on a CD, that is I can carry a CD to work and play it on my PC there, or loan the CD to someone...SDMI seems to prohibit this. I don't have anything against protecting the musicians' copyright rules, but it sounds like they may be creating a consumer nightmare with all this format's restrictions.
Any comments? "
Just click through to the music format you like and look at the top 40 list for each. It's updated daily, according to what's being accessed the most, which is a pretty good indication of what's worth hearing.
And none of it is restricted by this RIAA bullshit.
Veering off topic: Now, where are our Open Source musicians? I'm looking forward to the day when lyricists put lyrics where potential vocalists can sing them and upload MP3s, musicians can download the MP3s and add music and upload tracks, then mix engineers can grab and manipulate to their hearts' content.
Yep. Modern commerce routes around "fair use" as a defect. Isn't there an internet saying something like that?
It doesn't particularly concern me, because I consider most pop culture disposable anyways.
"They came and hauled away all the crackers, and I didn't say anything.
They came next and hauled away all the hackers, and I didn't say anything.
Then they came and told me that I wouldn't have to pay as much for software anymore, because there was no longer as urgent a need for waterproof security, so I was glad I hadn't said anything earlier."
(a variation on the phrase about the Nazis. You know, the one that conveniently skips the fact that the Nazis came FIRST for the Communists and Anarchists, and also took the gypsies and other groups it's not as conveient to mention because they don't evoke as much sympathy as the Jews)
I pirate a lot of software that costs much more than I could ever afford. I pirated a $240,000 accounting/inventory database package for OpenVMS, the compilers for SGI Irix, Irix itself (several versions), HP-UX (several versions), Esix, SCO OpenServer 5.0.5 (the free version is single user a/k/a trash.), SCO UnixWare 2.1 and 7.1, several CAD/CAM packages for Solaris and Irix, Clipper Unix (old Intergraph), OpenVMS, Digital UNIX, Ultrix, etc etc. All of this shit would have cost a fortune and there's no way I would have paid for it since I just wanted it it fuck around with. Usually I'd just ask the respective company for a copy, and some of them complied, but others refused so I just told them I was going to have to copy their software. None of them gave a rat's ass. Pirating commercial applications for your own personal use isn't in the least bit wrong. In fact it behooves the producers of it to not challenge this form of piracy since it only makes their products well known.
Someone want to maintain a list of SDMI-enabled and SDMI-disabled mp3 players, and the software that comes with the players? I would, but I'm kinda busy with other projects atm.
N/T
With a sound card that can record its own output, like the SBLive! (which does this DIGITALLY! No analog noise AT ALL!), you can record your SDMI player playing the track, then MP3 it. Done. No more SDMI restrictions. What are they gonna do, take away all our SB Live!'s? }:) -=^o.o^=
Why wasn't this posted on the front page? Moderate this up as informative.
Just take the line out from one computer and
record it on another, or to dat. No human would
be able to notice the difference, and all
watermarks would be removed too.
There's also AudioJacker which is a fake sound
device that just writes to a file.
1. It appears you can't move the music files around on your disk. They get stored in an encrypted form and if you try and reorganize them other than through the SDMI compliant software, they go boom!
You're implying that the encryption scheme is dependent on sector/track/block numbers. Does this mean that running a disk defragmentation program (which a certain operating system does without asking) will render your music unplayable?
This also DOES NOT prevent someone from making a bitwise copy of the whole hard drive, so you CAN move music from one computer to another, given the right hard drive duplication tools... unless they're also keying on OS keys, or other fields that don't exist in Linux.
Might this also be circumvented by an installable file system that transparently maps disk block locations? Or is the software talking directly to hardwar? (Now THAT would be a user nightmare.)
In conclusion, it sounds like this 1) Makes life difficult for naive users. 2) Does not prevent the copying of music by people that know what they're doing.
You need to qualify your statement a bit more.
It needs to be "How many musicians WHO ANYBODY WANTS TO LISTEN TO." The reason for this is that everybody is a musician. I know I am and most people I know are. I whistle in the shower, I play the clarinet, and if I want the cats to fight it's simply a matter of playing a little music on the alto recorder and they'll be fighting with each other within a few minutes.
But the subset of musicians whose talent has allowed them to earn a living full-time from what they do is a much smaller group. The filtering process that keeps a lot of awful racket (my harmonica playing, for instance) from being heard all over is a process called the commercial music industry. And trust me, you're glad you don't have to listen to my harmonica in the elevator. I am probably thankful I don't have to listen to YOUR music, Mr. Musician.
So tell me again how the people who have content that people want to listen to are clamoring for MP3...
Actually toll roads provide a streamlined/better route to drive. This is more like saying "Pay me money if you want to use this better/higher fidelity music player."
This is a completely different statement than "I know you think you bought it but you are only allowed to play it on this one particular device."
The use of toll roads is completely by choice. I'm not aware of any areas that are _only_ accessible by toll roads. The restrictions of SDMI is completely without choice (except of course for the choice not to buy SDMI related stuff).
Yes, i think its great that that is no longer a MAJOR barier. What with VESTAX having just released a Vinyl Cutting Lathe. (the cost of the vinyl-blanks will still be expensive) but at least its possibile to press your own records. I predict that more of these DIY vinyl lathes become availabile. Because more and more people will be pissed off with digital. Oh and also will realise how 'the major's forced them over to cd's in the firstplace. BUY VINYL!!
If you need a hint as to where to look, the second soundcard is often your modem. Yep, most modern modems are voice modems, and most voice modems basically include an SB16... So far, that AudioJacker scheme sounds like the best bet for truly lossless copying, however- keep in mind that while CDDA (and SPDIF) are digital formats, neither are fully error-correcting... which is why some audiophiles will spend way too much money on CD movements and such. A cute trick culled from an audiophile magazine (selling a relabeled Sharpie or somesuch for about $10)- take a green or black permanent marker ($1) and run it around the edge of your CDs, especially scratched ones (in my experience)... It stops a bit of internal reflection and light leakage, and so cuts down on skipping (makes it easier for the beam to retrain on the spiral after it hits a scratch)... But I rant. -Spooge.
In fact, if memory serves, the reason there are so many toll roads in Chicago is largely to pay for maintenance, so that further blows holes in your argument. Actually, tolls exist for Chicago to have the freeways that the rest of the state politically didn't want to have to be forced to pay for. Rural-vs-Urban politics at its best. This is brought up as to why they probably won't go away anytime soon, because all it will do in the Illinois State Legislature is to rile up the non-Chicagoland legislators to beat down the Frankenstein that is Daly (Chicago) politics. Gov. Ryan & the ghosts from his Secretary of State days might have better luck herding cats or pissing up a rope... Same ol' thing happened in Washington State. Get the cowboys and wheat farmers all riled up about the Univ. of Washington, and all the colleges in WA get screwed over by the legislature. Gotta keep those College Boys in check, I guess.
Musicians get three cents on the dollar for recorded music. Ultra superstars get six. woohoo. I did the math. Record deals are only there so you can get decent shows. I quit the music business because of this. Who cares?
No, most of the funky stuff stores *something* obscure and vague in the Registry, so that even if you do uninstall the SW, that key is left behind. On NT, it's stored in what is the current "hot" system configuration information, I'm pretty sure, the hive that you can't see with RegEdit, but on Win95 you can. But who knows... those CLSIDs are essentially undecipherable...
Only by religiously keeping pre- and post-versions of your *.DAT registry files can you possibly keep yourself in business, or using a "Registry DIFF" tool (like in Norton Utilities).
WMP also installs a couple of CODECs, I think, and it is within the realm of possibility that the Registry stuff for those CODECs keep them from being used by other stuff, as illogical as this might be. I just reinstalled WinAmp after I installed WMP, so no problem there.
Re: Free Movies... "Troops" was pretty damned funny...if only it was longer... *:)
That's not 100% correct. SCMS (Serial Copy Management Systems) partly killed DAT (and MiniDisc too, in a sense). SCMS was this fascist-like idea that you can't make digital copies of digital copies. You can make one digital copy of a digital recording, but no more after that. You can, however, make unlimited analogue copies of a digital recording and vice versa. It's way lame, but some people around the place have built specialist hardware to get around this (for MD players at least, but they're almost always model-specific). Another thing that killed DAT was, wait for the, the RIAA. This bunch of morons decided that with DAT, everyone could make unlimited digital better-than-CD-quality recordings of CDs, and so that noone would bother buying CDs anymore. DAT is still used in the professional audio/broadcasting industry, but not nearly as much as it should be. The other bad thing is that DATs are about AUD$15.99 here :(
Closed source OS's aren't any better, sooner or later the data has to go over a tappable wire or through the air. It can be intercepted at any number of places.
We had to chew off our own feet, and bang them against our heads to create music. Ahh, but those were good days. Good, but tough.
Heh. Slashdot works in mysterious ways. A story for you:
I own one of those obsolete CD stores, and read Slashdot mostly for fun. But I've been following this issue closely, as both a seller and user of music. When the BMG thing was posted, I mentioned it (including the Slashdot URL) as a "heads up" to the rep at my music distributor (which happens to be one of the biggest independent-- not label owned-- in the country). Sort of a "beware, you may suddenly have a *BUNCH* of product coming back" thing.
Earlier this week I get a call: Rep told the distributor's BMG buyer, who checked out the Slashdot story, got someone to translate the German links for him, and then made a "what the hell's going on?" call to BMG. After going through several layers of cluelessness, the buyer was told "yeah, we tried it, and it didn't work, and we're 'withdrawing' it until we can fix it."
Maybe a temporary victory, but now we have at least one more non-geek who's aware of the games being played, and is in a position to make the game playing difficult. *Chuckle*
Umm, anyone can rip any audio file to mp3. It doesn't matter how it is released, it will be re-encoded to mp3 and distributed freely. Or do you think it is the record companies who have made all of the mp3s that are currently available?
Ummm.... your point sucks. Who wants to drive in the bushes?
Dude, play some Carmageddon!
;-)
There's at least three acres of flat land in WV, but unfortunately the Huntington Mall is built smack dab on all of it ;)
== Answer == The files must be stored in a protected manner, but the fact that the system breaks when the files get moved around your file system is not a result of SDMI. This is probably because the implementation expects the files to be in a particular location. In other words, YES, it does break when you move the files.
Divx died and so will this, and for the same reasons.
Chop off your feet ? Luxury. Why, we had to bash each other about the head and face until we were dead just to hear music. Try to tell young people that these days...
*All* of Voyager's episodes suck. Except for those 1/3 new stories you talked about. They just suck more.
--- A bitter TNG/B5 fan
You've either watched too many episodes of the X-Files or listened to a little too much Art Bell. Which is it?
And your wife has stuff in her ear.
post your link to http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=trolltalk .. we need you there!
Don't buy any device that is SDMI compliant. The only real way to let manufacturers know that we won't allow ourselves to be restricted into giving up our fair use rights is to not buy any hardware or software that will do just that.
Boycott SDMI!
Anyone up for creating a website devoted to musical artists who want to share their contributions with the world? I got the idea earlier when someone mentioned that music should be open sourced. My idea is that the music created will be under the gpl and anyone can modify it any way they want as long as they give credit and distribute it freely. The long toerm goal would be to put music back in the musicians hands. I think we could all use the freedom. tootired@zombieworld.com
Actually, within the last couple of months, I have noticed quite a few of my non-geek friends getting into mp3s. I think it might have something to do with napster, but I could be wrong.
The only way it will ever work if it is encrypted all the way to the speaker cabinet, and even then they have to invent a new kind of speaker is a hybrid of a decrypting computer and speaker without any sort of transmission media in between.
When that happens, we'll be drooling over the nanotechnology too much to notice that our fair use rights are gone.
You are right about that one. Normaly, I buy the software I use (hell, I'm the only person I know how pays Shareware fees) but I use a "warez" copy of MS office. The reason I do this is I just don't have $300+ for Microsoft's typewriter Emulator (ie word) and if I hadn't been able to find a friend who would let me copy it I wouldn't be using. I'd stick to Simpletext. But now a days Word's needed if your a collage student thanks to Mircosoft's pushing it as a sudo-standard.
Ahhh, but your dreams are coming to a website near you! Check out my site, www.mp3car.com for complete information about the new line of MP3/CD players that are coming out. MP3 vs. SDMI....thats easy. MP3 for me...
most of the music I was tired of the band/song long before the cassette wore out. those few that wore out before I was tired of hearing it, I pulled out my backup or compilation cassette, and played it until it wore out.
That was so funny I forgot to laugh.
I hate Regis Philbin, I hate Who wants to be a millionaire, I hate people who cheat, and most importantly... I HATE YOU TROLLBOY!
Muahahaha. May you spend your years in hell next to Jim Carrey for your unfunny jokes.
OH yes...and they are allready around thank_you_very_much...like clarion's autopc running win ce...the cd player is a also a cd rom and they say theres a mp3 player for it...if not that then theres the empeg car player....my fav...a car stereo that runs linux and has laptop hard drives in em...etc...and i even ran across a portable cd-rom player that was similar to sonys car discman...except it had a built in hardware mp3 decoder ....lets face it...if someone would mass market a cd player that supported burned cds with mp3's on it....and could survive the lawsuits...well...anyway....for the techies having mp3's everywhere they go is allready here and will never go away as long as the current cd standard exists...i dont care what they come up with to encrypt cd's with..its still a cd that has to be backwards compatible...that restriction alone means i can make copies of cd's forever....not to mention decss is around in the unlikely scenario of dvd's replacing cd's...not gonna happen now ;) they oughta just admit defeat and give the music away online...i wonder what the profit from advertising would be for a site that gave away mp3's legitimately..amongst other things......or maybe if they (RIAA) sold the rights to other web sites to distro mp3's for a cut in the ad profits etc..etc...point is...there are other ways to make money off content besides selling the content.. its all ones and zeros
CNET article
That isn't going to happen because the
:)
precedent has already been set - software and hardware for MP3 playback is already legally being sold.
Or being given away. Thanks Justin!
maX_
Hmm... You obviously don't live where you "get" to drive on toll roads.
The use of toll roads is an abomination. Not only are you taxed for state services (that include highway construction and maintenance) through various state and federal taxes, including consumption-based taxes (gas tax), now you get to pay for the "privelege" of driving on them.
Lessee. To get from Tulsa to Oklahoma City requires either navigating backroads, or one of two toll roads. What a good, apples-to-apples comparison this is.
Now let's take the abomination that California is doing: agreeing to let a private company "build" the highway (the same highway contractors do it), in exchange for the tolls collected in perpetuity. This on new roads, as well as some improved existing highways.
Now, if I were REALLY an anti-tax zealot, I'd be extremely bothered by a tax going to support ONLY a private enterprise.
I think it is your DUTY as a Canadian to get what you have already paid for then. The recording companies have already been paid for your copies, so you'll just have to go and make them now. To not make copies now would be cheating yourself and your friends. It's like being punished for a crime you haven't yet had the pleasure of - so do it! I don't 'think' the industry is a registered charity?
Go to MP3.com and download stuff. They have an amazing variety and a lot of it is fairly good. Not every good musician has signed on to a big company.
As for movies, that's harder. It takes far more resources to make a believable film, but it may be possible some day.
Books shouldn't be too hard.
Basically, let's push amateur and open entertainment media.
Yep. Good old vinyl. Back when the barrier to entry into the market was an expensive lathe and a vinyl pressing plant.
Fortunately, water marks can be scrubbed if you know what you're doing. But this may be enough of a road bump that most people won't do it.
About 1/3 of the episodes of Voyager are ripoffs of the TNG, 1/3 are ripoffs of the original series and the rest are new stories and they suck.
If manufacturers would ignore the RIAA and market the devices as devices that play sound files, why would there be a problem. Even if the RIAA pushes the format it doesn't matter. I know I'll have my very own home made MP3 Player that I can take with me. This secure format really isn't legal for them to push to the consumer because they think they can control a computer file format. It's a bunch of crap. The format exists already and they think we are all going to switch over and use their new "special" format and replace all our software and hardware. Come on guys, just don't use the software or hardware that is compliant and they WILL STOP MAKING IT!!!
...or MP3's open successor. This kind of closed crap is doomed from the start. SDMI is the DIVX of the music world! (OT: Did anybody *NOT* figure out what was going on by halfway through last nights Voyager?) Cpt_Kirks
sdmi-dk
Thank you.
It is already possible for artists to do this. Get Digi001, a version of professional audio software ProTools targeted to home users and musicians. Then burn the files to mp3 via a plugin (shareware, cheap, tons of options). Make it available for download. Done.
This is scary to RIAA, not because it allows pirating or payment-free music, but because it allows the next generation of stars to build themselves up from the ground. Expect that when the dust settles from the current round of lawsuits, the music industry will start with the racketeering. Three years from now (probably sooner), an up-and coming artist, whose reputation was forged on free music downloads, will have major retailers refusing to carry or promote the artist's self-produced and guerilla-promoted CDs because of pressure from the music industry on retailers. This artist will then sue.
I'd bet money on it.
From the SDMI FAQ:
And of course, the use of the SDMI system is entirely voluntary.
If this is not an outrageous lie, just add a little button saying "turn SDMI off" on all SDMI-compliant software. I'd like to opt out, please.
Although this may be more obscure than CSS, it's still not remotely secure. Sure, I'll have to work a bit harder to pirate, but it'll still be easy as pie.
With DVD, all you have to do is copy it to VHS, which is very easy if you have one of the non-data ones which hook up to your t.v., since you just plug the cord into the VHS recorder instead of the screen. Or, if you have one of those nice VCR to computer plugs, you can do it straight to your computer. It's mpeg capture from there. Sure, it won't be the same quality, but if you're going to pirate, you'll be playing around with VCDs anyway.
On a side-note, does anyone know if there are any plans for *nix versions of the necessary software?
Well, assuming I'm using a supported OS, all I have to do is redirect the line out to the line in, either by software if possible, or by wire, if necessary. Sure this might be a tiny bit lossy, but certainly not as lossy as the wire that goes to your speaker, anyway. So from there I just have to have something to record the incoming sound, which are everywhere. Then I can burn it onto a CD or copy it to mp3 and distribute as I please. Sure, this may not always be legal, but contrary to RIAA belief, case law does support fair use, so they can't arrest me for having software to do this, since I wouldn't even be breaking their encryption.
Bottom line is that the greatest security is trust. If everyone in the world wanted to kill their next door neighbor, most of the time it would happen. Law enforcement only works when a small population is in violation. If they piss us off to the point where we all WANT to pirate, legal or no, they get what they deserve.
IIRC ( I haven't lived in SW Fl. for a while) the residents of Sanibel and Lee County (read TAXPAYERS) Have been begging for the tolls to be lifted or another way to access the Damn Island for years.
I have USB speakers. They work in any computer with a USB port with Windows 98 or Windows 2000. There's no sound card in the computer. The speakers are made by Microsoft. I don't think there is enough "smarts" in the subwoofer (where the USB cable terminates) to do encryption, but it's an interesting possiblity.
It's quite nice not having a damn sound card in the PC.
Just pointing out yet another one. Moderators ignore this guy, he's just out for banner impressions or to waste your points. I propose we simply do the above to every one of his posts so that no moderator points get wasted (and anybody who browses at 0 will see both his and our posts). Just hound this troll right outta here.
CNN Entertainment
Thank you.
That get trolled like crazy?
Do these people not know just how many conspiracy theorists there are on slashdot!?
You cant fool us!!!!!
I knew we should have never left vinyl!
The basic concept of SDMI is that there exists a so called SDMI domain in which all your secure music tracks are stored. This (logical) domain extends over some part of your hard drive and/or the portable device which you use to listen to the music. A licence control manager (LCM) controls the passing of music content in and out of this domain. For entering or leaving the domain certain criteria are used, like copyright, the number of copies allowed etc. .mp3 files ) into the SDMI domain, the files nevertheless have to be converted into SDMI compliant files, so moving them back out of the domain might not be so easy. (Users of the Thompson Lyra have discovered that all .mp3 files are converted to a proprietary format before being uploaded to the player)
Inside the domain the files are bound to this domain by the use of serial numbers (drive ID, player ID, removable media ID and other unique identifiers ) Therefore it is not possible to move SDMI protected files from one disk/machine to another, at least not withput the "help" of the LCM I doubt that at the moment there is support for more than the hard drive and the portable player as being part of the SDMI domain, so this might explain ahy CD-R and removable media drives do not work.
One interesting fact is that altough it is allowed to enter "free" content ( like normal
44% of people did not distribute because there was no "unfirom secure distribution system." That's more than the 16% of record execs. How many artists is that?
67% think that SDMI actually does help the industry. This should be the most glaring piece of misinformation we need to correct. "Remember DAT?"
36% thought that the SDMI decision making process was positive! That's more than the percentage that thought SDMI was for the RIAA agenda only.
Those numbers are incorrect. I assume you came up with those numbers by taking the previous posters numbers, (ie 33% of respondents felt that SDMI only benifited RIAA) and subtracting that from 100. There were other options as wel, namely "uncertian". So only 17% actually claimed that SDMI actually benifited the industry as a whole.
Next time, read the article before you quote it.
it allows bands & independent labels to cheaply & easily distribute their music worldwide without the record companies getting their cut That's the real issue here. Why would a new band sign over the rights to their music to a record company when they dont have to? Right now they get pressured into it because its the only way to "Make it"..that is..to get the money to get the studio so they can record their music decently so they can press up some cds so they can put them in stores to sell.....whew...unless they own their own label and cd factory they "HAVE" to sign a contract with a label that forces them to do things in the label's favor if they ever want to get out of the bar scene. The internet and .mp3's are especially dangerous to the status quo of Music Label's coz they provide the medium for free (mp3 file format) and the distribution for next to nothing...you set yourself up with a web page for cheap on geocities or just get a cable box somewhere..as soon as hits start to take off you get a pro site with advertising to pay off the web server...which will work coz if by then you are getting the hits for your music off your site then obviously it will pay for itself. ..after that the scenario gets fuzzy coz im not too sure where the ultimate monetary profit is going to come from...will you make money off the advertising to your site and give your music away? maybe the band is in it just for the sake of making music and isnt out for profit at all? and of course you can uhhh..hmmm..."sell" mp3's off of your page..yeah right... But back to the original point....what the RIAA and MPAA are so pissed off about is the ability of others to manufacture market and distribute music and movies without the traditional industry ever entering the picture... remember what happened with Pearl Jam and Ticketmaster? from the ex-cabbie out of Ann Arbor who used to live with PO' musicians + freaks :)
The music industry has been screwing everyone for decades. Most artists get a pittance for each sale. It can't cost more than about $1 to make a CD. So the other $10-$15 dollars goes to these record companies. LPs were about $8 in 1987. The next year, they abruptly disappeared off the shelves to be replaced by CDs costing twice as much. I have no doubt that if the industry were to succeed in pushing a new standard, they would double prices again.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
There was also a story on Bloomberg (which is down right now so I can't confirm it) a few weeks ago about a DOJ case on CD price fixing via kickbacks to record stores; I haven't found anything on the DOJ site about this, for some reason.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
My take on this is different - Beta was better, but Sony controlled it, just as the RIAA wants to control SDMI, and the other suppliers balked. You'll notice that all the proprietary SDMI formats are "technically superior" as well.
MP3 in your analogy is the VHS-like open standard, which is why, for instance, it has been adopted by a lot of electronics companies which have never been in the personal audio business before. The MP3 "copyright" battle is just a proxy for the format and distribution war that's going on now in the cozy electronics and music industry, of which Sony is the biggest player, AFAIK.
(I submitted a story a few weeks ago about the big 5 CD producers being investigated for price fixing, including TWX-now-AOL; apparently no one thought it was relevant, but I see it as the other side of the same coin.)
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
There's one problem with that statement... if the only available content is for SDMI enabled devices, what then? I don't know as much about this as I should before posting, so I'll keep this brief. My fear is that those that control the content can drive the technology.
For eaxmple, who needs the ability to copy to removeable media if all stereos come with a jack or port to plug in your SDMI compatible player? You can still do everything you used to do with a CD or Tape (i.e. take it to a friends house, play it in your car, whatever). I'm not saying I like it, but if the content is marketed as better with more features, it will drive the hardware sales.
Sujal
politics, food, music, life: FatMixx
I'd appreciate it if you don't insult me by saying things like "I am probably thankful I don't have to listen to YOUR music, Mr. Musician." unless you've actually listened to my music with an open mind. Thanks. Oh, and just to let you know, in adition to radio airplay I also recently received a 1000$ award for my music. So apparently not everyone feels the way you do.
Also, there is a MASSIVE difference between having talent and being a part of the commercial music industry. Your statement is like saying the only good software is the software a multimillion dollar company releases and promotes.
If people only want to listen to commercial music, why did almost 500,000 people download music from amp3.com in the past MONTH alone. I don't know the numbers for mp3.com, but they could quite easily be double that. It is obvious that there is a lot more to independent music than "awful racket".
Oh, and you said "So tell me again how the people who have content that people want to listen to are clamoring for MP3..." - if you had ever even visited any of the mp3 sites you probably would've seen the headline "AMP3.com Artist Chris Perez Nominated for Grammy". Chris Perez also won a 1995 Grammy, but then again, I'm sure no one wants to listen to his music.
> Who loses if digital media dies?
The only way digital media can die is by uninventing alot of things.. We're only a few years into the game and look at the mess we've made already.. Some clever musician is teaming up with some clever web geeks right now somewhere, and they'll do a multi-diamond selling album without any physical media without ever getting a major involved... Imagine if Smells Like Children had been net-only.. Inside 10 years, someone will get it together and make some real fame and money off an MP3s.. The whole label system as we know it is toast.. Maybe the first whole industry to fall to the information age, but not the last for sure...
Something is escaping me here. I'm not as familiar with digital music as I'd like to be, but I remember the good ol' days of the fight over the DAT recorder.
Isn't this "standard" just the MPAA (RIAA?) way of continuing the fight over digital media? And hasn't the recording industry been trashed in court before over this very issue (copying music), back in the '80s?
As with the Linux/DVD fiasco, I don't see how these folks have a legal leg to stand on, what with all of the precedent out there. Feel free to fill me in..
-----
".sig,
Well, he's wrong then. :-) Finding a song you want is extremely easy and relatively painless, with programs like Napster and some of the better MP3 web searches.
Only if you're looking for the latest boy band song. Try finding some more obscure songs/albums and you'll have considerably less luck.
Instead, they'll destroy themselves in the process of trying to convince people that it's better to license music instead of buying it. What morons.
They have to go at it full steam. They missed the boat with digital music. Digital music sat around and grew for a couple of years before the recording industry took notice of it. They're trying so damn hard now because they realize they screwed up. If I were a record exec, I'd be running scared too. With more people on fast and cheap connections and 20+ gig hard drives common these days, music can fly around at will. And it will only get worse for them. They will never relenquish control of their intellectual propery. They'd be crazy to do that. They want to make it as hard as they possibly can to find that cd you're looking for so you'll go buy it. Can't blame them for chasing profit.
Of course piracy will continue to exist. People have pirated things since there has been people and software. The software and music companies know this. Even though they won't ever stop all piracy, they can stop some of it. They protective measures won't stop people that make their lives out of pirating things, but they will stop Joe User from getting around the procection. If they can make it difficult for someone to pirate their wares, then they increase the chance of selling their items. For instance, if I wanted some new cd, I'd probably look around for a day or 2 to see if I could find it in mp3 format somewhere. If I couldn't, I'd just go out and buy the cd.
The record companies try to prevent piracy for the same reason the police try to prevent crime: they know they can't wipe it all out, but they can keep it under some control.
to protect us from nonexisitant threats.
Er, nuclear missiles don't exist? Then what were all those nuclear disarmament advocates who were camped out across the street from the White House all those years so worked up about?
Steven E. Ehrbar
What's the URL for this one? I downloaded the "Live in Mexico City" concert in .asf format a while back. First time I tried to play it, Media Player launched Internet Explorer and went to a web page that asked me for an email address -- but every time since then, it plays like any other file. I really ought to get around to splitting it up into mp3's :)
Fuck Slashdot
Music is not subject to wear and tear as such, so there are no ongoing costs to maintain it. I think the artists are certainly entitled to compensation for the effort of creating the music. I'm okay with buying CDs, but that should mean for me that I have a license to privately do anything I want with that music. I should be allowed to back it up, to convert it to a different medium, or whatever.
But I'm not at all interested in having to pay tolls every time I want to hear a song.
Little Debian: America's #1 Snack Distro!
Excellent point!
The problem with "supporting" independent artists is that music is not a political statement, at least for me. I like bands regardless of thier record deal, based on whether or not the music is any good. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.
Bite the hand.
Another cunning way they killed consumer DAT was by putting a 'tariff' on blank DAT tapes so they would cost more than a CD.
Bite the hand.
then they probably shouldn't have moved to a damned island in the first place. sheesh. :)
-k. ^-^ ^D
This is all the more reason to support independant and underground musicians -- the ones that don't get signed. Keep in mind that musicians pay a terrible faustian price whenever they join a record label: they lose the rights to their own recordings. Even a bigshot like Bruce Dickinson can't afford to buy back some of his own albums from his old record company.
If the market can be manipulated by conscientious consumers (and that is either us or no one) then perhaps a situation can arise where it is more profitable for a musician to stay independant than join a label. Make it so that the entity who has the monopoly is the band itself.
And that's what we need to do. Encourage the ones who do the Right Thing. Vote with your wallet.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I would have to say it would be geeks like people on Slashdot.
DIVX essentially fails because the people who first bought DVD players chose a DVD player. Which was also first to market. The Rio was the first to market, and the press was a nice plus also.
If you watch ZDTV "FreshGear" (shudder), they will have on some sort of online music player, and they call it an "MP3 player". That is the key. The people are looking for an MP3 player, and if they don't get one, they will get something else.
Or so I think.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - F. Voltaire.
Well, the cat's out of the bag as far as MP3 ripping goes. We have the software, we have the CD-ROM drives, and there's nothing that the RIAA can do about it :-)
One way that they could stop us from using MP3 would be to make the sale of MP3 players illegal. That isn't going to happen because the precedent has already been set - software and hardware for MP3 playback is already legally being sold.
Could the RIAA place pressure on manufacturers to market SDMI only devices? Well, I'm sure they could try (and I'm sure that they ARE trying). Would the manufacturers go for it? My guess is no, for two reasons: The RIAA can't control or restrict the supply of music for MP3 format (we can rip our own MP3's after all), and there's going to be precious little marketplace demand for SDMI only players. It just doesn't make economic sense for the player manufacturers to go down this road.
Could they place pressure on the distributers to sell only SDMI players? Yes they could, and I'm pretty sure that they'll try this one in the near future. Of course, they'll have to offer the retailers 'incentives' to do this as they'll effectively be removing themselves from a segment of the marketplace. I would imagine that the 'incentive' would be along the lines of "we'll refuse to allow you to sell our CD's if you don't". I see some interesting legal battles looming on the horizon over this one.
Another way that they could stop us from using MP3 would be to limit music distribution to only their specified music format. I don't think this is going to happen, because it would require them to kill off the CD market - the MP3 marketplace just isn't big enough for them to be able to justify replacing the entire music distribution mechanism. Even if they DID replace the music distribution mechanism with the new 'SDMI' only version, it wouldn't be too long before someone produced a nice little software package that would convert the SDMI music files into MP3, wav, or whatever other format you wanted. Encryption just doesn't hold up for very long these days, as the DVD consortium recently found out.
The only way that the RIAA would have a hope of replacing MP3 with SDMI is by providing such added value in the new file format that people voluntarily choose to use it. That clearly hasn't happened.
So, what's the upshot of all this? That SDMI is a doomed technology. The RIAA just hasn't realised that it's fighting a battle that it can't win yet.
--
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
Or being given away. Thanks Justin! :)
:-)
A very good point. Justin Frankel has helped to radically change an industry that hadn't changed for decades previous...
Not many people can say that
For the uninitiated, Justin Frankel produced and designed the WinAmp MP3 player.
--
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
Actually, come to think of it I don't think that WinAmp has the SDMI format implemented. Perhaps Justin should add it...
;-)
--
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
Is there a particular reason that www.sdmi.org wasn't linked? So far the only explaination I can think of is needless displays of bias on /.'s part. Anyways...
It seems that SDMI was really quite a knee-jerk reaction to the whole digital music media movement, and was never really planned as a true technical solution. I think such a restrictive standard shows us the intentions of its supporters, and their feelings about their customers as well.
But I suspect that SDMI is here to stay. Ask yourself who you know that is using mp3s... it's mostly geeks like yourself right?
Well, the much larger market for music isn't and they want something convienent and legal. While SDMI may be inconvienent to use, I suspect it will be very convienent to buy on-line.
mp3s will never have the legitamacy to be sold on-line through easily accessible channels. This will ensure that mp3s will always stay in the realm of rip-it-yourselfers (like me). The mass market isn't here though.
As I said, I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect that mp3 will stay fringe and won't eat into the profits of the RIAA as much as they claim.
GRH
(with 20+G of mp3s)
Now, I've never thought much of MD's before - my impression has been that they are a failed technology. Add the mp3 aspect, and I might actually buy one instead of an mp3/cd-player.
p
The MPman is an MP3 player, period. It was released before SDMI so how could it have anything to do with SDMI? These guys just figured out the format for sending files to the unit, and wrote their own software. You're not going to see anyone complain about this because a) The music starts off in an unprotected format (CDDA or MP3) and b) Saehan is a relatively small Korean company who are probably happy, if anything, that their device works on one more platform now.
As the other reply to your message correctly points out, not all ( and probably not even most ) of people who use pirated SW/music/etc do not have enouhg money to buy it. AFAIR from one of he older /. polls at least 1/3 of us here are IT professionals and surely can afford a 20$ for a CD or VHS tape. It is just the matter of not spending these 20$ for something you do not really want. If you download a few MP3 by some band and you like them there is a good chance tha you will buy their CD next time you are in music store. Yes, if you are ( say ) a student who took too many classes to have time for work and you just do not have 20$ then the above argument stands true, if you are unable to get it for free you are not going to get it. But in general, why would I buy something ( more then a 1-3$ in cost ) if I don't know what good it is. And with such things as software it is especially true. Even a demo version is not always enough. I have downloaded many a warez game and many an MP3 file
Games I liked I bought, music I liked I bought. I always like to have an actual box with the game ( manuals, nicely printed CD ), an original CD ( not a CD-R but the original printed CD with cover and stuff ), original book ( all bound in nice cover not a printout or xerox copy ). You know what I mean...
Everybody Lies. But it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
He contends that searching for illegal takes time and it's difficult to find the exact song you're looking for.
:-) Finding a song you want is extremely easy and relatively painless, with programs like Napster and some of the better MP3 web searches.
Well, he's wrong then.
If the music industry were to make it extremely convenient to get songs from them, consumers would pay a small amount of change for each song in exchange for the time saved.
This is true, as far as it goes. They will NOT pay for something that's easy to get and pay for, if they cannot make copies for themselves and have it stop working. They will NOT pay for a music format they cannot give to a friend (regardless of the legality of this act). They will NOT pay for something that will only play on the one player they download it to and then not play on another player because the key is wrong. They don't care about keys and legality. They just want to listen to some tunes.
If the music industry had a site where I could go and legally download MP3's, for a small fee, and not have to search, and be legal in doing it, and not have to worry about encryption problems, or compatibility, and where I could take the file they gave me and decrypt it to make it into other formats, then I'd be the first to sign up.
But they'll never do that. They're not that smart.
Instead, they'll destroy themselves in the process of trying to convince people that it's better to license music instead of buying it.
What morons.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
- Anticipated Technical Functionality of Phase 2 Screening of Digital Audio Content
- SDMI Portable Device Specification - Part 1, Version 1.0 (PDWG99070802)
- Amendment 1 to the SDMI Portable Device Specification - Part 1, Ver 1 (PDWG99092302)
- Guide to SDMI Portable Device Specification - Part 1, Version 1.0
- Interim Phase 1 SDMI Trademark License and Compliance Agreement
Snagged these directly from www.sdmi.org...PDF format, sorry.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
They know that SDMI is a giant pain in the ass. This way they can let the CONSUMER kill portable digital music devices -- people will buy SDMI devices, they'll suck rocks, and people will naturally return them in droves.
Net result: hardware companies get royally screwed, and they all vow to never produce another portable MP3 player. And it's all because the "consumer doesn't like hardware players" . . . . </I>
The problem is that the consumer DOES want hardware digital audio players. They'll just go buy a NON-SDMI player. Simple.
They'll buy something that will play their existing MP3 collection, rather than having to use some new format they don't have already...
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Can't blame them for chasing profit.
Sure you can! Making your customers into your enemy is not sound business practice.
Plus, there's only two sides to the coin. Trying to keep the public from copying music won't work, period. The public will do it anyway. You can't stop something from happening when everyone does it. No, the law won't stop it, nor will technology.
So they've got two alternatives. Embrace it, or die. That's it. Simple.
On a side note, why the hell isn't the "Extrans (html tags to text)" working anymore?
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
..compared to VHS and CD/R. Especially if you consider only entertainment DVD
m l98/dvdd_110198.html
0 22
players, not DVD/CD computer drives, since that is the market the DVD
publishers are so jealously "protecting".
http://205.177.58.134/tdb/tdb_may99/vhs.htm
http://www.seattle-times.com/news/technology/ht
http://techmall.com/techdocs/TS980407-8.html
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19981001S0
Where did you get your info?
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
Betamax actually came before VHS, and was technically superior. VHS became the standard due to marketing and oversupply, once all the videos on the shelves were in VHS there was no point in buying anything but a VHS recorder. I think this is a bad example to support your argument, as it is an example of marketing triumphing over usability.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
Keep in mind that musicians pay a terrible faustian price whenever they join a record label: they lose the rights to their own recordings. Even a bigshot like Bruce Dickinson can't afford to buy back some of his own albums from his old record company.
A similar thing happened with Buckner & Garcia, who you may remember as having recorded the album "Pac Man Fever" back in the 80s. Recently, B&G decided they wanted to reissue the album on CD, but couldn't afford to buy the rights back (from Sony, if I recall). Instead, they ended up re-recording the entire album from scratch, trying to make it sound as much like the original as possible.
Support independent musicians! Create your own content and keep it free!
There is actually a group of musicians/bands/etc. applying a GPLish touch to the music that they write. Doing a search in your favorite search engine on "free music" should reveal of few of their pages. Check out here to get started.
------ 24.5% slashdot pure
Your reply to the original question was excellent, technically. It seems, however, that you did not read (or ignored) some of the other more pressing arguments against SDMI.
... to MP3.
...
1. If SDMI is in any way more restrictive than MP3s or any other similar format, why should the consumer buy it? The benefits to the music industry and RIAA are not factors to the consumer. Musicians will still make music, and money, the old way.
2. As has been raised countless times in posts in this thread, the only music you can't duplicate is music you cannot hear. If you can hear it, you can record it
3. IMHO (and I've seen thise elsewhere), two of the major reasons music gets pirated at all is the high cost of CDs and the fact that many people purchase a CD of 12-17 tracks to hear 3 of them for a month or two.
It's been proven time and again that technical merits bow to more subjective issues.
One more thing
[Milo_Mindbender wrote]
1. It appears you can't move the music files around on your disk. They get
stored in an encrypted form and if you try and reorganize them other than
through the SDMI compliant software, they go boom!
[End]
[Anonymous Coward replied]
== Answer ==
The files must be stored in a protected manner, but the fact that the system breaks when the files get moved around your file system is not a result of SDMI. This is probably because the implementation expects the files to be in a particular location.
[End]
The content of the post and the fact that he composed such a lengthy post both suggest to me that he's a little beyond making such an elementary error as that.
Res ipsa loquitor.
--
DataHntr
> Last year, an RIAA official publicly stated their
> intention to eventually "phase out" MP3s by
> putting an "off switch" on all SDMI compliant
> software. After the SDMI standard becomes
> widespread, the consortium would "flip the
> switch", and make MP3s completely unplayable on
>all computers with SDMI installed.
Can you give us a source for this publicly stated intention? Not that I don't buy it, but it sounds like a good piece of ammunition against the RIAA/SDMI thing, and I'd like to be able to back up the claim if anyone asks me about it...
The latest issue of Popular Mechanics talks about a new MiniDisc player from Sharp that also plays MP3 audio. The model number is MD-MT15. It comes with Voquette's NetLink software/hardware for copying MP3s from your pc. "This combination allows you to download, record, and manage web content on your minidisc, as well as personalize web audio playlists including music, news and streaming video." It can record audio MD too, so all your bases are covered. Retail price is $249.
Somebody moderate this up! Now! He's a genius!! He makes very similar arguments that I did in the next message!!!
:)
Seriously, even piping the audio into brains isn't enough. My wife has a cochlear implant. It has an analog input port. Shouldn't be hard to reverse engineer an audio output (Not sure that she'd like me taking a soldering iron to it though:) The only way to be prevent the 'theft' of music (please note the quotation marks) is to pipe the thoughts of the musician to that of the listener. And then how would the RIAA and M$ make a buck? (Not to mention that I don't want to get that intimate with most musicians. Better stop this before I start a Natalie Portman thread:)
BTW, the industry (at least WRT the US market can win. I'm sure they'll try to 'license' music much the way software is licensed, especially if Art. 2B (UCITA) passes. The easiest way to do this would be to encode some code into the music, thus classifying it as software (BTW, what about those mixed discs that have some screensavers and junk like that on them? Are those programs sold or licensed?). Second easiest way is to buy a few judges and get them to ignore existing US copyright law and decades of the application of that law.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I'll buy an SDMI enabled MP3 player for the same reason (and at the same time) I bought a DIVX DVD player.
After DIVX tanked, I could buy a top of the line DVD/DIVX player for less than a top of the line DVD only player. (Short story long: I originally bought a middle of the line player from Best Buy. This player mangled the captions, and Samsung had no intention of fixing the problem. They should have a class action against them, BTW. I returned the machine for a replacement. Best Buy had no help and no machines available that day. So I just took the money and left. I would have gone back in a few days, but I had to drive 90 minutes to get to a Best Buy. At about the same time, DIVX got cancelled. I went into Circuit City to gloat, saw a GREAT price on a ProScan (I think that was the brand) and bought it. And made sure the salesman and manager knew that I had bought about $500 worth of electronics at other stores during the DIVX stupidity. That doesn't even count the first DVD player.)
If/when SDMI tanks and gets pulled, if I can get a MP3/SDMI that is fully functional, I'll be happy to do so.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
A forum for these industries to develop the voluntary, open framework for playing, storing and distributing digital music necessary to enable a new market to emerge. SDMI is working on two tracks. The first has already produced a standard, or specification, for portable devices. The longer-term effort is working toward completion of an overall architecture for delivery of digital music in all forms.
What it is not:
SDMI is not producing a single format, technology or design. The SDMI framework allows a variety of competing technologies and download formats to be used within its system.
Sounds almost like the NE1000 technical standard that wasn't originally, but became one. Luckily (I hope) this won't become one.
(My apologies for the HTML. I'm a suit, not a tech)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I think my point may have been lost: I wouldn't buy an SDMI/MP3 player until AFTER the demise of SDMI.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Nope. Just inside the head and then inside the cochlea (unless you count the cochlea as 'the ear'. I assume by ear you mean the outer and middle)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
First, I hope you aren't married to this machine, and can return it. Doesn't sound like it's working out for you.
Second: can you say DIVX? I knew you could boys and girls (geez, must have been that ad for Mister Rogers I saw on the morning news:) Seriously though, moreso than anything, byzantine purchase and use rules seem to have killed interest in these machines. If your experience(s) are accurate and typical, hopefully SDMI will go into the toilet where it belongs.
(Again, hope you aren't stuck with this. Sounds like it is not a good thing.)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I don't think they forgot the 'fair use' clause. I think they looked at this as one way to get around it, and force you to buy a copy of the song for your car, your home, your workplace, your walkman, your second car, your motorcycle, each computer, the bedroom, your kids' bedrooms, etc.
Why sell once when you can sell it ten times? Hell, I imagine the durability of LD and DVD did more to concern Disney than the superiority of the format for making copies. After all, if you can get junior to watch the Lion King 400 times, he's going to burn out the tape (not to mention the VCR:) and it will have to be replaced. Not so DVDs.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Ya...
:)
I was very much like that Next Generation episode where Picard lived the life of that dude thru the probe. I dig those stories
Kinda scary though. How invasive it was.
(from the above link)
14. SDMI-compliant PDMPs [personal digital music players] will incorporate a unique ID used to enforce the Usage Rules specified by the copyright holder. Do you feel this raises valid privacy concerns?
I'm not gonna even repost the results. This is *another* point you can make to your friends and associates against SDMI. All your music listening habits will be tracked, recorded, compiled, and marketed against you. And woe be unto that silly consumer who thinks he can get around it, the DMCA will put you in jail for that (no matter what country you live in, it would seem).
+&x
The SDMI spec states that you can play non-SDMI files even when Phase II (of thier world-take-over-plan) is initiated. The catch is that all files that are entered into the SDMI domain (for example transferred to the protable player) have to be converted to SDMI.
Um, doesn't "the catch" wipe out the first part of your statement. You WILL NOT be able to play normal MP3s on ANY SDMI devices after they "throw the switch" (converting them to a tainted format does not count). This is the point you need to make to your friends when they ask you about buying portable MP3 players.
SDMI is a bad thing (for consumers) that will get massive media and advertising support (it's backed by basically everybody). All of this will be done under a "protecting the artist" mantra, which is the exact friggin' same as the "protecting the children" b.s. we've heard so many times before.
+&x
Having been closely involved with SDMI, I feel I can comment on most of these, without breaking NDAs. Note that my replies are only applicable to the SDMI management package that I'm using. With other packages, your mileage may vary.
1. It appears you can't move the music files around on your disk. They get stored in an encrypted form and if you try and reorganize them other than through the SDMI compliant software, they go boom!
Thats your software, badly implemented. Lets have a quick review of how it's supposed to work. You apply for a key from your SDMI supplier, it gets installed, and when you purchase music, it is purchased against that key. Where that music ends up on your hard drive doesn't matter. You can have the same key on multiple devices (otherwise SDMI players wouldn't work), so have a specific location locked into the file makes no sense.
2. At least with the software I have, it appears all your music must fit on one device, there is no provision for multiple catalogs on several devices.
I have a catalogue currently spanning 2 PCs at work, and my PC at home. None of them hold exactly the same music. Your software must bite :)
3. It appears that storing your music on read-only media like CDR will not be possible.
Definately wrong. At MIDEM (a worldwide music media conference) SDMI files were distributed on CD.
4. At least with the software I have, storing music on removable media like ZIP drives may not be possible.
See above.
5. It appears that if you have multiple computers, a laptop and a PC for example, you won't be able to transfer your music back and forth between the two
See above
6. It appears SDMI is a security standard only and doesn't guarantee interoperability between SDMI devices from multiple manufacturers.
Sort of. SDMI files are encoded against your key, and your key is specific to your "trust provider", there is currently no global keyspace. If a device doesn't support your trust provider, then it may not play. Each trust provider, I believe, is free to use their own encryption methods.
7. I have yet to determine if the directory containing SDMI music can be safely backed up and restored.
It can, but you have to backup your keys as well. Your software should provide a method for this.
8. It looks like SDMI might be one of those "standards" that can't be distributed as open source without its security being broken.
Not as far as I am aware. The trust provider we're working with is using RSA and a couple of other bits and bobs. Nothing exciting, nothing secret, it's just they don't publish the fact unless you ask them. However remember, this is a Windows world primarily here, so attitudes are different.
Now I'm not going to get involved with arguements on why should people use SDMI over plain MPEGs or how easy it is to break. But from my background, including have games I wrote copied, distributed and never saying a penny, personally if I was producing music I'd like the idea that I might get paid for my work *shrug*
I posit that since, due to their overwhelming number, it is physically impossible to hold in one average human brain all the laws that apply to you at all levels of government (municipal, county, state, and federal), that ignorance of the law _is_ a valid excuse. Hell, even lawyers have to specialize, they themselves can't know all the laws.
I say that we petition to block all new laws until all current laws have been checked for validity, conciseness, and ease of comprehension. We should also take the time to correct any legal conflicts with current laws.
Start from the Constitution, and work your way down.
The DMCA allows corporations to make an end-run around fair use rights. This is a point that's missed by a lot of people commenting on this issue. The DeCSS case is not about copying. Even the MPAA's lawyers admit this.
The suit is filed under a section of the law (1201(a)(2)) which prohibits anyone from offering or distributing any technology "that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected." This lawsuit is *not* filed under the slightly less objectionable section 1201(b)(1)(A) which offers a similar prohibition against technology whose primary purpose is "circumventing protection that ... protects a right of a copyright holder."
Now, if this suit were about 1201(b), it is likely that the defendants could successfully defend themselves, as it is not a "right of a copyright holder" to restrict fair use. As a result, a piece of software that enables fair use would likely not run afoul of this section.
Unfortunately, section 1201(a) is much more insidious. Though it has an exemption for fair use, the defendants are unable to avail themselves of that exemption, as -they- are not exercising fair use by distributing the software. Rather, they are enabling -others- to exercise fair use. There is no protection for this activity (other than potentially speech under the 1st Amendment...)
So, in the absence of specific exemptions in the law, let's examine whether the defendants comitted an offence that falls under s. 1201(a) of the DMCA. Do the defendants offer or distribute the technology in question? Yes (at least those defendants who are distributing rather than linking). Is the technology in question primarily designed to circumvent a technological measure? Yes - clearly, DeCSS circumvents a technological measure known as encryption. Does that technical measure "control access to a work protected" under the act. Again, yes - Without dealing with the technical measure, one cannot view the data stored on the DVD.
This brings us to the issue of the DMCA itself, and particularly s. 1201(a). This section is simply bad law. The phrase "controls access to a work protected..." is far too sweeping, broad and vague. This law provides a new effective right to copyright holders to "control access" to copyrighted material in any manner they choose. It prevents the average consumer, who has little knowledge about the mechanics of taking advantage of their fair use rights, from obtaining assistance in taking advantage of these fair use rights. What is attacked here is not the right to *use* or to *posess* this tool, what is attacked is the right to distribute this tool.
This issue comes down to a prohibition of speech. We likely agree, and some courts do as well, that source code is speech. What needs to be decided is whether this is *protected* speech.
It is a _civil_ offense to *offer or distribute* technology which circumvents such a system. It is not an offense to *use* such technology.
Music has and will continue to be produced on simple, plain-jane audio CD's because you're not gonna convince the American public that they need to throw out their CD players and buy a new box to listen to their Milli Vanilli with.
Why not, they did it with Vinyl.
The record companies wanted the cheaper menium so they just decided to stop making vinyl albums and went with CDs.
We all lined up to get our CD players for our steroes even though most of us knew that CDs don't have the same sound resolution as 12" vinyl.
Don't you believe for a minute that if the companies wanted to, they would change from the CD format we know and love to a secure format. (DVD-Audio anyone?)
While older rippers might not work, you have to keep the data stream unprotected and unencrypted at one point - namely, the point that the customer is actually listening to the music. It's simplicity itself to use a program that captures sound card output (such as TotalRecorder) to make a WAV that can then be turned into an MP3.
--
These are *MY* opinions.
These are *MY* opinions.
They will not be *YOUR* opinions until the Orbital Mind Control Lasers are operati
Another somewhat annoying 'feature' is the way they are restricting 'SDMI protected content for local use', or in other words
your own content.
The spec reads "This input will be restricted to mono-voice grade and band limited (-3db at 100Hz and -60dB at 8kHz)". In
other words it looks like its going to be a pain in the ass to create your own content at a decent quality.
Plus it appears that they will be trying to detect watermarks on local content so they can disable playback on a stream recorded
in analog from a SDMI source.
Bottom line? Run out and buy MP3 devices for two reasons. 1: Encourage the growth of an unprotected format. 2: In case the
protected format catches on you will have a device that will play redigitized SDMI content.
In the long run SDMI will probably go the way of DIVX. Not because it sucks, but because MP3 has more 'brand' recognition. There are two or three orders of magnitude more references to MP3 then there are to SDMI in the press. People have heard of MP3, so when they go shopping that is what they will look for.
Also MP3 as an accronym just plain rolls off the tounge better. Believe it or not this can make a difference to the mainstream buying public.
Obviously you don't remember 45s or singles. Once upon a time record companies sold vinyl with only two songs on them. A hit one one side and a "B" side containing a song they hoped would catch on. I guess history may be about to repeat itself.
War is necrophilia.
This is exactly the case. I have searched for certain songs on the web and it takes an eternity (Napster aside) to find one, jump through all the hoops to get at it and then finally download the damn thing. After all that sometimes what you get is crap because it 's distorted or recorded at a lousy bitrate. I would gladly shell out 10 cents a copy from a legit site. Hell at a cost like that I wouldn't worry about corrupted or lost files. As it is now, if I lose a CD or it gets scratched I DON'T buy another one. I borrow a friends and copy it. Now if it was cheap enough, if I lost the music files, I'd go back and buy them again. If songs were as cheap as gum balls, we wouldn't be hearing about this piracy BS in the first place.
The primary problem is that the RIAA can't get past it's own greed. It'll spend more money than it 'll make to prtoect that $15 CD profit.
My $.02
Paul
Sure! And why not go further? Why doesn't the RIAA just setup it's own website for purchasing MP3's?
Ok, so folks may buy an RIAA 'blessed' MP3, then simply redistribute it. Of course, people were doing the same thing with cassette tapes for YEARS.
Instead of freakin' and fightin' the MP3 onslaught, go with it! General Public may very well PREFER to buy RIAA-blessed MP3's, knowing they won't get involved in any legal dispute or it's the 'standard'. Much as so many are MS lemmings...
Or at least do such a commerce website for now, til you hook all the suckers, THEN move to SDMI or whatever. I don't support such heavy-handed efforts, but it would seem to be a better strategy than just bitching.
Kinda like Moe, but just a little more Kool
If enough people buy SDMI-enabled players, even if they use them just to play MP3s, the music industry cartel will be able to release music SDMI-only. I.e. No CD version. If that happens, you will not be able to listen to your music on two different systems without paying double. You will not be able to defragment your hard disk. You will be powerless if they decide to timebomb your music.
Merely by buying an SDMI-enabled player, you increase the chance of music ever being released on SDMI *only*. Don't do it if you value your freedom not to be screwed.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
If people's favourite band releases only on SDMI, then many will buy the player, however crippled, just to hear the band. The same happened with CDs. Consumers don't have any choice; some publisher has a monopoly on every band.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Maybe it's just me but I have never had any problems with Microsoft software besides the usual BSODs. Internet Explorer is a lot more stable than Mozilla. I don't know exactally how SDMI encryption works but with most copywrited software, reinstalling the OS doesn't remove the licenses, unless you remove the entire Windows directory. I don't know ANYONE who had to reinstall their OS because Windows Media Player installation screwed it up. Windows Media Player installation doesn't really overwrite anything except older versions of Media Player/ActiveMovie. All it does is accociate itself with all media formats it supports. Sounds like you are just making this up. Seems like you just want to act like you are Anti-Microsoft to be cool.
Piracy is a problem... music producers need to put bread on the table; getting a lot of recognition isn't enough. This is true even if you destroy the giant music companies. But inconviencing the consumer isn't the best way to make money or to encourage them to come back.
It's nice that we can get public TV, Babelfish, Google, and Linux for free, but until music producers find a novel and unobtrusive way to make money, they'll still need to be paid directly and they'll need to try to prevent piracy.
Or have I completely missed the mark?
1. You buy something, it's encrypted, planned obsolescence causes the players for it to stop being produced.
2. You decided to copy it into another format so that when your old player stops working, you'll still have the content you paid for.
3. Unfortunately, you are now circumventing anti-piracy measures, and that's against the law. Fortunately, you get off with a warning, but you can't make the copy.
4. The songs you like? They went out of style and never became popular again. They were your favorite music, but you can't rebuy them, the company that owns the rights isn't interested in republishing them for just you. You also can't build your own player to play them in the old format, because of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
Not that you should have to rebuy the same thing anyway, but you can bet some people will be in this situation. I mean, at least if you own an old copy of the game M.U.L.E. and you can create an emulator for it, you can play it, even though it is no longer produced and Electronic Arts is sitting on the rights to it. But with this new encryption stuff, the companies are likely to see breaking the encryption as too much of a threat even if they don't care about the content you want to listen to. So, if stufff isn't mainstream or popular, it'll just be allowed to disappear. It's sort of like if it were illegal to make record turntables for vinyl records now, no matter if some record you love never made it to CD.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
As far as the original question, Consumers have and will determine what is bought. For every, hey, look clueless consumers at what we've created just for you-type product which has succeeded, there are a zillion DIVX-style failures which cost the developers millions. I'm personally skipping out on buying an SDMI device, but as a DAT-head, I find the quality of most MP3s to be lacking.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."-Tennyson
In short, DAT's not really dead, but it has gone into a niche market, catering to high end audiophiles, tapers of live music, musicians themselves, and audio and film professionals.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."-Tennyson
Microsoft in particular has made it very easy to "pirate" their software. Why? Because Microsoft understands your point, that most of these people don't have the money to purchase "pirated" software, thus the total loss to Microsoft is $0.00 . But you're mistaken about the effect on monetary intake. Microsoft seems to understand very well that "pirating" *enriches* Microsoft monetarily. Yes, Microsoft puts a lot of effort into stopping counterfeit copies of MS software, but that's to protect the public. If you pay for MS software, then you should be getting MS software. But Microsoft understands its wealth is inextricably tied to its market share, thus "pirated" copies of MS products do in fact enhance the Microsoft bottom line. To put it another way, Microsoft wants you using their products no matter what. If you're going to "pirate" software, they want it to be Microsoft software.
yeah totatly :)
:)
i want to drive _over_ the bushes and crunch the funny green plant things into the ground
err umm ^U^U^U^U^U^U^U^U
Need a Catering Connection
Hell, even DAT manufacturers were advocating the user circumventing SCMS.
There's a page in the manual for the Tascam DA-30 that instructs the user on how to deactivate the SCMS circuit (snip a jumper on the main circuit board with a wire cutter). For professional use only, of course.
Without the SCMS circuitry, the DAT deck could not be legally imported. And SCMS was the lesser of two evils, the alternative being a notch filter smack dab in the middle of the audio spectrum.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Actually it's picking up here, because the price of the players and recorders are dropping. Best Buy carries a good selection of MD players, recorders, components, and bookshelf systems.
A hybrid standard would be nice, right now I am optically transferring MP3s to MD, but I can only do that in real time and it involves recompressing them. It would be nice to avoid that.
Playing CDs in a discman has led to scratches. I usually play CDs non-stop, and if my player has had problems, it can damage the CD.
Now I just stick the CD in the drive, run a script, and listen to the MP3s. The CDs and case and material are all stored in a safe environment (it'd be cool if I could digitize everything).
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
That's a great observation. It seems they are trying hard to forget about fair use. They're trying hard to keep you from your legal rights with DVD's and are trying hard with digital music. Does anyone remember when you'd buy a tape and have to buy a new one in 6-8 months because it degraded or just plain wore out? That doesn't happen anymore. Especially with the advent of technology to take advantage of fair use (make your own high quality copies). Seems to me that the recording industry is trying hard to prevent people from being able to take advantage of "fair use" so they can bolster their sales. Don't you think that it's viewed as just another slice of their potential revenue stream? In their eyes, fair use is just plain bad business. After all, it cuts down on repeat sales.
BTW, has anyone noticed that CD's cost half as much (physical meia) as cassetts, yet on average, they charge 20% more when you buy on CD?
The entire mp3.com domain appears to be blocked from my proxy server. (Seems they aren't smart enough to distinguish between files by extension or size.) Anyway, is this content mirrored anywhere I could read it?
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
They want to prevent the piracy of tomorrow. In terms of legality, when I download 700 mp3's from Napster, it's no more illegal than when I burn a copy of my friend's cd. Both cases are a consensual, free-as-in-beer reproduction of copyrighted material. But imagine in 10 or 20 years, if/when every household has the bandwidth of a current college dorm. Suddenly applications like Napster cut a lot more profits.
The moral of this story may turn out to be, that the internet (I feel like Katz here) by making information easier to give away is making it harder to sell; and if I want to sell any, I have to make it hard to give away. Hence SDMI.
In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -Carl Sagan
...Which makes Open Source OS's a threat to such schemes. On an open source system it's much easier to set things up to trick software. For this reason I think anybody trying to enforce such standards (including DVD/CSS) will always be wary of Open Source software --- it's one less layer of obscurity to protect them.
It's ironic that you can say it either letter-by-letter, "Ess-Dee-Emm-Eye", or all-at-once as: "Sodomy" :-)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
This might be getting off-topic...however, there are at least a few areas which you cannot access without paying a toll.
Sanibel Island (SW Florida) is connected to the mainland by a single toll bridge. Short of taking a boat, there is no way to get to Sanibel without paying the bridge toll.
I about died laughing when a local DJ, talking about metallica's CD-sales, stated that 9 million CDs sold (between two releases in one year) x $15 a CD would make them "very rich". True that 9 million CD's would mean a lot of money, but I'm guessing Metallica saw more like 10-50 cents a copy...
mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.
It's good to hear this, though. Because that means that the musicians themselves aren't planning on going SDMI as well. I mean, we as consumers can choose not to buy SDMI enabled devices, but what if musician choose to use it? I could see the Slashdot crowd not buying SDMI devices, because they know better, but if music not in SDMI format is difficult to find, the Joe Average will happily buy SDMI devices because that's all he can get music for. In the end, we'd still be screwed.
Of course, in the meantime, the encryption scheme will have been broken and/or people will have figured out a way to intercept the music. There's no real need for concern.
Cheers!
Costyn.
The Official Steve Ballmer Webpage
Can someone take each of those items and explain how *all* of it is utilized? Maybe it's too early, but this is really boggling my mind.
_______
I just wish I could c:\format Internet
I'm not saying that efforts to find and prosecute pirates stop. What I am saying is that, regardless of what the media format has been, regardless of the industry doing the complaining, regardless of how rampant pirating may have been (or may not have been, we know the statistics are exagerated), with each new format the industry in question cleaned up, making money in a market they didn't know existed.
Each new format has made it easier for consumers to have better functionality (like random access CDs) and better quality. And with each new format the entertainment industry complained, but somehow managed to rake in the dough in unbelievable volumes, despite themselves, and despite their predictions to the contrary.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that pirating is not going to go away, but all the successful formats (tapes, CDs, and video cassettes) have allowed free copying of the copyrighted material, and yet the sales of each, in legal form, continue to grow exponentially. I'm not saying pirating is OK, I'm saying these stupid schemes only negatively impact the honest customer, and take away their rights - rights that have been consistently upheld in the courts (like your right to make a cassette tape copy of a CD to listen to in your car).
You have to pay for the copy protection schemes that take away your rights. Thinking otherwise is like thinking you actually get IE for free when you buy Windows.
----------
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Drumroll please....
Defeats the copy protection.
So, in effect, those guys have potentially put themselves in the same position.
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
See this link: http://www.world.co.uk/sba/mpman.htm Apparently, the encryption is in the client software. These guys are showing that the current SDMI encryption isn't in the hardware at all. So, we're looking at some guys who reverse-engineered something, so that it would work with linux. Are we seeing the DVD disaster all over again?
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
In the latest German computer magazin c't, Smudo (one of the rappers of the German group "Die Fantastischen 4") said the exact opposite: It's the CD sales which will earn you money. Live shows and touring only increase your costs. Sounds very reasonable, if you consider the concert prices here in Germany
MfG, ViktorFree Manning, jail Obama.
For the short term, I would agree that the companies have their best interests at mind. However, as far as the long run goes, the RIAA may be digging its own grave here.
In recent years the RIAA and other major players in the entertainment industry have cried wolf over what they've called "piracy concerns" facilitated by new technologies like MP3 and DVD. I am of the opinion that "piracy" is merely a euphamism for "profit". At least in the U.S., piracy has little if any discernable impact on the bottom line of record companies and movie studios. Even if audio quality may be below that of the original, I would think that if piracy in the music industry were a problem, there would be people willing to pay $4 for an CD copied onto tape that would cost $15 at a record store. Audio cassettes and VCR's have been around for 20 years, and yet these recordable technologies did not hurt the profits of the entertainment industry, in fact they made these companies more profitable than ever. When adopted properly, I'm sure the music industry will find MP3 (or some future open standard) a boon to their interests, as the movie industry has started to do with DVD.
What has changed since the advent of the Internet is that the companies in the RIAA are losing their privilege of holding an oligopoly in regards to the worldwide distribution of music. Hence, it would seem reasonable that the trend for the forseeable future is that a larger share of the profits in the music industry will go to the content creators (the artists) at the expense of the distributors (the RIAA). As a result of the RIAA's reactionary stance regarding MP3 and other developments in digital music, there is a high risk of the general public becoming disillusioned with the state of the music industry. In a few years, it will probably be possible for an artist to record studio-quality music independently and distribute it wherever he or she wants via the Internet. Or, if it remains prohibitively expensive to do the recording, this artist could easily go to a smaller record label and receive a much more favorable contract than what one of the major labels would offer. The point is that an artist would no longer have to go to a $100 billion company for the purpose of distrubing copies of their music worldwide. When this happens, prices for music from independent and smaller-label artists will probably be lower than music from major labels, as the cut taken for distribution will be much smaller. Consumers then would prefer this music to that of the major labels, which would then pose a serious threat to the profitability of the RIAA members. The major record labels would then have to provide some additional service to the artists in order to keep new artists from going solo or joining a smaller company.
While the RIAA will still have the advantage of controlling most of the conventional media for a somewhat longer time, this scenario is also likely to change when broadband Internet becomes more popular in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Therefore, if I were a consultant to the RIAA, I would recommend they rethink their recent stands on new technologies and not let concern for next quarter's earnings threaten the long-term viability of its members.
I'm going to disagree here, to a large part.
I'll agree that people, broadly speaking, will build up a collection of pirated MP3's that they wouldn't have bought -- for example, prhaps a theme song for a film, where they wouldn't have bought the soundtrack for it.
However, to say that NONE of the music people are pirating wouldn't have been purchased is incorrect IMHO. One could assume that 10 million people would have purchased 2 CD's a year more (and let's face it, those who truly can't find $25 a year are typically the folks who aren't online with computers good enough to have lots of MP3's), and talking about $150 million/year -- not much, but I also think the figure's highly conservative.
In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the real cost of mp3's is at least $1 *Billion* every year.
Don't get me wrong, I think SDMI is seriously flawed (and that's being kind to the extreme).
I want mp3 to be the standard.
But piracy is wrong, and should never be condoned. In addition, it gives all the idiots firepower for 'XYZ technology only matters to pirates anyways-- see, here's their own words!'
Steve
I dunno about the answers to your specific conerns, but none of that sounds surprising given the current state of music and corporate America. That being the case, I think I'll just stick with my PC being plugged into my HiFi, and wait for Sony to release a car and home audio real-time Mp3-CD decoder, w3rd... Ten disc even. Eschew Obfuscation
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
If they let you pick and choose the songs you want the individual artist and the label that owns the albums would really be hurt. Of course people only want the two songs off the album, but how does the rest of the album get sold. Are you suggesting the Recording Industry reinvent there entire business model so that they can sell you the one song you like. For an entire album a band is likely to get 10 cents royalty, but how much royalty do thy get per song? Are we just blasting the big companies or are we trying to protect consumers and artists.
Nothing prevents Virgin from setting up kiosks in their stores that let you burn your own custom audio CDs from a catalog of artists.
Actually, the one in Columbus, Ohio has this. Pick your songs and it burns it for you. I was surprised when I saw it, but it was getting a lot of use. I think it was a little limited on the catalog, though.
D-rock
Don't Panic...
A short article I wrote for MP3.com about a year ago on why SDMI can't work.
Test your net with Netalyzr
I love my MD player. I even bought one for my car. I can't see the point of an MP3 player when I can get 74-80 minutes of music on a nice convenient removable disk that costs $5 each. Oh and I live in the U.S.
I've wrestled with reality for 35 years and I'm happy to say, I finally won out - Elwood P. Dowd
This is already done. I think ESD is a perfect fit in the Linux world. There are also already such tools for the unenlightened masses - sound drivers for win 9x and win nt that dump to .wav (audiojacker, etc).
I can't imagine that the laywers would argue that you don't have the right to record the sounds you make on your PC. No, I guess I can imagine them saying that, but they'll look quite rediculous in the process. Not that that's ever stopped them before... but this is way over the top
Go to open source http://opennap.sourceforge.net/ and get your open source napster. I am already using Napster to transmit and to search for more than just MP3's.
You can't handle the truth.
Here in Canada they charge you a special tax over blank media (including blank CDs) which goes back to the recording industry to "compensate for illegal copying". The sad part is, the lobby of the recording industry with governments is so intense that regulations will favor them, not customers. For example, the govt here discarded the claim that CD-R's were used for legitimate computer backups, not only to copy mp3 files and audio CDs.
"I remember Y1K, every abacus had to get another bead"
"It appears you can't move the music files around on your disk. They get stored in an encrypted form and if you try and reorganize them other than through the SDMI compliant software, they go boom!"
That's about it. Playing your music on a SDMI device? Forget about playing it on a non-SDMI device. What's even worse, is that if "circumstances arise" in which the SDMI player's security gets cracked (a la DVD), then the company making the affected product has to make another one. (Clause 10.4)
Additionally, the RIAA gets to crack open the devices to ensure that they're SDMI-compliant. Well, they don't get to, but they can appoint an outside expert *hack* *cough* to do the work. (Clause 10.5)
"It appears that storing your music on read-only media like CDR will not be possible."
According to the SDMI FAQ, you can, but I'm skeptical.
"It appears SDMI is a security standard only and doesn't guarantee interoperability between SDMI devices from multiple manufacturers."
Bingo. Hell, I doubt a lot of manufacturers would be inclined to produce SDMI-complaint products, as it would cause too much confusion between companies that can't agree on a standard.
"It looks like SDMI might be one of those 'standards' that can't be distributed as open source without its security being broken."
Bingo again. DVD anyone?
For more information, check out MP3 Newswire's SDMI information page.
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
"It means, boys and girls, that the music/movie/software industries would never have received any money from these poor downtrodden victims of the American Way anyway; therefore, piracy costs them almost nothing in lost revenue."
So let's say that I want to go out and buy the latest CD from Artist X. Before going to the mall to purchase the CD, I realize that I can just download the entire CD from Napster or some FTP site. Boom, there's $20 that Mr. Corporate Suit ain't gonna get.
You assume that everyone who pirates can't afford the software / music being pirated. From my own experiences, people who do pirate can afford the pirated goods, it's just that they don't want to go out and blow the cash when they can just download it for free and do whatever with it.
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
They know that SDMI is a giant pain in the ass. This way they can let the CONSUMER kill portable digital music devices -- people will buy SDMI devices, they'll suck rocks, and people will naturally return them in droves.
Net result: hardware companies get royally screwed, and they all vow to never produce another portable MP3 player. And it's all because the "consumer doesn't like hardware players" . . . .
I used to think the RIAA was filled with morons. Now I know that they're not morons -- they're evil.
I have no
I don't think there's anything stopping you from building your own bridge, or at least operating your own car ferry service.
The trouble with metaphors is that they're like elastic bands. Stetch them too far and they snap.
And hit you in the eye.
The Orlando International Airport.
I tried my damnest to get to it from Kissimee (Disney Land) and could not with out paying tolls...
Forging Bastidges...
-- A Human Being is nothing more than mobile CO2 factory. Bow to the plants.
lets face it, as much as you find SDMI dis-tastefull - this is simply a matter of copyrights being brought to their logical conclusion.
it reminds me of the old plantation masters who thought they could justify slavery by treating their slaves as nice as they can. But the fact was that as long as you had slavery, beople were going to get beaten, abbused, and unethical things were going to happen. the same is true with copyrights. Unless you get rid of them - things like this will never go away.
Ha! It's been faster than any other home audio/video format!
I have a website. It's about Macs.
I've had a CD player since the late eighties and I have only had to replace two CD's. I had to replace my Art of Noise - Who's Afraid Of because in Jr. High I threw it like a frisbee to show people how resilient it was, and some pretty deep and jagged scratches were the result. I had to replace my Soup Dragon's CD (can't remember the album title) because I spilt 409 on it, which basically put holes in the aluminum.
I'm not saying you're wrong about making backups of all of our home audio/video, but I just don't get it when people say their CD's have worn out. You must not take care of them at all. I honestly can't fathom the kind of abuse a CD must go through before it "wears out".
I have a website. It's about Macs.
It seems like everyone here is saying that SDMI will die because MP3 is more convenient. But I thought that another prong of the RIAA attack on MP3 was to create copy-protected CDs that couldn't be ripped, except maybe by proprietary software. In that case, MP3 would lose its advantage, and we'd be stuck with SDMI as the only digital music alternative. Am I missing something here?
"He who breaks a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom."
Yeah, whatever. The music stores are just FILLED with music from *really talented* people. Where would we be without Courtney Love's Hole and Jennifer Lopez?
Here's a clue -- talent has NOTHING to do with it. Producers and engineers can make a hit record out of a sample of your fighting cats. Put enough studio magic on there and everyone thinks it's innovative. Alanis Morrisette is not a better harmonica player than you (or anyone else), but her tuneless bleating was all over Jagged Little Pill.
It's about what sells. If the artist is cute, sexy, or shocking, the music is just a bonus.
Example: I'm not a fan of folk music, but I spent a Saturday night at a folk music festival. It didn't take me long to figure out that the musicians there had more talent than 90% of what gets on played on the radio. Of course, most of them will never get the $$BIG DEAL$$ because they look like the guy on the corner asking for a dollar (even the girls!).
(Goodness, cold medicine makes me grumpy!)
-- In the future, everyone will code Perl for 15 minutes. --
this is a "standard" designed to destroy any attempt to digitize music. it's become apparent that the music industry wants to prevent any media that exists outside of its control. they are doing this by making it so difficult for consumers to adopt a new medium that they stick by older technology (i.e. compact disc). hey, isn't that a rather "monopolistic" or "collusionist" policy?
"Computers are like Old Testament gods; Lots of rules and no mercy."
While your assesment is true enough, it's missing one critical element - none of the events you mentioned had to deal with broadband internet access. When I can download and CD burn an entire artist's catalog in a matter of hours without the artist receiving any royalties whatsoever, it's a whole other ballgame.
Yes - if they can ensure that all portable players require 'authorised' music to play, then they have a strong position, because you need to pay for music to take it on the road (train, jogging, whatever).
On the other hand, as long as there are recordable MiniDiscs around, you're sorted - any music you have, in any form, can be recorded onto a blank MD.
MDs restrict you from taking further digital copies (SCMS), but as long as you keep master digital copies of all your audio (on CD or on your PC), that's irrelevant.
On the other hand, if you really need something smaller than an MD portable, best get a non-SDMI MP3 machine quick!
"So I can't backup my songs?"
Nope
"And I can't move them to portable media?"
Nope
Now honestly, if that's the way it's going to be, yeah, SDMI is going to die. The question is whether or not it's going to take mp3 down with it (if the RIAA doesn't do it beforehand.. you know the napster and mp3.com cases are going to be precedent-setting)
The SDMI spec states that you can play non-SDMI files even when Phase II (of thier world-take-over-plan) is initiated. The catch is that all files that are entered into the SDMI domain (for example transferred to the protable player) have to be converted to SDMI. So you can upload your mp3 to and SDMI player, but it might never be able to leave it again.
Even using an SDMI compliant software (Music Match, Real Jukebox etc.) would bear the danger that the programm's functionality comes with the cost that your files are converted. (but luckily the SDMI spec says that the original files will not be deleted)
(appended to the end of comments I post, 120 chars)
I think SDMI will die just like DIVX, because it is designed with the interests of the record companies in mind not those of consumers. On a related note: In Canada we have some new legislation that slaps a special tax on blank recording media which is designed to compensate for illegal copying. This outrageous legislation indiscriminantly penalizes both the innocent and the guilty. It completely overlooks the many legitimate uses of blank media. And it is hardly surprising that it leads to the sentiment: "YOU PAID THE FINE SO DO THE CRIME!".
It should be realatively easy to trick SDMI players into thinking everything is kosher when in reality you can do anything you want with the data file. This has probably already been done. It's a simple matter of programming :)
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Well there are toll roads where someone else owns the roads and you have to pay to dive. It is a similar situation with music.
Sure, but they don't require you to only drive a particular make and model car, or require only Goodyear tires. You don't have to pay again if you change lanes. Once you pay the toll, the road is just as useful to you as a free public road. There are other roads that will take you to the same place if you aren't willing to pay the toll to save time and avoid traffic.
None of those characteristics are true of SDMI.
An MD has a capacity of 140MB - 2-3 albums worth.
Nick
PS: for Americans - yes I know that everyone in the US thinks that MD is a failed tech but it's really popular in the rest of the world - when I was last in Europe I was astonished to see that even low-end integrated stereos are sold with an MD rather than a tape deck.
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
As an independent musician, let me say this: SDMI sucks. I totally agree with you that SDMI is going overboard in attempting to protect the musician's interests.
Wait a second...I just thought of something...although it's being touted as a tool to protect the interests of musicians, how many musicians do you hear talking about how much they want to see more SDMI stuff? Indeed, more artists are supporting mp3 than SDMI, and mp3 *supposedly* harms musician's interests. You hear more from record labels about SDMI than anyone - they're just trying to protect THEIR interests. SDMI will allow them to further control how, where and when you listen to your music. They don't care if it makes people less interested in listening to the music from the artists people think are supporting SDMI, they'll just put out more and more bands to keep their profits up.
They'd love to force you to buy SDMI rather than CDs, but they're not stupid enough to stop pressing CDs while there's still big money to be made on them.
You may think this is unlikely, but they've successfully banned VCRs that aren't affected by Macrovision. This means that new 8mm VCRs actually have to have special circuitry added to detect Macrovision, because their normal AGC circuit is unaffected (unlike most VHS decks).
You're absolutely right that SDMI is the consumer's worst nightmare, that's the idea. The only interest the RIAA has in preserving artists' copyrights is insofar as it makes them money. Thus, the point of SDMI is to make copying music as difficult as possible. Unfortunately, as we all know, being able to freely copy data is totally essential to the proper function of most computerized tasks. If I can't move my file from here to there, what good is it? The RIAA, whose board of directors must have an 8-track in its office, doesn't get this.
Back when SDMI was first announced and starting getting "industry supporters", I predicted this would happen (not to toot my own horn or anything...). The beauty of MP3 is its simplicity, and SDMI ruins that. Fortunately for us, this may be one area where big media conglomerates that see themselves as omnipotent may not be able to fool a sufficient number of consumers for their lame-brained efforts to succeed. From my point of view, it's far more convenient and cost effective for me to spend my money on even a MiniDisc rig than an SDMI device. In fact, ANY current alternative beats SDMI, even plain old compact discs. What's more, I think that most consumers will see it a similar way. The hassle of SDMI will outweight the benefits of a digital, solid-state playback device, and consumers will turn up their buyer-regret meters and go back to whatever they were using before. I hope.
MoNsTeR
Duxup dun said:
I dunno about where you live, but where I live (Kentucky) and in other places in the US, tolls have typically been placed on highways to pay for the construction costs of the road (especially if the state doesn't think it'll recover costs of construction quickly from things like property bonds, gas taxes, trucker gas tags, etc.).
As a minor note--until a few years ago, Kentucky had the single highest number of toll roads in the US (no less than eight major interstate thoroughfares were toll at one point, including sections of I-65 (the old "Kentucky Turnpike"--when I was very young, parts of I-65 south of Louisville were still toll)...). This has pretty much been reduced to two or three (if memory serves, the Bert T. Combs Parkway and sections of the Mountain Parkway, which still haven't been completely paid for); this is because by now most of the parkways (which are basically the state version of interstate highways--limited access and all--which is important because Kentucky has all of four interstate highways going through it which don't cover most of the state) have been paid for in tolls. (In fact, the parkway system here in Kentucky is good enough that parts of it are being very seriously considered for the proposed I-66 interstate--the infrastructure is already there and paid for, they just need to officially designate it as interstate).
In fact, there are roads in West Virginia that are toll (including interstates) for the exact same reason--West Virginia is a poor state (even poorer than Kentucky is) and about the only way they can afford to build interstates is to recover construction fees via tolls (construction costs also tend to be expensive there because you're dealing with building interstates in mountains--I honestly think there might be three acres of flat land in the whole of West Virginia :) and the cost of mountain construction is also a major factor in why the Mountain Parkway is still toll in Kentucky).
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
Some anonymous coward dun said:
Again, I don't know where you live, but more often than not (at least in the part of the US I'm in) toll roads aren't so much because they're "limited access" but they are toll to pay for road construction bonds (I've posted a much more extensive discussion here--in Kentucky and West Virginia, for example, tolls have been to pay for road construction costs, not for limited access).
I'd dare say that the situation isn't quite the same as with SoDoMI--the latter is far more akin to a protection racket ("buy from us or we send ya up the river and make you Bubba's prison-bitch") than a matter of paying for road bonds. :)
In fact, if memory serves, the reason there are so many toll roads in Chicago is largely to pay for maintenance, so that further blows holes in your argument.
I can name a few. Until fairly recently, it was literally impossible to travel to Owensboro, Kentucky without hitting toll roads along the route (unless one wanted to attempt driving on multiple, two-lane roads). There are still sections of Kentucky (especially along the Mountain Parkway) in which it is literally impossible to get to those areas without paying toll, because the Mountain Parkway is the only major access road into those areas (and yes, that includes the two-lane roads that connect to the Mountain Parkway). There are sections along a major interstate in West Virginia where one cannot go without paying toll on the interstate (because there are no other connecting roads, interstate OR two-lane, to the area)--the whole state is mountains, and construction of roads is very expensive there. Until around 1975-1976, you couldn't go north to Louisville on I-65 without hitting toll. Until around 1990 or so, you couldn't go through much of Kentucky on anything better than a two-lane, twisty, guardrail-less goat-track without hitting toll (Kentucky has an extensive parkway system, equivalent in quality to interstate highways, which was almost completely a toll system--nowadays it's almost completely free except for two parkways), especially if you wanted to get to any towns in western Kentucky.
Or, better yet, Chicago. :) I am not making this up--literally every route of access larger than, say, a goat track is toll into and out of Chicago. Yes, this includes even two-lane highways on occasion. This goes out to about fifty miles away from Chicago, and when I first saw it on a road map I stared in disbelief. I have NEVER seen so many toll roads concentrated in one area. :) (Of course, one could make the snide comment that Da Mob is running the toll booths as a protection racket... :)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
Is music that you can't hear - and I'd bet that even that statment is overstating the security of SDMI.
SDMI is a nightmare for the consumer and I'm sure that within a week of a proper player release there will the the equivalent to a CD ripper being used to convert these files into mp3.
What a shame that the record companies contracts gave them all the mechanical royalties - the mechanical sales channel can't last too much longer.
The thing with SDMI is it's designed to make sure companies get their money. The fact that artists get paid is merely an extra. What we need is to make sure that the artists get paid for their work while admitting that there's no way to make a secure audio system.
Although the other methods are sound, writing to Best Buy and Circuit City is bound to be useless.
They sell music, and large portions of their marketing budgets are underwritten by the record companies. These stores will cooperate with the music labels when it is profitable to them.
Ever wonder why crap like "Macarena" and "Blue" became so popular? Endcaps, baby, endcaps. The stores don't choose what to put at the end of each music aisle. Record companies PAY for that space, and dearly.
These stores DO ignore the record companies now and then, when it is profitable for them. That's why Best Buy was the first national retailer carrying the Rio. They knew the product would be smashingly successful, and the profits to gain were certain to outweigh the losses due to pissing off the record companies.
Keep in mind that the MAJOR reason why other national retailers didn't support DIVX is NOT because the format was crap, it was because Circuit City owned it and invested a fortune in it. Best Buy and others didn't want their major competitor to profit every time they made a sale.
Secure Analog Humming Initiative.
After the death of digital music distribution, the main channel for 'theft' of music becomes the humming of the melody by someone who has paid the per-use fee enough times on a SuperEncryptedWindowsOnlyDeathDisc to learn the tune. This allows someone who doesn't use SuperEncryptedWindowsOnlyDeathDiskDistrobution to hear hear a song.
To combat this horribly, anti-capitalistic 'theft', the industry proposes SAHI compliant Vocal Cord constrictors. This allows the consumer to be choked to death if he or she hums the melody of a song in the vicinity of someone who doesn't own a humming license for a song. This is, as the industry has us believe, true empowerment of the consumer and protection of the artist's rights.
Someone please kill me.
This sig is false.
Does anyone remember when you'd buy a tape and have to buy a new one in 6-8 months because it degraded or just plain wore out? That doesn't happen anymore.
I heard a story, which may or may not have been true, that the album "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd stayed in the top 200 best selling vinyl albums from the time it was released until the time it was put out on CD.
The explanation offered was that many audiophiles use that album to showcase their stereos, and would replace it over and over again every time the vinyl wore out.
And that's the loophole, now and forever. If it doesn't work with your 1989 stereo and computer, then you have every right to do whatever it takes to make it work. Even DMCA will let you.
SDMI will only be a nightmare until it is cracked. And if it ever becomes widespread, it will be cracked within a few weeks or months of reaching that critical mass. After that, it'll just be Yet Another lame distribution method that nobody will use for storage.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Well, the cat's out of the bag as far as MP3 ripping goes. We have the software, we have the CD-ROM drives, and there's nothing that the RIAA can do about it :-)
One way that they could stop us from using MP3 would be to make the sale of MP3 players illegal. That isn't going to happen because the precedent has already been set - software and hardware for MP3 playback is already legally being sold.
Could the RIAA place pressure on manufacturers to market SDMI only devices? Well, I'm sure they could try (and I'm sure that they ARE trying). Would the manufacturers go for it? My guess is no, for two reasons: The RIAA can't control or restrict the supply of music for MP3 format (we can rip our own MP3's after all), and there's going to be precious little marketplace demand for SDMI only players. It just doesn't make economic sense for the player manufacturers to go down this road.
Another way that they could stop us from using MP3 would be to limit music distribution to only their specified music format. I don't think this is going to happen, because it would require them to kill off the CD market - the MP3 marketplace just isn't big enough for them to be able to justify replacing the entire music distribution mechanism.
Even if they DID replace the music distribution mechanism with the new 'SDMI' only version, it wouldn't be too long before someone produced a nice little software package that would convert the SDMI music files into MP3, wav, or whatever other format you wanted. Encryption just doesn't hold up for very long these days, as the DVD consortium recently found out.
The only way that the RIAA would have a hope of replacing MP3 with SDMI is by providing such added value in the new file format that people voluntarily choose to use it. That clearly hasn't happened.
So, what's the upshot of all this? That SDMI is a doomed technology. The RIAA just hasn't realised that it's fighting a battle that it can't win yet.
--
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
When will these guys learn?
...
DIVX was the same thing to video and is dead. DVD's adoption has been very slow due to all the restrictions. And SDMI doesn't have a chance against the momentum MP3 has gained.
People buy things that give them value and convenience. I have no problem with industry safeguarding their rights to media (film, music, print), but in going to such great lengths to prevent copying, they lose billions more in lost sales than they gain from the reduction in small-scale "pirating".
Most of this stuff has a time value anyway. Hit songs and movies are only hot for a few weeks or months. This is plenty of time for the legit distributors to make a bundle. And they will make FAR more on an open (or more open) medium than on a closed (or even semi-closed) one.
All this money and effort would be better spent lobbying governments of pirate havens to crack down on the big offenders (who are only slightly inconvenienced by these copy protection schemes), instead of killing sales through this kind of copy protection mania.
Any RIAA types out there listening to this? Please get a clue
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
Most MiniDisc players - which also use SCMS when doing digital recording from CD/DAT/MD/etc, also have a "test mode". Many of these allow you to switch SCMS on or off. See http://www.minidisc.org - be aware tho, you want to read instructions carefully, test modes allow you to do things like re-align heads, fiddle with rotation speeds etc. It can be *extremely* easy to screw up your MD player/recorder beyond all recognition.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
By non-existant threats i mean that the russians weren't stupid. They knew that if missles were launched, it would destroy the entire world. It didn't matter if we lanched fist or they did. SDI would protect against incoming missiles, the only problem is that if there were ANY incoming missles, we'd all be fucked anyway, who cares if we can shoot down 80% of them. There are still enough to obliterate the earth 10 times over. (by the way that leaves 2 earth-obliterations left :-)
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Ok am I the only one who sees "SDI" whenever I should read "SDMI"? Actually, come to think about it, they are both overglorified efforts based on over-extravagent technology to protect us from nonexisitant threats.
:-)
You all remember SDI, don't you? The Strategic Defense Inititive? Star Wars? Ronald Regan? Savings and Loan? Gorby? A Black Michael Jackson? Sheesh, I'm old.
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
from the Wired Article talking about the huge f_up with copy protected CDs...
"It's a cost-benefit to the company. If copy protection can drive 50 percent more sales, then maybe it's worth it," Hoffman said.
Sweet Mary Mother of Gates! These people actually harbor delusions in their heads 1) that 50 of their stuff is pirated 2) that every pirater, if "forced" would actually BUY the stuff rather than live without it.
How far, exactly, does your head have to be crammed up your ASS to think that you could do 150% more sales if you could somehow just make it harder and more complicated for your customers to use your products to the point that they are unusable?
First - if you anticipate 50% more sales - you have to anticipate that at least 90% of your product is being pirated... because we all know that if these pimple faced WaREz geeks weren't filling up harddrives full of Autodesk 13 and Photoshop, they be lighting cats on fire or some other stupid, useless thing to consume their time.
Is the concept of a person like me (thru the power of his G4/450, in record time, i might add) cranking out entirely LEGAL CD collections of 300+ disks into mp3s ONLY to gain portability and ease of use just _that_ f_ing alien to these people?
These people are more confused than the FBI at a Richard Jewel look-alike contest. They make the Special Olympics look like a fuckin MENSA meeting.
Whackamole, technology supremecy, old-fashioned CP hacking (Go C64!) will force these people to change - since technology alone just doesn't seem to work.
If they took the time and effort into stupid shit like SMID and put it into forming silly things like BUSINESS PLANS on how to sell mp3's over the net, they'd be even MORE rich than they are now.
These guys are real-world Dr. Evils... instead of blowing up the planet, they should just sell the fucking Starbucks.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Yes, but the RIAA is a cartel, and like all cartels, it controls the distribution of the product you need. Your mp3 player is useless if you can no longer rip CDs and it can't play the music you buy off the web.
Think of it this way. How useful is a DVD player that can't decrypt the CCS encryption?
Here's my opinion about all kinds of pirating, whether it be software, music, or movies. Why does pirating occur? It's because the people who can't afford to go out and buy their favorite music/movie/software can't afford to do it. And what does this mean? It means that the people who actively seek out pirated music/movies/software will never, ever, ever go out and pay for it because they can't afford it. Downloading MP3's, ASF's, etc off of IRC or a warez site is the only way these people have to get what they want. What does all this mean?
It means, boys and girls, that the music/movie/software industries would never have received any money from these poor downtrodden victims of the American Way anyway; therefore, piracy costs them almost nothing in lost revenue. If piracy didn't exist, these people would simply do without it because they'd have no other choice; there would be no difference in the monetary intake of Virgin Records, Paramount Studios, or Microsoft.
Think about it.
"All truth passes through three stages: first, it is ridiculed; next it is violently attacked; finally, it is held to be self-evident."
you have to pay to dive
:-)
:) it. With the road, you certainly don't buy a piece of the road, you pay to use it for a short while.
Hmmm... Are you sure you're talking about roads, not about swimming pools?
But, I don't agree with what you're saying here. With music, you buy the music, you'll 0wn
It's more like you buy a car and you'll only be able to drive it on certain highways. If you want to drive through the bushes, the car stops. That sucks and I won't buy such a car.
Thimo
--
Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux!
If I buy a cd, I can legally make a tape recording (or another CD I suppose) to use in my car, etc. This is fair use. So why should I not be able to COPY my SDMI music from where it is located to anywhere else (to another PC of mine, onto CD so I can listen to somewhere else)? This seems like a draconian restriction.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I work as a helldesk minion in a university computer lab. From my unscientific method of walking around looking at what people are doing, 50% of the users are downloading/playing mp3s. Since this particular lab is associated with the Business School, most of these users are not geeks. They are future Suits.
Whether this is good or bad is probably something for Jon Katz to discuss :-) but it's happening. Even the thickest luser can understand that mp3s are (potentially) free beer, not to mention familiar and well-tested and playable almost everywhere.
but I suspect that mp3 will stay fringe
I suspect [SDMI] will be very convienent to buy on-line.
Yet Napster et. al. have made it very convenient to find free (beer) mp3s on-line, and these search engines/filesharing programs will only get easier to use. Hmm, do I pay $1 for this Beatles song, or spend 5 minutes finding where I can get it for free? 'Tis a no-brainer.
Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.
Finding a song you want is extremely easy and relatively painless, with
programs like Napster and some of the better MP3 web searches.
Not really, unless you're looking for the hottest of the hot and the poppest of the pop. It took me about a week of checking Napster nightly to get a copy of Ruben Blades' "Pedro Navaja," to say nothing of Carlos Vives' "La Gota Fria" or 80's Chilean prog-rock band Los Prisioneros. I'd shell out 75c or a buck to download the whole song -- if I could find it. I wouldn't buy a whole album of Blades, because there's only so much salsa I can take in one go -- but "Pedro Navaja" is pretty sweet.
gomi
If those are the results, then we need to inform people.
44% of people did not distribute because there was no "unfirom secure distribution system." That's more than the 16% of record execs. How many artists is that?
67% think that SDMI actually does help the industry. This should be the most glaring piece of misinformation we need to correct. "Remember DAT?"
36% thought that the SDMI decision making process was positive! That's more than the percentage that thought SDMI was for the RIAA agenda only.
Until we can hit 90% or better on the points you mentioned, we'll not have the mindshare we need to get through to the company execs and money makers. They'll continue to put out flowery press releases crowing about SDMI "protecting the customer" -- what they won't include is the fact that they're really protecting the company from the customer.
Spread the word today. Strongly associate DIVX and SDMI devices. Make sure people understand fair use means they are allowed to have MP3 backups of their music, and don't need to buy two copies of everything (a "play" copy and a "good" copy) since they can listen to the MP3s on wonderful devices like the Rio. How many of you like having to buy new CDs because the old ones "wore out" or otherwise became too scratched?
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Well there are toll roads where someone else owns the roads and you have to pay to dive. It is a similar situation with music.
Not to say I'm very fond of that particular system myself.
That's an interesting point. One that I was quick to point out when it was first announced here on /. IMOHO, everytime you purchase a blank CD, you are prepurchasing the right to copy songs you've haven't purchsed otherwise. I would find it hard to believe that effective legal arguments could be made to counter this.
"It seems you've been making copies of songs that you don't own."
"Actually, when I purchased my blank CD's, the industry was paid for the songs that I copied."
"Is this true?"
"Well, yes your honor. We have a tax for this purpose on every blank sold."
"So you've already been paid for the songs indirectly?"
"We'll, yes, your honor. But we have the right to be paid as many times as we see fit."
"If the plantif has already been paid...blah...blah..."
SDMI: Just Say No.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Consumers will opt for devices that meet their requirements, not those of corporate lawyers. If the SDMI implementation is really as strong you say, these devices won't see wide-spread acceptance. But then, that's probably what the music industry wants.
>WTF is wrong with the dumbasses in the motion picture and recording industries?
Just because an industry grows bigger with change it doesn't mean that all the original players involved will profit. From a big corp/establishment perspective, uncontrolled change is bad -it allows other people to make money in an industry where I/my company dominates. I believe there's been a number of books written about resistance to change in corporate cultures.
On the other hand, while consumers think they are buying music, the industry thinks they are selling content that is bound to the media. There's a big difference which explains many of the actions, laws, and lawsuits of the industry distributors. Historically, they've been able to control the content by controlling the media and thus will need to be dragged forcably into the 21 digital century where content is independant of the media.
BTW, If digital media trivializes the cost and effort of content distribution, much of the music & movie industry is extraneous. They're just Luddites looking to protect their cash cow...
Of course, in the meantime, the encryption scheme will have been broken and/or people will have figured out a way to intercept the music. There's no real need for concern.
Well, won't there? Someone has broken the DVD format, but I still don't have a way to back DVD's up. Why? Because MPAA (or in this case RIAA, same shit...) have much too much control over the hardware makers. Diamond got away with the RIO, but would they have gotten away with a DVD-R which can write the code tracks? Will we ever have such a drive? (Affordable, without 'tax'?)
Corporate power reaching across hardware-content boundaries leads to pain for the consumers.
dufke
-
__
Comment submitted. There will be a delay before you understand what you posted.
Isn't it possible to take the SDMI technology and use it against the recording industry? Technology is supposed to be double-edge sword. If the purpose of SDMI is to screw the consumer base why could it not be turned against the RIAA?After all SDMI has one advantage over MP3: it sets up formal procedures for making payments. Consider the following scenario:
1. Plans for SDMI-compliant hardware are ditched, the specifcation becomes a wire-protocol
2. Restrictions on copying are removed
3. The protocol is used by independent artists to sell their work over the web
The RIAA is out of the loop, the useful parts of SDMI techology (payment for content) is salvaged and everyone is happy.
BluesPower
You have a very good point. I got turned on a electronic music a few months back, and it this had been, say, 3 years ago, I probably would have bought some albums. As it is, I'm streaming the Electronica Trip channel from Green Witch right now. Why would I buy an album when I can chose what type of music I want to hear, and hear it without commercials?
--Kevin
If they were clear about the licenses, they might have to say something like "fair use entitles you to so-and-so". They'd rather not admit fair use exists, and have lobbied for the likes of DMCA to put it in a smaller and smaller box.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
Security gone bad? maybe...
See this from the perspective of the folks who built that "standard" though. They want you to pay for a song, store it somewhere, and not be able to redistribute it to others or make copies you haven't paid for.
Of course you're usually allowed to make copies for your personnal use, but apparently they forgot THAT part of the copyright law when they designed the crap...
What seems to be really stupid though is that the software allows you to move files around, which renders them unusable, and it doesn't warn you?? If that's the case, it doesnt qualify as user-friendly to me.
"I remember Y1K, every abacus had to get another bead"
Before one can know if SDMI does the right thing, one must have a clear picture of what the right thing is. One thing the recorded music publishers have neglected for years is that they were only incidentally selling atoms. Really, they were always selling licenses.
I have here a brand-new shrink wrapped CD. Copyright mark and one warning on the outside - "unauthorized duplication is violation of applicable laws". Pop the wrap. Disc itself has the same print. Liner notes have copyright statements, same warning.
So here's an odd thing - I've bought some atoms and a license, but I haven't got a clear picture of that license.
I took a quick pass at smdi.org and wasn't too informed by it. So I buzzed over to riaa.org where this item is a pointer on The Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 I should run over and read the acts, but I haven't yet. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse..."
Music licensing is fiercely complex anyway - many organizations can "own" an aspect of the same performance. Making rights visible would go a long way towards making SDMI restrictions comprehensible - and maybe getting rid of some restrictions.
Henry Troup
hwt@igs.net
Answer to the questions about the SDMI spec are in line below.
-n.o.
===
Milo_Mindbender asks: "I recently got hold of a solid-state music player
that is Secure Digital Music Initiative (see www.sdmi.org) compatible. While
the player itself is a fine device, the restrictions forced on it by SDMI
appear to make it a nightmare for the consumer. I'd appreciate it if someone
with more knowledge of SDMI could tell me if my concerns are real, or just
the result of a bad SDMI implementation." Click below to read the rest of
Milo's submission and to see the direction the RIAA wants to push us in.
"1. It appears you can't move the music files around on your disk. They get
stored in an encrypted form and if you try and reorganize them other than
through the SDMI compliant software, they go boom!
== Answer ==
The files must be stored in a protected manner, but the fact that the system breaks when the files get moved around your file system is not a result of SDMI. This is probably because the implementation expects the files to be in a particular location.
===
2. At least with the software I have, it appears all your music must fit on
one device, there is no provision for multiple catalogs on several devices.
== Answer ==
Again, not a result of SDMI. SDMI explicitly supports multiple devices for a single user.
===
3. It appears that storing your music on read-only media like CDR will not
be possible.
=== Answer ===
Archived clear text music is not "SDMI compliant" so if you mean you cannot write LPCM to CDR and be SDMI compliant, this is true. However, there is no restriction which prevents you from storing your protected files on CDR as long as it is not possible to make copies that work in any PC. SDMI allows you to store content to any media as long as the media is bound to the media or to the user's "local environment" which might include more than one PC (see below).
===
4. At least with the software I have, storing music on removable media like
ZIP drives may not be possible.
== Answer ==
See above. Again, this is a limitation of the software, not SDMI. Zip disks (I believe) have unique IDs which means the content can be bound to the disk. This will allow them to be played by any computer with the appropriate software, but will also prevent bit-identical copies.
===
5. It appears that if you have multiple computers, a laptop and a PC for
example, you won't be able to transfer your music back and forth between the two.
== Answer ==
Not true. The specification is a little hazy about this, but you are allowed to make copies and move them between devices and PC's. The number of copies is limited, however.
====
6. It appears SDMI is a security standard only and doesn't guarantee
interoperability between SDMI devices from multiple manufacturers.
== Answer ==
Yes, the 1.0 specification says nothing about interoperability. SDMI is scheduled to discuss interoperability in the future, but many people believe that any real interoperability progress will come from outside of the group.
===
7. I have yet to determine if the directory containing SDMI music can be
safely backed up and restored.
== Answer ==
This depends on the implementation. The spec says that backup and restore should not be a security hole (back up on my PC, restore on yours). Of course, everyone knows that this is a very difficult problem to solve well.
===
8. It looks like SDMI might be one of those "standards" that can't be
distributed as open source without its security being broken.
== Answer ==
Only partly true, since the SDMI spec is not a technical specification. It provides a high level set of requirements that software and hardware must meet in order to be called "SDMI compliant". These requirements are somewhat general and say things like "SDMI compliant components must authenticate eachother," but it does not say which authentication protocol to use.
The one place where this is true is with respect to the watermarking technology.
===
If anyone can clear up any of these questions for me I'd really appreciate
it. Right now SDMI looks like it will make it terribly easy for the
uninitiated to accidentally lose music by moving it in ways that seem
innocent at first, but cause the security to kick in. It also seems to give
the music less utility than music on a CD, that is I can carry a CD to work
and play it on my PC there, or loan the CD to someone...SDMI seems to
prohibit this. I don't have anything against protecting the musicians'
copyright rules, but it sounds like they may be creating a consumer
nightmare with all this format's restrictions. Any comments? "
== Final Comment ==
To sum up, the problems you identified are restrictions of the particular implementation you have. Most of SDMI is very aware that unless security is invisible to the user, SDMI compliant systems will not be adopted. Provisions were made to allow for the kind of uses that you mention and for other uses which consumers would normally expect. Most SDMI attendees are only interested in SDMI so long as it is possible to make compliant products that are attractive to consumers.
===
- Anticipated Technical Functionality of Phase 2 Screening of Digital Audio Content
- SDMI Portable Device Specification - Part 1, Version 1.0 (PDWG99070802)
- Amendment 1 to the SDMI Portable Device Specification - Part 1, Ver 1 (PDWG99092302)
- Guide to SDMI Portable Device Specification - Part 1, Version 1.0
- Int erim Phase 1 SDMI Trademark License and Compliance Agreement
Sorry. I didn't notice they they weren't all fully qualified. Like I said, I just snagged em from sdmi.org...---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The death of DIVX demonstrated that consumers will not accept a standard that further restricts their use of intellectual property when a more open standard already exists. Its too bad the "open dvd" didn't turn out to be as open as we thought. Mp3s are here, now, and will not go away soon. SDMI has to be converted to audio at some point, and as a result can and mostly likely will be recorded, circumventing the technology. Someone will find a way to grab the digital out before its converted to analog by the soundcard. The industry doesn't understand they're fighting a battle they can't win. Until they send the audio directly to people's brains, no format will be secure.
- As far as I can tell, the main aim of the plan [using SDMI] seems to be to confuse consumers as to what is and isn't kosher in the digital music arena so none of them will have time left to engage in music piracy.
Instead of trying to make it harder for the consumer, he suggests that the music industry makeit easier for people to get to music. He contends that searching for illegal takes time and it's difficult to find the exact song you're looking for. If the music industry were to make it extremely convenient to get songs from them, consumers would pay a small amount of change for each song in exchange for the time saved.It wouldn't surprise me if backups are impossible or intentionally inconvenient to the point that a repurchase is preferable (and who's gonna do that?).
Here's what happened to me the first time I attempted to use a "licensed" audio file.
1) I download a "free" 30 meg King Crimson concert at 56k; this takes about nine hours including failures and disconnects.
2) It's in Windows Media format, so I go download the Windows Media Player so that I can listen to my precious, hard-won "free" Crimson.
3) Since Microsoft makes the WMP, I backup my whole system before installing it, including the Crimson show. This is common sense, I think. MS likes to delete other companies' libs without asking and replace them with their own, unstable ones for some reason. Something to do with monopolies or something.
4) I install WMP and it hoses a decent percentage of my system files.
5) I re-install my system, including WMP, and this time it "works" because I didn't install anything hoseable yet.
6) I click and attempt to enjoy the grandeur that is Crimson, but I can't because I'm no longer "licensed" to do so. The "license" was an invisible file that, if moved, no longer functioned. I could at this point either A) re-download the whole thing just to get a 10k "licence" text file, or B) say "Fuck this."
7) I say "Fuck this," delete everything, and vow never to futz around with "licensed" content again. SDMI/WM et al lose one customer.
I would expect this scenario to repeat in the homes of millions until SDMI joins DIVX in Acronym Hell. I hope it does, anyway.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
To echo another response to this post, the important part of your post is "and much like the recording and movie industries, the real artists don't make beans". That is what I think the MPAA and RIAA are trying to ensure -- that they maintain control of the *production* of content, to keep a monopoly position and to reduce costs. There's no way that a Hong Kong pirate shop or an internet rip site is going to compete with these guys in serious ways (and, yes, the maintenance of the perception that we are buying content, not media, is essential to making these competitors seem illegitimate). But, if independent musicians and filmmakers felt they could cheaply distribute their work, and not have to sign away their rights to the studios, that *would* threaten their monopoly.
Ironically, they try to defend themselves as protecting the artists!
Mind you, I think that, for all the reasons you mentioned, they are on balance still dumbasses.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
Where do you draw the line between protecting the musician's interests and giving the consumers value for what they pay for?
SDMI has nothing to do with musicians. Probably 8 out of ten of them oppose it. SDMI exists solely for the major record companies. MP3 has major record companies scared stiff-- not only because of piracy, but more importantly because it allows bands & independent labels to cheaply & easily distribute their music worldwide without the record companies getting their cut. By implementing these kinds of senseless restrictions, the majors hope to kill off any & all forms of digital music distribution. Obviously, in the long run it's a losing battle, but they've got the money, so they won't give up the fight easily.
Where do you draw the line between protecting the musician's interests and giving the consumers value for what they pay for? This is kind of like buying a car and being told that you couldn't drive it at night or on certain roads. There is no way I would pay money for digital music with these kind of restrictions.
The fundemental question is not wether SDMI is good or bad..its wether its even relevant anymore.
Music has and will continue to be produced on simple, plain-jane audio CD's because you're not gonna convince the American public that they need to throw out their CD players and buy a new box to listen to their Milli Vanilli with. Videos will still be released on VHS, because for most people, they dont care if their movie has digital quadrophonic Dolby THX surround-sound. They just want to see a damn movie.
What _is_ relevant now, are applications like Napster, and how its existance and similar "community trading" apps will impact how media is reproduced and sold. Not just music, but all sorts of things. Napster for movies. Napster for warez. Hell, even Napster for porn.
See, nothing prevents Sony Music from setting up a server, and selling MP3s securely..You could purchase the MP3 online two weeks in advance, before the audio CD hits store shelves. Nothing prevents Virgin from setting up kiosks in their stores that let you burn your own custom audio CDs from a catalog of artists. Infact, they would probably make more money in the long run doing that, than they would by selling a CDs of individual artists. Most people are reluctant to pay $17 for an album where there are only one or two songs on it they like -- I'm sure they'de much rather pay $20 for a custom-burned CD where THEY decided what got put on it, so they could ensure that every song appealed to them, and the whole 75 minutes of the disc were used.
The cat is already out of the bag, and its meow sounds suspiciously like "MP3".
Who loses if digital media dies?
It sure ain't labels? Nah. They've still got their distribution networks set up, and the massive payola scenario they engineered with (former) radio station owners means that the advertising networks are locked up pretty tight too.
They've got the songs, the stores, and the stations. What they didn't have is the software, and the hardware that comes inside. By threatening to sue and/or refuse to license standards to consumer audio hardware manufacturers, they get to force some absolutely ridiculous amounts of anti-consumer design.
Would you want to buy a player that would refuse to play your music? Are there market forces that are pushing you to say, "Gee, I wish my music collection just didn't work. I'd love it if I could lose my entire investment to a rogue hacker. If only nothing worked together, and I could only use Windows, and I was only allowed to have a single music playing device, and I was miserable with anything but CDs!"
Nope, but there sure as hell are labels that wouldn't mind you saying that.
SDMI's doomed to fail, because that's what it does best. SDMI fails. People are proclaiming the death of a PC over a failure rate that is infinitely lower than SDMI's <i>intentional</i> rate of failure.
And when it fails...the status quo, pre MP3 but post payola, will be maintained for the labels. That's the plan--musicians, consumers, hardware manufacturers, linux coders be damned.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
SDMI devices are coming to market, and MP3-based devices are already out there. The one thing we all need to keep in mind here is that MP3 already is the de facto standard for digital audio. If the consumers stick to MP3-enabled devices, SDMI will die on the vine, like Betamax. Ultimately, all the consumer electronics manufacturers will act in their self-interest, and stick to "fishing where the fish are".
Ultimately, SDMI's fate is in our hands, because we control our own pursestrings. If we don't buy it, they'll stop selling it. The recording industry may think SDMI is the be-all-end-all of digital playback, but it doesn't matter how much they market it or how pretty the box is if we dogs won't eat their dogfood.
What can slashdotters do?
Buy only MP3 devices for themselves. Do not buy devices that support SDMI instead of, or in addition to MP3.
Evangelize your friends and the less technically astute. Don't hammer them with the technical details of why SDMI is inferior. Say things like "you'll want to back up your songs, right? SDMI can't do that" or "Only MP3 players work as-is with your existing CD's, just like making tapes for your Walkman". Keep it simple. MP3 still wins.
Write to the big consumer electronics resellers. If Best Buy and Circuit City alone emphasized MP3 players they could almost single-handedly ensure the death of SDMI. They may support it now, but if they do that's because they genuinely think the marketplace will accept SDMI. Circuit City, in particular, should have learned their lesson about proprietary systems from the DIVX fiasco.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
http://www.sdmi.org/
Just so we know what we're talking about. From that site:
What SDMI is: A forum for these industries to develop the voluntary, open framework for playing, storing and distributing digital music necessary to enable a new market to emerge. SDMI is working on two tracks. The first has already produced a standard, or specification, for portable devices. The longer-term effort is working toward completion of an overall architecture for delivery of digital music in all forms. What it is not: SDMI is not producing a single format, technology or design. The SDMI framework allows a variety of competing technologies and download formats to be used within its system.Last year, an RIAA official publicly stated their intention to eventually "phase out" MP3s by putting an "off switch" on all SDMI compliant software. After the SDMI standard becomes widespread, the consortium would "flip the switch", and make MP3s completely unplayable on all computers with SDMI installed.
This is made particularly incideous because the Digital Millenium Copyright Act makes a copy control system legal, and makes it a criminal offense to remove such a system (regardless of your intent!) However, the RIAA has gone beyond a copy control system.
By considering (and possibly implementing) such an "off switch", and other attributes of the SDMI standard, the music industry is group boycotting the MP3 standard. They can't do that, at least not the way they are planning to do it now. The DMCA doesn't allow it, and it may be an antitrust violation.
When they do, a number of us will be here, waiting. And for the RIAA/MPAA/DVD-CCA lawyers reading this (We know you're there), recognize that some of us see the potential antitrust violations you've wired or may wire into your software codes. If you keep your efforts limited to honestly restricting piracy, and don't prevent competition with your proposed proprietary formats, and if you stop using your monopoly on movies and/or music to control the downstream market for players, then your industry associations have nothing to worry about. But we're watching, like thousands of hawks.
The moral of the story: we should stick to open MP3 players not made with SDMI, for now.
There are several interesting results:
For the people who don't have music available on the web, there were several reasons given. Piracy was halfway down the list.
56% of the people responded No to "Has the lack of a uniform secure distribution system limited your distribution of music online?"
33% responded "RIIA" to "Do you feel that SDMI has furthered the objectives of the RIAA or the industry as a whole?"
64% responded "Detrimental" to "Do you feel that the fact that the SDMI decision making process, not being open to the public, press or interested parties, had a detrimental or positive impact on the group's work?"
There are many more questions on the survey, read it for yourself.