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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? "
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
Yes, but the key question is what will I play my pirated music on?
Suppose I am the RIAA what do I do? I know I can't stop digital music. I propose a new digital music format that can't be copied. This digital music format also gives me additional monopoly power in the digital music industry making sure I make barrels of cash and not some other startup distributer.
But wait there is already a free unencumbered product out there. I must tie it up in lawsuits saying it is a pirating tool and urge congresmen to pass legislation making it illegal. At the same time I offer incentive programs to those who do produce my SDMI compliant devices. Lo and behold the hardware companies (especially if im sony) make SDMI compliant devices. The consumers, not really knowing the difference, buy the heavily advertised new SDMI model.
Now everyone uses SDMI players. I copy a piece of music from my SDMI device. I can play it in my computer but I can't play it in my portable device. I can't play it in my stero etc.. etc... Thereby they guarnatee I still buy their music.
Yes they technically can (but probably won't) make a secure enough system for this purpose. The RIAA makes a master RSA key. Embed the public key in every player sign authorized RIAA music with the private key. Oops I just created a monopoly too locking out those pesky independent artists.
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
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.
And if it will play on my existing player and in my CD-ROM drive, it's not copy-protected, is it?
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.
1)They can only be played in very new cd players -Even some players that are a year old can't play them.
2)They can't actually be sold as compact discs, since they don't meet redbook standards for cd's.
3)They can't be played in any cd-roms.
As you can imagine, all these factors really limit both the number of people that can play (and buy) the cd's, and the number of people who actually would buy them.
--
--
"Insert witty quote here."
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.
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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!
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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?
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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.
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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
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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
I agree with you except the part about net result. MP3 players are already being manufactured. When hardware companies see that people don't want SDMI devices they will remember the the unrestricted MP3 devices sold like hotcakes and they'll go back to selling them (if they ever stopped in the first place). Follow the money.
And I don't think they're evil. They are morons. Then don't understand the concept of a toothpaste tube (its one way).
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.
===
I wrote a long column for MP3.com about the dysfunctions of SDMI; you can read it here. The head of SDMI, Leonardo Chiariglione (who is also the head of MPEG), responded in his inimitable manner here.
- 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.
On the same subject, BMG has withdrawn it's copy protected CD's, Wired has the story.
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.