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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? "
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.
The world according to gfxguy:
- When consumer recording devices started to become popular (reel to reel, 8 track and eventually cassettes), the recording industry made the same complaints. The consumers won their freedom to record their music, and music industry boomed. Every year set a new record in number of albums sold (until CD took over). The recording industry may have lost a few sales to pirating, but overall they simply raked in the cash in unbelievable bucket loads.
- When consumer grade video recording devices hit the shelves, the movie industry made the same complaints. Consumers won their freedom to record from TV. Again, while pirating may occur, the movie industry made bucket loads of cash hand over fist from the rental market...often making more in rentals than in theatrical releases.
- Video games became a large market. The companies tried all sorts of stupid human tricks to make us stay legal, including purposely damaging their disks (so copy programs wouldn't run), and the off disk copy protection was simply a nightmare for consumers...and who was hurt? The one's who legally purchased the game. The pirates broke the off disk copy protection, and gaming became a more pleasurable experience when you broke that stupid look-up-in-manual-or-codewheel copy protection. I did this to many games I legally owned. It was just stupid. They stopped doing it. The gaming industry has grown every year and they too make bucket loads of money (and much like the recording and movie industries, the real artists don't make beans).
- Digital formats started becoming more and more popular. The recording industry once again when crazy about DATs and recordable CDs and so forth. It was a draw. DATs didn't catch on - for whatever reasons. The record companies promised that the format for CDs was a cheaper manufacturing process, and CDs are cheaper to make - the reason they were so expensive to start was because of the volume. They promised that when volume was high enough, prices would come down. They didn't - even record prices rose. Once again, the recording industry was and still is making money hand over fist - sales grow at an exponential rate every year. Obviously recordable media didn't effect this to any great extent - at least not at the loss of profits, even though CD's could be copied with no loss in quality.
So the question remains: WTF is wrong with the dumbasses in the motion picture and recording industries?I believe this is a much bigger issue than even slashdotter's, who tend to overreact anyway, are making it out to be. It's not just inconvenient, but WE are the ones who ultimately pay for this inconvenience! Anyone who supports these people by buying a DVD or some ridiculous secure music format is subsidizing this stupidity.
I was about ready to buy a DVD player until I heard about the regional codes. That alone made me hesitate. Good thing, too, because I hesitated long enough for the @!#$ to hit the fan with this whole DeCSS thing, and now I'm just going to wait. I like the quality, but not at the cost of freedom.
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Stupid sexy Flanders.