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Set Digital Music Free
The latest issue of EFF's newsletter covers the HackSDMI challenge. Probably not surprisingly, they're urging the same thing as Don Marti, who Salon interviewed.Update: 09/19 3:33 PM by michael : The RIAA, EFF, and 2600.com debated SDMI on Pacifica radio today.
As I submitted earlier, Don Marti has stepped down from the boycott. Hopefully it will get posted on Slashdot soon.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I am rather partial to this editoral myself.
~~ What's stopping you?
They're so close. They're starting to realize that hackers are valuable, but they've forgotten that hackers aren't stupid. Stand together on this, maybe we can embarrass them just like the poor FBI's been embarrassed by no Uni rubber-stamping Carnivore.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
The goal is to have no eyeballs look at this until it is ratified. This increases our chance that once they force this down everyone's throats someone can find a hole.
Remember, if the system is really secure there isn't much we as hackers can do. 128 bit encryption is 128 bit encryption, and baring major advances is unbreakable to hackers. Let the music industry get a strangle hold on the people with a new standard and there isn't much we can do to lossen it technologicaly.
Of course there is the other way to look at this: help make this standard as secure as possibal. Then keep reminging people that you used to be able to copy music for your own purposes, and legally you still can. When people get mad congress does listen, and they can force the industry to release the ability for everyone to take advantage of fair use. Grass roots politics is where things get done in the US, so join a political party that mostly thinks like you, and get things done. (It doesn't have to be the republicrats, but a major party gives you a better shot of getting your canidate elected in exchange for some lesser issues going against you)
OK, you may be boycotting them, but according to hacksdmi's website, some of the test files are 50 MB. So even if you are boycotting, go ahead and download the files, there's nothing like a good ol' slashdotting'. Besides, it'll make them think that people are interested.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Extract the watermark, don't extract it. It really doesn't matter.
Yesterday's Forrester report on the new Nomad reiterates the commonly held view that SDMI is irrelevant:
"SDMI is too late to make a difference. Net users see access to free music as a key benefit of digitally downloading music. While the Jukebox is hardware-ready to support SDMI -- the security rules developed by the music industry's Secure Digital Music Initiative -- owners will ignore secure, paid-for music downloads and opt for the free version."
I don't have any problem paying for music, but I am going to continue to rip my CD's to use the unrestricted MP3 file format, rather than use watermarked SDMI files. Flexibility and convenience is very important to me as a music consumer. And there will always be music players for unrestricted formats.
Corby
Why do we need "secure digital music"?
CDs and MP3 files seem to do just a fine job of handling my music needs, there seems to be nothing missing.
Would this initiative secure funding for the artists, or offer new capabilities for the listeners that don't currently exist?
Would this allow me to secure my music by getting access to it if the media it came on was damaged?
How does this guarantee my right to fair use under existing copyright laws?
--Mike--
No matter what the results of this challenge, the industry would never admit that it can't be done. If technical means can not accomplish it, then they will employ strongarm legal tactics. Either way, personal freedoms will bow to corporate interests.
Or a well known hacker group!
Their avarice shows their stupidity. This is twice as nonsense compared to brute-force hacking for testing crypto security.
And if you want to crack RIIA's crypto for fame, wait till it is widely used, then crack it and get fame ;)
What would that prove? That the evil hacker(sic) types are bad and nasty and want to make life difficult for the RIAA?
Guess what? They know that already.
DDoS isn't going to do anything except make our reputation *worse*. What we need to do is boycott the challenge, and be very, very vocal about *WHY* we are boycotting the challenge -- not that we can't do it, but that we won't do their dirty work for them until and unless they decide that it's time to play nice.
"RFC 882: We put the . in
Lately I've been thinking that we're drawing the lines for battle in the wrong places. Perhaps there SHOULD be a secure format that can be used for things like limited listening. I know we all cringe about self-destroying CDs and the like, but really it could be a great method of exposure -- 2 listens, and the disc is done, and then you can buy a PERMANENT CD. That might be an agreeable setup, material waste aside. A limited download might be used to accomplish the same thing. You can play it n times, but then you have to buy. Sort of like the trial period/limited number of times kind of shareware (which has a place, even if it's non-free).
Now, I think most of us fear that if secure initiatives come out:
1) they WON'T be used wisely. We might be forced to pay per every viewing/listening/reading.
2) that it will somehow be made illegal and/or very difficult to freely view/distribute stuff you actually have the rights to.
It seems to me that #1 is possible, but that if we start fighting the battle from the other end (#2),
we might be able to make a lot more headway with conservative policy makers AND preserve the freedoms that are truly important. Remember, the GPL doesn't stop Intellectual Property from existing under the law, and make everything free. It (and other free licences) just makes Free Software possible.
We are fighting the battle for #2 in a number of places (DeCSS I think falls in this category), but we're also wasting a lot of time on #1. Given a chance, I think secure initiatives might find a fair place next to free alternatives.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
I'm a bit disappointed by the reaction of all the big guys in the hacker community. Did they actually read the challenge? You can get to try to break their stuff with almost total privacy (all but your IP address), and you don't have to give up any of your rights if you don't want the money.
Also, you don't give them expertise, as nothing forces you to explain how you hacked their stuff if you did.
Whether you like the idea that SDMI are trying to implement or not, a public challenge is always a good thing. And they are actually giving up a rather convenient and powerful way to test their algorithms...
Finally, the best way to prevent SDMI from existing is certainly to undertake their challenge and to break the schemes. Otherwise, they'll implement it, and maybe it will be broken afterward, but bypassing it then may involve more complicated legal issues...
If you don't want to read the click-through license agreement, just use this URL:
http://hacksdmi.org/hackDownload.asp
I'm not sure if the agreement prevents me from telling others how to circumvent it, but I don't really care that much.
Have a nice day.
-----
It took almost two years to crack CSS, and that was only because Xing didn't encrypt their keys (BTW, did Xing ever get in trouble for this?)
If the "crack SDMI" goes on for 3, 6, 9 months, even a year, without being cracked, it doesn't prove anything. There is no such thing as an uncrackable algorithm. The Germans thought Enigma was uncrackable, they were wrong. The MPAA thought CSS was uncrackable, and they were wrong. Now the RIAA is trying to build anther "uncrackable" code. And they're going to find out in a year, two years, 5 years, whatever, that they're dead wrong as well. The best that the RIAA can hope for is making the encryption such that it can't be cracked brute-force by today's computers. How long have CDs been around? 20 years or so? How far has computing technology gone in that time? Will computers sometime during the life of SDMI be enough to do a brute-force attack against SDMI? I'd wager yes.
They aughta go read "Applied Cryptography" and just give up. SDMI is irrelevant, CD-Audio will take years to catch on. MP3 is here, working, popular, and sufficient for most users.
PS, I just proved that SDMI can (and will) be cracked. Send me my $10k.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
Because it IS flamebait, and the author displays a complete lack of understading regarding the issues. It has nothing to do with hackers chickening out, it's that they don't want SDMI to be successful. By cracking it, then telling how they did it, they just made it that much harder to fight SDMI in the future.
I usually like the Register, but this one left me scratching my head. I really don't think the author understands what is happening here at all.
Finkployd
Anyone thought about hacking the HackSDMI website? Maybe change the index file to something talking about the boycott and laying down the real reason that they want SDMI to become popular...
Of course, I'm just putting this out there as an idea... I don't condone it one bit! No siree!
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Assuming you could get the numbers, how about a "CD double-burning rally": as a public act of disobedience, set up a number of CD burners. Make copies (in open format) for anyone who shows up with a blank CD and a copy of any CD they might own. They can then throw the original in a nice bonfire (or not). People who have already made their own burns can just show up to flash their heinously illegal copies (snigger) in the face of Big Business and/or have an original platter roast.
You've got to admit, it's the sort of protest that gets eyeballs in local media.
-TBHiX-
until after it's a standard (and it's too late to change) before we break it ...... (evil grin :-)
Warning, I've found that you can't daisy chain more than 4 of these CD dongles without losing control of your printer... playlists out the windows!
Because you can't, you won't, and you don't stop...
Okay, let's see here: SDMI want me to test the strength of their proposed security measures, measures on which the entire future of the music industry's electronic offerings will be based. An industry that earned over $16 billion in profits last year.
...And they're only offering me $10,000. And they want me to do it "on spec".
How very typical of the music industry. What cheap bastards.
Tell you what, SDMI: Crank the prize offering by at least three orders of magnitude, and we'll talk...
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Quite the contrary. By poking holes in the SDMI in its early stages, we help make it more ironclad for when it is actually rolled out. By hacking it now, you're not getting egg on their face. You're not making them look dumb. Even if it's really easy and the hacker who breaks it says "Ha ha, silly people, can't make a strong algorithm to save their lives" and all his/her hacker buddies laugh at the SDMI, they have fundamentally made the algorithm stronger, because the consortium will immediately plug the hole that was used to crack it. And one gloating hacker gets some money, and the rest of us get stuck with a stronger algorithm in the hands of oppressive corporations.
Corporations don't need our help. Statistically, the odds of any one hacker being the first to break it are very low. So basically, everyone but that one person who is lucky enough to win is donating his or her time to a bunch of bloated media giants to help them make CDs more expensive and harder to listen to in the future. Some deal.
I'd prefer to see the SDMI consortium triumphantly deploy their new "unbreakable" system, and then have it hacked and go belly up and get recalled a week later. That, and not public outcry, will convince corporate policymakers and possibly some lawmakers that the whole thing is a bunch of bunk. Angry shouting people on slashdot go away... big losses in non-recoverable engineering costs don't.
Please, let's not think that all people suggesting boycots are whiners saying that "it would be too easy" or "$10,000 isn't enough". Anyone who tries to hack the SDMI before it is rolled out is implicitly endorsing it and making a real contribution to its cause. Don't!
Even better: crack SDMI, and DON'T tell them! Don't even tell the people you were able to do it. Let them think it's perfect and unbreakable. Wait for it to catch on, due to its backing by every big evil corporate giant.
Wait a month or so...
*poof* Hey look eveybody, here's a crack for SDMI, music is free again! By this time, SDMI has become so pervasively embedded in everything that the music industry is kinda stuck with it, and by golly, it's cracked too!
Did you run the sound through a Fourier analysis? Were there any missing frequencies or added sub-audible marker tones? Those kinds of markers would survive a re-digitizing attempt, which is basically what you did.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Here's a quote from their click-through license agreement.
(1) you will not be permitted to disclose any information about the details of the attack to any other party,
They're just going to buy the silence of everyone who does, then they'll be able to say that the hole they discovered is closed (because everyone who could exploit it has and has been payed off). Worse than that though, it'll enable them to sue these people for breach of contract for ever talking about anything related to digital music, encryption, watermarking, or anything else they they take offense to. Kiss your right to participate in Slashdot discussions goodbye, unless of course you're prepared to toe the SDMI-party line.
The RIAA and MPAA are all cheats, thieves and liars. Bah, why do they bother, their usual method of bribing all the politicians and judges has carried them this far.
Just a few notes.
CSS is encryption. You can speak of 'cracking' it in order to access the encrypted data.
SDMI is not encryption. It is a watermark. (SDMI does claim that some of the "Phase 2" technologies are not watermarks, but whatever they are calling it, the functionality would seem to be necessarily similar in concept.)
The SDMI challenge is not to decrypt music, the SDMI challenge is to remove the watermark.
However, having said that, 'crack' is such a good word, I will use it hereafter to mean 'removing the screening technology from the music file.'
SDMI has previously announced that the watermark is inaudible, and can survive transfer from PCM to frequency-band-based compression like MP3 and even to analog.
However, the samples for download are not watermarked with the current Verance "Phase 1" technology, but with contenders for the "Phase 2" technology.
There are samples both with and without the watermark, so comparing the two samples and statistically analyzing the differences would seem like the clear place to start.
It seems to me like there are several things that the hacker community could do to really poke SDMI in the eye with a sharp stick:
1) Crack their Phase 2 screener, tell them $10K isn't nearly enough, and have them fly you in to discuss your terms.
2) Crack their Phase 2 screener, and don't tell them about it until the Phase 2 "trigger" comes out in CDs. Then tell the world how to crack it.
3) Those are both hard. Note that SDMI doesn't provide any tools so that we can determine for ourselves whether we have cracked the screener. Instead, they ask us to upload the files with the screener removed to their site. You have gigs and gigs of audio samples. What are you waiting for? Start uploading!
Chris Owens
San Carlos, CA
The encryption algorithm will be a trade secret; otherwise, anyone could write an open-source program that leaks the cleartext. Not acceptable.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Go to the download page of the HackSDMI website directly without going throught the click through link agreement page. This way you don't have to agree to anything to download the files (there isn't any warning or EULA on the download page).
Please note, I myself did NOT use the clickthrough to get to this page, or to find its address.
-Adam
Sometimes its good to stop and think, unless you're thinking, "Why am I crossing a freeway?"
I wonder that we aren't seeing more discussion/speculation as to the outright legality of the SDMI.
Whether or not it is technically feasible is beside the point. Is it legal? A couple of points to consider:
1. Copyrights, by law, last for 17 years at which time "ownership" is "transferred" to the "Public Domain". Therefore, is it legal to wrap the copyrighted work in a format which, by virtue of encryption, renders impossible that transfer of ownership interest?
2. The concept of manufacturers and a few copyright holders working together to develop a format + playback + record mechanism, in which the copyright holders serve as "gatekeepers", granting or denying access to the technology in their own self-interest, could only be considered a pernicious form of anti-competitive restraint of trade. New artists, equipment manufacturers, etc. will be forced to pay financial tribute to the keepers of the encryption keys, and can easily be excluded from the market, simply by denying access to the recording or playback equipment. I can readily envision such collusion as standing in violation of any number of anti-trust statutes, from Sherman on down.
Lastly, I wouldn't overlook the marketability of such a system. Will consumers really "pay-per-play"? Will they spend their bucks buying systems that a five year old could see was meant from the outset to soak the maximum amount of money from their pockets? What's in it for them? Why would Joe Bob go out and plunk down $200 on a new player in the first place (especially one which renders his existing music collection worthless from the outset)?
I expect the public to respond to the "new" format and equipment with a hearty "no thanks".
Are the SDMI watermarking algorithms actually copyrighted yet?
If not, somebody crack them, copyright them before the SDMI organization, and sue SDMI for trying to embed the technology in consumer electronics and software without licensing it from you.
In the USSR while Stalin ruled lititure of any sort was illegal unless it was in praise of communism, Stalin, or other approved subjects. Yet after stalin died several authors were discoverd to have written quality works for "For the desk drawer". That is they wrote books that they never expected to see the light of day because the urge to create was so strong.
SDMI and those big music companies are about to deploy billions of dollars in software, hardware, and content, and $10k is all they can cough up? If they add another three zeros to that, together with binding arbitration, we could start talking.
I think this shows us what we probably knew all along: Chiariglione is cheap. Chiariglione doesn't respect other people's work or intellectual property, he only cares about his own.
And to anybody thinking about participating in this challenge: don't sell yourself cheap.
having also worked at McRatBurger(TM) during the time of this sandwich: the meat was pre cooked and then frozen -- you'd just basically be heating it up and making it look like what people expected.
--
The HackSDMI challenge is meaningless because it doesn't provide people even with the minimal set of tools they would have once the system is deployed: thousands of recordings and software to actually test for the presence of the watermark. If SDMI were to be really secure, they would also have to disclose the watermarking method as part of the challenge.
At best, the current "challenge" can be considered a sanity test: does some MP3 encoder or MP3 setting, or Ogg Vorbis, or some other simple method break their scheme?
In any case, if they want anybody who knows about this stuff to work for them, they should pay the going rate for consultants. A serious attack on SDMI by consultants would probably cost them in the millions, and they would have to pay whether the attack succeeds or not.
You and I know that's a fallacy. The general public doesn't. And, if anyone comes along and tries to break it later, RIAA can just call them "evil pirates" and rattle the DMCA saber at 'em to shut 'em up...
Sorry, RIAA, I won't be your stooge, no matter how much money you wave under my nose, and no matter who wants to call me "chicken" as a result. See Figure 1.
Eric
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
I hate the fact that the new windows media player, by default, has a little box checked that says, "Allow WinMedia to send information to sites you download movies from.." .20 or .10 for that matter.. either way you slice it MP3's are free once they are made.. no CD art, no reproduction cost, no CD case, no shipping or handling..
I would be about as excited to know that everytime I play a CD in my computer, or an MP3 file, that information is being sent to the RIAA (or anyone for that matter.) What exactly would be the point in surrounding an audio format in with a barrier to prevent copying? Besides what was mentioned before.. nothing is perfect. PGP isn't perfect (although it has not been cracked in some time, it WILL eventually get cracked..) And the same goes for this new audio format.. CSS got cracked, so will SDMI.
If I own a company and I invest millions of dollars in an encryption scheme, which I know will not last more than a year, maybe two, but will require a change from hardware manfacturer's to make a new encryption - I'm going to go out of business. Something tells me that 12 months is a pretty generous estimate considering the amount of hype this story has recieved.
Realistically, the RIAA should look at some different models to make money off of music. Naptser is insanely popular, even among novice users (my Dad is on Napster and he has trouble starting IE and searching Yahoo.) I would pay $5/month to use Naptser and Napter's 4 million + users would make that equivalent to approximately 500,000+ CD's.. ($15 apeice for the CD's). Napster pays the artists or the record labels a royalty and everyone is happy.
Or base it on downloads.. every song costs
However, if their intentions are to keep ALL of the pirated music off the net, well that will never happen. There will always be the squadrons for rouges for whatever reason will blatantly infringe on copyrights, just because they can. As there will always be people that download that material because it's free.
To think that someone gets paid to set there and say, "Hey let's make a new encryption scheme" is ludicris to me. I could be making a ton of money thinking up actual good ideas.. I wonder how that guy got that job... hmmm
"The same thing we do everynight Pinky, try and take over the world." - Brain
Music always has to go to analoug at some point. Any watermark/copy protection they implement can simply be bypassed by a $2.00 patch cable from Radio Shack, a simple loop back into your soundcards line in, and possibly a noise gate in the loop to filter out some of that dreaded hiss...
.MP3 or whatever...
The fact of the matter is music copyprotection methods are mute, the music has to be converted to an analoug signal at some point in the chain, at which point it can be captured and repackaged into
I think the RIAA/SDMI should be trying to promote the very artists they are claiming to "protect" instead of trying to find ways to ensure the cash keeps flowing in.
With promotion they will get revenue return through CD sales, tour sales, merchendise, whatever... but alienating the people from the music, or what they choose to do with the music is going to cause the cash flow to dry up quicker than anything.
People are fed up with the amount of control corporations have now, and I'm sure it won't stand much longer without a revolt or revolution...
"This amp is special, see all the knobs go up to 11, that means it is one louder than other amps"
Could you please point me to some music/movies/literature/TVshows that YOU have created? None? That's what I thought. Try creating some time. Learn the difference between what is "good and bad" and what you "like and dislike".
In 1976 Congress increased the length of time of a copyright to the author/artist's life plus 67 years. In 1995 Congress increased the time of a corporate copyright to well beyond a century (120 years, I think.) So any movie made before 1880 would be in the public domain. Know of any? Of course not. Congress has been systematically stealing from the public domain since 1909 when it was increased from a maximum of 28 years to an automatic 56 years. Write your congressmen, tell them you want Tolkien, Charlie Chaplin, and Mickey Mouse in the public domain where they belong. I have already done so.
Don't just complain - DO something about it!
New instructions:
Go to the ClickThrough Agreement, then use the link above. Looks like they might be using cookies, or some other method which forces you to view the license page before viewing the download page.
You still don't have to click on the 'I Agree' button.
-Adam
This space for rent.
If you actually go and download the files for the contest, you won't find much. Rather than any sort of description of the watermark technology, or any software that checks for the watermark, you get three .wav files. File 1 has no watermark. File 2 is the same audio as file 1 with a watermark applied. File 3 is a different song with a watermark applied. Your "challenge" is to remove the watermark from file 3. To check the file, you have to upload it to their server, and they will send you email with the results of the check.
So, from a cryptographic point of view, this is pretty worthless. It's along the lines of the newbies who post to sci.crypt saying "I've developed a new algorythm. Here is some ciphertext, crack it!". Of course, to do any valid analysis you need to know how the algorithm works.
My guess is that either the people setting up the "contest" are pretty clueless, or they have no faith in their algorithm, or both. Or this is just a publicity stunt to reassure the record labels. My money is on the latter.
Any hacker who attacks SDMI after it's released will certainly have access to a software implementation, or the algorithm, or both. So, to leave both of those out of the "contest" just makes it a sham.
So, crack it, and release the crack one day or soe after the contest is officially over. And release it to some sience magazine or so. A math/CS one would perheaps be interrested in such a thing. Then you call NY Times or something and tell them about the article and that SDMI sux. If they put DMCA against you, say that you only used the contest time (during which you where urged by the creators of the thingie to crack it), and just waited with the release... Should be fairly water-tight. And if they sue you, even the most stupid non-hacker will laught at them...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Note (at the risk of sounding like a broken, um, MP3): SDMI is toast. MP3 has already won. Unless they stop shipping CDs, and completely destroy the revenue they're trying to protect, the SDMI people are wasting their time.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
And there's always the trick of having a soundcard driver that saves the audio stream to the harddrive.
No. SDMI requires that there be no way to get a digital cleartext out of an encrypted file. For example, all Microsoft Digital Rights Management sound card drivers disable all digital outputs (card outputs, write to file, or a fake waveIn) when an SDMI clip is being played. If a sound card driver driver is not digitally signed by Microsoft and rated MS-DRM compliant, it has no access to the Secure Audio Path and will play silence instead of music.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
SDMI-enabled players are distributed out to surpass their existing versions. The MP3 decoders are time-stamped to expire (aka shutdown) on a set date, after which only SDMI will be supported. Nice, eh?
If that's true (probably not), you'll just see Winamp replaced with "WinMMS" (a port of XMMS) with hardly a hiccup.
Oh, BTW, if you can dig up a link to the article, mail it to me. You know how to fix up my address; bots don't.<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
all it did was recive sound from windows applications like it was a sound card and write 44.1 kHz pcm sound
It won't work for long. Microsoft Digital Rights Management will silence all SDMI audio going to unsigned drivers. MS will only sign a driver if it shuts off all digital waveOut capability (this includes without limitation disk writers, digital out ports on the card, and waveOut to waveIn aka SB Live What-U-Hear) when playing secure audio; only signed drivers get access to the Secure Audio Path.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Predictably, everyone seems to have misunderstood my comment. That's probably partly due to weakness in the way it was presented, but probably partially due to Slashdot blind spots.
_I_ understand that SDMI (and any other such format) is likely to be abused by the corps. I understand that individual rights are being erased by profit hungry/control freak execs. I can see there's danger here.
But only part of the point of my post was that the technology could be used legitimately. The other part of the point was this: the battle we need to fight ISN'T that of making sure that SDMI never happens. The battle we need to fight is making sure that alternatives are available, legally and technologically. We spend WAY too much time defending Napster and other such things that are legally and ethically questionable, on the grounds that our opponents are ethically (and often legally) questionable. I think in the case of SDMI, all we have to do is make sure that alternative ways of getting music (which respect the artists) exists, and it'll win out.
In short: I'm not afraid of a future in which SDMI exists. I AM afraid of a future in which it's the only choice. We might lose that battle, however, because we're perceived as freeloaders that don't respect those who create music. We need to work more actively on implementing systems that can compete with what SDMI claims it can accomplish, but without the greed and draconian restrictions.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Tools of the industry, wake up and realize that the RIAA is simply trying to solicit free labor to help bulletproof their encryption scheme.
More importantly, consider this. You know that cool new Nomad Jukebox from Creative Labs? The one that has a 6GB drive in it? It supports the SDMI-format. Great, right?
No.
Last summer I found a media composite from Sony Records. For those of you who don't know, a composite basically gathers articles from several sources into a single volume, the results of which are delivered to executives. There was an interesting article from Billboard, I think it was.
It seems that the SDMI group met last year and decided on certain resolutions regarding the implementation of the SDMI scheme. Of interest is a plan on how to enfore SDMI acceptance on to those of us who decide to stick with our existing players (e.g. WinAmp, MS-MP, XMSS, etc). The plan is this: SDMI-enabled players are distributed out to surpass their existing versions. The MP3 decoders are time-stamped to expire (aka shutdown) on a set date, after which only SDMI will be supported. Nice, eh? They actually agreed to this.
I am salivating all over myself for the Nomad Jukebox, but I am not about to drop $400-500 without knowing if, in fact, the player does not support this type of initiative *and* that Creative will not subsequently release a bios patch that would render mp3 unplayable.
I will dig up the article (if I can find it - my office is like a 10'x10' version of Beirut in Springtime) and post it here.
- Ryosen
This was originally posted by me as anonymous. I didn't have my password yet.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
Maybe not. What if the watermark is somehow audible? Your little side trip through the audible domain wouldn't wipe it out.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Not to disagree, but even most local bands admit they have hopes of signing with a major label. The whole system needs to change.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Besides, I'd like to see them *enforce* it.
Two words: Jon Johansen.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
SDMI essentially claims that it can make sure that people can only listen if they've paid. So, subtract greed and you get:
A system in which artists are compensated by fans appreciative of their work at reasonable prices.
Subtract draconian restrictions and:
You have a system in which there is fair use, perhaps a little fair abuse, but that copyright respect is encouraged.
You don't want these things?
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.