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The Madison Project: Inconvenience Vs. MP3s
twistedemotions points to this article in Sound & Vision magazine. The article reveals that "[t]he Madison Project is the code name for IBM's Electronic Music Management System (EMMS), a stealth initiative to deliver piracy-proof CD-quality music to consumers via the Internet." From the sound of it, Madison is pretty far from prime time -- beta testers interviewed were able to easily convert the nusic to listenable, no-longer-read-protected MP3s, and the prices as formulated so far are nothing to write home about unless you think $20 for a CD is a fair deal.
Apologies in advance for the preponderance of overly-claused sentences in the following.
When, exactly, did the content industry (by which I mean, of course, the typical entertainment media conglomerates, as well as other businesses/artists/providers who are happy to receive money for what may or may not be quality stuff) start treating their consumers as "the other side," waging a continuous and pointless war? When did every consumer become a potential lawbreaker - to the point where those who respect copyright laws and artists' rights (definitely not the same thing) are subject to restrictions, limitations, and other such rot as to keep them from becoming the "pirates" the industry is convinced they will be (or have the potential to be)?
An equity feminist would already tell you just what kind of damage the more shrill and less-sensible element of said cause has done to gender relations when it was extolled that all men were rapists or potential rapists. The content industry doesn't seem to have learned by example what happens when you blanket all members of a group (in this case, movie-goers and music fans) with a negative label. The cynic in me can't decide why they'd miss this - is it ignorance, or dismissal? Do they just not realize, or do they think that people will just keep buying what they have and not say a word to the contrary? (Looking at the Top 40 charts makes me think the latter.)
Making media harder to use and appreciate doesn't deter the small criminal element among consumers - hell, the article in question demonstrates that, as security goes, this ain't gonna do it, and common sense alone says that if you can burn it to an audio CD, you can rip it - and it just pisses off the mainstream listener/viewer. Make it harder to use, and those with a clue (however few that might be) will either make it easier to use, or find an alternative. The only thing the industry can hope to achieve is to kill promising technology and markets. (Consumer-use DAT, of course, being the perfect example.)
Madison, SDMI, CSS, et al are just plain bad ideas - at best, they frustrate and add to the cost (and price) without adding value, and at worst they drive away consumers.
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
Encryption, copy protection, whatever are only good if both parties involved are concerned with security.
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
I think that these capitalist Orwellians have a serious case of HDFB (head detached from body).
Otherwise known as HUTA -> head up their ass!
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
A man who wants nothing is invincible
Being a native speaker of German, I have some trouble understanding your .sig - it looks like an online translation of something like "I'd like to have sex with my own army of Llama whatever". Could you share this precious piece of information with the rest of us?
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
You try to have 10million cd's shipped around the world, stored and then sold to customers. Now tell me that this isn't going to cost a considerable amount of money. Material costs are fairly small, less than 10% of the purchase price. Probably about 1$ including everything(cd, cover, case, leaflets) but it is still something.
Now take this all away and the record company is probably making about 8-10$/cd(of course you still have advertisement, design and all that crap that cuts their profit down a lot but just the change of medium involved).
Now if I was offered a chance to download cd's for 8$ and had the proper connection I'd probably go for it. 10$ or more and I would just driver to the record store and pay a little extra to get the whole enchilada..
This thing is best used for hard to find cd's. Especially the ones not being made anymore. Those you could easily charge a premium for and you'd probably get the customers too. In addition to this offer reasonably priced (8usd) regular cd's and you have a business.
Heh - your comment about building "a mic and speakers from raw components" brought back a memory from when I was a kid:
I wanted some speakers (actually, a complete stereo, but I wasn't going to push it) for my bedroom, and everything I had (scrounged radio speakers, other crap speakers) never sounded too good. I wanted some 12's - but my parents wouldn't by them for me - so I went on a quest to get "big sound".
I ended up trying a variety of things - I built a bass tube using a carpet paper tube and a four inch mid-range/tweeter I had (I took off the tweeter, and pasted a piece of paper over the hole where the coil was). I used some info I gleaned from an old pop-sci issue I had discussing the Bose Acoustimass system (3:1 ratio on the tube). That sounded pretty nice, actually.
I even tried to build my own speaker from some construction paper, a box, some magnet wire (from an old motor), a toilet paper tube (for the coil form), and a piece of an old speaker magnet. I never got good sound from this - but I did get some sound - enough to listen to, at least.
Speakers aren't hard to build - microphones aren't either (and I have a copy of The Boy Electrician, so I can give it to MY son).
Maybe they can take my soldering iron away - big deal: a dowel, a nail, and a gas stove are all I need then.
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
All the posts ive read so far have been to the tune of "ha, see NOTHING is hack-proof" and "DeCSS lives" or whatever. People are so concerned with the digital security (or lack thereof) of each of these coding schemes that people rarely stop to think: "What im doing is wrong." Im not an RIAA advocate. I dont think that people's right to make backups should be violated? i dont think many big label musicians are starving, but hey, downloading this stuff, copying these movies, etc etc... thats wrong. Petty theft, not a shred better. If this decryption scheme was really just the work of professors interested in data security, thats fine... if it was some law abiding citizen who stumbled across the way to copy these items and reported it to the developer, thats great...however i have a feeling that it was just somebody who wanted to take what isnt theirs.
Now, im no better than you, i have my music, and where i got it i wont say, but hey.. no one stops to think that the whole "digital music revolution" is based largely on a concept nothing more glorious than very fast shoplifting. im not saying that these measures shouldnt be developed, but its kinda sad when something that is wrong is so mainstream. Just a bit of philosophy for thought.
As for the technology, we all know its a cat and mouse game. It just looks like IBM is the mouse this time. Thats what enginners get paid to think about...
--jay
Actually, Mozart did write almost all of his pieces on commission... Still, your point is well taken
From what I understand, the decoding of the music is done in software.
That means, some piece of software that runs on some operating system, whatever it may be, takes files and plays them back using the operating system's built-in multimedia sound playback facility.
All it takes is a couple of hackers (à la DeCSS) out there to write a sound card driver that samples the data it receives to disk, just like the "print-to-disk" option in most printer drivers for most operating system that enables anyone to convert proprietary, non-copiable documents to PostScript.
Then, one would have a raw, 100% digital dump of the audio data, which one could then happily encode to whatever format one likes.
I realize that this is so obvious that there must be some way the industry has thought of this. The only way to avoid it would be to do decryption in hardware. This would mean, however, that you'd need a special piece of hardware on your computer to play the music back with (like a special set of speakers), another special piece of hardware to hook between your computer and your HiFi equipment in order to be able to play back music from the internet on your home HiFi, a special type of chip inside your mobile playback equipment etc. Which sums up to enormous amounts of hardware and the whole thing being so user unfriendly and so expensive that I fail to see how this is to generate a lot of market share in a tech environment. (After all, you can still just download the crap.)
And against the hardware solution there is the fact that I could still take a digital sample using S/P-DIF digital audio from the HiFi and record that on the computer, possibly putting a $20 copybit inverter in between. So in the end, this would still be copiable without much hassle.
Am I missing anything?
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Can someone answer this question for me?
To create sound on a PC requires that data is sent to the sound card. This data can be read and recorded by some sort of "shim" between the decoder application and the sound interface. This shim will grab pure data (i.e., not a conversion from the analog). How can an application prevent something like this from occurring? Is it even possible?
I know the guys working on bluematter. This groundbreaking project cost over $20 million, and can claim a total of 200 downloads. The opposite of user-friendly, it can take up to 47 steps to download and play blue matter tracks.
Of course they know the project cannot succeed. The recording industry will not allow a usable solution. LA is full of politics and cursory thinking. Its also full of money and consultants happy to grab it.
A solution will only come from outside LA's musical clique. Maybe its time for their self-destruction. The internet is destroying the demand for old media - TVs are flying out of our windows, musical tastes are becoming more diverse, theaters are declaring bankruptcy, and movie ticket sales are dropping. Let the new replace the old.
Actually, the sound is still encrypted AS IT COMES OUT OF THE SPEAKER! You will need a aural implant to grok it. Furthermore, each copy of the music is encoded with a particular code unique to each individual implant to protect against unauthorized listening. You will have to give your code when you order the music. Once you receive the music, you will have 24 hours to listen to it. After that period, you will have to pay an additional $5 per listening session, to have them enable the thingy in your brain via remote radio signal.....
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
It's an application of IBM's Java-based Cryptolope
Hmm, that old thing? IBM's been hawking it since 1995 or so...
Your Working Boy,
I was out at IBM recently and watched one of their techs talk about the research that went into the Madison project, from the watermarking to the delivery mechanism. The technological problems they are dealing with are pretty well covered by other posts, so I'll leave those along for now.
The really retarded part was that in their design for madison, they still have specific functionality for EVERY player in the current music distribution system, from the labels to the record stores. The record store functionality was the most bizarre extra step because it required an extra key exchange in their system. They had a new role for the Columbia House CD club types as well... it was insane.
We asked them why all that complexity (the labels should be able to go straight to the consumers in the perfect system), and they said that their (IBM) mandate was to preserve the existing system...
Well, at least we know what their primary goal is....
Sujal
politics, food, music, life: FatMixx
is to take the speaker wire, disconnect it from the speaker and into the mic input. It's great making it so that the user can't decode the file, and save it as another file with a program, but if they provide the program to decode it, then it's serving as its own copier. Of course, you could pay to simply have a file on your computer, and they won't provide you with the decoder. With these guidelines, everything I say is encrypted, no one can copy it before I say it, but sure as hell, when I say it, someone can record it.
I live in Canada. That's normal.
Then again, our dollar is worth about 60 cents US.
gg
gg
Dr.Whiz-Bang
It's just a new way of selling cds. What this system gives you is the album + liner notes in a way you can download it onto your computer. Whoopie. Instead of buying it at a store, and having it in my hands, i buy it online, and then burn/print it, and have it in my hands. A negligable difference from buying it from cdnow or something like that.
In essense, this is a half-assed effort. Rather than meeting the new "digital age" or whatever, they're trying to come up with a newer, cooler way of selling cds. Instead of selling albums say song by song, with micropayments for each song downloaded, they're trying to make a fool-proof/pirate proof album; they're pouring money into a system that won't work, and will just piss everyone off more. The people that will buy cd's anyway will buy them in this new way, and the people that pirate will still pirate, as this method offers no NEW alternatives. The music is still expensive. Until that changes, we'll just have music in different propriatary formats that will be hacked within days of release. Record labels need to look at themselves, and say, why do people pirate our music. And then tackle it from that angle, instead of saying, we'll just do what we want, and make it pirate-proof; it's inane.
For anyone who felt like pointing it out - yes, I'm aware I'm preaching to the choir. Just felt like bitchin'.:)
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
As long as there are people trying to protect music/code/games/porn whatever with code there will be people who will defeat them. Laws in the US mean nothing in Canada or Russia.
What world do you live in? Canada has, at best, a modicum of independance... If the US of A wanted things to go a particular way, we'd be hard pressed to stop them... it's hard to "stand on guard for thee" when your opponent thinks that might equals right...
As for your other contention, it's never a matter of whether SOME person out there is going to try to circumvent protection, it's a matter of trying to disuade as many people as possible from doing it. Frankly, I miss the days when only the 3lit3 hax0rs traded mp3s. Now Susie GradeEight can trade her Britney Spears with abandon...
(yes, I'm going to off-topic hell now...)
The truth is, with a multi-tasking environment, one can run a recorder and a player at the same time, and still manage to get a close-to-perfect copy of the audio (of course this depends on the quality of the player and the recorder). The same technique has been used for years to create .WAV files from countless different sources. Hell, I used to do a line-out to line-in from my tape players.
The only logical ways I could see to prevent this method would be to either have a stand-alone unit, or to totally tie up the shell so one can't do anything but use that player until it is closed.
Stand Alone hardware? You can just as easily reverse-compile hardware (TiVO hacks, iOpener hacks, etc). Tying up the shell? Not feasable -- as it removes any convenience behind it. Besides, that would probably get reverse-compiled also.
This all reminds me of the VHS copy protection that came out a few years ago where if you tried to copy the tape, it displayed big black bars across the screen. Apparently, someone figured out a way around it, because I don't see that anymore.
Some will figure a way around this, and offer it up on the next version of Napster.
This is exactly what happens when corps decide that the consumer can't be trusted. It's funny that our money got them all to where they are today and it's our money that is attempting to make a consumer proof consumer product. It really surprises me how the enemy went from the college student (with their dorm and net access) to Joe Average User with his cable/dsl connect. Bandwidth is what escalated this bottle. Forget putting the genie back in the bottle, their trying to keep everyone from getting their wishes.
I try to keep rants out of my posts but what really pisses me off isn't the RIAA's arrogance that drives them to sue 2600 and confiscate napster clients. What really makes me mad is that they are succeeding.
BOSTON SUCKS!
They should license the music only to be listened to by the person who purchased the license.
Why should my kid brother get to listen to music that I paid for!
IBM? That sounds strange to me. I mean, IBM has pretty much embraced the open source and open standards world. Their alphaWorks pumps out some really cool, free stuff. I'm sort of surprised they'd embark on YetAnotherSecureDigitalMusicFormat. Short of a noir futuristic scenario of pervasive thought policing I can't imagine there is any way to get around the plain physics of media distribution.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
"We have finally got the message, says Mr. Suit, of Ynos Music Inc, "That's why we've quit delivering anything on our cd's. Some customers have started to complain, but we've given them $50 gift certificates towards any of our new 'No Content' line of merchandise." Fans can now go to their favorite music store and purchace these new cd's for the same price as the old 'content-full' cd's.
When we asked people to comment, the most popular response was a dumb look on their face followed by extreme confusion.
Emanuel Goldstein of 2600 fame was not available for comment (actually he said "WTF." but we didn't know what that meant.)
Chalk this up as another success for the record companies.
The Other Nate
Signal 11 postulate: Anything that can be interpreted by human ears must obviously be free. Obviously.
The fact that it runs contrary to actual reality is apparently irrelevent. I've always struggled with this "basic human rights" concept. Here's my postuate: "If they have bigger guns, they can charge us for anything they want."
Anyway, if we have the divinely granted right to life, liberty, and property, we may as well have the divinely granted right to define property as we see fit. We may as well define sonic vibrations as non-taxable. Hell, we may as well have the divinely granted right to scantily-clad women. Works for me.
"Information wants to be free!" "That's quite insightful - where did you hear that?" "I'm reading it off the bumper sticker I ripped off of Signal 11's car!" (Superosity, paraphrased)
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
You missed the point... sure the effort to create a CD is negligable and, hell, CD are dirt cheap. I dont mind making a cd for myself (how else am I going to listen to my music in the car?) but there is no way in hell I'm going to pay the man 20 bucks for the privledge of making my own CD's when I can go buy the originals for less and make my own CDs out of them.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
it's been said over and over again, but if the music is able to get to the listener's ear, the user is able to copy it.
You've just found it... the next generation for secure digital music will get around this by preventing the user from hearing the music. Also, an RIAA representative has been quoted: "We are taking legal action against speaker manufacturers because there product it used for the sole purpous of allowing the consumers to hear music, which circumvents ou secure digital format, hence speakers are illegal under the DMCA."
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Toast.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
If you use Macromedia Flash to deliver mp3s, it's just as great as any upcoming/new form of encryption that there's going to be.
Worse. The Direct Marketing Association will require that a privacy-invasive :CueCat will be required to scan it ;-)
Looks like companies STILL haven't learned how to make decent protection schemes--for much of anything--even after all these years!
Considering what he thought of mandatory "self-censorship" parental advisory labels, I don't wonder at all.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
This reminds me of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", where one planet's culture realized that middlemen are useless, and shipped them into space.
I say we should do the same thing to our middlemen. And to avoid the eventual fate of that planet, we should make sure that out telephones are always kept sanitary.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
Anyway, that aside, when the hell are people going to realize that the nature of audio is to be interpreted by human ears, and as such can't be "protected" ? Best of luck if you guys succeed though, I understand the Christian Coalition has been trying the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil bit for awhile, without success. Maybe technology will answer their prayers (pun intended).
--
Imagine a world with different technology, where record companies, through some magic, are able to charge listeners each time they hear a song. Not a big charge, of course, and maybe "listens" are also sold in bulk units of 100 or more. But for aeons, the record companies have a tight fist and nobody is able to listen to a recording without paying.
Then...some geek somewhere comes up with a way to PERMANENTLY purchase listens, for a particular song. Using his program, a consumer can purchase a song for the price of a single listen, and magically save it so that future listens don't cost anything.
The record companies freak. Their pricing scheme is completely wrong for this technology. A single listen costs less than a penny, and now consumers can purchase a LIFETIME of listens for that price.
...
back to reality:
Of course, that "new technology" is what we have today: CDs. Purchase once, listen forever. The problem the record companies have isn't the fundamental technology, it's that their pricing scheme can't cover it. Now, one person buys the song, and EVERYONE hears it for that price.
Well, the record companies currently have a way to charge us a "fair" price for an unlimited number of listens to a particular song or album. So, they're just going to have to come up with a way to sell a recording for an unlimited number of copies. Same idea, just an extension.
How? Well, basically, the record company (or artist) has to be paid before the song is recorded. In other words, the record company says, "we have a new Backstreet Boys albumn, but until 1 million people pay $50, we're not releasing it." So, the PUBLIC is buying the recording, and has the right to distribute it however they like.
Don't think it will work? Well, neither do I, really. See my other comment.
chris
the RIAA would be killing itself because it would have no way to listen to demo tapes of up and coming artists.
Ummm... yeah. Without demo tapes, how would anyone have heard N'Sync or The Spice Girls before they got signed?
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
People won't pay artists for crap anymore. Crap will die. Like those silly boy bands that are all the rage right now, etc.
People that really appreciate music will pay - but these people have no interest in mass market crap.
Music quantity will go down, but the quality will skyrocket.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Yep, all valid points.
The truth is, there will be no money in any art that can be digitized, at least not any appreciable money from the art itself.
There will have to be something value added to make it worth anything. It is pointless to fight this technology, you can't stop it without taking down the Internet.
Don't you think the MPAA knew that you could fit 13 hours of music onto a CD as soon as MPEG technology was released? They of course didn't say anything, their existance relys on technological suppression. The cat is out of the bag now, and all efforts of the MPAA will be futile.
The only other option is an all out "War on Piracy" the same level as the "War on Drugs". This is supposedly a country ruled by the consent of the people. Most people are going to not support the MPAA. Expect a propaganda campaign once this thing really gets going.
You tell me if it will be successful. We can all see how the War on Drugs is doing.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Down on the corner,
Out in the street,
Billy and the Poor Boys are playin',
Ringin' nickels at their feet.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
It's been said over and over again, but if the music is able to get to the listener's ear, the user is able to copy it. I don't see how this could ever be gotten around.
--
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
So these companies are dumping millions of dollars into R&D to develop a "pirate proof" system (note: pirate proof is about as possible as anti-gravity, tele-portation, and Robert Downey Jr staying clean).
If they were to take ALL the money spent on wasted R&D, stoopid court cases, and other bullshit propagnda, and instead use that money to offset the cost of CD's, we wouldn't have a _reason_ to bother with pirating.
I mean, who would rather spend time downloading a dozen MP3's of inferior quality (and some might not even be a complete song), then burning the MP3's to a CD to listen to when you could just buy the whole damn disc for $4.00?
Then, MP3 players would be 1/2 the cost they are now, because the companies that build them wouldn't have to add in $$$ to offset eventual court cases accusing them of promoting the pirating of music.
Personally, I'd gladly go to the local Record Store and spend $50.oo to get a dozen complete CD's, however, when my $50.oo only gets me about 3 discs, then it seems like a waste of money and I tend to buy LESS.
-This sig intentionally left blank
Why should this part surprise anyone? This is kind of the point, after all. Encrypted media isn't meant as a discount alternative to non "protected" media, regardless of what they say to get you to adopt it.
The real point is to garauntee that you have to go through them to get your music. Then they can ramp up the preice however they want. New technologies that make media distribution cheaper and more efficient have never corresponded to cheaper media for consumers! At least not if you follow the rules.
So does anyone have more recent news on what is happening with this? From the details in the article I would guess this project is falling flat on its face.
-------
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
Ah! but what if we have another law that prevents you from finding out how to make 'fair use' of the work that you have paid for (reverse engineering).. Catch 22 - It is legal for you to make 'fair use' of something, but not to discover the mechanism to do so?
when the record industry jumped on 'digital technology' in the form of CD's, and pumped their profits up, it of course did not guarantee that they would have access to said gravy train eternally.
air and light and time and space
Madison Project has been long over for some time. It ran in San Diego and some other areas. It wasn't a secret -- nor was it a success. It happened over a year ago.
Wow this is old.
I wanna know when we will see a madison project dedicated to DivX or some other MPEG-4 based codec.
-Davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
From the article: The Madison experiment will continue at least until December 31, 1999, according to Max Martens, a spokesman with the public-relations firm of Porter Novelli in Los Angeles. Until then, neither IBM nor AlbumDirect will talk about the feedback they've been receiving from test participants. "This is strictly a test, and it's wait-and-see," Martens said.
Is the article's date wrong, or is this old news?
This is just the case of the distributors scrambling to hold on to a dying market. The problem at hand is not whether or not they will survive (which they won't), but how many laws will be created and destroyed during the course of their demise.
Do we really want it made illegal to listen to music on anything but a pair of RIAA-sanctioned sub-cochlea vibro speakers?
Or forcing all music to be automatically placed under the licensing restraints of the more popular RIAA contracts?
And if you're worried about the musicians, I think this states it all.
-Medgur
Who owns the rights to "Happy Birthday?"
> All these companies are only wasting time and money trying to prevent the inevitable.
So are healthcare companies.
Ryan
This can be done in two ways: either making the non-free music more desireable, or making the free music less desireable. Those that will survive have to use the first approach, because it will then also be preferred to the equal-quality non-free music. Unfortunately, the current record execs are trying the second approach, by deprecating free music and attempting to make it punishable.
According to the HHGTTG, we are the descendants of the cast away middlemen.
I bet they get paid big money by the record companies to develop this shit. The fact that it fails in the marketplace is probably mostly irrelevant to them (unless the companies put clawbacks into their contracts, but only an idiot would sign such a contract).
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
--
It's a
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It's a
-- Danny Vermin
(with apologies to Kliban...)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I'll tell you what piracy is, piracy is paying an agent, a lawyer or an accountant money to do a service which you already know how to do.
Piracy is a system that tries to stop technology
Piracy is someone who sends your research off to startrek because you choose to believe in a way of life which is worth living.
I believe in free will, free choice, I also believe that personal freedom has to be earned.
Can anyone imagine a musician who wants to make music as an end in itself? I mean, suppose that N Sync and the Back Street Boys had decided that there was no money in music and had become lawyers or accountants instead. The world would be a damn sight better place. Name one musician whose music has actually got better after they became a millionaire, and if half of the morons in the top ten at the moment could actually play an instrument or sing they could make money from live performances.
:wq
It's also going to be illegal to broadcast analog TV signals after ... 2008, I think. Yes, that regulation has already been made. At the behest of the media conglomerates.
Oh yes. You all remember that the digital TV standard is now being retooled to allow for "content protection"? (at the behest of same congolomerates -- this was on /., even, as you may recall)
Well, so obviously the only reason anyone would have analog equipment after 2015 or so would be for "piracy", right? Certainly isn't any good for viewing "legitimate" media.
Legacy is very easy to deal with indeed. Just make it illegal.
The only way we're going to be able to deal with this is to start producing significant amounts of our own media, which must be at least as unencumbered as GPLed software.
Otherwise, what argument can we make to the public for free OSes and uncrippled equipment that can only (easily) view "unprotected" content?
DNA just wants to be free...
A Bugg
I think this kind of efforts will last a little. There are a lot of people who believe that "all we need to do is to improve protection and resell the music as much as we want, as it was before". Until RIAA realize that this logic does not work anymore, there is always will be some "new protection technology under development" (well financed by RIAA, right?).
Actually, this is a pretty funny article -- especially toward the end where the author describes the way to cobble together your CD: download the music, buy the glossy liner paper, print it out, then burn the CD.
Yeah, a real riot. Let me at those albums. There's nothing I'd like better than to (a) spend more for an electronic download than the "physical" counterpart and (b) get to spend my time (which these days -- for most of all us, I'm sure -- is more valuable than these bozos at AlbumDirect realize) to put together the whole kit-and-kaboodle.
Lessee. First, I gotta download the songs.
I got a DSL modem -- 1.05/1.05M -- so, no, not too bad, but, ya know, 15 minutes is still 15 minutes.
Then I gotta print the liners on special paper? (No, you can use normal paper -- but, yeah, you gotta print the liner notes.) And, um, I get to burn the CD myself? The whole CD? No kidding? Lessee, I got a burner about a year old. Still takes around 15 minutes to burn the CD. (And if I get a coaster? Well, hell, just burn it again! CDs are cheap. My time is not cheap -- but CDs -- yeah 79 cents each, no prob.)
And then, when it's all done, I have, er, a custom CD that I burned and printed out the labels for and that, um, looks like I cobbled together myself. Yeah! That's sooooooo cool.
But wait! It wasn't really cheap because it cost more than the "physical" CD!
Oh yeah. Great idea.
Come on you dumbass suit-wearing, cellphone talking, consult-the-business-model, Viper driving, 30-something, "Hey, Bob, look at us: we're executives!" weenies: no one is gonna buy your idea! No one is going to buy your idea!
It's like going to a restaurant -- Benihana, whatever those places are called that force you to stand in line with a bunch of dirty-fingernailed, snivelling little shits who touch the glass and then cough all over the green peppers and water chestnuts -- and pay *them* for the privilage of making your own food. What a great idea! (Executive-speak: "Well, friend, you have to understand. We're not selling the product as much we're selling the experience. We feel that customers appreciate the fact that they're in charge of their own product, er, dinner and that they've been given the ability to tinker and tailor with the food to create a singularly satisfying, one of a kind dining experience. If you'd like, I can give you a prospectus describing Benihana's philosophy and perhaps you'll appreciate why we are able to set ourselves apart from the competition.)
Probably about the time macrovision came into widespread use and VCR manufacturers adjusted the time constants in their VCR's AGC circuits to avoid recording signals with the macrovision pulses in them. Ok, that's hardly the exact time that technology came into use that presumed the user to be a pirate... I remember all sort of very interesting floppy-based copy protection on the Apple ][ software. FWIW, strong floppy-based copy protection did ultimately turn out to be a pointless war, but macrovision is here to stay.
The thing I can't figure out about SDMI is what happens if rouge hardware manufacturers make players that don't check for the watermarks. For example, I'll never put any code in my little MP3 player to check for watermarks. I guess my little project doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things... but if there's a market for non-SDMI players, I'm sure there are lots of folks who will provide them in the interest of making a buck. There just isn't any security in CDDA format, other than watermarks, and watermarks will only work if other devices check for them.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Why Is Anyone Even Trying To make a new standard? Copyright protected or not, anything made will just be converted to a free format as soon as the "COPY PROOF" method is made.
It seems pretty obvious to anyone with a little technical saavy to understand the issue and a little common sense to derive that the days of paying $15.00 for music (where $0.50 go to the artist and $14.50 goes towards getting that little CD into your hands) are over.
So, the answer has to be one of the following:
1) The Big Record Companies (BRCs) are just clueless. Naaw, they're too big and rich to be that dumb. At least some of the decision makers have to see the writing on the wall. That leaves us with:
2) Inertia. It's going to take some time for the BRCs to get something in place that will deliver the music we want at a price we'll find nice enough to download legit instead of hitting Napstella.
Yeah, I know the Linux uber-hacker croud could put something in place in twenty minutes or so, but the BRCs are going to want something robust, foolproof, eye-catching and permanent. Meaning that technology isn't going to bury it in the next couple of hours.
That takes a while. In the meantime, they sic the lawyer-dogs on whatever they can, and come out with copy-crippled-crap protocols hoping to slow things down enough that they can catch up. Damage control.
Oh, and coming to grips with the fact that they're not going to make those nice, fat profits as easily as they used to... that's inertia too.
They expect the system to work this way:
a) People purchase music online, paying more per song than for a CD.
b) Music is watermarked for that user (s device?), who has filled out name and address details correctly for music company.
As you can see, there's no way it can fail!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
>Of course, the big challenge for the RIAA is to >get SDMI enabled devices to be the accepted >norm - to displace MP3s as the format of choice. I don't know how, but they seem to be doing a good job with that, at least when it comes to purtable MP3 player hardware. The major players (Rio, Nomad, etc) all have little statements on their web sites/press releases/etc saying "Our device is SDMI-ready" I'm sure most of the people around here would be more likely to buy a device that says "not SDMI compliant and never will be", but they're trying to market it at us as if it's a selling point.
It will tell you how artists in the past made their money. And while you're reading your history text, why don't you study the other subjects too so you can finally finish high school and come back here when you're a grown adult who's not living with mommy anymore?
Mmmm.. Donuts
I'll admit that musicians who make music just for the money usually make crap.
However, money serves as a huge carrot too. So if many of the great musicians were GUARANTEED that they would never make any money from their efforts, I'll bet you they would not take the risks they did, or at least not to the extent they did in order to build their music career.
Mmmm.. Donuts
I am getting tired of all these new music file formats that won't allow me to make a copy of music that I have bought and bring it to work. You can, however, convert these foul beasts to something more usable like Ogg or Mp3. The solution is simple: fake the sound card. In Windows, you write a device driver that acts just like a sound card, but sends the wave information to a file. Unix makes it even simpler for root users: sound will be sent to /dev/dsp, so you just capture it there.
Now, doesn't this make the copy-limiting attemps a little... Stupid?
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
You're being paranoid; there are too many amateurs in audio and video for analog to be phased out/made illegal. Quite frankly, if the semipro audio equipment was killed (and any semipro equipment has to allow copies either in digital or analog domain), the RIAA would be killing itself because it would have no way to listen to demo tapes of up and coming artists.
Besides, can you come up with a single piece of legacy equipment which was declared illegal by a US court? Even scanners that can pick up cell phone bands were grandfathered in when that ban was put in place.
Analog audio will always exist because it's easy to build. I can build a mic and speakers from raw components, and digitizing it can be done by any number of off-the-shelf parts, which will need to continue to exist in order for manufacturers to create microphones.
Frankly I don't care that much about video; I already have my APEX...
IBM?s != IBM's
--
But under the current model many people can copy music easily. Yet CD sales are better than ever, so if the music companies were gone all that would happen is that musicians would be paid more money.
I also tend to think that if music companies went away, we'd see a lot more variety of music and a lot more bands with a smaller following would make a LOT more money. A lot of people treat Napster like radio - they listen to a lot of songs, and if they hear an artist they really like they buy CD's from them. That will just be more direct in the future, and even given a lot of bandwith for everyone I still think most people will prefer some physical medium to buy - even if it's a different medium than CD.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your scenario is pretty scary, and I would agree that it is technologically possible. But I don't think it will actually happen.
You see, it would take at least 5 years before there's enough of the new audio equipment out there that the CD manufacturers could actually stop selling regular CDs. During those 5 years, customers will become more and more accustomed to easy to use, cheap or free downloadable music. So there will be real resistance from people who don't want to replace their speakers, amplifiers, etc. They just won't do it.
In the meantime, do you really think the recording, production, distribution, and sales organization for CD's can survive for another 5 years, making enough money to push something like that through? Not a chance. They're as dead as the dinosaurs, they just haven't really realized it yet. However, they may thrash around alot and make a big mess as they die, so just stand back and wait for it to be over.
The only way the RIAA could make this work is to give everyone in North America a free SDMI-compatible music system, right now, backward compatible with everyone's existing CD collections. Then they could simply stop making regular CD's, and only sell the encrypted ones.
They can't afford to do that though, and people won't buy the stuff fast enough. They're doomed.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
The comment title reminds me of a lovely quote from Yellow Submarine:
John: Break the glass.
George: We can't!
Paul: It's Beatle-proof.
John: Nothing is Beatle-proof!
Does my bum look big in this?
Too bad your pants aren't butt-piracy proof.
Either this article is ancient or that's a typo.
W
-------------------
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Is it just me, or is there no moderation in this story? I see no -1s traveling about.
I've come to the realization that what should be common sense to all us technically savey people isn't so with the executives, and those who are in charge of such projects. Dilbert (the comic) isn't far off from the portrayal of the pointy haired boss. They really don't have a clue. It's even more obvious in industries where technology is just starting to catch on (Civil Engineering, Architecture, etc). But the point is, those in charge don't have a clue.
Those in know, the geeks and techs of the world -- even those working on this project, havn't found a need to shoot down such projects. I would be willing to bet that some of the guys working on this project might even know the truth, and they're prepared for it. Either it's in their contract to do it, or they want to make sure they have something to do. They'll save the I told you so's for later. Meanwhile, they have plenty to do and plenty to work on. They get paid, so what if the company is too obtuse to see they're wasteing money? They should've done the speculative research before they even started.
I, for one, am guilty of working on dead end projects simply because I like the fact that in the end, I can't be held responsible for its failure. That, and I love saying "I told you so."
"The project is so hush-hush that IBM slammed the door in our face when we approached them about interviewing test participants. Undaunted, we slipped in through the back door by pounding the streets of San Diego until we found a few pioneering users willing to invite us into their homes to show us exactly how Madison works - or doesn't."
Couldn't this be considered circumventing an encryption scheme under the DMCA?
Uh-oh.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Analogue to digital conversion is inherently a simple process which doesn't require extreme device linearity, and producing an ADC with a precision much greater than that used in CD and DVD recording is no problem at all. Comparatively speaking, high precision DACs are much more difficult to manufacture, yet despite that, 20-bit stereo DACs now cost just a couple of dollars.
What this adds up to is no light at the end of the tunnel for the RIAA and the MPAA at all, because even if they succeed in making their digital media uncrackable, people will still be able to redigitize it, and without appreciable loss of quality. The march of technology is utterly against them. Sorry.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
too expensive to put the amp/decoder in each speaker... there's a reason people use passive monitors (I don't think that's a good thing, but if you're dealing with sound reinforcement, you pretty much either shell out the bucks or go passive).
...
hacking into the cabinets isn't the only way to do it... my trusty MD player or WAV recorder can be hooked up to a pretty high quality mic,
legacy will always be a problem. just like you can burn the IBM CD and then rip it to mp3.
Trolls get bowled over and act all flustered with me/Sucking up hot grits like a Dustbuster sucks fleas/Hey, script kiddies, I've got your private keys!/And can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?
(File under: Be careful for what you wish for.)
>used to wonder this, too. I believe the idea is that a watermark-aware device
>(like a future version of the Diamond Rio) simply won't make a
>copy of a watermarked source.
Quite interesting 'professional' DAT machines and audio CD burners don't follow the copy bit restricrion (see for instance TASCAM). Ant the higher cost (about 1500 EUR) is justified by the truckload of digital and analog interfaces have.
Disclaimer: I have no relation with thascam except a friend of mine borrowed me a TASCAM DAT machine, and is impressive .
At some point it ends up a just music/video and can be re-encoded so what's the point?
And watermarking - to be useful it has to be distinguishable from the real data and so can be detected and rubbed out. Not by individuals of course but by those organisations that pirate media on an industrial scale who don't care about investing a few $100k
The SDMI watermark is designed to survive being encoded into MP3 (and back, even).
Chris Owens
San Carlos, CA
The kinds of bands that will suffer from this are the corporatized bands that don't really have any talent anyway -- bands that cannot put on a live show without a "sync" track (pun intended) and a bunch of hired help.
We justify piracy these days when it only hurts Microsoft or Electronic Arts, but what's going to happen when those companies disappear, and the programmers deal directly with the public? Are we suddenly going to give up our WE DESERVE FREE INFORMATION and I'D RATHER GET IT FROM GNU selfishness?
Sure--today, software companies are the ones getting the profits, and I say, screw 'em. But imagine an ideal world, where a programmer gets every penny of profit from their work. Why would they bother to write a program, if as soon as they release a single copy it's immediately pirated and distributed worldwide for free, in a form absolutely indistinguishable from the original? How is that programmer going to be able to make any money? Rely on the charity of those who feel like donating a few cents because they liked their software?
Sure, I don't like the current financial scheme of the software companies. But the technology we're talking about here prevents ANYONE from making money from programming. Famous quote and hacker philosophy: INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE. Hey, folks, SOFTWARE IS INFORMATION. And FREE SOFTWARE is crappy software, because there's no profit motive in it, and the worthwhile would-be programmers are off doing something which allows them to put food on the table.
We'd better come up with SOME way of rewarding and reimbursing programmers, or we're going to pirate software right out of our society.
----
You might have some good points... Programming and music aren't exactly the same, in that a programmer can work for free on his own time, and still get a good job as a programmer. If you're a musician, it's probably harder to make a living. Still, the above should make my point clear...
I know TONS of people who make music with no hope of financial gain. Some of them have been doing it for years. And a lot of it, despite the poor recording quality, is really good music. Cheap digital recording technologies are enabling the recording quality to go up, and the ability to burn CD's or put it on MP3 is making distribution easier. This is what the RIAA is terrified of, because out there are bands that are WAY better than what is on the radio, and they now stand a fighting chance of being heard.
I would like to see a artist community web site where artists set the prices for their work. A system of micropayments can be setup for each work and/or users can downloaded unlimited music in certain music classes that they pay for access to.
Hopefully such a system will result in lower costs. Artists will have more direct access to users, and users will be able to purchase individual tracks.
There is nothing stopping someone from going out and sharing a paid for work with other for free. However, since the cost of a legitimate copy of the music will be lower many people would download officially since they know that most of the download charge will go to the artist.
Ok, I agree, but WTF does this have to do with the article? The download costs much more than just buying the CD, both in terms of time and money. There are already mechanisms getting set up for paying artists directly, through things like Micropayments and the Street Performer's Protcol.
-RickHunter
Well, Metallica once were "rioters" too. So he probably would have his record company sue you, your computer maker and your elelctrical company for making MP3s of his sings. Am I over-cynical today?
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
I like ConceptJunkie's reponse: "Evil. Stupid".
But in answer to your question about when they started seeing the consumer as the enemy - 'twas always thus. Taxes on the sale of blank "music" CD-R media extended to blank "data" CD-R media are nothing more than extensions of the taxes on blank cassette tapes. Ditto the hamstrings on DAT that prevented it from being a commercial medium.
They've always regarded the customer as little more than a sheep to be sheared, a fool to be parted with our money. Ditto the bands who actually produce the content they resell.
Make no mistake - the consumer has always been a dupe in their eyes. Only recently, now that we have the power to force a change their business model, have we gone from "harmless dupe" to "enemy".
But they've never had anything more than contempt for us. The only thing that's changed recently is that the veil's been ripped away, and we can see them for what they really are.
The top selling albums of 1999: BACKSTREET BOYS Millenium,BRITNEY SPEARS, ...Baby One More Time, RICKY MARTIN, Ricky Martin. Not albums which the 40+ crowd are going to be buying.
Bullshit.
I'll pay my dime when the artist has done something to warrent it. If I like the band, I'll go to thier show. If I like them enough, I might even tip them, I'll give them my five bucks, no problem. However, I refuse so help me god to give a 14 bucks to some haft ass, one hit wonder, to buy their cd, for one stupid song that in two years I'm going to hate and place the cd in the "sucky pile".
I'm insulted by "FREE ART is crappy art", that total bs. Some of the best stuff in the world has been done becuase of doing Art for what it is NOT THE CASH TO BE GAINED BY THE ART!!
You think when what his face was crafting David he was thinking: "I could make a mint off of this". Or what about Mozart? Do you really think he was thinking, "hell, if I created a great piece of musical work I could up the price on the guests, and increase my profit by 20% and buy that fancy boat I saw down by the oceanside" when he was writing Missa?
The people that think they can make money from "Art" are corprate assholes, greedy bastard, and pissed poored artists looking in the wrong area to put food on the table. Example:
back street boys
britney spears
How about cool bands that are for MP3's? Name a few, go a head and do a search. Artist make thier money from selling WORKS they PRODUCED.
Another thing that completely pisses me off is, don't sell out your art. Don't make art just to sell it. I can't really feel sorry for people who put all their pennies in one jar and bet all or nothing on thier music/art. If the artist can't put food on the table, to bad, most likly they suck. Yeah, I know many designers, these guys could be consider artists. Some of them do really good work. I have also seen "designers" that have no talent, spent 100k on art school, having a hard time trying to put food on the table. Should I say, even through you suck, here's five bucks? It's no better, then the artist saying "here's this great painting I made, you can have it for free".
For music, it's another story. For music, the artist want as many people to hear it, download thier music, and come to their shows. Let's say someone is "well off" at 100k a year. At a buck, only 100k people need to donate to them. At 2, only 50k. At 5 bucks, a fair cost of a show, they only need to reach 20k people. If you can't reach out to get 30,000 people to come to your show in the course of a year, sorry, the artist suck. If a buck a person, it's 30k. Just enough to put food on the table (not much else however).
Do art for the loving of creating Art, not for the cash flow that it could be. If you are good enough, no matter what it is, you will get your rewards.
fuckit, end rant
MarNuke
That's funny; The Madison Project is an a capella group from James Madison University. Odd coincidence.
-lw
Mods: Disagreeing with me != my post Offtopic / Flamebait.
World without hate or war, invaded. Tragic?
Of course, the thing is that all those digitized media streams are encrypted until the last possible instant. The only place an analog signal exists is on the short epoxy-bound length of wire inside each loudspeaker cabinet. (For video, it's all digital until you get to the LCD electronics or the amplifiers on the tube.) Well that's no problem, you say, because you can always just hack into the cabinets. Just watch out for the DMCA enforcement squad.
For your protection, of course, your Media Control Center will automatically reject any media that's not digitally certified as being Genuine Digital Stuff. Sure, this means you won't be able to make your own recordings without paying to become an Official Genuine Digital Stuff producer (which obligates you to sign this very reasonable contractual agreement), but it's worth it to make sure we don't have to worry about pirates, terrorists, and drug pushers.
Will there be resistance to throwing away all that investment in old CD's and expensive stereo systems? Sure, but over the span of twenty years the vast bulk of the consumer population will replace equipment anyway. And the new Genuine Digital Stuff is so cool!
While everybody's strutting around talking about how awful it is that the RIAA or MPAA "just doesn't get it", what we really should be worrying about is the day that they DO get it: they'll realize that their wildest dreams are finally possible. They'll realize that through the combination of new technology and new laws, the content industry can have complete control over how its content is consumed. No more "piracy". No more skipping-over-commercials. Want to make a party tape? Sure, but by the way we're going to sell space on your tape to some advertisers. It's a sure bet that lots of smart people in the industry have figured all this out already. They just need a way to get the ball rolling.
I'll stop now because I'm depressing myself.
Whether ANYBODY actually read it. The person that submitted it, the /. reviewer (timothy?) that supposedly checked it out, the rest of these posters above.
All you have to do to get a clue is look at the frigging URL.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
OK that's it... I'm selling all my stuff and buying a one way ticket to Belize and a sheet of blotter acid.
:^)
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
We've been seeing too many under-researched articles on Slashdot recently. Sloppy work at the Geek Compound. Go read some Journalism 101 books, guys. Linking to someone else's article is not journalism.
I think it is stupid and wasteful to spend the money to protect something which you can't really protect. Is the RIAA going to require little doggles on soundcards that prevent people from hooking up stuff other than speakers?
I think if the RIAA has a subscription plan, they could potentially make even more money, and if you take it to the next step, offering to burn custom CDs that have the tracks that YOU want on them for a fee, I think they could really be "with it" and finally entered the technology age........
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
IBM needs to invent completely silent audio. That's right, PIPE THE MUSIC DIRECTLY INTO THE BRAIN!!! Muwhahahaha! Try and record THAT, suckers!
thelocust[dot]org
I think part of the problem, as I'm sure a lot of people here will point out, is that we have no choice. Ask yourself, can you live without music? No f@#*in' way. Can you live with just independant bands' music? Maybe for some, most likely not for others.
Can you write-in and convince your favorite band to change labels so you'll buy their music again? Is it even possible for them to do that under their typical 'first-born, etc' contract they probably have to sign?
So it seems that because we'll always want music, but the masses (not the 1.3% who will bother going around the security) don't have a choice as to where they get music, then the megamedia corps will treat us anyway they want. Which apparently is the way we want it. Afterall, we only get what we deserve.
Jason
(Sorry if this has once again turned into random babbling. I had a good point directly related to your post, but somehow lost it somewhere...)
I knew as soon as DVD (and CSS) came out that it would be cracked. Not because I'm a genius in precognition - it was just obvious. Sooner or later, someone would reverse-engineer a player. And what do you know, along comes DeCSS. All this DMCA stuff won't supress it either, however hard they try.
Any audio encryption scheme is doomed to failure. DMCA or not, someone will still crack it fairly quickly. And even if not - well, good old Line Out to another computer's Line In will work, and will render an almost perfect copy (with the right equipment, you won't be able to tell the difference.)
Despite all of this, I think the RIAA's real fear is not piracy, but competition. The MP3 format, and even better - Ogg Vorbis - allows artists to sell direct. This is scaring them witless. They are desperately trying to prevent people from being able to publicize their music without them.
Perhaps I should be arrested as a circumvention device since I can play the piano reasonably well by ear. I'm waiting for the RIAA lawyers to come busting down the door :-)
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Facing a cartel is half the problem. Consumers are the other half. I tend to agree - if we want content in general (be it music, movies, etc.), we have few choices. We'd have more choices if consumers as a whole were a whole lot less like a flock and a whole lot more like an unruly mob. Someone here on ./ a few days back tossed around the term "sheeple," which seems terribly apt here.
Does re-educating the consumer (sounds Orwellian, I know, but you know what I mean) even have a prayer? During bleaker moments, I think not - as a population, we're pretty damned lemming-like. I'd like to think better of people, I really would.
*sigh*
Anybody else wanna revolt against corporate interests? I just can't be stuffed today - this is reaching depressing extents.:P
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
And eat the garbage that I feed you,
Until the day that we don't need you,
Don't call for help, no one will heed you.
Your mind is totally controlled,
It has been stuffed into our mold,
And you Will Do As You Are Told,
Until the rights to you are sold.
Surpisingly perceptive man, 20 or so years before the whole flap. I wonder what he'd have thought of MP3's.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Hey now.. Lets give this thing a chance.. I mean really, who wouldn't pay even a little more per CD if it meant they were also having all their rights to fair use simply and painlessly removed? Come on guys.. the record industry is really suffering these days because of digital technology.. Its getting hard for a record company executive to put food on the table and a roof over their families heads..
air and light and time and space
The top selling albums of 1999: BACKSTREET BOYS Millenium,BRITNEY SPEARS, ...Baby One More Time, RICKY MARTIN, Ricky Martin. Not albums which the 40+ crowd are going to be buying.
I'm not going to argue that adults dig Britney, that's for sure. But check out the RIAA's consumer profiles: the 40+ set bought 34% of the records sold in '99, while the 19-and-under crew only accounted for 21%.
Piracy Proof? What an impossible statement to make!!
Ok, lets suppose we are in fantasy land where they finally make the mythological "Completely Pirate-Proof CD". Unless it is a thing of magic, either, I can't make a backup, or it is pirate-able.
Sorry Capital America... it just ain't possible!
-- "Microsoft can never die! They make the best damn joysticks around!"
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I am living in college in a dorm. I have 9 computers in my dorm room, a dat device, a tape deck, and lots of cables. Note. That's 9 computers in my DORM room. At home I have roughly 12 more. I have been surrounded by computers my entire life. MY computers reach from low end 12mhz machines and a working c64 up to sparcs and high end intel machines. I have more computers than some small companies.
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
I grew up in India. A country of a billion people. India has won ONE medal (a bronze) in the last three Olympics. Sports is not a big deal in India - athletes are guaranteed no money from their achievements. The most an athlete can hope for is some large company hires them at a regular job and allows them to take a little time off to practice.
Yes, there are still some independently wealthy athletes who do well but on the whole it's very easy to argue that there would be many more people willing to dedicate a lot more time, effort and money to athletic excellence if there was money to be made from it.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Music is watermarked for that user (s device?), who has filled out name and address details correctly for music company.
If I had moderator access, I'd be torn whether to mark your comment as funny or insightful, since your sarcasm ("there's no way it can fail!") is both.
Please provide the RIAA with your name, physical address and email address below:
Mr. U. Suck
1234 Fuck The Recording Industry Drive
Suite B-1TE-ME
Chicago, IL 60619
email: throw-away-account@someip.com
I'm sure you and others have thougth up equally, if not more, create responses to expeditions fishing for personal invitation, but if not, I cordially invite you to make use of the above on any RIAA/MPAA questionaire or registration form. I certainly plan to.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Could you ask that question in the form of a rap song please?
and the prices as formulated so far are nothing to write home about unless you think $20 for a CD is a fair deal.
um.
wait a sec...
are you telling me that they would have wanted me to pay more for music that i couldn't copy than for music that i could??
i'm confused... if, as they claim, part of the artificially high price of CDs (and blank CD-R for that matter) is to recover losses to music pirates -- shouldn't music that i purchase in a format that prevents this piracy actually cost LESS?!?
ouch, riaa-logic hurt wittle ol' me's head.
i go smash things now...
---
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
And in the case of the musicians, many of the great ones around the time that recording technology was being developed didn't want to record their stuff, so the "competition" (other musicians) couldn't steal their style. Django Reinhardt's work is mostly lost because of this attitude.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
As long as there are people trying to protect music/code/games/porn whatever with code there will be people who will defeat them. Laws in the US mean nothing in Canada or Russia. IMHO I believe it is time to see more indie labels rise up and take the reins from these so called Music professionals. Look at what sound scan did to the industry! If it wasn't for the industry installing sound scan at the retail level they would have never noticed that Nirvana was selling and the Hooters weren't.
when they ban enctryption only criminals wi$21*J *#JF$%!@#$':
The music industry's customers are like there are 3 teenagers, and 1 adult. Each teenager buys 1 album a month, but the adult buys 4. There are therefore more sales to adults, but the largest segment size is the teenagers. The most profitable market is when you can sell 9 million copies of the same CD, so the teenagers are the ones who the record companies are targetting.
All these companies are only wasting time and money trying to prevent the inevitable. I'm not going to argue ethics here, because frankly it doesn't make a difference whether people think they're in the right or not, copying music. The fact is that the music only has to be converted once, and then copied as many times as neccesary to destroy any such "inconvenience" scheme the Corps come up with. Even if it involves a padded box containing a speaker and a microphone, once 1 decent copy is made, it's over.
The only way they will win is by providing a superior product, that has value added for purchasing the physical medium. And as copying becomes easier and easier, their job of keeping us entertained and making money will neccesarily get more and more competitive. Either way, it's still the only win-win situation in the foreseable future.
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
-Jaron Lanier
...with just one teensy problem I can see.
What if you buy it, and they watermark it with your credit card? Encrypted, of course; only someone with a digital copy of what you purchased can extract it. Which is no one if you keep it to yourself, or the record company - and various crackers - if you distribute it.
Ah, yes - but they do have a speaker coil...
[/me reaches for Dremel to cut grill on "tamper proof" speakers]
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Moderate this up! Insightful!
I still want to know how watermarked formats are expected to work.
I walk into a record store, plonk down $20 in green folding stuff, and get a shiny new CD. I can then convert that to MP3 and no-one can tell who did it. They can tell it came from disc #1485175. They might be able to tell the store that disc was sold from, but they can't tell who bought it.
I used to wonder this, too. I believe the idea is that a watermark-aware device (like a future version of the Diamond Rio) simply won't make a copy of a watermarked source. The watermark is simply a way of embedding a few bits of information into the music itself. All the information that's needed is "don't copy me!" Watermark-compliant units will comply. It's not much of a stretch from there to see that slightly more elaborate watermark schemes could be used for regional coding (like DVDs), limited replays for demo material (given a player smart enough to remember what it has played) or time-restricted play (don't play this stream after Dec 31st 2000, etc), and who knows what other unpleasantness.
Of course, the big challenge for the RIAA is to get SDMI enabled devices to be the accepted norm - to displace MP3s as the format of choice. That's going to be a toughie, eh?
Incidentially, I'm told that the way CDs are made now, there's no way to serialize them - they are stamped out like so many cookies, all the same - so there's no way to put unique serial numbers on each one. So they couldn't track a serialized disc to a particular store, either.
The biggest section of the CD buying public is teenage girls, who don't have credit cards, so you cannot limit purchasers to those who have credit cards.
Are you sure about that, or are you just guessing? I seem to recall seeing RIAA demographic figures, and adults - older adults, the 40+ crowd - were actually the biggest music buyers today, odd though it seems. There was a big flap about that stuff about a year ago, when the RIAA was claiming that profits were down because of MP3s (which was patently false according to their own figures, by the way). I don't have a link to that stuff anymore - anyone else?
I agree that the RIAA can't require buyer registration - for a number of reasons, not least because big chunks of the market are under-age.
The difference isn't just that it's so much harder to make a good living as a musician but that it can cost thousands of dollars in studio time, etc. to produce an album, while writing a program just requires a computer, which the programmer would probably already have anyway.
Care about freedom?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
I walk into a record store, plonk down $20 in green folding stuff, and get a shiny new CD. I can then convert that to MP3 and no-one can tell who did it. They can tell it came from disc #1485175. They might be able to tell the store that disc was sold from, but they can't tell who bought it.
The biggest section of the CD buying public is teenage girls, who don't have credit cards, so you cannot limit purchasers to those who have credit cards.
But wait, what about speaker to mic recordings? No problema, our new BigBrother speaker actually induces so much noise, that any recording will sound horrible, no matter how good the recording equipment is. So if you want to get in on the wave of the future, order your BigBrother today!
Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. -CP
How will something like this EVER be possible. Regardless what type of protection they place, I can still use the LOW-TECH method to get their audio into my mp3's. Think "Audio Patch Cable" Just two simple stereo male miniplugs. Plug one into audio out, the other into audio in/mic. Start my favorite audio recorder, then fire up whatever "Copywrite protecting software" they give you. Make your mp3's from there. Hell, this is the same way I get my old tapes to mp3!!
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Evil
Stupid
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
You gotta remember, they're still a big corporation. Their first loyalty is to their shareholders and ultimately the bottom line is what drives them. The could stand to make a lot of money from this distribution format if it pans out (Especially with the hardware sales it'd no doubt drive) so it should be no surprise that they'd be working on something like this.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
We don't want your DRM-hobbled music in the presence of unprotected alternatives.
We won't buy your DRM-hobbled crap in the presence of unprotected alternatives.
OK, says RIAA, we'll take away all the unprotected alternatives, releasing music only in watermarked, protected formats, and we'll badger the hardware companies to self-destruct any device that doesn't comply. (What, you mean you didn't want to throw out your entire CD collection and buy it all over again?)
Fuck 'em.
When consumers are presented with the choice between SDMI and rolling around in a pool of freshly spat-up cat vomit, the choice is remarkably easy. Not only is the pool of half-digested Friskies and mouse-heads less offensive, it is also delightfully warm.
This has been proven for WMA (unf*ck.exe) and ASF (ASFRecorder), and it is soon to be proven for SDMI. Remember that WMA was hacked only one day after it was announced. Its popularity fell off due to its lackluster spectrum response level. ASF wasn't bad (of course, that's because it was secured MPEG-4 and not one of Microsoft's own proprietary formats), but we have yet to see SDMI cracked for free.
Hackers have proven that even "licensed hardware" is not free from their wrath (CueCat!). I think that these capitalist Orwellians have a serious case of HDFB (head detached from body).
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
won't be able to stop piracy. Records, tapes, CDs, DVDs, whats next?!
As long as MPEG1 layer-iii audio exists, music fans of the world will be able to share unsecure digital copies of their favorite tunes.. and that's the bottom line... CUZ STONE COLD SAID SO!
click here to incinerate homeless people
Curve it around...
You can't destroy the Earth, that's where I keep all my stuff!
I've been watching this debate about artists getting paid for music and etc... for a while now and I'm finally to a point that I can't stand it any more.
The fact that there is a software industry proves that electronic piracy will NOT destroy the music industry (even if we wish it would)
Let me take you back a decade or so. Software used to be small. You could fit DOS and Windows on a handful of diskettes. You could put almost any other software in the world on one diskette. You could also either download or trade for any software title in existance. I don't know of a game I ever wanted for that wasn't cracked (that's what breaking piracy protection used to be called). Professional or ameture, game or office app, everything was free for the taking if you didn't mind the legal issues involved. Downloads were at 2400 baud, true, but software was small. I remember the first game I ever saw that was actually a whole megabyte! Even it didn't take more than an hour or so to download from my favorite BBS. My point is this: Even in a niche industry (software was at the time) where almost everyone has the knowlege and ability to pirate everything, several fortunes were made. True, a lot of that was business software, but a lot of it wasn't. People know how the system works, and they will pay for good stuff. Look at the share ware model. For a long time it was NOT crippleware, people sent out full working versions and merely asked for people to send them $10. It worked. Fortunes were made off of that too. My point is that the richest people in the world made their money from something that could be perfectly copied and redistributed - in an industry where EVERYBODY, not just a fringe percentage, knew how.
Politics, Culture, Food?
No, this will balance out. As more people pirate, the quality will go down. Only crap will be out there (look at the free stuff on say, mp3.com). Then, eventually, people will be willing to go for a pay-per-play service once all that's available is pirated, free garbage. Supply and demand. It'll take care of itself. If, in 5 years, all I can d/l on Napster is free crap, I'll gladly pay-per-play good new stuff.
Damn right! Beethoven would never have composed and performed some of the greatest music known to man if he wasn't guaranteed a small percentage of the record companies profits... hey, wait a minute, most "classic" music was written before record companies, or the fiction of intellectual properties rights was even invented!
Thank you for sharing your hallucination with us; I've got a different one: art created for art's sake is the best art (e.g. Grateful Dead). Art created just to make a buck is crappy art (e.g. Britney Spears) And by the way, the Grateful Dead, even while allowing people to freely record concerts and freely distribute those recording, were the most profitable band in America for at least a few years...
Guess that blows all your crackpot theories out of the water, doesn't it?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Heh, thank you. Very impressive indeed... you should be in the Slashdot Troll Olympics with the rest of us.
All told I probably end up putting about $4 worth of effort into it, which is well worth accumulating those one or two tracks from each CD that are really good putting them all on one CD for the car.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
A Bugg
Why wasn't Quake3 released in a GPL license with a tip-jar http address?
Hmmm....
Why are there next-to-no decent GPL'd games(i.e. artistic software) of ANY sort?
Hmmm....
Because if really smart people who like to make games aren't paid a lot of money then they're going to turn into really smart people who design ERP programs for financial institutions. End result is they still get the money but we get no games.
So maybe in the post-copyright era all the ad jingles will kick ass and the Gap commercials will feature better bullet-dancing sequencies then the Matrix, but we the "art"-loving public will suffer.
Do some research into how badly destroyed the HK movie industry has been by the rampant piracy in HK/China.
Piracy(yes, PIRACY, not "sharing" not "trading") is not an artists friend.
We justify piracy these days when it only hurts Sony Records or Warner Brothers, but what's going to happen when those companies disappear, and the artists deal directly with the public? Are we suddenly going to give up our WE DESERVE FREE INFORMATION and I'D RATHER GET IT FROM NAPSTER selfishness?
Sure--today, record companies are the ones getting the profits, and I say, screw 'em. But imagine an ideal world, where an artist gets every penny of profit from their work. Why would they bother to record a song, if as soon as they release a single copy it's immediately pirated and distributed worldwide for free, in a form absolutely indistinguishable from the original? How is that artist going to be able to make any money? Rely on the charity of those who feel like donating a few cents because they liked their album?
Sure, I don't like the current financial scheme of the record labels. But the technology we're talking about here prevents ANYONE from making money from art. Famous quote and hacker philosophy: INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE. Hey, folks, ART IS INFORMATION. And FREE ART is crappy art, because there's no profit motive in it, and the worthwhile would-be artists are off doing something which allows them to put food on the table.
We'd better come up with SOME way of rewarding and reimbursing artists, or we're going to pirate art right out of our society.
Look, secure digital music will never be an alternative as long as people can buy CDs. If people can buy CDs, they can make MP3s. That's all there is to it. And MP3s (with all of their inherit problems) have been and will be continue to be extremely popular.
If the RIAA wants to stop online digital music piracy, they have to get rid of CDs. And since that is where all of their money comes from right now, I have a feeling that they aren't about to do that.
I thought I had heard of this stuff before. Based on non viable economics and the ease with which the resulting CDs can be ripped (no surprise there), I suspect this project is already dead. And 5:1 compression? It is to laugh.
A cautionary tale for technology companies: entering into content protection projects has proven to this point to be a total waste of time, money, and opportunity. Not to mention what is does for your karma.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Why Is Anyone Even Trying To make a new standard? Copyright protected or not, anything made will just be converted to a free format as soon as the "COPY PROOF" method is made. Lets say they make a new copy proof that sounds so perfect that it will make you soil your pants. Who cares, cause someone will just make an open sourced version of it, or something better that is free, and the copy-proof version will be copied over to that format. It's just a waste of money in my opinion to research copy-proof methods. The few companies that are makeing "copy-proof" methods are selling "unsinkable ships"
Oh come on guys.... This isn't entirely foolproof....Someone who is really determined will still be able to rip mp3's off of this.... Does it have a way of preventing me from plugging into a headphone jack, ripping onto a tape, and then ripping back to a wav and converting it to an mp3? yah, that's what i thought... face it, it won't work. What we need is for the record companies just to break down and lower the prices or do like cdnow does, and allow you to make your own CD CHEAP... Please. almost all the profit from a cd goes to the record company, not the artist. Let's lower the prices on cd's and be able to design are own!!!!
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}