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More Cracks In The SDMI Wall

Posted by timothy on from the eh-what's-that-sonny? dept.

The indefatigable Andrew Leonard writes: "Now Princeton researchers are getting in on the act. SDMI's watermarks do not seem to be made of very stern stuff. Janelle Brown has a story about a team led by Edward Felten that says it too has triumphed in the hack SDMI challenge." I think they could have made it simpler by having the watermark simply be Vincent Price's voice moaning over every track so "protected," or some juicy backwards masking, and been done with it. The Salon piece is loaded with the links you need;)

49 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting and all that.... by OlympicSponsor · · Score: 2

    The story is vaguely interesting (although largely repetitious). But why is /. accepting advertising from Salon? Andrew Leonard's address (as given by the mailto link) is aleonard@salon.com. The story is on Salon. Even my vague understanding of journalistic (not say publishing) ethics says that Andy shouldn't have sent this (nor the previous Salon links) and Taco shouldn't have printed it.

    If it's really all that good, someone else will eventually submit it.
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  2. Imbeciles by weeble · · Score: 2

    "it would be a cinch for an enterprising coder to turn one or more of its watermark-removal techniques into a downloadable program that would let any MP3 pirate "press a button to commit piracy." - This is taken directly from the article.

    I disagree totally. Removing the watermark from music that you have purchased is not piracy. Unauthorised distribution of copyright music with or without the watermark is piracy; eating it, singing over it,,corrupting it, destroying it is not piracy.

    If the RIAA have their way then removing the watermark will soon be illegal.

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  3. Re:What does a watermark do? by Vryl · · Score: 2
    there are many advantages to keeping the watermark recognition software under lock and key, to be used only as part of a systematic process of scouring the net for copyright violations.

    Sorry to do this to the paranoids out there, but do we have any proof that this is not already happening?

    In the absence of a pristine file to check against, new music fresh from the studio and the record company may already be watermarked. There is nothing to lose by doing this for the record companies (or the artist), and perhaps much to gain at a later date.

    For older music, this is not an option, as we can check against the originals (but then again, a lot of stuff comes out 're-mastered' from time to time), but there are few, if any, people who could detect such a watermark in new, previously unheard material.

  4. Not really by YanceyAI · · Score: 2

    Ethically, there is no problem. Journalism's primary goal is the distribution of information, not profit seeking. Consequently, Andy should not be barred as a result of his position and /. should not censor him as a result thereof. If Andy has information that he knows interests a certain forum, he is ethically required to distribute that information.

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    Can I bum a sig?
    1. Re:Not really by ucblockhead · · Score: 2

      . Journalism's primary goal is the distribution of information, not profit seeking

      My God, that's the funniest thing I've heard in months!

      --
      The cake is a pie
  5. Re:We all know that this is folly. by westfirst · · Score: 2

    The way to hack this can also be found in Peter Wayner's Digital Copyright Protection . The mechanism is simple. Rotate by 45 degrees. Blur twice and then sharpen twice. Boom. The watermark is gone, or at least as gone as the Digimark detector in Photoshop.

  6. Re:Watch the ball not the person by radja · · Score: 2

    the public accepted DVD players, yes.. but the public does not accept region coding. most DVD players are sold region-free and can play disks from all regions. At least that's how it is in the netherlands..

    //rdj

    --

    No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
    --Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
  7. Another way of defeating SDMI.. by drnomad · · Score: 2
    is simply by not buying their stuff.
    quote:The group is taking the risk that SDMI authorities could try to prevent it from publishing its work -- participants in the contest were supposed to be sworn to secrecy -- but Carver believes that by forgoing the prize they may not be required to sign any nondisclosure agreements.

    then put the documentation on an insecure FTP server...

    Why would we want to remove the watermark anyway, is a SDMI compliant Media player, which doesn't reject the song sufficient enough? or will they encrypt the music?

    --
    Bizar technology?
  8. Re:For Shame! They are complicit with RIAA by Apotsy · · Score: 2
    You're right. This can only help matters. The fact that this was done by academics at reputable institutions makes them much harder to ignore.

    If some l33t h4x0r out there claims he's cracked it, the SDMI nitwits can just deny it and people will believe them. But when some guys from Princeton, Rice, and Xerox's PARC say they've cracked it and post the results for all the world to see, they can't deny it and expect people to take them seriously.

    This is definitely going to send them back to the drawing board for while, perhaps even cause them to scrap the idea altogether.

    --
    Free Hans!
  9. Re:Catch-22 by Vryl · · Score: 2
    BTW it keeps coming up in this thread, but you cannot defeat many audio watermarks by overlaying a new watermark.

    Is this true? In my digimarc trick, I defeated the original watermark with whatever means, then created a new file with a new watermark, on the strongest (most damaging) setting. I then overlayed this file over the original (watermarked) file, and played with the opacity until I had a file that was pretty bloody similar (down to individual pixels a lot of the time), but did not contain a recognizable watermark.

    From this file, I could then re-watermark it with my new watermark. The original watermark was gone, the file was nearly identical and contained my new watermark, at considerable less signal strength than originally needed to defeat the watermark.

    I am assuming that this technique would work more or less the same with audio files.

  10. SDMI is d-d-dead by mcice · · Score: 4

    We are doing a university project that aims at
    defeating all known audio watermarking techniques.
    So far we killed EVERY SINGLE ONE using a mixture
    of techniques including inaudible transforms in
    the frequency domain, jitter in the time domain
    and very funny huffman shuffling of the bitstream,
    making it 1% larger because we also apply a
    reverse psymodel where inaudible frequencies
    are actually added instead of eliminated.

    We only have an mp3 bitstream specific test tool
    right now but adapting this to AAC is no big
    deal (we chose mp3 because of its popularity).
    Of course you need a decoder source for this
    but once you have one, you can start mess up the
    bitstream all the same.

    I work on that project because frankly, SDMI can
    kiss my behind. Too bad them guys have too little
    brain mass! Sitting duck, their watermark is.

  11. Re:For Shame! They are complicit with RIAA by (void*) · · Score: 2
    Sorry, but I disagree. It a extremely important in this case to behave maturely. If you do, this gives one leveraging power. Becuase of what the Princeton boys did, we no longer have to rely on essentially slanderous remarks such as the ones you have made. Now that they have gain cooperation from serious people, it would do them great damage to turn around and so as you say they would. It would make their evil more transparent.

    Furthermore, what they do is wholly consistent with the principle of free speech. There is nothing in law gives the SDMI guys the right to suppress what the fruits of their research have done. No attempt was made to get the prize, and only the scientifically interesting questions were asked. In the 2nd phase of the contest, the Princeton group declined, because it makes no sense to try to crack a single file - you wouln't know whether you've actually cracked it or not.

    In other words, we now have two weapons in our arsenal to bring down the SDMI. We have the continued threat to them that it would be broken when it is released, and our refusal to cooperate, signalling disagreement with their control policies. Next we have a bunch of people who played along, and did everything consistent with the goal of proving it cannot be done. AFAIK, SDMI is now caught between a rock and a hard place. They can neither continue down this path of improving SDMI (ignoring the Princeton group's efforts) without accounting to the public their policies. They are on the losing side.

  12. I don't think you understand by Xcott+R13,+3(0,R4) · · Score: 5
    Point by point (keep in mind I don't speak for the group here:)

    No, we did not ignore the ethical or political issues involved. In fact, if anyone understands those issues it's an expert in the technology, not some angry anonymous B1FF. The very fact that you think "damage is done" shows that you don't understand the serious technological problems behind what SDMI is trying to do. Just how do you think SDMI is now a step ahead?

    No, we are not helping SDMI restrict fair use by making them (and everyone else) aware of weaknesses in the system. Keeping mum about ways to circumvent the system will hurt everyone, as a flawed SDMI in deployment hurts everyone a lot more than no SDMI at all.

    Here's an ethical question for you: what about Diamond Multimedia? First they were sued by the recording industry over their MP3 players. Now if we let SDMI deploy a flawed system they're going to get screwed again, having to blow tons of money by putting these SDMI ASICs in their portable devices. That make them drain more battery power and otherwise suck. This is an okay scenario to you?

    And what about users? A circumventable system on your portable devices may not stop people with the right utilities from making copies, but it will forever get in the way and generally annoy the heck out of people. This is also okay for you? Acceptible losses, friendly fire, if it will help you teach SDMI a lesson?

    If SDMI is never going to work, the right thing to do is to keep it on the drawing board. Anything else will yield an awful end result.

    1. Re:I don't think you understand by Chops · · Score: 2
      I respect your talent and trust that you know more and have thought more about the issues involved here, and so I apologize in advance for this flame. If you haven't gotten tired of dealing with ranting /.-hippies, I'd appreciate hearing what you think of all this:

      My take is that the SDMI is an evil thing, a thing that should not happen, and a stupid thing from the companies' perspective. I hold all the companies who haven't yet said "screw this; we're going to go work on a revenue model that might work" responsible for that choice. You can't give someone music and deny them the ability to copy it. You can't. You never will be able to again. They'll stick a microphone up to the thing they listen to, they'll encode it as MP3s, and they'll put it on Freenet, or Gnutella, or Mojo Nation, or whatever the next and even better system is. There is no longer such a thing as "secure music." I allow for the possibility that, if you throw enough money, enough brains, and enough industrial and political muscle at the problem, you might be able to get secure, uncopyable digital music, in which case only people with good speakers will be able to get MP3s of Napster quality out of it. Regardless of what the right thing to do is, regardless of what would protect the artists' rights best, regardless of your or my personal stance on copyright, this outcome is a done deal. It's already happened; there simply is no way to stop people from trading MP3s on the internet, watermarked or not. That's a fact. The whole thing is stupid, and doomed to failure. The RIAA in particular is so hidebound and arrogant that they can't see that.

      Now this watermarking idea that the SDMI is having rammed down its throats by the RIAA is particularly doomed to failure. Not only is it impossible for the above reasons, it will piss off the consumers royally. People who don't care about Napster because they can't figure out how to use it will get pissed, because they'll have to go through all this bullshit, buying new equipment at the very least, just to listen to the next Blink 182 album, and they love Blink 182. A lot of them will stop listening to the Top 40 checklist. Not only that, it'll get cracked, quickly, and completely (you know more about this than I do :-), and millions, maybe billions, of the RIAA's money will go straight down the toilet.

      From my point of view, this is an unqualified success. This is grounds for dancing in the streets. I loved it when I finally started to believe that they were going to try to go through with it. It was a veritable vision of the future: everyone hates SDMI, everyone hates the RIAA, and the RIAA takes a bath. All the companies that had the balls the tell the SDMI to go fuck themselves and work on revenue models that work find themselves with lots of new customers.

      The SDMI is obviously doomed to failure, barring the institution of a copyright-enforcement police state the likes of which makes 1984 look chickenshit. If Sony can't figure that out, fuck 'em. If Sony wants to try to take my fair use rights away because they think that'll make it work, good. Fuck 'em. It won't work, and they'll look stupid and lose money trying. That is the biggest reason I wanted this watermarking nonsense to go as far as it could.

      No, we are not helping SDMI restrict fair use by making them (and everyone else) aware of weaknesses in the system. Keeping mum about ways to circumvent the system will hurt everyone, as a flawed SDMI in deployment hurts everyone a lot more than no SDMI at all.
      It only hurts companies that choose to participate. If whatever godawful crap SDMI comes up with actually makes it to market, I want it to be as weak as possible. I want it cracked hours after the first SDMI-compliant players hit the shelves. I want companies to go out of business because they spent money on making their devices SDMI-compliant. They deserve it, for backing such a lame-brained, anti-consumer, technological impossibility.
      And what about users? A circumventable system on your portable devices may not stop people with the right utilities from making copies, but it will forever get in the way and generally annoy the heck out of people. This is also okay for you? Acceptible losses, friendly fire, if it will help you teach SDMI a lesson?
      The right utilities? What, like a fucking microphone? Yeah, it'll be a pain in the ass, but we're not talking about Viet Nam here. It's the magic of the free market: If it's a pain in the ass, people will hate it, and it'll die. Plus, as a bonus, all the music that at least one person can digitally copy will go on Mojo Nation anyway, and we won't lose a single Backstreet Boys B-side. In the meantime, somebody who's figured out that people can copy music now and worked out a way to make money anyway will make millions. Yes, that is perfectly okay for me. What I'm afraid of is that at some point, these rapacious bastards might wise up. The small but clueful voices in the SDMI might finally get it through the RIAA's adamantine heads that they should at least pretend to be on the side of the consumer, and they might come up with something that wouldn't get a freshman business major laughed out of class, and we might still be listening to Britney Spears thirty years from now.

      The RIAA won't give up on this. If they do, they die. They'll try to beat Napster until they die, and I won't like what they come up with. It won't be on my side. It won't be on anybody's side. It'll be a plan to preserve a profit model that simply doesn't work anymore, at the expense of the music consumer. It might be lobbying congress to make MP3s illegal. It might be CDs uniquely keyed to the buyer's identity, so if your CD winds up on the net you wind up in jail. It will be a greedy, rapacious plot to fuck the American consumer out of his or her money and freedom, and every clue the RIAA gets means a little bit more clueful a greedy, rapacious plot. They're evil, they're clever in their way, they're very, very powerful, and they prefer massive force to insightful change. It's the way they've been doing business for decades, and being heavily under attack in an arena they don't understand isn't going to make them any nicer. Now I don't personally care; I've got enough John Lee Hooker tracks on my HD to last me quite a while, and every time I convince myself to check out the great new indie band, I hate it, and I rip another Dylan album. But I wholeheartedly believe that the RIAA and its bastard child the SDMI can do nothing but harm to the American people, and I want them to lose money, lose mindshare, lose political clout, and gradually die an ungraceful death while being made fun of on the internet. I think a horribly flawed SDMI sounds like a great start, and I sincerely hope that they're arrogant enough still to go on with this thing.

      That's my rant.

  13. Re:What does a watermark do? by StoryMan · · Score: 2

    Because the CD player you bought 2 years ago doesn't have the hardware to decrypt and encrypted file.

    Computer software -- or new CD players -- could be equipped with such hardware, but, uh, would you ditch a perfectly good CD player to 'upgrade' to a new one with less functionality?

    I suspect the RIAA is toying with this idea: how much of an outcry would there be if, say, we urged labels to release CDs that could not be played on current CD players?

    I'm sure there was (or still is) some bean counter sitting in a conference room somewhere talking to Bri ("Hi, call me 'Bri!'. It's short for Brian.") about whether or not it would be 'economically feasible' to scrap current CD technology and, well, force consumers to upgrade to new players.

    In fact, I'm sure there were meetings and more meeting about this.

    "Bri, whattya think?"

    "Well, Joe COnsumer won't like it."

    "Well, fuck Joe Consumer, Bri. Fuck him. Fuck them. Bri, let me ask you this --"

    "Huh?"

    "Your car? What kind is it?"

    "I got a Lexus. And --"

    "And you like it. Right? You like that Lexus."

    "Yeah -- my wife, she's got --"

    "A BMW?"

    "A blue one, yeah."

    Leaning close: "Bri, listen to me. Are you listening?"

    "Yeah."

    "You want your fucking Lexus. Your wife wants her BMW. You want a standard of living that you're used to. Right?"

    "We got a big house."

    "This is why, Bri. This is why."

    "Why ...?"

    Jimmy whispers: "F. U. C. K. Joe Consumer. Fuck him. You understand? SDMI is good. SDMI will feed us, Bri."

    "Yeah."

    "Say it, Bri."

    It's late afternoon. Bri is tired. He looks out the window. Gray skies.

    "Say it, Bri."

    "Fuck Joe Consumer, Jimmy."

    "That's right."

    Bri wants to leave. He wants to get in Lexus and go to his big house. "Fuck him," says Bri.

    "Say it, Bri."

    "Fuck Joe Consumer!"

    "That's it."

    "And the hackers. Fuck them, too."

    "You're okay, Bri. You're a good guy, Bri."

    "Fuck the consumer! fuck the hackers!"

    "All of it."

    "Everything."

    "That's right."

    "Thank you."

    "You feel better?"

    "Yeah."

    "Are you on board?"

    "Yeah."

    "No go home, Bri. Go home and remember what we talked about."

    "Okay."

    "Take tomorrow off. Will you do that?"

    "Tomorrow?"

    "Hit the links, Bri. Go and have a nice day. Take it all in. 9 holes, 18 holes -- it's up to you."

    "Thank you."

    "You're okay, Bri. You're a good guy."

  14. Re:copyprotecting? by bellings · · Score: 3

    i mean, if it can be played, it can be recorded - and if the watermarking is done so that human can't hear it, then you can't hear it in the copy either.

    Who cares if you can hear it? More to the point, why would you care if a computer could detect it? Until it becomes illegal to distribute programs that play audio without checking for watermarks, how is the presence of lack of a watermark going to affect me in any way?

    Or will I have to retroactively add a watermark to my wedding video, before I can edit it on my computer? If my brother sends me a CD of his garage band, will I have to take it down to Media Play or Barnes and Noble to get watermarked before I can listen to it on my stereo? If e-mail a recording of my kid saying "mama" off to my relatives, are they going to have to visit www.riaa.com to get a license to listen to the e-mail?

    If someone can distribute a player that doesn't care about the water marks in any of those sound files, why would that player care about the watermarks in the latest Britney Augilara CD?

    I must be missing something fundemental about watermarking here. Unless I suddenly find myself in a world where the only audio I listen to are those sounds pre-approved by one of the major record labels, one hundred percent of the stuff I send around is going to be home-brewed audio. And any program or hardware that makes it more inconvenient to listen to that home-brewed audio isn't going to make it into my house, and it isn't going to make it into the house of anyone I know.

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  15. Re:Haiku by kubrick · · Score: 2

    Psychoacoustic
    Models change inaudible
    Sounds; no protection.

    (apologies for completely murdering the form there :)

    --
    deus does not exist but if he does
  16. DMCA == an "ignorance is bliss" approach by Morgaine · · Score: 3

    The group's portrayal of DMCA is interesting. From their FAQ:

    We think the DMCA, by criminalizing some kinds of study of important technologies, represents an "ignorance is bliss" approach to technological copyright enforcement, which will not work in the long run. We lobbied against certain aspects of the DMCA while it was before Congress, and we still consider it to be a seriously flawed law.

    If so many well-reputed groups lobbied against the law without any effect whatsoever, it really brings home how the legislature is already in the pockets of the corporations today. It's not a worry for the future. It's already with us now.

    --
    "The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
  17. Re:Not their intellectual property by e_lehman · · Score: 2

    I assume you clicked through their agreement. And isn't click-through considered now considered a legally binding form of "digital signature" under that stupid new law? I forget exactly what the agreement said, but I think you already have (inadvertantly) signed something.

  18. SDMI's fatal flaw by AFCArchvile · · Score: 2
    SDMI's ultimate failure lies in one simple fact: if the majority wants something so bad that they would lie, cheat, steal, die, and even kill for it, and there's a company using security measures to prevent the majority from acquiring that certain something, then the majority will do everything in its power to break the security measures.

    One other bone I have to pick with the SDMI is the intent spelled out in the acronym definition: Secure Digital Music Initiative. Secure for whom? Not us, the consumers, the people who listen to the music, the people who pay for the music with our hard-earned money. The SDMI is primarily intended to "secure" the invidious royalties of the big record companies. Each MP3 file out there (FTP, Napster, Gnutella, etc.) represents a virtual voice opposed to the SDMI. The roar of opposition is deafening; however, the music companies have torn out their ears, much like Oedipus did his eyeballs. They can't handle the truth: music is no longer a per-unit commodity. It is attempting to evolve into a free medium for the people to enjoy without shelling out X amount of dollars to pay the Sony tax. One example of this is Smashing Pumpkins; you won't find their newest album in stores, it's on MP3 at their site. I look forward to other high profile artists doing the same, for the age of "ConGlom-O Music, Incorporated" has ended.

    --
    "Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
  19. Watermark by StoryMan · · Score: 5

    It has been asked and talked about before: but the real question is just what exactly is in SDMI for the consumer? The average consumer, I mean. Not the guy that has a home LAN, digital sound cards, and 100+ CDRs of MP3s.

    I'm talking about the family who goes to Best Buy on a Saturday to buy a new CD player or buy a couple of CDs.

    What's SDMI gonna do for these people? Nothing.

    Jack Valenti (the MPAA, not RIAA) has been spouting off about "ethics" for the past week or so. "We need to change our culture so that people realize that downloading audio/video is stealing. We need to adjust people's ethics and make them aware that, yes, stealing is bad. You cannot be a good person and steal."

    Now, Valenti is a prick. There's no doubt about it. He's an old guy of the worst sort: a guy who thinks he's "in touch" but, of course, is woefully out of touch. He thinks he's in touch because he's "been around" for something like 40 years -- wining and dining with Jack Kennedy, setting up the current MPAA rating system, (boy, when I was 11 and blocked out of Apocalypse Now because of Valenti's 'R' rating, I was furious. I even wrote a letter to the guy -- he didn't answer -- and attempted to explain that it should be up to my parents about whether or not I should be able to see Apocalypse Now or the Deer Hunter and not Jack Valenti and his out of touch band of decrepit geezers who have managed for years to wine and dine and subsequently get in bed with all of the politicos. But I digress...) and acting as the rabid lobbyist for the interests of the Motion Picture Industry.

    The problem with the MPAA -- and by extension the RIAA -- isn't Napster or DIVX (the video codec, not the failed Circuit City venture) or peer-to-peer networking -- it's one of perception.

    True, a new business model would help matters -- a business model in which the RIAA and MPAA figure out how to exploit technology, leverage it, and still give the consumer a sense of empowerment -- but the real issue is one of perception. The RIAA and MPAA are vile whores.

    I don't say this lightly, either. Not too long ago I was at an 'eGovernment' conference (one of the dumbest conferences I'd ever attended -- government, for sure, has no clue when it comes to understanding the way business and tecnology have shifted, but, again, I digress...) and the keynote speaker was some higher-up on the US Internet Council. (Some non-profit US group out of Washington DC who go around the globe and attempt to get everybody to buy into the global benefits of the internet). This guy -- a fantastic speaker, by the way -- was asked a question about Napster and about pending litigation against Napster and Scour and guess what? The first words out of his mouth was this: "The RIAA is vile."

    No kidding. It was a joke -- and he switched into his serious "Well, okay, not vile, but you know ..." mode, but it was a telling moment.

    The audience cheered. For me, it was the high point of a dumb conference. (Can someone explain to me why the government -- state and local, especially -- don't get dot-com speakers to speak at these things instead of government webheads? I mean, if the government is gonna learn anything about "leveraging" the internet, the place they should for instruction is into the private sector and not back into the public sector, where -- except for some academic wonks, perhaps -- they will find only cluenessness piled upon more cluelessnes, but, okay, I digress...)

    My point is this: that the RIAA and MPAA both need better PR if anyone is gonna buy into Valenti's ethical arguments. It's as if a pimp complains to a Congressman about how his "business has been bad lately because the ladies been giving it up for free. Man, I gotta install computerized chastity belts and issue encrypted keys!"

    No one listens to the pimp because he's a pimp. The other pimps praise the first pimp's ethics -- Yeah, man, there is an Ethics of Pimping -- but everybody else gives the pimp a crazy look: Ethics? You're not serious, right?

    That's what Valenti is fighting against. He's in a PR war for getting Joe Consumer to buy into the Ethics of the Pimp.

  20. Re:Not their intellectual property by wmoyes · · Score: 3

    When I downloaded the test files, I never clicked on the 'I agree' button. I simply used a URL that would get me to the files without agreeing to their contract. Note that they said in the legalize 'by CLICKING you agree'. Well I never clicked. I typed. Also just to make sure I appended '?Never_clicked_do_not_agree_to_terms' to the URL. Well guess what, they let me download the test data and submit to the oracle anyway.

  21. Applicability to the DeCSS case? by bhurt · · Score: 2

    I wonder if the lawyers defending 2600 et. al. are watching?

  22. Re:What does a watermark do? by AntiNorm · · Score: 2

    Exactly why doesn't the RIAA just distribute encrypted files? If the player doesn't have the right key, it can't play.

    That's what the MPAA did with DVDs and CSS. And look how long it took to break the encryption...

    =================================

    --

    I pledge allegiance to the flag...
    of the Corporate States of America...
  23. Re:Erratum: disclosure by Andrew+Leonard · · Score: 2

    I've been trying to figure out an appropriate way to alert Slashdot to stories that I think Slashdot readers will appreciate. I've been a longtime participant in Slashdot, and for years refrained from submitting any of my own stories, basically figuring that it was up to Slashdot whether they were worth covering. Then Slashdot linked to a Red Herring reprint of a story we ran on Gnutella, and I wrote Rob Malda asking how this could be avoided, and he said that everybody "else" submits their own stories. So since then I've started submitting them -- although the only stories I've submitted have been SDMI related

    --

    Editor, Salon Business & Technology

    Salon.com

  24. Haiku by 575 · · Score: 2

    If it can be heard
    Regardless of protection
    It can be copied

    1. Re:Haiku by (void*) · · Score: 3

      It may be copied
      But if watermark remains
      SDMI wins

    2. Re:Haiku by psergiu · · Score: 3

      This makes no difference
      As watermarked MP3s
      Will napster.

      --

      --
      1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
    3. Re:Haiku by (void*) · · Score: 3

      Napster all you want
      Watermark will track you down
      says SDMI

    4. Re:Haiku by Fjord · · Score: 2

      Haiku has 5 sounds
      Followed then by 7 sounds
      And then again 5

      --
      -no broken link
  25. Re:However by takemiya · · Score: 3
    And regardless of how strong it is, there would always be someone out there trying (and probably succeeding) to hack it

    Trying and definitely succeeding. If a software SDMI verifier ever comes out, it'll be disassembled and cracked before you can say 'script kiddie'; otherwise, it'll just take a little longer for some grad student researching ultramicroscopy to take apart their SDMI Rio and map the chips. The only possible point of SDMI is to stall free copying until the industry pushes draconian laws through Congress and/or to make the pointy haireds at the top think Something Is Being Done.

  26. Erratum: disclosure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4

    Andrew Leonard is a contributing editor at Salon magazine, a fact which no doubt was accidentally dropped from the story in editing. Timothy apologises for this and will endeavour to make sure that connections between media outlets pushing stories on slashdot are made clear in future.

  27. Karma whorish link by crisco · · Score: 2
    For those of you too lazy to read the article for more links: FAQ for research group that is playing with SDMI.

    +2 is high enough, thank you.

    I'm awake cause I can't sleep. This sux, tomorrow is going to be a long day.

    --

    Bleh!

    1. Re:Karma whorish link by crisco · · Score: 2
      That did sound arrogant, didn't it?

      I didn't mean it that way - I meant that the default score of 2 was enough, it didn't need to go higher.

      At least someone seemed to figure it out...

      --

      Bleh!

  28. What does a watermark do? by bellings · · Score: 2

    I must profess complete ignorance with respect to watermarks. A handful of bits of additional information can be encoded in a sound file. So what? What advantage does the recording industry see in this?

    Obviously, this is only useful if your software extracts this information, and is designed to do something with it. Will a players be built that will only play a song if it contains a watermark customized for that particular player? Or is a player somehow check the watermark against a list of songs it is licensed to play? Or are copyright enforcement teams going to systematically suck down every song they can find on napster, and then check the watermarks of those songs, in order to automate the discovery possible copyright infringement? Or is there some other possibility that I don't see?

    Installing and depending on watermark-enforcement software in all available players seems questionable, at best. First, there is very little to stop anyone from either simply writing a player that ignores watermark, or hacking an existing player to ignore watermarks. Moreover, if the watermark-enforcement code gets included in commonly available software (like Windows Media Player), then everyone will have a very simple mechanism for testing the efficacy of de-watermarking software: download some de-watermarking software, use it on a sound file, and then try to play the sound file with your favorite copyright-enforcement software. If it doesn't play, download different de-watermarking software, and try it again. Repeat as often as necessary. Obviously, both the distribution of media players without watermark enforcement, and the distribution of de-watermarking softare, will face many legal challenges, but neither would face any great technical challenge. Indeed, using a watermark this way would appear to be about as useful as "encrypting" the file -- i.e., not really useful at all. I hope no-one tries to implement this -- its bound to only create ill will and bad law.

    Instead, there are many advantages to keeping the watermark recognition software under lock and key, to be used only as part of a systematic process of scouring the net for copyright violations. Suddenly, it would be difficult to rip a song and then be absolutely certain the watermark was cleanly removed. If fact, the de-watermarking software itself may leave a signature, which could be searched for. If combined with a system of audio fingerprinting, this could be a very powerful tool to catch copyright infringement. Imagine if Metallica could systematically find people actually sharing Metallica songs, instead of simply finding people sharing files that have certain filenames. I am also much less hostile towards this use of watermarking -- in fact, I may even welcome it. I could still privately trade music among my friends, artists that wished to give away their music could be free to do so, no-one would have to deal with annoying copy protection schemes, and the record labels would have a mechanism to discover people trading copyright material on filesharing systems such as napster. This might be a win.

    --
    Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
    1. Re:What does a watermark do? by Xcott+R13,+3(0,R4) · · Score: 5
      Hi,

      Very keen observations, all of them. The intended model for SDMI, presently, is that all music will have the same kind of watermarks for which all players will be screening. These will be used in a general infrastructure by which the marks will instruct players/recorders to not accept marked music under certain conditions, for instance if it is or has been compressed.

      Watermarking with secret keys to detect rather than directly prevent unauthorized distribution is technologically feasible. Using a secret key would make it more secure, and with no detector to use as an oracle one could not tell if their music is marked or not. There is still a serious problem with this technology however: if detection is automated, people could still perform tricks to misalign the music with a detector. Simply encrypting an MP3 and providing the key will scramble it beyond the ability of a webcrawler to find it.

  29. We all know that this is folly. by Vryl · · Score: 4
    I have previously hacked Digimarc watermarks in Photoshop, using only Photoshop and Digimarc. Does this make Photoshop and Digimarc illegal circumvention devices under the DCMA?

    The technique was basically to defeat the watermark (using noise or blur or whatever), and overlay a new one on it using the digimarc software. I am willing to bet that basically the same technique would work with sound files, as many of the principles are the same.

    If I have access to the SDMI watermarking software (as I am sure to have sooner or later if the clueless fools go ahead with any of this nonsense) then I will be able to replace their watermarks with one of my own. This is pretty funny, not only will I have 'cracked' SDMI, but actually subverted it to my own purposes.

    Everybody knows that watermarking will never work, why are they persisting with this madness?

    I wish they would get a clue, and offer me something that I want, like good quality songs from complete catalogues available from reliable servers. In which case, I will gladly pay a reasonable tarriff for access to them.

  30. Not their intellectual property by Xcott+R13,+3(0,R4) · · Score: 2
    Nothing you do in the contest becomes the intellectual property of SDMI until you sign it away.

    In particular, to be eligible for the prize money you would probably have to sign away your intellectual property rights. That's probably where the idea first arose that attacks are their property.

    Nobody in our group signed any such document, and we're pretty sure we can just publish all the details.

  31. copyprotecting? by Sakke · · Score: 2

    how is this so called copy protecting supposed to work? i mean, i can just play the song at the studio through analog stuff (and since 80 % of the modern records are overcompressed and sound bad, i would turn some knobs too) and record it and distribute that copy if i wanted. i mean, if it can be played, it can be recorded - and if the watermarking is done so that human can't hear it, then you can't hear it in the copy either. damn stupid people.

    --
    ound the message used repetitively over and over still nothing grows silen
  32. Felten was the one who took IE out of Win98 by Paul+Crowley · · Score: 4

    It was Dr. Edward Felten who demonstrated for the courts that IE could in fact be removed from Windows 98, and that clear benefits to the consumer resulted from doing so. It was his evidence that Microsoft attempted to discredit with a video that later turned out to be faked.

    See http://www0.mercurycenter.com/business/microsoft/t rial/breaking/docs/mstrial121198.htm , http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2196 350,00.html.

    The stupid Slashdot line breaking algorithm means that you may have to deal with spaces it introduces. Since it seems you can hide spaces in tags, it should be fairly straightforward for trolls to introduce overlong lines this way - I hope Taco fixes it...
    --

    --
    Xenu loves you!
  33. Juicy Backwards Masking! by jeremy+f · · Score: 3

    Juicy Backwards Masking!

    Don't wait, for a limited time, the SDMI is selling advertisements as digital music watermarks! Listen to these satisfied customers:

    Rob Malda: "Well, I wasn't too sure about supporting SDMI and the RIAA and all, but ever since I had my voice recorded saying "come to slashdot.org" over and over again on the newest Brittney Spears album, my site has been overpopulated by teeny-boppers! But damn if I'm not enjoying the extra revenue from banner ads!"

    Imagine if this was used for political purposes... Hell, the canidates wouldn't even need to campaign, all they'd need to do is purchase subliminal message time in popular music!

    "You will vote for Al Gore"
    "We will vote for Al Gore"

  34. And the "politic sarcasm" award goes to... by Chops · · Score: 4
    Carver believes that by forgoing the prize they may not be required to sign any nondisclosure agreements.

    The group doesn't believe watermarks are useless -- but merely inadequate for this kind of project. As Craver puts it, "We are not out to get the recording industry; if our results can help anyone develop a better security system, we're happy."

    Translation: "It'll never work. You guys are fucked. Keep the money."
  35. SDMI will (eventually) impact fair use rights by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 3
    From the SDMI Faq?:

    Q - Can SDMI-compliant devices play MP3 files? A - Yes. SDMI-compliant devices will be able to play all existing digital formats; it is up to the manufacturer of each device to choose which particular formats to support. The only content SDMI-compliant devices will not play is illegally copied SDMI music beginning in Phase 2. Unlike non-SDMI devices, SDMI devices can also be upgraded to play new music released in the future in new SDMI-compliant formats. And many SDMI portable devices will be able to play music that is digitally downloaded in new, protected formats right away.

    9. Q - Will the watermark technology chosen for Phase 1 interfere with existing CD players? A - There are hundreds of millions of CD players in the marketplace and nothing being done within SDMI will in any way limit consumers' ability to use those machines with existing and new CDs.

    These two statements imply that, while "Phase 1" does not harm fair use rights, "Phase 2" will include technologies that restrict the playing of a "illegally copied" SDMI file. The implicit assumption, in restricting Question 9, above, to both "Phase 1" SDMI, and "existing CD players" is that eventually "Phase 2" SDMI and future CD players will work together to disable copying of music.

    The copyright industry has long held the assumption that "fair use" is only a defence against claims of copyright infringement, and does not constitute a right in itself. In their view, all copying is illegal, unless specifically authorized by a court (in dismissing a infringement suit), or by the copyright owner. So, even if a consumer wishes to copy music to give to a friend, or excerpt a segment for a brief review (all examples of fair use), he or she will be stymied by "anti-piracy" features in the SDMI-2 spec.

    CSS, SDMI, and like technologies act as contracts, to be enforced by compliant devices. These enforcement mechanisms will eventually have technological ability to prevent copying, and Congress has passed a number of laws (17 US Code 1201 et seq) that attach legal penalties to the circumvention of these pseudo contracts.

    If and when SDMI becomes widespread, various lobyists from the RIAA, MPPA et al. will propose that the importation and manufacture of devices that do not recognize SDMI be banned (as contributing to piracy). (DAT players and VHS VCRs are already required to implement "Serial Copy Management System" and "Color stripe" respectively.

    So yes, SDMI is something to be feared. It's akin to having an RIAA lawyer living in your computer.

  36. For Shame! They are complicit with RIAA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4

    These guys, by participating in this challenge, are helping the RIAA to restrict our ability to engage in fair use, period. In short, they are helping the process along to take away our freedom.

    Reading their tortured excuses in their FAQ (http://www.cs.princeton.edu/sip/sdmi/faq.html) regarding why it was ok to help the RIAA because of "scientific research" or the pursuit of knowlege or whatever-- TOTALLY misses the big picture. Fellas, if you're really interested in watermarking as a science, then have an open discussion about it. But the RIAA doesn't give a shit about research; their challenge is closed for a very practical reason-- to restrict access so that they control when and how our fairly purchased media is played.

    It's disheartening that these researches are ignoring the political and moral ramifications that underlies their research-- always a most dangerous practice of science. At best they are ill-informed-- their constant reference to "pirates" suggests they don't really understand the issues involved here.

    I am glad they pulled out of the challenge and that they don't think the RIAA can succeed in the long run, but in the short term the damage is done-- they've already made the RIAA aware of weaknesses in their system so at least for the moment, they are already a step of where they might be otherwise.

    Nice job guys.

  37. Looks like the good guys won this time by Sara+Chan · · Score: 4
    Following are some quotes from the FAQs published by the researchers who broke the SDMI.

    "We believe their [SDMI's] general security model is inherently vulnerable to a number of attacks no matter how sophisticated their watermarking technologies become. We can never say for certain, but we are confident that we can continue to develop attacks like we have if SDMI updates their technologies."

    "The underlying problem that SDMI is trying to solve, that of protecting content from a hostile platform while allowing the platform to "play" the content, is inherent[ly] very difficult, both in theory and in practice. To overhaul their system, SDMI may well have to overhaul their business model."

    "We would be deeply impressed if SDMI or anyone else developed a secure system for piracy prevention given the requirements of music listeners."

    In other words, they believe that the whole idea behind SDMI is bound to fail technically.

  38. Back atcha.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2
    I'll try to keep it brief..

    No, we did not ignore the ethical or political issues involved. In fact, if anyone understands those issues it's an expert in the technology, not some angry anonymous B1FF.

    Being anonymous (A) doesn't negate what I said, and (B) the details of the technology aren't the issue-- the issue is are you helping RIAA or not and is what they're trying to do wrong or not?

    The very fact that you think "damage is done" shows that you don't understand the serious technological problems behind what SDMI is trying to do. Just how do you think SDMI is now a step ahead?

    Before they didn't know if their watermarking was flawed. Now they do. Your opinion that watermarking is inherently not going to work obviously differs with their opinion. They are a step ahead because they now know that their current methods won't cut it.

    No, we are not helping SDMI restrict fair use by making them (and everyone else) aware of weaknesses in the system.

    ...so that they can improve them. You've completely missed the point-- it's not about whether the technology is flawed (or difficult to circumvent) it's about whether the technology SHOULD be there in the first place.

    Keeping mum about ways to circumvent the system will hurt everyone, as a flawed SDMI in deployment hurts everyone a lot more than no SDMI at all.

    I think this is just where we disagree-- you want them to make an informed decision that they have a flawed (inherantly, you say) system so abandon the whole thing. I don't think this is likely to happen-- do you think the RIAA is rational? Worse, what if they can improve the system so that it's not so easily circumventable?

    Here's an ethical question for you: what about Diamond Multimedia? First they were sued by the recording industry over their MP3 players. Now if we let SDMI deploy a flawed system they're going to get screwed again, having to blow tons of money by putting these SDMI ASICs in their portable devices. That make them drain more battery power and otherwise suck. This is an okay scenario to you?

    I think it's better to fight the DMCA and its corresponding philosophy itself rather than be distracted by the technological impossibility of what its trying to accomplish. Technical realities are hardly something the RIAA or MPAA are concerned with when the legislation is concerned.

    When it comes to the presumed fact that they're going to fail with watermarking-- it doesn't matter. As long as it is illegal to even try to circumvent it we're screwed.

    Regarding Rio-- yes it would suck if Rio had to put in a useless watermarking chip, but I'd rather have one in there that's useless than one that's effective.

    And what about users? A circumventable system on your portable devices may not stop people with the right utilities from making copies, but it will forever get in the way and generally annoy the heck out of people. This is also okay for you? Acceptible losses, friendly fire, if it will help you teach SDMI a lesson?

    Yes. It was user-unfriendliness in the name of copy protection that's more or less killed numerous programs from DivX to copy-protected software. But that's another issue. If you believe that the RIAA's watermarking is inherently flawed, you can make that argument without giving them information that they can use to prove you wrong with a decent system.

    If SDMI is never going to work, the right thing to do is to keep it on the drawing board. Anything else will yield an awful end result.

    But

    #1) - it may work. I'm not an expert in the technology, and I have a hard time imagining their being able to do it, but they obviously have some experts who think they can.

    #2) - Even if it doesn't work in 100% of the cases, the RIAA may not even be looking for a perfect system. They may be satisfied with a system that's sufficiently challenging that they can easily enforce the DMCA against the managable # of "techies" who are able to reverse-engineer it.

    some angry anonymous B1FF
    (What's B1FF anyway?)

  39. Re:Watch the ball not the person by climox · · Score: 2
    This system is designed to be used on propriatory hardware just like DVDs, with region encoding and other bells and whistles. The public accepted DVD players, why would they not accept similar restrictions in a music player if it does not hurt them too much?

    But every single person I know who own a DVD-player have had the region-coding removed. - I live in the Netherlands, where you have to wait 6 to 12 months for an American DVD to appear in our region... If they appear at all. ;-(

    So maybe people will accept the 'play-protection' , but they will circumvent it when necessary (that is, when they play want to play a song that can't play with a regular protected player. Simple as that.

    --
    Opinions uttered in this comment may not be mine when I'm sober.
  40. Give some credit to the other participants! by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    The article mentions that Xeroc PARC and Rice University (where I graduated from) were also participants in this effort. Not that I have anything against Princeton, but it's really not fair to give them all the credit.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  41. Catch-22 by Bazzargh · · Score: 4

    If you submit a successful hack to the SDMI challenge, it becomes the intellectual property of the RIAA (this is a condition of the contest). If you don't submit your hack to them, but to a third party for verification, they can and will claim you have not passed their tests.
    The only people who would be sane to submit a hack are the companies who have submitted competing watermarking technologies. They have a vested interest in breaking their rivals work.
    I'd be interested in knowing if this research actually met that condition as most universities claim IPR on work by their grad students and employees.

    BTW it keeps coming up in this thread, but you cannot defeat many audio watermarks by overlaying a new watermark. The way the technology works is to add 'adjusted noise' to the track, and adding a second watermark will test positive for both. As you add more you degrade both the original watermark and the original sound, the premise being that by the time you screw the watermark up you have also screwed the music.