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French Hackers Break SDMI
jonathan_ingram writes: "Two French hackers have
reportedly
broken SDMI. Various other groups participating in the SDMI challenge have claimed to have accomplished this already. However, this group has decided to publish their results, available at
their site.
The site includes a detailed technical report, together with the history and background of SDMI, and the SDMI challenge." Ah, what a seemingly good idea SDMI was for the media companies - now I fully expect to see a story "Newborn infant cracks SDMI, burps up on RIAA".
All this means is that the music industry will replace SDMI with something more secure. The fact that it was broken *now* is a positive thing for them as they don't have to worry about supporting hardware that doesn't yet exist.
Duh. You forget rule number one of security through obscurity - IT ISN'T SECURE. Even using the strongest, least crackable encryption method, or most stealthy watermarking will fail, as the SDMI devices will need to reveal their secret key in their execution flow. The secret can't be hidden in software, decades of 16 year old crackers have shown companies that. Only tamper-proof hardware can hide it, and even then the electrical engineers will have a go at opening up the hardware.
It's only possible to be 'secret' by demanding that an SDMI device contact some more secure device via the 'net. But even then the messages sent back and forth can be logged and replayed to fool the SDMI device.
I purport that the next SDMI scheme will be broken. And the one after that. And the one after that, etc. The only secure way to do it is to actually keep a secret, and to do that is just not possible. Public key encryption works by never revealing the private key. Only a human with locks on the doors can do that, an automated device stands no chance of keeping a key private.
Does my bum look big in this?
This is true, and I think it's really bad.
I hope the legal problem will be settled and that they will publish their results soon.
I have reasons to believe that their results are excellent, especially on the algorithms that for which we haven't posted a technical report yet.
Julien Stern
On the other hand if the watermark is audible, people will be saying "This sucks, I can hear the watermark" (and even if it's only theoretically audible, the sort of music reviewers who can hear what colour felt tip was used on a CD rim and which way up the speaker cable was stored in the shop will be saying "This sucks, I can hear the watermark" just to show how good their hearing is).
--
rant
When I first read the headline, I actually thought it said French Hookers Break SDMI.
--It's Pimptastic!--
There will a a proliferation of indie bands. Tastes will no longer be so bland, and we will get better variety. There is absolutely nothing -- morally, ethically or commercially -- wrong with such a development.
It think it has been pointed out to death that it is the recording companies who are resistant to change who will have to suffer. On the whole, the rest of society will be better off.
Murder is not larceny, running over a cat is not bank fraud, and removing the mattress tag is nowhere near as fun as bigamy.
Copyright infringment, however, is stealing. It has a different name, but the idea is the same. I'm not going by webseter's dictonary, though, but I am using common sense. The copywrited works are not given to you, rather, you are simply given the privledge of using them, as long as you agree to do so in certain permitted ways. Violating this agreement and acting as if you own the work and all rights therein is, at the core, the same thing as stealing. You aren't depriving them of anything physical, but you are challenging the idea of their ownership of their creations.
In all, maybe slightly different at most, but certainly far similar than any inflammatory analogies that I've seen in the past.
-Space for rent
Well, you're obviously not a coder then. I do most of my development at work, for work, but I also do some little stuff at home. Nothing significant yet, but if that ever changes, I would certainly want to protect it. Copying without express permission is stealing. If someone goes to the effort to create something then they should be compensated for their time and effort. ;-)
If people aren't compensated for their effort, then they'll wise up and stop making that effort. I myself like listening to music and watching movies. I'm sure the artists also enjoy making them, but if they can't support themselves from it, then they'll have to do something else. I sure wouldn't keep coming to work if I wasn't being paid. I like it here, but not that much. Besides, I'd have to find a job where I would get paid.
OTOH, if you ever do fnd such a magic ray, let me know, 'k?
-Space for rent
Well, noone knows the answer, but there are a few points (among others) which makes the existence of robust watermarks in the near future rather improbable.
But well, it is also possible that there is a breakthrough in watermarking research in some time...
Julien Stern
Uh, yeah. The French would rather be trampled to death by crazed cows than let themselved be governed by American laws. Quite the contrary - it's more likely the hackers would receive a Charles de Gaulle medal (or whatever they have there) for their accomplishment.
On a similar note MP3s are shit. They sound like crap... If I was the music industry I would be pushing this sort of thing out like CRAZY. i.e. I'd have hundreds of Napster "servers" out there serving up slightly munged songs.
I think you missed the point. The average consumer does not have "golden ears". This same argument was raised during the LP vs CD debates. Many audiophiles claim that LPs sound better than CDs, but it didn't stop CDs from becoming the audio medium of choice. Why? Because average consumers aren't oracles, and average stereo systems aren't of studio quality. MP3s or deSDMI songs may sound bad, but in the end, it has to bother the average consumer enough to where they'll buy the original. And, that's the whole issue. Napster has proven that for 51 million people, they either can't hear, don't have the equipment to hear, or flat out don't care about the muddiness of MP3s. These people probably won't care about deSDMI songs either, and that's what the record industry is worried about.
The article in the above link tells us that the RIAA wanted something which is technologically impossible, but refused to listen to the techs. They needed a watermarking system, and they want it now.
I think the great thing about these French guys actually publishing their work is actually putting the genie out of the bottle. SDMI tried to prevent that in the agreement of the contest - one was not allowed to publish the hack methods or results and they'll likely enforce this by law. Fortunately, we here in Europe are concious of the fact that US does not apply here - forgetting this is a mistake which US corporates have made before (i.e. DeCSS).
Bizar technology?
Special Note
It looks like the site is currently being slashdotted. We don't know how it will hold. Sorry if it's very slow or down for a while.</em>
Once I thought I was wrong...I was mistaken.
Um, mp3s sound just fine to me. Now, I'm no cloth-ears... I can tell "shit" sound quality from "good", better than most people I know, and I find mp3s perfectly adequate - certainly as listenable as a CD. That's not to say I can't hear the difference... I just don't think it's worth worrying about, and I certainly wouldn't say mp3s were "shit".
Anyone remember the great CD vs vinyl argument? Yes, vinyl is warmer/nicer but CD got "good enough" pretty quickly and nobody gave a damn. So it is with mp3 vs CD: Yes, mp3 is worse, but not much worse and certainly good enough - and sooooo much more convenient, which is where mp3 really wins.
Your point about new mail notifications and the like is a reasonable one, but I wouldn't rank it above "slightly annoying"... If I download a "bad" mp3 from napster, there are usually plenty of other versions of the same track there - I just pick one with a different file size and try again!
And of course this isn't a problem with mp3s you've ripped yourself (which is what I mostly do anyway), but that's not really got anything to do with this discussion I guess... All the same, I suggest you have a go some time, you might be pleasantly suprised.
OK, just my rambling 2p on mp3s...
-Andy
--
http://www.gimbo.org.uk/
The AC made a point in appealing to the evilness of stealing - that it deprives the rightful owner of something he has a natural right to. Clearly, for a wholly digital work, this does not apply.
Saying that the owner is free to impose arbitary restrictions on someone else's freedom is the crux of the issue. Do you think copyright owners can and should have such powers? As an example, may I ask for your first born son in return for using my software? I think common sense says you should not. So by your own common sense, you must admit that one has limits on the powers of copyright owners.
What is the limit? The limit of free use, for example?
But I'm not sure where SDMI solves that. Compressed formats will always have less fidelity. It's the simple trade off for file size. What SDMI adds to the mix are watermarks that audibly degrade the sound of a recording regardless of audio compression.
SDMI penalizes the people who bought a legit copy, and still doesn't really solve the problem.
This is similar to a software problem I have. I purchased a package that uses a key. Now occasionally, the key doesn't work so I can't get any work done with the package. Oddly enough cracked versions of the same software are easily available and by virtue of having the unstable software key security "feature" removed, they are arguably more usable. So you have an expensive package that randomly locks you out, or a free package that works all the time. Now the vendor would say they give support and that's why you should be registered. Only the vendor is slow to respond to any problem and when you call with an issue, such as, "My key doesn't work," they give you the run around, claim user error and take 3-7 days for each round trip denial of any problem. You can imagine how happy I am with this company.
Now if the music industry wants to do the same thing to their paying customers, well, I think we know where this is going.
Remember, these guys are in France, so not subject to the DMCA
Dosnt the Byrne(sp?) Convention assure that Copyright & Patents from member countries must support the Copyright & Patents of other countries - would this be a 'copyright' law? Could the Byrne convention force the planet under US Corporate Rule? (just as it has Americans).
We as humans are naturally born with freewill and free thought. If you "create" a poem, and you want to keep it to yourself, don't tell anyone about it. If you tell someone, then it goes from your mouth to their ears, and forms thoughts in their head. Those thoughts are theirs, not yours. When they tell someone else the poem, it is an exchange between that person and the person they are telling. You no longer have anything to do with it.
That's the problem with intellectual property. You are claiming ownership on someone elses THOUGHTS. That's what intellectual means.
Rules only exist by an agreement between the "ruler" and the "follower". Governments exist based on the assumption that we somehow gave up our freewill by mutual agreement, in exchange for "protection". In reality, if we do not wish for this protection, we should be able to make a mutual agreement to forego leadership.
So really, you don't own anyone else's thoughts, regardless of whether you gave them the idea to think them. And the natural state of the world is freewill, not leadership that you choose not to follow.
But anyhow...
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
He was released and given a medal by his country.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
The main reason why content control can't work is that the industry is both allowing the person to view the work, AND keep the work a secret.
They can't have both!
It can eather be viewed or kept secret, and they don't seem to understand that.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
One of the two hackers, Julien Boeuf now works for OhmForce, an audio plugin company. http://www.ohmforce.com
No brain, no headache
Can you document this?
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
well, actually, I haven't seen their French acronymn, but SDMI might be read as being Si Dommage' Mais d'Interesse (So Damaged But of Interest).
Heck, maybe that's why they hacked it - it practically shouted out "Salut, Dommage'-Moi, Intellectuels!"
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
...or is it just to get free movies?
Or is it to gain the ability to play with movies.
My friends and I have parties. We bring turntables and a DJ mixer, and spin & scratch records. We have a lot of fun manipulating commercial audio works to make our own works in real time.
DeCSS is the underlying technology that will allow people to "play with" DVD video content in ways that are analogous to the way that DJs play with vinyl and CD audio content.
Just as many people in the recording industry would prefer that "sampling" be made illegal and physically impossible, the motion picture industry wants to make access to the bits on a DVD illegal and physically impossible.
That's what's important about DeCSS. It creates new possibilities that no one has even thought of yet.
The hell with "free movies." That's a bottom dweller argument. You don't need DeCSS to copy movies. You need DeCSS to manipulate movies and use them as raw material. 10 years from now, we'll look back and realize that that's what this was really about. The ability to interact with commercial video, as opposed to sit on the couch and passively watch it.
Julien Stern is a PhD student in cryptology at the Laboratoire de recherche en informatique, Orsay
Julien Boeuf is a masters student in multimedia, images and sound at the Ecole nationale supérieure des télécommunications, Paris
Yeah, I fully expect to see toddlers cracking SDMI any minute now. And possibly some pissed off French hackers turning up at Hemos's house to have a word :)
not_cub
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
You can't circumvent a device that doesn't exist.
However, IANAL. In particular IANAL in the US.
--
--
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
> Personally, I don't think I would would be willing to exchange getting criminal record for a little bit of free music....
Fair enough. But the question is: Are you willing to get a criminal record for opposing an unjust law, and by opposing it ending it (think long-term)?
I think he's making the argument that it probably means no player for linux :-)
Look at the DVD/DECSS fiasco. If the DVD ebcryption had been broken before all the hardware was on the market, then they would have made the encrytption *much* more difficult to decode. Maybe to the point that it couldn't be done for quite a few years. FOr those few years there would have been no player on Linux.
--
Remember, even out of USA you are never safe from the RIAA and MPAA lawyers juridiction. A guy in Norway knows about it...
So download and save the cracking explanations right now, because their web site has a high probability of being taken down, and mirroring will be necessary.
France has a policy of never extrading its own citizen, whoever ask for it.
Now suddenly you can stick a CD in your drive and a $0.60 CD-R in your burner, hit dupe and you have a 100% copy.
Not to mention, you can purchase a Phillips CD recorder, promoted in ads that encourage people to make copies of their CDs.
Lest we forget, VHS did not kill the movie industry, cassette tapes did not kill the music industry, and it appears CD-R, the upcoming DVD-R formats, and compression formats like MP3 still won't kill the music and movie industries. As you mention, MP3s don't sound as good as CDs. DivX-encoded movies don't look as good as DVDs. So the business about "perfect digital copies" being traded over the Internet will continue to be fantasyland until most people have cable/DSL or better (much better).
It seems out of paranoia, the media giants are willing to push overly cumbersome digital formats on people that do nothing to preserve an individual's ability to use their own legally-purchased bits as they wish, outside of making copies and selling or giving away those. Like the Divx pay-per-view DVD format before, these technologies will be soundly rejected by technophiles and early adopters as overbearing. Ultimately, so-called "anti-piracy" actions will prove counterproductive, as users will run into just as much trouble, if not more, using the digital "secure" formats, than the pirates these techs are supposed to stop. Stuff like "Why can't I have this song on both my computer and my portable MP3 player?" Stuff like (if CPRM is forced into the ATA spec) "Excuse me, but why can't I send these songs I produced to my friends?"
Big Business really needs to think about how many customers it is willing to inconvenience and turn away to knock out casual copying, instead of going after the hard-core pirates who make hundreds of copies of CDs. As the head of a Canadian media association once said to a class I was in, perhaps the industry will have to learn to live with casual copying, go after the full-blown mass pirates, and just encourage people to purchase full-quality, legal copies because it's the Right Thing To Do.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Do you really think that people will have the time and motivation to try and listen to those 10000 bands which will emerge out of this movement? I think the industry will do its marketing again, and make sure that only the best (or those they like) come to the surface. Lesser bands will never be listened to, just because the sheer mass of music out there.
Why do you think most people listen to radio? Because most people are lazy. The _want_ to have music preselected for them.
cu Lars
On behalf of all Americans I apologize, both for the newborn comment, and for inventing SDMI.
Nous sommes désolé.
The goal that the media industries have isn't eliminating ALL piracy, it's eliminating mainstream piracy.
Everything, at one point or another, WILL be hacked, decoded etc. just because it is out there. The idea, as I understand it, is to make the entire process such an inconvience that it is easier to go out and spend the money on the real thing. Look at what it took to break it, the announcement came out in the begining of Sept. 2000 and it took till almost the end of January. And to pull it off took a grad student and a Phd canidate.
In the end those who make a living cracking and selling data/music/etc. will continue to make a living at it. The whole thing is to just make them work as hard if not harder than those who created the original work.
-Life is a Journey, --Not a Guided Tour! ---Trust me, I've already looked for the guide book.
MP3 is only one of a handful of related formats, including AC3 and AAC. MP3 is probably the worst of the three, which is why it's loose on the internet while Dolby et all keep AC3 and AAC under tight control. The reason for this is that both sound better than MP3 at the same bitrates (particularly AAC, this is what Liquid Audio uses.) If you use AAC at 160kbps, most golden-ears will be satisfied with the quality. Let's not forget that even MP3 can sound pretty good if you crank up the bitrate enough. I have DSL-- it doesn't take that long to download a 128kpbs file, why shouldn't I look for 256kpbs files?
Ha-hA go away or I will be forced to taunt you a second time!
We are french hackers, why do you think we have this outrageous accent?!
E.
www.randomdrivel.com -- All that is NOT fit to link to
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Well, as to the comment about the evils of stealing, I don't see how this does not apply to wholly digital work. Someone who creates something, whether digital/analog/whatever, is entitled to be compensated for his effort. Although the work itself can be copied without destroying the original, the owner is being deprived of his compensation for that work. Taking something without paying for it is still stealing, it doesn't matter how the copy was made.
As for the licensing issue, I do not see how this is an arbitrary resrtiction on any freedom at all. If someone creates something and offers to let you use it under certain conditions, you can't complain that those conditions are restricting your personal freedoms. You have to freedom to say no, do not accept the conditions and do not use the work. If someone demanded my firstborn son as compensation for using their software, I would not use their software. The only power they have over me is that they can limit how I use something that they created. I don't think the ACLU would be too interested in fighting that battle.
Not sure what you're asking in the last line, about "free use," but if you mean what can someone ask as compensation for using their work, then I would have to say that they could ask for anything they want. Of course, they wouldn't be guarenteed to get it, but that's simply up to the market.
-Space for rent
MP3s sound like crap to *you* (did you know that sound perception changes with age, the older one gets, the worst it gets?), obviously the quality is good enough for other people to prefer the format and for the record industry to worry about it (remember they tried to shutdown Rio?).
Now, if what you claim is true: what are the record (and othe IP) companies waiting to change their business model?:
-Release for free full versions of a song digitized at low quality.
-Produce high quality CDs and DVDs of the same song. And let pirates copy them at free will.
-Laugh to the bank while people flock to buy the best product, avoiding the annoyance of copying a low quality product or the lack of service from pirates. Of course the price is the same one offered by the pirate, but a big corporation can offer support (your CD was broken, or does not play: they will exchange it), promotions, gifts, etc. to promote the product and at the same time can have a deal to present the artists all around the world singing that song live (so the lazy musicians get their asses out of the studio and make music the way it was meant to be), getting a cut of the money slice. In other words they can provide *services* around the IP that they initialy produced. They have all the infraestructure already in place!
They have stumbled accross the golden egg goose (like I would stumble with my cat in a room: by chance and not by my own doing), and as we know they do the only rational thing: they try to kill it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Well, you're obviously not a coder then.
I work for a commercial, proprietary software company. Our product costs hundreds of dollars. We provide it on an unprotected CD, and have a 30(?) day money-back guarantee. You do not need to have the CD to run the program. Our sole anti-piracy measure is a network check for unique serial numbers. I have seen warez vendors with our product on their disks.
You know what? We actually still manage to sell our program and make decent money.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
A couple of facts:
1. You only need to play back an encrypted/watermarked audio or video file once to produce an unencrypted and unmarked bit stream. Unless the decryption chip is the same as the D/A chip, there is no way of preventing someone from creating that bit stream.
2. Analog watermarks on audio files that survive transformations such as mp3 encoding/decoding are so limited as to render them useless, I don't think anyone actually needed to waste time on SDMI to find that out.
I mirrored it here in case their site gets overloaded. Not a complete mirror, there are probably a few small broken links, etc, but better than nothing if their site collapses.
(Shameless plug): ProcessTree - Put your idletime to use.
The way I understand it, the problem is not so much with watermarking, but with the way SDMI is implementing watermarking.
Since each song (in this case) must contain the same watermark (or at least a small set of similar watermarks), Joan Hacker now has all the data she needs to eliminate said watermarks. In the technical document from the french hackers, they showed that by correlating the audio from the marked and unmarked songs it was easy (for interesting amounts of easy) to find the watermark and remove it.
This is the crux of the problem as I see it. As long as the same data is used to watermark each song, programmers will be able to pick out that data and remove it. Since SDMI compliant devices will need to support unmarked songs (legacy cds, independant records, etc), they have no way to stop this most trivial of attacks.
--Mando
Newbury Comics... They're wicked cheap ;-)
FYI, some forms of private key encryption cannot be broken with any algorithm - ever. only encryption standards where the key is shorter than the message (or the same key is used for multiple messages) can be broken.
Ah - I thought that it would be that UNION of all member countries copyright laws were to be followed. Thanks.
Well, good for you. However, the fact that your company is able to make a decent profit while being pirated does not justify the piracy.
Everyone has a different outlook on their own property, and if you don't mind someone taking something you put time and effort into without compensation then I certainly don't mind as well. OTOH, though, some people do mind, and want to protect their right to compensation. Some companies cannot survive blatant piracy of their work, and even if they could, they still have the right to compensation for their work. Now the movie industry would definately survive if a few people made illegal copies of movies, but that doesn't make it right.
-Space for rent
let's face it: major record labels aren't trying only to stop 'mainstream piracy', they're trying to keep the entire notion of piracy of media, which is quickly becoming thouroughly absurd, on artifical life support. The semantic battles slashdottahs and others fight regularly to distinguish hacking from it's various mainstream pseudonyms and alter-egos is just one example of old media attempting to alter the semantics of the internet and digital-media worlds in order to ensure a place within them. screw that.
record companies currently profit off a set of distrobution models: distrobution of recorded music, distrobution of music videos and distrobution of voluntarily consumed self-programing materials (read music mags) serve as perhaps the major sources of recording industry income. they are want to ensure that any distrobution model used in the web maintanis the same format as that of physical distrobution (pay per record) or takes on an even more profitable guise (pay-per-use). screw that.
the artists want the profits, alternate distrobution methods made possible by electronic distrobution have the capacity to deliver them. (that is, unless the recording industries successfully dominate and centralize the market for distrobution technologies (read: ps3 delivereverythingbox) in which case we're all screwed.
Nice argument, my friend. One of the most intelligent I've ever seen on Slashdot.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Huh, the French ARE good for something.....
Boba Fart
I had always imagined using the random method described, just like brute forcing it. But I get no karma, and no one noticed. =( Anyways, to get to my question here, exactly where does one find out extensively how SDMI works? In the article, they talk about knowing A LOT about how it works, but I can never find anything much more descriptive than a newbie FAQ in general. Thanks.
In other words, if you intend to produce a SOFTWARE PLAYER for your encrypted stuff, it WILL BE broken.
The only way to have securely encrypted music would be to use hardware-based encryption : the decryption key is hidden deeply inside a complex decoding chip engineered and taped out at great cost by some company. To produce a player you must incorporate that decoding chip into the MP3 player. To produce a SOFTWARE player, you need the customer to buy a special PCI card containing the decoding chip. That would be secure, because reverse engineering the chip is impossible.
It may sound like it would be overkill and would never work, because you'd never convince customers to buy special hardware just to listen to encrypted music. But frankly, i'm telling you i bet the next generation DVD encryption will be based on something like this. Besides, all it would take to push this for music would be an agreement with the sound card manufacturers to incorporate the chip directly into sound cards, in a way that makes tapping the digital signal very hard.
I guess that the other question is: Is the city-state of Hollywood going to ask for them to be extradited?
`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Not true. If I didn't get it for free, I wouldn't get it. How does this deny the author anything?
BTW, my music collection consisted of SIX CD'S before Napster, now I have 30+.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
"Violating this agreement and acting as if you own the work and all rights therein is, at the core, the same thing as stealing. "
Actually, it more like Violating the Agreement. The "Thing" is being used in a way the owner of the copyright doesn't want. Hard to enforce on individuals, easy against big business.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
If DeCSS had been written before any DVD players were on the market then they would have *serious* encryption & no one would be writing free decoding software.
Isn't CSS based on good 'ol export-level 40-bit RSA with some obscurity thrown in? If so, everyone in the know knew that it would be crackable from day1.
Although putting the CSS decryptor in a software device (DVD softplayers) was a mistake they won't make again...
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
It seems to me like, under the DMCA, it would be illegal to posess a copy of this software in the United States, since it could be used to "circumvent an access control device."
Personally, I don't think I would would be willing to exchange getting criminal record for a little bit of free music....
All this means is that the music industry will replace SDMI with something more secure. The fact that it was broken *now* is a positive thing for them as they don't have to worry about supporting hardware that doesn't yet exist.
If DeCSS had been written before any DVD players were on the market then they would have *serious* encryption & no one would be writing free decoding software. The guys who broke SDMI should have stayed quiet until the hardware had been around for a year or so, as it is they have shot themselves (and you) in the foot.
...the more complex a security system, the less
likey that:
1 - it will be implmented
2 - it will be implemented correctly
3 - it will work the satisfaction of those who
seek its' protection
Read what Bruce S. has to say in Secrets and Lies
about complex security systems that rely on crypto
And finally, remember this:
mp3 is out there... soon oge-vorbus...
the ripping will occure at the play back device
So, until shmuck intl. corps. start subsasizing
the masses by forcing some sort of weird-assed
copy-protected-enabled play back device to be
placed infront of every speaker in the world
(sorta' like Sony's brain-dead copy-protection-enabled LCD screen), the entire
exercise is one large corporate circle jerk.
...too bad corporate porn doesn't get me off.
Unfortuantly, it's just kinda' funny (in a sick
way) and awkward to watch... kinda' like a
rhinoceros attempting to mate with a porcupine.
Copy Protected Music:
Just another corporate auto-erotic fantacy that
will results in the fatality of the music
industry.
> now I fully expect to see a story "Newborn infant cracks SDMI, burps up on RIAA".
Beware of this ambiguously sounding sentence.
I am French but I feel smarter than an US baby.
And BTW Americans did invent SDMI so, please, either explain your idea a clear way or don't write it.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Watermarks and encryption are two very different things
Watermarks attempt to identify different copies by embedded sounds. I see no theoretical reasons these sounds can't be irrevocably embedded. I happen to believe that the hackers will continue to win, but not because they by definition must be able to eventually, as with software based encryption (DVD, and I believe CPRM). So does anyone have a reason that it will be broken, other than a belief that the hackers are sufficiently good and the RIAA/MPAA sufficiently not? Is there any "proof" that it can be done, as there is for the fact that you can "simply" copy/paste the software DVD player's code to read the MPEG2 stream? anyone? please?
I also think we need a better way for developers to communicate anonymously and securely so that this stuff can be broken without as much worry about the DMCA, etc.
It's a content control law. It allows the content providers the ability to control all aspects of the content, taking away your fair-use rights.
No more making copies of stuff to play in the car, keeping your originals safe at home- something you can do by law otherwise.
No more taping of shows to watch at a later time.
No more copying of pieces of the content for use within other things. You can't take a snippet or even a still from a movie to show in a review or a research paper- unless you've got permission from the content provider first.
No more control over the content that you produce- they're insisting on every recording device have anti-copy systems in place such that you can't copy even your own content that you've got rights to by law. No way to duplicate it either since the DMCA takes away all rights in that regard.
All of these things are rights that have been taken away by the DMCA and copy protection systems.
Stealing I've no problem with- unless it's something they're stealing from me...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
...Controlling stealing I've no problem with- unless they steal something from me to achieve it...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Unless the quality changes, the "rating" isn't going to cut it. How often do you hear "I don't want to buy that CD for one song cause all of the others suck."?
SDMI: Run away! Run away!
---- Just another spud server.
It should also be noted that our newly created song is much closer from the original than the marked version. Consequently, we cannot have any quality problems, and testing the quality of the final result is not required.
So removing the watermark improves the audio quality. High End audiophiles will thus want watermark-removers to clean up the signal. There's a legitimate use for this.
12.00$ CDs? Where do you find such things? All the big chain stores seem to charge 16-19$ *per* cd! The cost of media has dropped too, it is possible to get blank CDRs at 15-20 cents.
You must be doing them wrong. CDex (with the Blade encoder), using VBR with 80-320kb/s, and the results are good for anything but audiophile reference purposes IMHO.
And Ogg Vorbis should turn out to be better in the end.
(this is not a
You obviously haven't used cdparanoia combined with LAME. At the highest-quality setting, LAME produces mp3 files that are completely indistinguishable to human ears from the original, while getting a compression ratio of 5 or 6 to 1, for industrial music (I've seen some ambient music [tangerine dream - alpha centauri, to be precise] compress at the highest-quality VBR setting to 11-to-one).
Saying that "mp3's sound like crap" makes you look like a fool with a record+play sync program (i.e. a bad ripper) and the worst version of the Xing mp3 encoder.
I looked at what the guys think the algorithm is... and if they're right, it's one of the stupidest algorithm I've ever seen.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Why do you think most people listen to radio? Because most people are lazy.
... it's a result of the limitations of the medium.
Because one comes attached to their car. Because it's free. Because they don't have to carry around anything to listen to the radio. Most people use radio as background noise, to alleviate boredom, not because they have a specific body of music that they want to listen to. That's not how radio works. That doesn't make radio listeners lazy though
The _want_ to have music preselected for them.
You'll note that the recording industry, when they provided congress with the draft legislation that became the webcasting laws, made it essentially impossible for a webcaster to allow listeners to select their own music. (You have to get permission from each individual copyright holder to do that.) The lack of an ability for a radio listener to preselect is where the industry's power to promote their music comes from. If users could select what music they wanted to hear on the radio, then the recording industry would be powerless to impose new music on the airwaves. People would listen to what they wanted to, instead of what the RIAA wanted them to.
What if you could type in your desired playlist into your radio, and hear it, along with commercials, news reports, and weather reports. You'd be happy, because you'd hear the songs you like. The radio station would be happy, because you'd be listening to their commercials. The record companies would be very unhappy, because they don't get to pound the new Brittany Spears song into your brain.
That's why they made it illegal. Not because people want to have music preselected for them, but because people put up with it because they have no choice, and the recording industry is hell bent on keeping things that way.
- John
Our sole anti-piracy measure is a network check for unique serial numbers.
This is what Office 2000 does. After you have launched the program fifty times, it connects via a wide-area network to Microsoft's server to verify the authenticity of the software. And if you do not connect to the network, Office refuses to run as advertised.
The next step in unique serial numbers is associating each serial number with a name and password.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Everybody's decrying the alleged loss of quality with MP3s. That's a complete crock.
Environment: Most music is listened to in a noisy social settings like bars and dives and juke joints (and elevators.)
Equipment: The speakers suck because not everybody can afford B&O, B&W, SAE. (the rest of the components are pretty much good enough from 20 to 20kHz.)
Listeners: The listener's ears suck because listening to NIN full blast damages the cilia in you cochlea. Hell, listening to Mantovanni full blast damages the cilia in you cochlea. Years of listening to your mother's nagging full blast damages the cilia in you cochlea.
Source: Then you have to consider that one man's music is another man's noise. Personally I loathe Mariachi music, polka and Thrash Metal. This week's pop goddess is next week's remainder bin and that's how the music industry makes its money, on churn. Quality? Puh-leeze.
Okay, the environment sucks, the speakers suck, the listeners degrade and the source sucks.
MP3 is plenty good enough and I'll keep my old drives and CD burner for my own use and the RIAA can KMA.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
MP3s sound like crap to *you* (did you know that sound perception changes with age, the older one gets, the worst it gets?), obviously the quality is good enough for other people to prefer the format and for the record industry to worry about it
Yup, and it depends on what you are used to. I can listen to the analog noise of old scratched up LPs all day and it "sounds fine". On the other hand, the digital noise in most low quality MP3s drives me nuts. I can see how a college kid would see it the opposite way.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Their children need wine!
--
Freeper Logic
I cant see any reason why having a key longer than the message would hinder cracking the encryption.
Quite simply you have to brute-force and try all possible keys (admittedly if u dont know the length of the key then it's trickier)
Quantum Cryptography does seem to be the solution but it's not exactly in a real usable form just now.
A recent article in the NY Times talks about how the researchers from Princeton and Rice are having to work out the legality of publishing their results, due to potential problems with the DMCA.
Free Hans!
MP3s are not shit if you don't use Napster. Napster is for all the little kiddies who can't tell LAME MP3s from Xing MP3s, and 128 from 192 kbps. If you want good quality, check out IRC. Napster sucks for quality. MP3s are excellent quality, however, _if_ you look around a bit.
Really, they just want to look like they are trying to protect their "intellectual property" with technology, but realize that is futile. The only thing they hope for is to be able to use this as an example of, "See? No matter what we try to come up with to protect ourselves, the hackers beat us." and use that as an excuse to get more laws passed to increase their profit. They realize that it is harder to innovate a new, more useful technology to transfer content to us. They really can't beat mp3's although they could come up with music that has ads in it at the beginning, or a proprietary compression algorythm that is much better than mp3, but requires a special player and encoder from them so you have to have an ad based mp3 player (which would be free, and perhaps written in java to be cross platform.) It's just easier to go play golf with some politicians and have them tax us as if we only use computers and recordable media to "pirate" their copyrighted works.
I'm the king of bongo baby I'm the king of bongo bong.
Yes I am a pawn for big business. I am controlled by the man like a puppet. Just wanted to get that out of the way.
Anyways the thing is this : The goal that the media industries have isn't eliminating ALL piracy, it's eliminating mainstream piracy. For instance there are cassette decks everywhere but most of us still dutifully pay $12 for a CD when we could dupe it off a friend. Why? Convenience, added to the fact that quality is degraded on a tape. Going back to even when the industry was primarily cassette tapes though the same thing held true in that most people would rather buy the real cassette as dubbing a copy of worthwhile quality meant buying a Chromium Oxide cassette tape (itself like $4) then using a high end cassette desk that you've kept very clean and calibrated...it was hardly worth the effort unless you had far too much time on your hands. Again there were lots of people busily duping everything they can find with their custom label collection, but they remained small enough to not be a considerable threat.
But then along comes CDs : Now suddenly you can stick a CD in your drive and a $0.60 CD-R in your burner, hit dupe and you have a 100% copy. Put that with some good transparency labels and you can actually have a professional looking copy that doesn't make you look like a cheap thief. The same thing is a concern for the movie industry with DVD's : What happens when people can make digital copies of DVDs? Back in the day you COULD hook two VCRs together and dupe a copy but again what you'd end up with would be of lesser quality. The majority of consumers think : "Bah it's only $17...I'll just buy the fuggin' thing.". If on the other hand they could easily make a 100% copy and they knew all their friends were...that would bother them. The majority of consumer piracy isn't so much pure theft rather than people not wanting to feel like a sucker (which of course they aren't, but when all their friends are busy duping everything it's hard not to get caught up in it).
I've babbled quite a bit there but the point is this : If you have to degrade the quality of an SDMI song (i.e. a "brute force" attack) then that will keep it on the fringe as most consumers would rather pay the chump change and get the "Real thing" than have reduced quality. It is obvious that there are ways to get around SDMI (i.e. take an audio out and redigitize), but the point of the SDMI is that if it's perceptable then their mission has been accomplished.
On a similar note MP3s are shit. They sound like crap. On top of that the majority of people ripping seem to have absolutely no idea what they're doing and somehow manage to record in the sound of a new mail notification, or suddenly the tone will change abruptly mid-song, etc. If I was the music industry I would be pushing this sort of thing out like CRAZY. i.e. I'd have hundreds of Napster "servers" out there serving up slightly munged songs. People tend to give up and just go buy it. Just like in Warez channels where mysteriously that game you spent 3 days downloading has one ZIP missing, or one's corrupt, etc. They're doing their jobs perfectly.
Totally irrelevant : For all the kiddies writing their whitepapers proclaiming that we're at the dawn of a new world where IP and copyrights are invalid because they can copied : As I mentioned we had cassette tapes in the early 80s. This isn't new. This is the same old shit history just keeps repeating itself. I had Commodore 64 friends who had walls of pirated software. I had buddies who had the big briefcases full of duped cassettes. I had friends who had walls of VHS copies. For anyone who's foolish to proclaim that this is a profound new world, you're obviously too young to realize it's the same battle taking different forms.
It's already possible to get tons of bootleg music. Just check out the next music con at your local venue. SDMI will simply push this out into the mainstream.
Since watermarking is done as a post process (Music (A) becomes music (A') through watermarking) All those engineers and other hangers on would have all the more reason to make away with the pre-processed media.
Look for bootleg version of your favorite SDMI watermarked music at a music con/ used CD store near you!
=MikeT
Vive la France!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yeah, sure, according to the Berne convention stuff copyrighted in the US is also copyrighted in France. But it is only subject to French copyright laws, obviously, which are != the DMCA.
Remember, these guys are in France, so not subject to the DMCA. Of course, I thought the same was true of Norway...
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