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DataPlay - Flash Killer or Copy-Control Nightmare?
theancient1 asks: "Coming soon to MP3 players, PDAs, and digital cameras: DataPlay: a $10 coin-sized disc that holds 500 MB of data. The catch? The discs have content control implemented as part of the file system. If a file has the 'protected' bit set, you'll need a key to access it. Keys can expire after a given interval, and although you can transfer files to your friends, they'll need their own key. This proprietary, SDMI-ready device is the RIAA's dream -- if all music were distributed this way, services like Napster wouldn't exist." And the war over digitally control content escalates. Will this system be cracked as easily as SDMI, or might this be something to worry about?
"On CNNfn, the CMO says it's great for record companies that want to re-sell their old music in a new format. In their press FAQ, they essentially claim to have invented the CD-R. (Patents pending.) All new hardware technologies seem to come with content control strings attatched. Is CD-R the last truly open storage medium? Is DataPlay the next big thing, or something to avoid?"
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I was working on a flat tax proposal and I accidentally proved there's no god.
I think the problem (at least IMHO) is the expiring keys. (I have no problem with people profiting (fairly) from their work, or with them taking reasonable steps to protect their ability to do so.)
Right now, if I buy a CD, I own it forever, or at least until the disc is rendered unplayable for some reason. If I'm careful and/or I make backups, it should outlast me.
Not so with an expiring key. Suddenly, under this scheme, if I buy a song/album, I can only use it for a limited amount of time. At the end of that period, I either pay up again, or I don't get to listen to it anymore.
That's changing the rules - we'd no longer be buying the music (or even access to a copy of the music on a given physical medium), we'd be hiring it. Personally, when I buy something, I like the fact that it's mine "forever".
You can be pretty sure that, in the long run, this will cost us (the music buying public) more.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
To some extent, yes you have.
Speaking as a non-earning musician.... I think it would be nice if music were a tad less commercialised. Under the current marketing regime, yes you are dead right. Fewer record/CD/micro-optical-gizmo sales will effect the little guy. The point of the issue here is that we have entered the age where scarcity (of the IP) has just about been eliminated. The system of distribution we have for music is based upon a false premise.
The loss to the little guy is the result of a crap distribution system. Good music has the ability to make listeners' lives better. By introducing hardware controls on the distribution simply to line the wallets of particular entrenched interest makes fuck all sense.
Wouldn't the world be a better place if the good music could propogate amongst friends and/or communities?
NB I'm not personally proposing a replacement system here. Let it evolve like the last one. I imagine there are a bunch of well paid musicians out there who wouldn't be too happy about this, but then there are a stack more not-well paid musicians who produce music because they want to produce music and be heard. Now that we have the ability to do that, why wouldn't we?
When some smart techy comes up with the trick to reproducing rice as easily as we can now reproduce bits, would you be calling that theft from agribusiness, and stressing out? Some people would think of it as an end to hunger.
Read a bit of Andre Gorz, and realise that what may be the beginning of the end of scarcity is a GOOD THING.
The issue here is the failure of capitalism in its current form to deal with this form of distribution.
Yes, there are problems with this, but we should be looking at this as an opportunity, not a reason to be clinging to irrelevant paradigms.
Something is wrong here, but it's not the 'celestial jukebox' concept, it's our inability to deal with it. Of course we should look after our artists, but that is not going to happen by tying the hands of the music lover and denying them the ability to appreciate the artists' work.
Buckets,
pompomtom
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
The problem we all have with these copy-control systems isn't the systems themselves. The average consumer doesn't *care*. They're glad to have the cool new tech.
The problem is the DMCA that makes it illegal for us to purchase gear and then modify it to avoid a copy control system, or to share information about how to do that.
I have no use for a device with content control. In a market with competition a variant of such a device without the content control will soon emerge or the invention will simply vaporize (like most storage related inventions seem to do). I read slashdot regularly and anouncements of the next generation storage devices (holographic storage, new and improved optical storage, better harddrive) are about as frequent as discussions on Gnu license issues. So, my guess is that this will fail (provided it ever evolves into a product which I doubt). BTW. 500 Mb isn't even close to the actual size of my mp3 collection, I need something larger.
Jilles
My response to byte.com's article:
In your January 22 article about the DataPlay storage device, the author writes: "How long this claim, and its copyright-protection features, survive contact with the anti-intellectual-property-rights types remains to be seen". I believe this is misunderstanding the philosophy behind the opposition to SDMI. The big media corporations have consistently and repeatedly abused the rights of both the artists and their consumers, both by lobbying for new laws such as the DMCA and the "Sony Bono" Copyright Extension Act, and by twisting existing copyright law and ignoring international copyright treaties with such abuses as region coding of DVDs (which has been carried over to DVD Audio, making a mockery of their reasons for using it on DVD movies). Fair Use and the first sale principle are being eroded or bypassed entirely, with the introduction of the "You're buying a licence, not a copy" model, which, if effective, will remove the need for the recording companies to respect the consumer side of copyright law.
Just FYI but MDs now hold 5 hours and 20 minutes of music on the SAME $2 MDs. Internal Battery life is up to around 25 hours. Add an single external AA battery and get upto 100 hours.
They are called MDLP and are available from all the major manufactures (Sony, Sharp, Panasonic, JVC). No idea when they will be available in the states.
There a review here and some other info here
These MDLPs are currently arguably better than any portable MP3 player currently out. I know at some point MP3s will pass them but as it is now I can carry basically 50 to 60 CD of music for $20 ($2 per blank MD, 10 MDs). In the portable MP3 world that would cost me, assuming $50 per 64 meg memory card and I can put what, 2 CD in that space?, that would be 25 cards or $1250.
On top of which I don't think there's a single portable MP3 player with a battery life over 10 hours. I'm sure that will change. It seems strange to me that a music device with no moving parts (MP3 player) would use more energy than a device with moving parts (MD player)
Quite a few audio cards have digital out - you could simply record it into a harddisk recorder, and then record it back to your computer without losing a single bit of audio quality. Almost the same goes for MiniDisc recorders, allthough here the sound is compressed / decompressed. In other words: your initial stand was correct (if you can hear it, you can rip it), but it doesn't have to include a quality loss.
-- Haje Jan Kamps -- www.kamps.org -- Freelance journalist / Photographer
Actualy, I think users will soon find that only Napster type files are tradable. Files will be traded and downloaded into SDMI RIO type devices and becomming SDMI encoded for playback because the players will be cheap. However the original MP3 will be kept on the HD and CDR. Lets face it, how many Liquid Audio protected files do you have? I don't even have a capible player for it, so the files are useless to me. The industry will have a hard sell selling Pay for Play content as it can't be played on your in dash MP3 player or on your RIO. The only way the RIAA can get this to market is to subsidize the SDMI players like the Radio Shack Cue Cat thing was given away and payed for by Digital Convergence. That way the SDMI stuff will be lots cheaper than the other stuff. (Where can you get a 500 Meg compact flash card for less than 100.00?) 500 Meg for less than a dollar is proof it's got bucks poured into pushing it from somewhere. Try to buy an unencripted one for your camera and it will have Compact Flash prices on it! It it really could be made this cheaply, it would be put into compact flash and PCMCIA memory cards. MS is working to import MP3's and place a "Security wrapper" on them so they later can't be copied off and played elsewhere. That way you will have to buy the music from MS in a MS Media Player format as blessed by the RIAA. It will only play in HI FI if you have USB Speakers and all hardware handles the encrypted music. It'll be encrypted all the way out your speaker wires to the speakers. (it's an easy sell. Everyone will have a player with their new computer pre loaded with the latest MS Pay Per View TV Box software. You don't have to download a Liquid Audio or Real player. I won't buy that OS even for free! They know it'll sell. They tested it on DVD's.
The truth shall set you free!
> divx failed because the technology came out before the connectivity was present (in most
> homes it still isn't present). People are not enthusiastic about having to plug a phone line
> into the box on top of their TV set.
Bull. Since when is finding a phone outlet a major issue? DirecTV (for PPV) and TiVo both require it, and that hasn't curbed their success. What killed Divx was:
- disks were too expensive by PPV or rental standards
- you couldn't play the disc on a friend's machine, even after buying it. This was a major downer, since people like to congregate at friends' houses to watch movies.
- even purchased movies required a Divx player and phone connection to play
- Divx movies had less features (no 16:9, worse sound, etc)
- little choice in players, especially name brands
> You people can claim all you want about how 'we defeated divx.'
People voted with their wallets and Circuit City lost, so I don't know what you're talking about.
Does anyone have a utility to change these bits on MP3s?
MPEG-Layer 3 Bitstream Syntax and Decoding. (It's a zipped MS Word document, so break out unzip and catdoc.
If that's too heavy, here's a simpler explanation: the MP3 header is 32 bits (bit 0 through bit 31). Bit 28 is the copyright bit, and bit 29 is the original bit. You can view them with mp3info -f '%O %o' foo.mp3. You can change them with a hex editor (set the second nybble of the fourth byte to 4, assuming the emphasis bits are 00).
If you needed to read this message to learn how to do this, I strongly suggest making a backup of the file before you edit it.