Slashdot Mirror
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?"
_ _ _
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"
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.
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!
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.