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Napster Adding "Protection Layer"
bluecalix writes "According to an article on sonicnet, 'In the new Napster, which the company says will be launched "as soon as possible," users will still be able to swap MP3 files ripped from their own CDs. But Napster will add a new "protection layer" to MP3s as they move from one user's computer to another, allowing the service to control what users do with the files they download, according to a statement from the company.'"
Why doesn't anyone EVER mention vmware when referring to methods of circumventing this technology? It seems pretty darn intuitive to me that once the data steam leaves vmware linux can have its way with it. There are plenty of loopback capture methods for linux.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
The thing that Napster are forgetting is why it is they were so successful: It was a classic example of viral marketing. People used it because it was useful. Then more people used it because other people told them it was great - not because they'd seen a billboard advertising it. If they want to charge for napster, and the downloaded MP3's only work on that one machine - its not going to be useful is it?
So the message to those wishing to ego-pander by having (say) 100 million people using their software is simple: Go.
It has to work on Windows, like it or not, and it has to be simple. It has to be secure, it has to scale, it has to be able to search, and it would be damn handy to the lamer in the street if it could cut collections of MP3's to audio CD.
Obviously it has to be completely decentralised, cos RIAA are going to go nuts.
Go for it. Make it work. And do yourself a favour by not putting the letters 'GN' at the start of it's name.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Well, it won't be an MP3, will it? It'll be some proprietary Napster file format. Most likely your Napster client has a private key and a public key. When you get an MP3 from someone else, your client gives their client the public key, their box uses this key to encode the outgoing .mp3 as a .nap, then it can only be played on your box because only your box has the private key.
Piece of piss. How does it play in an MP3 player? It won't.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
The nightmare that immediately jumped into my mind is that this "protection layer" could come to involve brief advertisements from our favorite corporations, prepended to the beginning of every song. Otherwise, this seems like not much of a problem or hindrance--if the idea is to keep people from burning MP3s to CDs, there's nothing to keep them from writing dummy device drivers as an intermediate step. More power to them.
- could they block alternative client tools?
- could they keep people from removing the protection?
the answer to 1. is probably. Certainly they could sue anybody who is distributing alternative client tools ala deCSS and keep those tools out of the hands of most users. They could also have some kind of access mechanism that would change every couple of weeks that would be transparent to end users who would get automatic client updates to be able to use the new access mechanisms. Thus a determined hacker could get through the protection, but they would have to do it again every couple of weeks and couldn't reasonably distribute the hack to a wide enough user community to pose a threat to napster.the answer to 2. is less clear. Obviously they couldn't change the way you access older napster files on your computer. They could encrypt them, which isn't terribly feasible in terms of having to be decrypted for every playback unless the encryption is weak (maybe I am wrong on this). What about having a funky scrambled format that changed regularly? then anyone cracking it would again have to distribute updates through illegal means, which is slow, whereas their software could remember the old formats and descramble based on the date of the file.
I guess my point is that they don't have make it impossible to decrypt mp3 files to win. They just have to make it impractical for users to do it on a wide scale.
I agree with many of the posters that it's likely this copy protection will be easy to hack. I doubt that it will be on purpose, but napster just doesn't have the kind of resources or time it takes to play this kind of game. But I do think that it's a legitimate attempt. Napster investors and board members aren't looking to play cute tricks and sly wink-wink kind of routines with all the visibility this has in the country and on the hill. This is all about making their authorized subscription service, which seems like it at this point will have only one major contributor, Bertelsmann (and if other label showings are any indications, maybe only with a few hundred selected traffic)
The main issue is really the injunction. Once a reasonable rewrite is made, napster will be compelled to turn off file sharing. The injunction has nothing to do with appropriate copy protection. It will still be illegal to swap songs, even if you can't burn them.
So that leaves the high profile 1 billion dollar deal that is nothing more than a political stance, an effort to show good faith that napster wants to pay. Can you imagine as a record label taking $30 million a year to give a license to piracy?? Do you think any of the labels would take that deal from off-shore pirates? And a little honesty... Where does the $200 million a year that napster would have to produce come from? How much revenue did they book in '00 ? Probably no more than 10-20 million, and if they did that would put them at the top of the heap in private online music ventures.
The real truth of the matter is that no one, NO ONE, is doing well with online music. No one can beg borrow or steal licenses to deliver digital as the primary medium. What you're left with is a bunch of marginal online radio apps and places that offer a horrible cross-section of downloadables (emusic). Or deals where the right to stream is gotten buy buying in the correct brick and mortar store. It makes no difference, look around at the online music industry and everyone is laying off. It's simply a game of how much money you have left before you go under.
Napster is no different. The $50 million they got from Bertelsmann had heavy contingencies. If you had made an investment in napster, wouldn't you have been looking at the appeal results as to how you felt about following through with the investments.
They even hinted at doing napster for movies and games. Apparently they saw scour's unqualified success as a reason to run down that road. What on earth makes them think they can be successful against the MPAA when the RIAA has been so effective?
Napster's management has cracked like everyone else's, and they are desperately grasping at any business plan that hits their desks. It's quite interesting to watch, you can be sure it will continue to be entertaining.