Tiny, Secure Music/Data CDs Due in the Fall

An anonymous reader submitted a story about a new recordable disc the size of a quarter, that holds about the same amount of data as a CD. Of course its an intermediate step before we simply stream all audio from the net, but the RIAA sure is making that obvious last step a royal pain.

Comments

This could work against the RIAA

[b0z]

Imagine a world where you have these small disks. Your old CD players are no longer compatible with the new music coming out. You now have this thing that is nearly impossible to copy. Even if you could copy it, the blanks would cost between $5 and $12 (according to the article.) Also, they could decide to lock the CD's completely until you register them via the phone or web much like software (according to the article, they have this capability.)

Now, imagine lots of fed up people like you and I that might have cd burners and high speed internet connections. We will always find a way to trade music even if they bring down napster, so then we make our own CD's. We simply record the audio from MTV or however we want in order to get the mp3's we need. Of course, I can see the quality increasing in digital audio as well so that we get CD quality files on our hard drives, and simply write the cd's ourselves.

Also, this could become a big pirate business. Because noone will be able to play music with these handicapped disks, people will look for alternatives. We could start burning CD's for our friends and family for $1 a piece, bypassing the record labels and (unfortunately) the artists. The RIAA is shooting themselves in the foot with this technology I think. We've gotten too used to CD's and there is too much money already in the CD players, and the future is the mp3 player, not this minidisk that has it's crippleware.

Confusion is imminent...

[tewwetruggur]

...damn, I think I just put Aerosmith in the Coke machine...

Re:Confusion is imminent...

[Mtgman]

Funny, I always thought Aerosmith was a coke machine.

Steven

Re:Is there any demand for this?

[hexx]

Are CD's at 4.75 inches in diameter and negligable thickness really that inconvenient?

Yes, I think so. I don't know who else agrees with me, but:

1. CD's don't fit into pockets.
2. CD's scratch easily as they are not protected by any casing like floppies and these new DataPlay discs.
3. Portable CD players are terribly bulky as they must house fair sized motors to spin heavy and unweildy CD's and must house the CD entierly.
4. CD's are still primarily a music meduim. Aside from the breach into the software installers, backups and games market, they are not too successful at photo storage, video storage and are silly for e-books.

That's just off the top of my head anyway. It's a format that is targeted at data storage in general.
The dataplay marketing machine at least is doing it's job well. Prop-a-ganda worked for me! (read as hooked-on-phonics)

I'm so confused

[UltraBot2K1]

From the article: "The new format uses CD-like discs about the size of a quarter that hold up to five hours of CD-quality music plus extras, up to 500 megabytes of data."

How exactly is the music going to be CD quality if you can store 5 hours on 500 megs. What type of compression is being used on the discs. I can't stand MP3's simply because of their lossy compression and will not support any other format that uses similar compression.

Doesn't matter anyway, because I'd end up losing the discs between the cushions on my couch. I think I'll stick with CD's until DVD-audio becomes a reality.

Re:Is there any demand for this?

[Enoch Root]

That was wonderful. You managed to troll the MD users while remaining Informative. Kudos.

-- ER, listening to his new, kick-ass MD player as he posts this

Re:Well duh?

[n3rd]

Surely something so simple could be easily cracked.

To me, if it's encrypted, cracking it is far from "simple". If you're a crypto expert, then yeah, you can reverse engineer it perhaps, but Joe Linux (me) won't be cracking this anytime soon.

I mean, SDMI was a huge failure, how can they expect these not to be?

I think you have it backwards. If I put out a product that was a "huge failure", I would improve upon that product and re-release it, which is what seems to be happening in this instance.

RIAA is pissed, and they probably made a helluva scheme this time.

Re:new format?

[Tackhead]

> "We are in need of a new format," says BMG's Sami Valkonen

Well, Sami, enjoy your new format.

I'm not in need of a new format.

Actually, I kinda like the idea of 500M of rewritable storage in the palm of my hand, but not at the cost of the DRM garbage you wanna cripple it with.

Speak for yourself

[BillyGoatThree]

Ummm...I don't want to "simply stream all audio data off the net". I want my audio data here in my hands (or in my drawer, or on my harddisk). That's the whole point of this whole Napster thing (which I'm pretty sure you've heard about, since it's all we talk about anymore). It isn't about "We want to be able to download"--it's about "We want to be able to do what we want with the stuff we own (which includes downloading)".

I mean, what if www.riaa.com started offering downloadable SDMI (or similarly encrypted) music files tomorrow provided that you could only listen to the stream, not save it or time-shift it or anything. Thanks but no thanks. I don't want a specific medium, I want a choice of mediums.
--

Is there any demand for this?

[Taliesin]

Mini-discs died a pretty miserable death, and the continued failure of people to adopt any of the other recordable mediums suggest that we're pretty content with CD's for the time being. I think that there is a sort of law of diminishing returns with size, and anything smaller than a CD doesn't appeal to many people.

Any new medium must offer something substantial for it to be adopted. In the case of CD's it was quality of music. For MP3's it was transferability and effective HD storage. What new quality is offered by these disks that doesn't already exist in another form? Are CD's at 4.75 inches in diameter and negligable thickness really that inconvenient?

The next wave in media will most likely be based not on size but on durability. This is the one area where all current forms of storage are severly lacking.

We need to know what fair use is

[ReconRich]

(Donning asbestos long johns...)
This is another example of technological measures to enforce copy right, which will inevitably lead to somebody cracking the technological means, lawsuits, destitute geeks, and wealthy lawyers.

We need to know (in the US at least) What is fair use.

OK, this thing is definitely going to keep me from extracting small portions of a cd for purposes of review, etc. which has always been upheld as fair use. The RIAA is almost cetainly not afraid of me doing this, they're afraid of me Napstering albums. But they feel they have to do something.

OK, its time for Orrin Hatch to carry out his threat and ask the Congress to define "Fair Use".

What would this do for Us ?

1. Buisiness owners who depend on production of copyrighted material would KNOW what can and can't be done. Technological measures which prevent legal fair use would *NOT* be protected.

2. Buisinesses would LIKE this. All buisinessmen LOVE determinism, all they really want is to know what they can and can't do... and then beat up competitors for the can't.

3. We would love this. We would know what we CAN do, and would have a legal leg to stand on, as opposed to having some ignorant judge use an undefined concept like fair use is now to uphold what he sees as "pirates" against a "legitimate" buisiness.

Technological means of copy control are going to be upheld by the courts until such time as the courts have SOMETHING codified to look at (that's what they like). An incontrovertible definition of fair use would provide this.

-- Rich

Re:We need to know what fair use is

[cpt kangarooski]

First, the courts themselves define most Fair Uses, and created the doctrine ~150 years ago. It derives from the Constitutional guarantee of free speech, common law property rights, and the Constitutional mandate that any copyright law promote the progress of the arts, and last for a limited time.

Congress has recognized and codified some Fair Uses into law. However, that does not mean much - while Judges must recognize those Fair Uses, they can still recognize more. And if Congress declares that a judicial Fair Use is not one, it has no impact on the Courts, as Fair Use derives from higher authorities than Congress.

Additionally, the one of the points of having a judicial system is to handle new cases. If there were something incontravertable and codified, you wouldn't need a judge. However, what is piracy for one person may be Fair Use for another, despite being the same action. I don't know about you, but I prefer judges that can respond to the specifics of a case.

And, let me point out, that should copyright law somehow mandate a system that absolutely prohibits copying, it would potentially be unconstitutional. Congress cannot actually remove people's powers to copy works - it would be unconstitutional. What they do in fact, is grant to authors the right to bring suits against people who copy without authorization. Further, that right must be granted only to the author of the work in question. (though it can then be sold, given up, etc.)

A system like this, if legally mandated, would strip authors of their rights to copy works to which they themselves hold copyright - because it doesn't matter if it's a copy instead of a master, they simply DO have the uninfringable right to copy it. Copyrights cannot exclude authors legally. And sooner or later, the work must lose the copyright, and anyone has to be able to copy it at will.

Why you think that anyone who carefully studies copyright issues would prefer such an encumbered system as this that presumes to grant authors or worse still, the company that makes the media, or Congress such broad powers as you describe is beyond me.

No one is allowed to prevent you from making excerpts of a CD for review purposes, or space shift the materials to another medium. (e.g. mp3 players - this is regardless of the AHRA, which didn't cover them but are still legal! This also means that we gained nothing significant from the AHRA....) If you can't for technical reasons, you have the right to make it so that you can. The RIAA can go to hell, for all I care - they simply don't have the powers that they want to have, and there is no basis for the government to ever be able to grant them to them.

The Congress really needs to return to the idea that they must not establish prior restraints against copyright infringement, but simply make it easy for copyright holders to sue and get damages from honest-to-God pirates, without chilling Fair Use.

Re:A quarter of what?

[whydna]

A quarter is a denomination of US money. It is valued at US$0.25. It is a round metallic coin of measurements: 24.26mm (diameter) x 1.75mm (thickness) and weighs 5.670 g. It has a reeded (ridged) edge with 119 reeds. The front has a embossed picture of the first US president, George Washington. The back has a embossed picture of an eagle (the US symbol for freedom).

Info on other US coins can be found here: http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/index.cfm?act ion=coin_specifications.

Re:Extra albums?

[jovlinger]

No, it's free money for the record companies. If they can put three or four albums on there "if you liked this album, perhaps you'll like these" they can hypothetically sell you 3 additional albums without spending a single cent on marketing them. It's the perfect place to put lesser known or niche acts that don't have enough momentum or mainstream appeal to be marketed on their own. If you use a scalable encoder format, they could offer you teasers at a crap bit rate, and then just sell you the additional bits. (does OGG do this?)

They'd be kinda like a B-side album. Can you imagine the stigma of being a bonus album act, tho? Destined never to sell an album by yourself, never headlining your own album...

There are a few negatives:
1) risk; lose the disc (easy, given the size) and you're down three albums.
2) duplication; if the same bonus album is on several discs, do I get to unlock all of them with one purchase? What if I then give one away?
3) quality; there's only 500 MB, so that works out to 125 MB per album, which isn't going to make the sound quality people happy. Perhaps this can be ameliorated if they use a VBR encoder with manual hinting -- this would be a new trade, the compression engineer, whose job it is to decide the bit-budgets for various parts of the album ("let's give the intro skit 96 kbs, which should allow us to push up this dynamic bit into the 300 odd kbs"). I'd expect some albums to be sold with "gold" compression, and cost more, but take up all 500 MB for one recording. Classical music especially, which will be longer than a typical album, and also appeals the quality conscious and price-insensitive listener.

What is this, a joke?

[joshamania]

You've got to be kidding me? Another format? Of course, I know the RIAA doesn't "get it", and they probably never will. This new format is ridiculous. So you've got these little discs now. Great. What ever happened to the mini-disc, what was wrong with that? It was small, it was recordable...oh, wait, the record cartels did not control the distribution media of the mini-disc.

My advice to all of you who own stock in any of the big five cartels...sell it. You're revenue streams will evaporate. Face it, if you make money from a record company and you are not a recording artist, than you are a parasite. Don't try and justify it, just accept it and move on, because the new methods of music distribution are like a flea & tick collar and you are going to lose. Get out while you can.

This is not new!

[macsforever2001]

This is hardly new news. The company is DataPlay. There was an article in Slashdot about them and their technology a few weeks back.

Why the new media???

[Dman33]

Prerecorded cassettes fell to 76 million shipped last year vs. 123 million in 1999, the industry says. "We are in need of a new format," says BMG's Sami Valkonen.

So, really old technology (cassettes) starts falling off so they need a new format??? They make it looks like the industry is not doing well or they are losing sales! My question is how the CD sales are going?!

Answer: Up only ~$400 Million USD for US sales only.

No new format in 20 years???

[Asikaa]

'Music "hasn't had a new format in 20 years," says DataPlay CEO Steve Volk.'

Uh, MiniDisc?

'"It's time to do something new, something smaller, better and more versatile."'

Uh, MiniDisc again?

Nothing quite like conveniently forgetting something for marketing purposes.

Asikaa

Trying to rip off the coke company, are ya...

[asparagus]

...you know that Aerosmith isn't worth a quarter. ;)