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SDMI Challenge Participants May Face DMCA Action
ssimpson writes "Everyone has probably forgotten the SDMI challenge to hackers to try to break a handful of proposed watermarking and "other" protection mechanisms? Well, it was recognised that a group of researchers at Princeton University broke all of the protection mechanisms and were due to publish a paper on at the 4th International Information Hiding Workshop (25-29 April) but have been threatened with the DMCA if they publish the results. So much for academic freedom, eh? SDMI seem particularly upset because one of the protection mechanims broken in the paper, The Verance Watermark, is currently used for DVD-Audio and SDMI Phase I products. Oops. Somehow, a copy of the threatening letter and the full paper entitled "Reading Between the Lines: Lessons from the SDMI Challenge" has appeared on John Young's excellent Cryptome site. SMDI's urge to "withdraw the paper submitted for the upcoming Information Hiding Workshop, assure that it is removed from the Workshop distribution materials and destroyed, and avoid a public discussion of confidential information." seems a little weak now...."
Do we believe we can defeat any audio protection scheme? Certainly, the technical details of any scheme will become known publicly through reverse engineering. Using the techniques we have presented here, we believe no public watermark-based scheme intended to thwart copying will succeed.
nice...
Actually, there are a number of odd typos in the document. I suspect it was OCR'ed.
"Intellectual Property" laws give rise to arrogant concepts like "ownership" of technology.
By saying "urge", they obviously recognize academic freedom's RIGHT to publish it. They just sunk any chances they had in a lawsuit with their own words.
In order for a computer to ship with the "Designed for Windows XP" sticker, it's got to include (among other things) a sound card that obeys Microsoft's secure audio path. In order to make their Windows Media format popular and avoid legal trouble, they want to bow to the wishes of the RIAA. Hardware manufacturers will need their drivers approved by Microsoft in order to get them to work in XP, so they'll need to be "secure" in order to make them usable with the most popular operating system. Given the fact that Microsoft owns everything, and the RIAA owns Microsoft, this will be in all of your computers in a couple of years. Unless we can pressure all of these megacorps to stop forcibly removing our rights, the whole MP3 movement will be pushed so far underground it may as well not exist.
Alright. Why would anyone buy a SDMI CD player?!
I know in my house alone, we have atleast 9 non-SDMI CD players that I can think of off the top of my head. The CD format is so widespread right now that I'd imagine it's a similar situation pretty much everywhere. I have no reason to go out and buy a new CD player. I have a portable AIWA discman that I bought in 1997. It has worked like a charm. It has all the neccessary features; 10 second anti-skip, hold, and play controls. What else could they put in there to make you want to go out and buy a CD player that won't work in alot of cases? Are they trying to play the public for fools. This is sounding alot like the DIVX fiasco, and we all know how that turned out...
Dys.
This comment is brought to you by the drug caffiene, and the number 5.
Nothing but lies, lies, and more lies from the RIAA and their cronies. Why should we believe anything they have to say anymore?
Eric
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Which is to say- don't hold your breath. Did you think these things _need_ a TAS to discern them? You'll be able to hear it quite easily on a boombox- or through a Xing mp3 at 128K. That's the _point_.
It's said that the Verance watermark sounds like middle-distance buzzing bees at a higher pitch (buzzing flies?). Which may, in a sick way, be compensated for by the fact that, with the hypercompression techniques in use, there _is_ no middle distance for commercial music anymore- everything is brutally up-front and flattened, and there are no quiet passages that are not compressed to full volume, and loud passages are routinely distorted to the point of flat-topped waves, so this covers up the other sonic ugliness of the buzzing flies sound.
So, the commercial sphere is going to mean extremely high resolution media containing totally smashed and flattened audio of relentless, ear-fatiguing aggressiveness, which contains in the background a noise of buzzing flies or some other uncorrelated noise at least 6 DB louder than the current worst possible CD-audio quantization noise, or to look at it another way, a noise of buzzing flies or some other such extraneous sound that is always louder than the worst distortion components produced by mp3 encoders such as Xing.
I couldn't make this up if I tried... and it's appalling, but it also offers an opportunity.
There are places out there gearing up to give indie musicians the capacity to do music distribution without going through a label. Largest is the rip-off mp3.com, which only lets you sell CDs made from 128K (inadequate) mp3s. Of course, by definition this is still less distortion than DVD-A with watermarks... however, there's others, and the one I'm most a fan of is ampcast.com, which is just finishing up their own CD program, with the option to have CDs duped from Red Book master CDRs you supply to Ampcast: burn-to-order of _real_ CDs. (Burning from special 256K and up mp3s not available for download is also an option.)
The thing is, there's an extra thing Ampcast is doing- they are taking pains to allow the artists to tap into the existing distribution networks. You can buy an official barcode for your CD through them for $20 a barcode- and get them shrinkwrapped with spine stickers, everything you'd want to have your stuff alongside commercial releases and look just the same as them.
The catch is- maybe you don't _want_ your indie stuff to fight its way into that channel. You can always sell it over the net, after all, and go for alternative distribution- and more relevantly, there was a time when the stuff with barcodes _sounded_ _better_ than what people could do in their garages. But that time is gone! These days, not only is electronic, computer-generated music more popular, but the facilities for producing commercial-quality music have never been more affordable- and at the same time, the people producing the commercial music are increasingly _wrecking_ it with compression and blatant overlimiting (so you could do just as well, sonically, with Pro Tools, or better if you chose), but they are also preparing to add uncorrelated noise many times as bad as the noise of clean old vinyl records (or the quantization noise of the very worst CD transfers), _intended_ to be worse than the worst an mp3 encoder can do!
So in a way, the logical thing would be to run screaming- to abandon even the idea of sharing the same shelves with that crap, and try to establish a sort of underground that would most likely be centered on CDs done right. CDs done right (with recent improvements in dither technology) are surprisingly good, even compared to high end analog media. And we can be absolutely sure that the record industry will never produce anything as good as CDs done right again (barring a total collapse and recalibration of their values). The one-two punch of volume wars and watermarks will keep them totally pinned, hopelessly committed to debilitating and selfish practices that ruin their reputation for professional sound quality...
Let's get ready to spread the word on that one. It's just as fair as the way CDs were spun to be better than LPs by use of signal-to-noise ratio figures. Hell, records have better sound than bad mp3s- it's totally legitimate to say at this point that watermarked DVD-A will have substantially worse signal-to-noise ratio than vinyl records, and it is a plausible claim. Naturally, audio CDs will _really_ stomp watermarked DVD-A for signal-to-noise ratio...
The truth, of course, is that you can hear past a noise floor to a certain extent- this is what helps vinyl records, and why dithering is so important for digital audio. This doesn't help the watermarking side much as that's still an annoying type of sound by design, right in the most sensitive hearing band- but it's basically true. However, conventional wisdom is that the noise floor is a hard limit- and this can be turned around as a deadly attack on watermarked media's superiority. Somebody come up with what the signal-to-noise ratio is (including correlated noise) for the worst mp3 you can come up with, like Xing 128K or something. We'll get the word out that watermarked stuff by definition must have a signal-to-noise ratio that is worse even than that...
I wish that SDMI would follow through with their threat and pursue Princeton University and the United States Navy in court to suppress publication of an academic paper. These parties have the resources to mount an aggressive defense, and the case would set a precedent that would significantly weaken the DMCA.
Heh heh....I can see it now:
SEAL Team four, your mission is to mount an 'aggressive defense' of the US Navy against the SDMI. The gloves are off on this one gentlemen. As you know, any operation where the opposition employs lawyers releases us from the standard rules of engagement.
Well, you could've done it ten years ago when it went consumer. Consider all that time you've had three more characters available to use.
Here's another:
OMR - optical mark recognition
That's how they read your SAT tests....
The revolution will NOT be televised.
No son, put down that Columbine memorial pamplet and consider the true nature of getting even: make them listen to a continuous stream of Wayne Newton records!
See? And then they can't track you down and jail you for publicy encouraging terroristic threats and murder.
mmm'kay?
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Publicity. The SDMI was being introduced at a time when some individuals were having some doubts about efficiency of CSS style algorithms.
CSS was based on the following set of assumptions:
Data that is transmitted in an encrypted format can not be read except by authorized users-- users that have access to the appropriate key.
Of course, as with all covert communications, the key must be transmitted in a secure fashion.
Now, the CSS designers decided that if DVD players were designed with a "hidden" sector, the key could thus be distributed. Persons who merely copied the data from a DVD would have nothing except the encrypted data-- useless without a key. Access to the key depended on physical access to a tangible medium-- the actual DVD-Video disk.
Of course, the key transmission protocol was eventually compromised, and cryptoanalysts discovered that the actual encrytion- instead of being 40-bit, was closer to 25-bit-- literally, a toy code.
Cryptoanalysts and Cryptologists have long recognized that an ideal code should involve a strongly assymetric algorithm-- cheap for a user to decode with a proper key, but expensive for a eavesdropper to decrypt. More importantly, the algorithm should be subjected rigorous testing and/or peer review. The CSS algorithms were not subjected to this kind of testing prior to the release of DVD-Video.
The SDMI proponents, hearing this criticism, decided that their coding algorithms needed that extra bullet point: "peer-reviewed". But, apparently, they had neglected to consider that their algorithms might amount to nought. They only had visions of a future press release:
"SDMI invulnerable to hacking! Music Industry safe from hackers."
And, because, all of the participants in HackSDMI were bound by confidentiality clauses, no one would be the wiser.
Princeton is not public, but it has mighty deep pockets.
Is the constitution above question?
Logi - I can do anything, but not everything.
What? That trade liberalization means economic growth, which means less grinding poverty in the developing world? There are some pretty screwed-up things about transnational organizations like trade authorities, including especially attempts to make thought-crime laws like the DMCA international, but the alternative of uncoordinated, inefficient, and parochial (to local corporate interests) trade barriers is worse. Much better to support organizations that fight government/corporate corruption, like Transparency International than hide in ones own nationalistic hole.
I wrote parts of this stuff
please refrain from exposing what idiots we are and how much our encryption software sucks.
We already all know what idiots they are (cat's out of the bag on that one!), and the first amendment still protects our right to tell others what idiots they are.
What seems to be illegal now is proving what idiots they are mathematically...
For Princeton not to DTRT here
would be far more expensive in the long run.
Why stay in the US with oppressive when you can come to Canada with oppressive taxes! You can't lose. Plus you can relocate to cities which aren't a permenant shade of brown and still be near major centres. NB: I'm not talking about Vancouver.
Hell, if you were large enough, relocate to some of the more remote major centres of Canada(Yellowknife, Whitehorse, Iqaluit) and get *major* tax breaks from the governments.
You don't exist. Go away. --SysVinit Halt
Sure! Here is my copy!
--
If the odd freak builds their own DA converter out of twigs and masking tape the RIAA isn't going to have a fit. Because in the kind of environment where that is necessary....they've already won.
-------------------
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Well, it's not really confidential any more, is it? It's not like Felten signed an NDA to get the SDMI secrets, and is now publishing them. The whole point of the exercise was for his team to figure it out on their own. I don't see how it can be considered confidential information restricted only to the SDMI group any more, since another party has independently figured it out. It could be argued that Felten's research is confidential to him until he decides to publish, but it's not confidential to the SDMI folks any more.
While I'm at it, kudos to Cryptome! The site is probably one of the most important resources on the 'net, here's hoping it never goes away.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Attack on challenge C:: In the first at- tack, we shifted the pitch of the audio by about a quartertone.... Our submissions were confirmed by SDMI oracle as successful. In addition, the perceptual quality of both attacks has passed the "golden ear" testing conducted by SDMI after the 3-week challenge.
Attack on challenge F: For Challenge F, we warped the time axis, by inserting a periodically varying delay.... confirmed by SDMI oracle as successful.
l-_-_-_-l-_-_-_-l
OK, C in particular was trivial, the kind of thing even somebody who knew nothing about signal processing would try, but, come on, didn't SDMI even try to crack their own things before throwing them out to the world?
Based on what I see in this paper, I think SDMI's motives may be misinterpreted here... I think there's a significant component of embarassment here! "Breaking" some of these "amazingly-wonderfully-powerful gonna-save-music-as-we-know-it" schemes was trivial. No wonder they want to hide it.
Note that the papers definately seem to have enough information to build automated crackers for some of the schemes, mostly shell scripts to already existing tools.
It's clear to me that the USA as a free country is collapsing. The twin pressures of a non-productive population viting themselves more and more "bread and circuses" out of the pockets of the workers, and corporations extering pressure on those same politicos (who humor them so as to FUND these "bread and circuses" re-election schemes) is causing us to lose our freedom.
Sad but true... it is pretty much agreed upon that this slow slide is an inevitable characteristic of every government. Our founding fathers only attemped to make one that would suffer it as slowly as possible, but I doubt any one of them thought it would last forever.
Like most things that deteriorate gradually, however, very few REALLY fight it since it spans generations. Why fight for something that will only become bad a few generations later? Screw our great great great grandkids... besides things aren't so bad right now right? RIGHT?
I'm sure in a few hundred years a new, bloody revolution will be fought, this time over intellectual freedoms, when the new peasants realize that their fiefdoms run by the corporations are undeniably corrupt. For now, we can close our eyes to the truth, for don't we have Coca-Cola, MTV, Nikes, Britteny Spears, Microsoft Products, and great movies like "Titanic"? Truly marvelous products that are the result of a wonderful free market, no?
300 years, huh? Crap! I may actually live to see 2076..
It's private.
You can find more information here:
http://www.princeton.edu/pr/facts/index.shtml
-slams
There is NO POSSIBLE WAY TO TECHNICALLY PROTECT DATA FROM BEING COPIED
Don't be an asshole. Public hysterics on Slashdot went out of style a long time ago (Katz nonwithstanding).
First of all, proving a negative is notoriously difficult. I suspect your ability to actually argue your position instead of waving hands is quite limited.
Second, watermarks have nothing to do with protecting the data from copying.
Third, given that protection from copying goes hand in hand with encryption these days, of course it is possible to protect the data from being copied (in the useful form). The very first thing that jumps into my mind is to make it tied to the individual physical characteristics of the device which stores it. I am sure I can think up more ways, and I am also sure that people smarter than me already thought of them already. The sticking point is that all these ways make the *use* of data very inconvenient. Thus they are not very well suited to, say, selling the latest Britney Spears song over the 'net.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
The researchers did mention "security through obscurity", and also noted that they had less information and tools than a serious attacker would have. They also used information in a patent, so they did better than the British codebreakers who ignored Enigma patent information due not not believing German cryptographers would make such an obvious mistake.
(Also, the notion that Kaplan had contempt for the defendants is a little odd: Kaplan's description of the defendants was more or less of a restatment of the labels they had given themselves. You can't style yourself a leader of the radical underground hacker movement and then complain that people think you're some kind of radical underground hacker. I read 2600 and I understand that there's a certain level of irony involved, but it's not obvious to everyone.)
Moral? Did you read the letter?
..instead engage SDMI in a constructive dialogue on how the academic aspects of your research can be shared without jeopardizing the commercial interests of the owners of the various technologies.
..at least one of the technologies that was the subject of the Public Challenge, the Verance Watermark, is already in commercial use and the disclosure of any information that might assist others to remove this watermark would seriously jeopardize the technology and the content it protects.
The specific purpose of providing these encoded files and for setting up the Challenge was to assist SDMI in determining which of the proposed technologies are best suited to protect content in Phase II products.
Failure wasn't an option. It was commercial research. However, since they didn't take the money, they didn't agree. Reading the part about the "clik-thru" agreement (spelling for emphasis) made me laff.
Anyway, I hope that this story will illustrate the dangers of the DMCA so that the european equivalent which is on its way will never come up.
'twould be nice, wouldn't it.
--
+&x
I seem to remember there being (and me using) a link to the published document. www.cryptome.something blah...I can't remember or find it in my history..hmm..
anyways...what happened slashdot???
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Do we believe we can defeat any audio protection scheme? Certainly, the technical details of any scheme will become known publicly through reverse engineering. Using the techniques we have presented here, we believe no public watermark-based scheme intended to thwart copying will succeed. Other techniques may or may not be strong against attacks. For example, the encryption used to protect consumer DVDs was easily defeated. Ultimately, if it is possible for a consumer to hear or see protected content, then it will be technically possible for the consumer to copy that content.
All the criteria are filled: it pisses off the AckAcks, has strong backing in working code and best of all, reads like your average /. post on the subject...
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
The "Boston Tea Party" was a revolt against one such market monopoly, granted to the British West Indian Company to sell tea to the colonies...
:)
This government action prevented the Colonists from buying their tea from cheaper sources, and mandated they buy from a government suported and subsidized monopoly.
Surely you're thinking of the East India Company. They didn't strictly have a monopoly on tea, they had exemption from paying the taxes on tea, which obviously gave them an unfair advantage. People could buy tea from other sources, but the effect of the tax was that the East India Company was the cheapest source after they were given their special exemption - previously the tax had applied equally to everyone.
Just being picky and pedantic
No, PGP had a much, much more novel approach to beating the laws. They printed out the entire code, bound it and then exported the book to Europe. It couldn't be stopped, because banning a book from being exported was a clear violation of the first amendment. When the book arrived in Europe they cut of the bindings and then used a scanner to converted it back into source code. I don't think that that will work in this case.
But since they did ask to have it broken and it was broken I wonder why they are still persuing it. I think that they have already committed to it, and have begun production long before they offered the challange. The challenge was just to get the most obvious cracks off the net and then sue those more active members into submissions. But since they asked for it to be broken I don't think they really have a leg to stand on. Just my thoughts.
So what if it isn't published in the USA? It would be legal to publish all in the vast majority of countries that haven't been so foolish to adopt a DMCA or other absurd laws. Many sites (including this one) have vast bandwidth and would gladly publish your work and take a /.'ing
I would respect your team if you simply published in a move of civil disobediance against absurd US policies. Publish from your school and dare the US Gov't to take it down. The whole world laughs at the USA these days..... (Do keep a mirror in a safe haven, please) Many of us wish to see the work.
They are still presenting the paper as planned. The RIAA's letter was basically ignored by them. I think this may be a real slap in the face for them. I'm just glad they didn't back down.
They are not immature just evil. People running these coporations are the spawn of the devil.
War is necrophilia.
Then again, the end of the presentation makes this point:
Ultimately, if it is possible for a consumer to hear or see protected content, then it will be technically possible for the consumer to copy that content.
At that point, it doesn't much matter what the encryption/protection scheme actually is: their only hope is to use the DMCA bludgeon on their own customers. And unfortuantely, customers only have patience for so long before they say "F*** it..."
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
If it's necessary, I'm sure there are plenty of people here who can build whatever they need to play audio. DA converters are not that hard to build. I don't believe that stripping the electronics from a CD-ROM transport need be terribly difficult either. Let's all get our Digi-Key and Mouser catalogs ordered and whip out those soldering irons. A good electronics hobbyist and good firmware coder should be able to make any piece of open hardware that they want.
Once workable plans are developed, the skills to assemble devices from a kit are even more widespread. We don't absolutely need Circuit Shitty and their ilk. We especially don't need to enrich anybody buying deliberately broken equipment. There is a long history of audiophiles building their own equipment. I think that particular subculture is about to expand.
The SDMI hacking challenge will be back in 2002, bigger and better than ever!
How do I enter?
Simply send us a SASE with self inciminating details to SDMI Challenge, PO Box 123456, Circle 8, Hades 83911. Our courtesy baliffs will contact you shortly after.
What do I win?
Winners will receive 25 years, all expennses paid internment at a penitentiary of our discretion. This includes all accomodation and meals, along with complementary entertainment provided by fellow inmate Mr, Kaczynski.
Bonus offer!
Enclose the name and address of you friends, along with examples of their hacking prowess, and they could share you prize AT ABSOLUTELY NO EXTRA CHARGE!!!!!
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
> > Information Hiding Workshop, assure that it is removed from the
> > Workshop distribution materials and destroyed, and avoid
> > a public discussion of confidential information.
>
> Oops! Now it's on the Internet. I hope everyone saves a copy
> for when cryptome is shut down
Yeah, just goes to show you what these jokers know about information hiding! How 'ya 'sposedta hide information when it gets onto Cryptome and mirrored all over hell's half acre?
Now RIAA - those l33t d00dz are serious about information-hiding! Invite them to this information-hiding thingy, they know what it's all about!
This comment
Meanwhile the sales of CDs have actually started to decline for the first time ever. I suspect that this is not just the result of Napster. I suspect that the ultra aggressive tactics of the labels have discouraged many purchases.
where did that come from?
According to the RIAA 1999 year statistics, cd sales are up.
http://www.riaa.com/PDF/MD_RIAA10yr.pdf
We are all geeks, just admit it and get on with your life.
Fuck 'em! "Somehow" the paper is accidentally diseminated via a popular Geek website or mirrors thereof. Then the entire question becomes null and void.
Any takers on mirroring this paper? Where can I download it?
Rebellion is not only expected from true patiots in todays political climate, it is expected.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
...on our own paper regarding the SDMI challenge. Now, I'm not sure I will...
What I think is really very funny is that the SDMI didn't contact us to have to paper removed or something. This probably means that either 1) they know we are French and know the DMCA doesn't apply or 2) (most likely) they don't really care about our results because we are attacking an algorithm that they haven't picked.
So the funny point is that they had apparently already chosen and deployed an algorithm before the contest. Now they are whinning because the Princeton team (brillantly) broke this very algorithm. And they are invoking some almost "moral" reasons for that, while they probably would have shut up if only the three other algorithms had been broken.
Anyway, I hope that this story will illustrate the dangers of the DMCA so that the european equivalent which is on its way will never come up, and that eventually the US one will be removed.
I would even say this was clearly instigation, and the very least thing that could be done is sue SDMI for that! But I really, really hope that this is going to cause a big stink and maybe even lead to the DMCA being found for what it really is ..
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
[BLOCKQUOTE]Do we believe we can defeat any audio protection scheme? Certainly, the technical details of any scheme will become known publicly through reverse engineering. Using the techniques we have presented here, we believe no public watermark-based scheme intended to thwart copying will succeed. Other techniques may or may not be strong against attacks. For example, the encryption used to protect consumer DVDs was easily defeated. Ultimately, if it is possible for a consumer to hear or see protected content, then it will be technically possible for the consumer to copy that content. [/BLOCKQUOTE] So they are reacting by being an ostrich.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
- 1. They believe watermarks have a future
- 2. They publicly invited the crypto community to hack their pathetic technology.
These people are nothing but fancy con artists who have convinced the recording industry that they can save them from their inevitable doom.There is NO POSSIBLE WAY TO TECHNICALLY PROTECT DATA FROM BEING COPIED
THERE IS NO POSSIBLE WAY TO TECHNICALLY PROTECT DATA FROM BEING COPIED!!!! THERE IS NO FUCKING WAY TO PROTECT DATA FROM BEING COPIED YOU COMPLETE MORONS!!!Someone you trust is one of us.
You obviously have never worked for a large university or organization.
;-)
Ironically, I do
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
Whilst I'm happy to see the results published, it's dissapointing to see them leaked anonymously. I would have far prefered the faculty at Princeton to stand up, give the RIAA the finger and say "We're scientists. We do research and publish. If you don't like the fact that some of our guys cracked your methods, don't make them so weak".
Now the appearance is that university researchers *are* in fear of RIAA and the bizarre legal state of affairs that exists. After all, if Princeton can't/won't stand up to them, who will?
It's nice that the paper is out, and that, (presumably), they can now present it at the IHW conference without repercussions, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
If the researchers went ahead and published the paper anyways. Large universities have fairly competent legal teams, they should be able to defend themselves.
Besides, this is Princeton. I can't see how any litigation pursued against researchers from Princeton would be anything other than a black eye for SDMI. It's not like they'd be suing some little private university with no grad school that no one's ever heard of. This is barely a step down from threatening Harvard (and seriously, who in their right mind would threaten Harvard?).
It would be a shame if Princeton's legal dept tells the researchers to back down because they don't have a legal leg to stand on here. Hell, even if they didn't have a legal leg to stand on it would still be fun to watch SDMI go after several professors at Princeton. High visibility and bad publicity for SDMI. I'd pay to watch those court proceedings.
Moller
They addressed the letter wrong:
April 9, 2001
Professor Edward Felton
Department of Computer Science
Princeton University
Princeton, NY 08544
Dear Professor Felten,
(etc.)
Well, it's a good thing that they got the Zip code right. Last time I checked, Princeton University wasn't in NY. The RIAA can't even send threatening letters correctly.
Colleges and Universities also have a time honored tradition of bending over for anyone who is or might be a contributor. If Princeton's development office has them on file as a donor, you'll be disappointed how quickly they'll act to shut up their own students and faculty.
Well...I don't know how true that is in general. But specifically regarding this case, from the FAQ (http://www.cs.princeton.edu/sip/sdmi/faq.html) on their webpage, they state that:
Fortunately, the DMCA did not apply to this challenge, since SDMI granted explicit permission to study their technologies. We are not sure whether it would have been legal to study these technologies outside the context of this challenge. We think the DMCA, by criminalizing some kinds of study of important technologies, represents an "ignorance is bliss" approach to technological copyright enforcement, which will not work in the long run. We lobbied against certain aspects of the DMCA while it was before Congress, and we still consider it to be a seriously flawed law. (my emphasis)
Above, we mentioned the important role of analysis in the design of security systems. The main problem with the DMCA is that it hinders this analysis, restricting it in order to provide an extra layer of legal protection for existing copyright systems. But this causes the scientific process to stagnate. Imagine a federal law making it illegal for anyone (including Consumer Reports) to purposefully cause an automobile collision. While this may be a well-intentioned attempt to stop road-rage, it also bans automobile crash-testing, ultimately leading to unsafe vehicles and the inability to learn how to make vehicles safe in general. The situation with the DMCA is analogous.
So this group of researchers lobbied against the DMCA. This would be the perfect opportunity for them to fight it. Seeing as how they've said that they disagree with the DMCA, it seems that it would be more likely for them NOT to fold under the RIAA's pressure.
Moller
Ugh. We're never going to have a no-compromise digital audio system.
Free Hans!
Unless of course the watermarking process destroys signal information, in which case there will be no way to recover it.
Free Hans!
According to this article, recording engineer Tony Faulkner was able to spot the watermark 75% of the time on his first chance at hearing it. What does that tell you? That this stupid watermark is going to be something you will hear on every DVD-A disc you buy! Doesn't that suck?! Well, the recording companies don't care ... they just want to stop those Napster punks from stealing their content -- quality be damned!
Free Hans!
I don't have a copy of the file, is it for Deutche (German) language pages? Do Germans need different style sheets? Or is this some sort of style-remover?
i18n is a bad abbreviation
[
Did anyone not save a copy of this document or download the Zip provided? Most wouldn't probably have cared much otherwise. I would have read it and moved on myself. Now how many copies of it are out there? When will these groups realize that as soon as they threaten legal action, it's both an incentive to make as many copies of the "infringing" documents as possible, and find out exactly what it is and how it works? If it's to be censored, it must a) work and b) be interesting. Probably never...they didn't learn it with DeCSS, nor with CP4Hack (The CyberPatrol URL list cracker,) nor now with this article.
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
The RIAA/SDMI released all watermarked music tracks, of which some contained watermarks currently in production, with a challenge to crack them. Obviously, they assumed that no one would be able to crack it or anyone who did would give up all claim to their work for some money (probablly so that RIAA/SDMI could patent any way to remove the watermark, ala Macrovision). They didn't count on someone taking up the challenge (or using their publiclly released materials) for purely academic research and are now trying to plug the hold in the dam before it bursts.
Man... is the RIAA really stupid or just playing stupid to get public opinion on their said agaist those evil hackers from Priceton?
Either way, their big secret is out, just like the MPAA's CSS secret, and the knowlege of it is not going to disappear.
The important thing to understand is that these are defenses. This means the RIAA still gets to drag someone into court and wage a legal war of attrition, while the defense are argued. That's very, very, expen$$$ive.
Augh, I know this comment is a bit late for anybody to see it in the story, but oh well. If you want to see the original web page, license, AND download the test data sets, then just check out the link in my sig.
-----
This pisses me off, that the SDMI expects consumers to be happy buying so-called "perfect" digital copies of music that in fact have known, intentional defects in sound quality introduced as access control methods.
I'm especially taking issue with "Technology C". From Felten's paper on the attack:
Think about this for a second! They simply removed audio information and then the sound sample was accepted as genuine. This means that the audio information they removed was never there to begin with. Argh.
Oh, and kids... 1350 Hz is not some whacky frequency that only bats can hear. It's somewhere around E above high C, which is a perfectly fine note, when you think about it. I mean, I play trumpet, I love listening to trumpet music. Cutting out 1350 Hz will effect everyone from Maynard Ferguson to Miles Davis (well maybe not Miles Davis. ;-)
Well that's enough of that. Time to get dressed.
Tetris rules.
This law is a joke. Every reverse engeneering of encryption methods could be said to be research.
IP laws have less and less meaning. The only thing they say is that "if you want to be ellegible for any of the exception clauses we offer you need a damn good crew of laweyrs".
I believe PGP did it by forming a foreign company, re-engineering the program with new people, and releasing it that way.
I have no sympathy for the crooks running Napster, the idea you can build a billion dollar business helping people rip off everyone else in the music business is one extreeme of the debate.
huh? Billion dollar business? What business? Napster didn't charge for anything and ads, as we all know, are a joke. I suppose it's possible that they thought they might one day become a billion dollar business, but I don't think they ever really thought about how they might get there.
What napster is/was, is high profile & well financed, i.e. a lot of dumb people "invested" a lot of dumb money.
Billion dollar business my ass.
Whenever a technology/product is proven to be less than it is marketed/hyped as, the company will do all it can to keep the masses from finding out.
Ciao
nahtanoj
I know a little about law, and here's some of it: a trade secret is a fucking *secret*, if I break into your lab at night and steal your data, that's illegal, if I take whatever has been publicly released and figure it out for myself, it's all good and legal. for example: the recipe for coca-cola is a trade secret, if I break into their processing plants and look at the manufacturing process to figure out the recipie, it's illegal. If I buy a coke and analyze it in my own lab, the coca-cola co. is SOL. (unless like here, they hope you don't know the law and write threatening letters...)
"huhuhuhh, go away. we're like closed or something"
-Legion
I'm not Canadian, but I hope to be within a decade. As a future Canadian citizen, I wouldn't mind one bit if Quebec became its own little nation.
-Legion
Control? When 'crackers' hack SDMI, and SDMI knows about it, then they have the legal backup to try to shut themmothufuckers up. An SDMI hacker is not invisible for SDMI. If SDMI was cracked in the underground like DeCSS, then it would be much harder to stop the genie getting out of the bottle. The hack is a corporate risk - first try to stop 'em (the protection), then try to stop communication (publishing the hack), then sue them (still making money from the tech.)
Bizar technology?
I just need some space to figure this out.
I'd go on, but it's hard for me to think like that.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
In addition, any disclosure of information gained from participating in the Public Challenge would be outside the scope of activities permitted by the Agreement and could subject you and your research team to actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DCMA").
Oh, no, hold it... they are threatening to sue under the Dumbass Chickens who Misuse Agreements law... not the _D_igital _M_illenium _C_opyright _A_ct. Oh, thank God. Don't worry guys, everybody go home, it's just the DCMA, thankfully not the DMCA.
If I was Princeton, I would write back and say nothing except, "Can we have the spell-checked version of your letter now? Then we'll consider it. Thanks."
Hillary Rosen and her mom must have never had The Talk. After all, it's information she could use to be a whore.
--
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
That's funny. At my web design job I've been naming all my external stylesheets "de.css" also. Nobody at work knows what it means (I've tried to explain, but...), but they just go along with it anyways, even on projects I have nothing to do with. :-)
Stupid Cheap Guitars
Apparently they didn't read, new less than even was available in public sources about encryption, assumed the scheme was designed by scientists instead of scientologists, thought academics were not in the real world - a prize "worth a couple of days of a security specialist's time" forsooth, took lessons in science and technology from George Bush's teachers, still believe the world is flat, think that might makes right and that money is right. . . . j_w_d
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
And I've gone even one step further than this. I have named my stylesheets "decss.css" and actually include the DECSS code as a comment.
Now, anyone who sees my pages will have downloaded the code *automatically*.
Damn I love anarchism.
Come on, Tinkler, Tink!!
Isn't it lovely how if you boycott them, it strengthens their argument about the economic impact of copying technologies, even though it is not the copying technologies, but their reactions to those technologies which contribute to the lack of desire to purchase CDs for some people (well, me at least).
P.S. I'm a cultural luddite. I don't buy CDs and I don't watch TV, but I do (yes, I'm a hypocrite) buy DVDs. Arrgh I can't escape. Unfortunately there does not seem to be any decent independant movie content and nothing in sight.
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
What is even more delicious is that this was released on a Saturday morning -- when the lawyers are away from their offices enjoying the sun and a few beer. Lots of time to spread it around before the judicial system has a chance to yank it
...this kind of thing really gets my goat. I think I've got an answer, albeit one that's unlikely to be passed any time soon.
What we need is a law that would allow courts to punitively strip intellectual property protections from individuals, companies, and organizations that use those protections in bad faith.
Under my proposal, those who abuse the system would be subject to public domainification not only of the IP in question, but also of other IP they may own.
My law would allow courts to strip IP ownership in the event that any one of the following is true:
- The guilty party is using IP laws to prevent dissemination of critiques of IP. This includes flaws, comparisons with other solutions, historical research, or other legitimate academic or competitive information
- The guilty party *knowingly* sought and received IP protection in bad faith; IE patenting something with advance knowledge of prior art that would disqualify the patent
- The guilty party is, or has a business relationship with, the RIAA
Ok, that last one may not fly, but the first two cases are increasingly common, and go beyond corporate malfeasance and into the area of crimes against the public good. The only way these abuses will stop will be if there are severe penalties levied on those who perpetrate IP abuse.
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
I guess that makes sense.
Bunch of fuckin' bullies. Whacha gonna do?
:wq
Hey I thought the stupid dumb moronic idiots claimed the crack wasn't a success?
So now they're admitting it is?
Link.
As stated in my story, a copy of the paper is at: http://cryptome.org/sdmi-attack.htm
Happy mirroring :)
"Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know."
As a former Princeton undergraduate, (Class of 1998 for those who care), I can assure you that the University would probably stand behind Professor Felten if it came down to a lawsuit. And I can virtually guarantee that in a bullying contest, the record companies would be at a disadvantage. This may in fact be the road to the RIAA's demise -- they're starting to go after people with both the money and influence to fight back.
A little bit of insight on this whole mess from your local, amateur psychologist. There is a war on between industry, who wants to encrypt and control information as much as they can, usually to further their profit margins; and the public, who want to get the most they can, for the least they can, and want to know "all the juicy secrets". So far, it seems that the public has the lead, with technology being their main weapon, and free-speech laws a somewhat effective shield against the corporate counter-attacks. The ONLY weapon the corporations have left is legal action. They can't stop you from breaking their encryption schemes, they can't stop us from publishing the results, and they can't stop us from distributing information they want kept secret. So, all they have left is to bring legal action against those few who dare to openly and publicly present this information, to make these people suffer for opposing the corporations. There's a war on folks, and this is just another battle in that war. We'll see LOTS of casualties before it's over, but in the end, I think we can win this one. Any speculation on what the final costs might be, when corporations realize they can't win this war???
Sending spam is legal, ethical, and basically a good thing
If you read the document properly you will see that one of the things that helped them get at technology A was a patendt filed by verance.
I think this means that the technology talked about in the letter is patented, and that most of the information about it is allready available to anyone who wants to take a look.
Nice trick, telling people to stop spreading confidential information that is allready in the patent databases.
Quote from the RIAA letter:
The limited waiver of rights (including possible DMCA claims) that was contained in the Agreement specifically prohibits participants from attacking content protected by SDMI technologies outside the Public Challenge. If your research is released to the public this is exactly what could occur.I argue that, by including the "Verance Watermark" technology as part of the Challenge, even though it's already in commercial use, SDMI already "allow[ed] the defeat of those technologies." Further, by making the Challenge public, SDMI implicitly encouraged attacking content outside the scope of the challenge.
How can they apply this complaint to Princeton U. but not themselves?!
One point I liked in the paper was the use of a patent search to find more information. Does this mean that the US patent office is traficing in this information, and violating the DMCA?
it's to avoid public discussion. Much to dangerous.
Ok, maybe their methods aren't the best but we should all realize that the music industry has our best interests at heart when they do things like this. They really aren't concerned with profit or maintaining their monopoly, no, by doing this they hope to continue to produce quality music at a reasonable price for the consumer.
SDMI now knows how to make its technology better while at the same time has prevented anyone to have knowledge of it, anyone suprised?????
I hope that they will publish anyway, I will add it to my DeCSS mirror!
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
I have only made exceptions to this rule twice (where artists have released MP3s or kept their own copyrights). As a result, the major labels have lost many CD sales that would have been theirs for the taking -- if only they had been interested in serving customers rather than in treating them like criminals.
Cassette sales are down (no big surprise there, and you can hardly blame Napster).
Album sales are up.
lose the good stuff in the noise and burden the attacker even more, intentionally wasting their time.
I love it!
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I mounted the iso image in loopback mode (mount -o loop ...) and did a find on the filesystem to see what the latest Mandrake has.
imagine my surprise when I found they had a copy of DE-CSS in there:
% find /mnt -print
/mnt/tutorial/style/de.css
/mnt
/mnt/autorun.inf
/mnt/COPYING
.
.
.
/mnt/VERSION
its the 2nd to last file in the distro.
sorry for blowing the whistle on you, Mandrake, but I'm just doing what my country wants; turning in my fellow man for the Greater Good.
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Edward Felten is amazing.
This guy is my hero! Looks so *innocent*, doesn't he? :-)
From the law his own self:
USS Code, Section 1201(g)(2):
Permissible acts of encryption research. - Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), it is not a violation of that subsection for a person to circumvent a technological measure as applied to a copy, phonorecord, performance, or display of a published work in the course of an act of good faith encryption research if -
(A) the person lawfully obtained the encrypted copy, phonorecord, performance, or display of the published work;
(B) such act is necessary to conduct such encryption research;
(C) the person made a good faith effort to obtain authorization before the circumvention; and
(D) such act does not constitute infringement under this title or a violation of applicable law other than this section, including section 1030 of title 18 and those provisions of title 18 amended by the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.
Let's see: the scholars recd the copy lawfully (they didn't infringe copyright to get it); their act was not just necessary for research, but was research itself; I am sure they are making a good faith effort, as is evidenced in the harrassing letter; I'll eat my hat if releasing their paper breaks any other laws.
That's 4 for 4.
But wait there's more:
1201(g)(3):
Factors in determining exemption. - In determining whether a person qualifies for the exemption under paragraph (2), the factors to be considered shall include -
(A) whether the information derived from the encryption research was disseminated, and if so, whether it was disseminated in a manner reasonably calculated to advance the state of knowledge or development of encryption technology, versus whether it was disseminated in a manner that facilitates infringement under this title or a violation of applicable law other than this section, including a violation of privacy or breach of security;
(B) whether the person is engaged in a legitimate course of study, is employed, or is appropriately trained or experienced, in the field of encryption technology; and
(C) whether the person provides the copyright owner of the work to which the technological measure is applied with notice of the findings and documentation of the research, and the time
when such notice is provided.
The scholars *are* disseminating the information to further encryption study; if they are not employed in the proper field, then no one is; clearly they have notice of the findings to the copyright holder, to wit the harrassing letter.
Conclusion: Those bastards don't have a leg to stand on.
I was thinking a bed cover or shower curtain...
/Smuffe
Perhaps not, but nor do they want to get in the habit of not publishing research because someone with lotsa lawyers says not to.
--
Dyolf Knip
And this RIAA scenario is even more stupid since all the people involved signed agreements making this a perfectly legal hack.
--
Dyolf Knip
You can take that "almost" and shove it up your ass!
Biatch.
Gee.. anyone want to take some karma from me? I just got too fucking much...
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Duly mirrored on my homepage. Server & perpetrator (yours truly) are in Brazil. DMCA can't catch me. (I hope)
Just read the cryptome piece and this really made me see red: /. crowd that has been pissed off by the RIAA, if something like this is implimented it will affect and piss off a far greater amount of people.
"The HackSDMI challenge contained two "non-watermark" technologies. Together, they appear to be intended to prevent the creation of "mix" CDs, where a consumer might compile audio files from various locations to a writable CD",
RIAA members are total scum, If I buy a CD and I want to make a compliation, that's my business, they are my CDs. So far it's been the switched on
If I can not longer backup my own properity because of these efforts, surely the people that prevented me making a backup must provide a replacement if it gets damaged?
Seems like the record companies want it both ways.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
I wonder how this could be used in a First Amendment challenge to the DCMA?
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
What if Prof. Felton releases the conclusions in an academic environment abroad.
Since SDMI asked for their crappy scheme to be broken, would that still be illegal under the DMCA ?
Up to this point most other (civilized) countries appear to have more reasonable laws on the issue then threatening academic researchers with jailtime.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Ultimately, if it is possible for a consumer to hear or see protected content, then it will be technically possible for the consumer to copy that content.
No doubt the entertainment industry would love to sell you music you can't hear, and movies you can't watch.
Everyone, save this to your hard drive, print it out, post copies of it on your website, on Yahoo Clubs, on i-drive -- everywhere. Here is my copy of it:
e ng e.htm
http://home.rochester.rr.com/tweak/SDMI%20Chall
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Er, the website is:
e ng e.htm
http://home.rochester.rr.com/tweak/SDMI%20Chall
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
This from a pussy who couldn't even post his real name. Call it what you want, asshole -- it may not be a full fledged website -- but what's important is that it's now one(of probably many) online "web pages" where the results of Princeton's work can be found:
e ng e.htm
http://home.rochester.rr.com/tweak/SDMI%20Chall
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
This from yet another pussy who refuses to show his/her name. Ok, if you READ some of the above links, you'd know that the results COULD:
(a) Be shared only with SDMI, in which case the person who cracked SDMI would receive an award of up to 10,000 dollars.
(b) Be displayed publicly, in which case the personwho cracked SDMI wouuld forfeit the reward.
Next time, read up before you say stupid assinite shit.
Btw, Intellectual Freedom means that the results of any study done on a security system can be publicized. If you don't allow the people at Princeton to publicize their results, it hurts US, obviously, but ALSO the artists -- b/c if the artists don't know about the weaknesses, they will endorse this CRAP.
Next time, try to say something intelligent.
IP "rights" should not be placed as paramount over intellectual freedom, freedom of speech, freeom of thought, fair use, or anything for that matter: IP rights are a necessary evil, that's all.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
someone was going to crack all of that stuff eventually. I wonder if it would have been someone other than a university that did it, would they just be outright sued, or get the same threat as the people at Princeton did. Either way, this just means that they have to learn to make a code that noone can crack
Unfortunately, I think part of the strategy the RIAA has in mind is to lobby for changes in law in order to require SDMI to be present in devices.
If they can push laws through that would make it illegal to sell a device which circumvented SDMI, the RIAA wouldn't be as concerned about rogue players because they could sue the manufacturers for damages. Perhaps worst of all, they could sue YOU for violating the DMCA by using your rogue player.
This just plain sucks, folks.
--
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
So, has anyone put this on Freenet yet? If so, what's the key? If not, then I'm very disappointed in Slashdot.
Well, since there is no proof that they broke the encryptions I don't believe that they did. Show us the proof and we will believe you Mr. Clinton.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to see how the prison laborers are doing on those De-DeCSS shirts.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Taking RIAA's arguments further, it would be illegal to report on any bugs found in commercial software.
/. to stop discussions.
Their current argument is that the report would impact on commerically available software and therefore allow individuals to take advantage of faults in the software.
Well isn't that what bug reports do? If would mean that you couldn't analyze and report on bugs found in bind, sendmail, apache, linux, IIS, Windows, Outlook, WEP, etc.
It would make CERT and bugtrak illegal! Next they would be after
If this ever goes to court, it will be a good test of the DMCA.
Unlike previous cases (DeCSS, etc, etc) that were electronic publications, this one is a paper based publication. The court has no problems with understanding things that are on paper (compared to anything electronic) and thus their academic publication will most likely enjoy the full protection of the law. That and I'm sure that there is a long history of corporations trying to stop the publication of formal academic papers (from what I've seen, the academic's usually win)
When coupled with the fact that the SDMI folks presented a formal and public challenge to break their system, I'm sure that whatever protection that they though the dcma would have provided them will be thrown out the window.
While it could be argued that the issue comes down to interpretation of the constitution (federal gov't has the right to support useful arts via copyright laws but is forbidden from abridging freedom of the press or of speach), I think that any reasonable court would probably conclude that forbidden devices cannot include research papers where no machine-readable code is in place. I would suspect that cryptonanysis papers would still be protected. Crackers will ownez everything if they aren't because of the lack of professional criticism for such devices....
Sometimes, I wish people would have the backbone to fight these kind of things. It does not really matter-- someone will eventually and fight and then I would suspect that court will rule in the defendent's favor.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Oops! Now it's on the Internet. I hope everyone saves a copy for when cryptome is shut down tomorrow.
---
Know someone who is stealing cable? Report them!
But then, I wouldn't be surprised if the SDMI people back down to make sure they don't lose their most valuable weapon in the fight against free speech.
---
Know someone who is stealing cable? Report them!
The best quotation I found was, "the Verance Watermark is already in commercial use and the disclosure of any information that might assist others to remove this watermark would seriously jeopardize the technology and the content it protects."
Huh? Wasn't that the point? To prove that it doesn't work? Or maybe it's just another example of that old logical fallacy, "We can't do X because X contradicts what we do."
Join the Petition Against Petitio Ad Principii!
Interrobang, back at last!
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
am scared of Jean Createn, and his pepper spray. if you think corps are hurting you, check out www.globeandmail.com and see what our goverment is doing to its own people. Go Canada.
Same thing happened to my friend, was not suspended only kicked out of the class.
Poor RIAA bastardos are beaten again... when the fuck they gonna realize they have to start trying to find a way to keep up with evolution and technological progress, rather than trying to force people to stop thinking and sharing their thoughts.
Well that's really easy to say when your ass isn't on the line... it's no fun being a martyr...
I must burn in hell, suffer and pay for my sins
But Gods the one who's losing, Satan always wins!
"The DMCA has so far only protected the rights of big business. The courts have a history of supporting free exchange of ideas. I have faith in our courts. I hope this is not misplaced."
I don't have much faith in the courts. Perhaps I'm pessimistic, but so-called "judge" Kaplan seems to be a typical example of the neo-Napoleonoic complex that most of our newer judges seem to have.
Also, keep in mind, that Judges come from lawyers. Lawyers come from lawfirms. The past 20 years has seen a geometric increase in litigation, most of it being done BY the corporations and the powerful. From that pool of lawyers come the next crop of judges. Today, I'd doubt it's possible to apppoint a Federal judge who hasn't done a lot of work for at least one of the aggressive IP cartels.
Judges are supposed to be different from lawyers. They are supposed to be impartial, ubiased, and rule on the LAW, not their personal biases. If "judge" Kaplan is indeed a typical example of the modern judge, then it's obvious that wishing for impartiality is, indeed, wishing for something that won't happen.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"If they were patented, how they work would be required to be fully described in detail and on public file in the patent office. By keeping the code s33cr3t, they get no protection but can hope that security through obscurity will keep the innards of their function safe. Obviously it doesn't."
And the DMCA seems to have the effect of assigning perpetual "patent" protection to such "trade secret" schemes as well. Which is clearly Unconstitutional.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"Corporations by their nature are amoral, mindless beasts..."
Amoral, yes (remember the Pinkerton's "Geek profiling" service they are offering to schools to single out geeks as "potentially dangerous"?), but not mindless. Corporations seek profit like a tiger seeks prey. A world where IP companies have "carte blanche" to charge whatever they want for media is obviously a major objective for them.
"they'll have more luck in China, where censorship is part of the very society... I feel sorry for the Chinese in that regard."
I feel sorry for the Chinese, or any people not living in an open society, though I hate their evil governments. What is scary, is that laws like the DMCA threaten to end all freedom in the USA, and turn us into a "Corporate State" where corporations own everything. This is the opposite extreme of "communism" where the government owns everything, though the end results would be the same.
Just as people were no freer under Hitler's fascist Germany than under Stalin's USSR, they'd be no better off in Jack Valenti's "SDMI Rebublic"
It's clear to me that the USA as a free country is collapsing. The twin pressures of a non-productive population viting themselves more and more "bread and circuses" out of the pockets of the workers, and corporations extering pressure on those same politicos (who humor them so as to FUND these "bread and circuses" re-election schemes) is causing us to lose our freedom.
We are noticeably less free today as we were in 1984, I shudder to think of what we will be like in 2084...
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"Why did SDMI have the challenge in the first place? They were enthusiastic about the challenge, but when someone cracks their technologies, they get so upset and were even reluctant to admit that someone had. If they say "try to crack this" they should accept it if someone does crack it, and also accept the results of that. Furthermore, why were they challenging people to crack a watermarking technology that is currently being used???"
If they truly expected that it wouldn't be broken, that is outright stupidity. Also, their "hacksdmi" challenge would seemingly, IANAL, put them on shaky ground as to preventing a participant from publishing the results of their participation.
Obviously, some corporate drone got giddy with the idea that SDMI was somehow "hackerproof" and ceme out with this "challenge" because he couldn't resist trying to give the hackers "what for"...
This has happened before. Wasn't it a corporation that publically proclaimed the Titanic "unsinkable", only to be proven wrong on the first trip?
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"As for noticably less free, well, we're free from the worry of Nuclear War, something you can't say about '84"
Maybe on a World War III scale, but the inevitibility of some sort of nuclear catastrophe increases yearly. It's only a matter of time before a rogue state or terrorist group gets a nuke and explodes it on a US city. In fact, the breakup of the USSR probably INCRESED the possibility, as there are many Russian nuclear engineers now unemployed, and LOTS of Russian nuclear material out there.
Also, don't forget that China now has multiple ICBM's targeted at the USA now, and thanks to Clinton, they might actually HIT something, when 3 years ago, a Chinese rocket could barely reach orbit with any reliability... And, China puts a far lower value on human life than even the USSR did...
Nuclear fission bombs are INCREDIBLY simple devices! They are less complex than most consumer electronics, including your PC! Anyone with half a brain and fissionable nuclear material can make one. In fact, this information is pretty much public domain and easily available.
So far, it's only the strict controls of the nuclear material that has prevented every rogue state in the world from having nukes. But inevitably, somewhere, someone will get it.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"If they can push laws through that would make it illegal to sell a device which circumvented SDMI, the RIAA wouldn't be as concerned about rogue players because they could sue the manufacturers for damages. Perhaps worst of all, they could sue YOU for violating the DMCA by using your rogue player."
If our government does that, then you might understand the purpose of the 2nd Amendment (just as ignored as the clearly power-limiting 9th and 10th amendments), as that would be an indication that the time may be for some kind of revolt...
I don't like or advocate violence, but someday ultimately, violence may become necessary to force the government to start living within the law (Constitution).
Simply, the purpose of establishing a government is to SAFEGUARD the freedom of the people. If the government sells out solely to corporate interests, then it is ceasing to perform it's function.
You might find this hard to belive, but one of the "matches to the fuse" that started the American Revolution was something not all that dissimilar... England had the habit of granting and supporting "corporate" monopolies in it's own self interest. The "Boston Tea Party" was a revolt against one such market monopoly, granted to the British West Indian Company to sell tea to the colonies...
This government action prevented the Colonists from buying their tea from cheaper sources, and mandated they buy from a government suported and subsidized monopoly.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"Hasn't it been said before that no matter how well-kept a democracy may be, it will almost never last for more than ten generations?"
I think it was Athens, Greece that was the reference in that statement. Athens was only one city, and it was the only powerful city-state that had a democratic government. And it was ultimately taken over by Macedonia, which had a purely authoritarian government.
"I wouldn't be sure this is absolutely true, as the Greeks managed to stave off total political decay for hundreds of years until the Romans had conquered them (still, their democracy was a bit different)."
10 generarions is approximately 300 years... Which is about right for the duration of BOTH the Roman Republic and the Athenian democracy.
The Roman Republic, BTW, is largely the framework that was used to create the American Republic...
"However, it seems that there is no perfect government, and I doubt there ever will be. "
Correct. Humans are imprefect, and there is no possibility of any Human creation of being truly perfect.
But, we always must strive for better. Just as the American Republic is an improvement of the Roman one (more perfect), someday there will be one that is more perfect than it is. Society evolves slowly over time just as biology does.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"Why, because he disagreed with you? Maybe the law actually says what he said it meant, and it's the law, not the judge, which is wrong."
Kaplan DID NOT apply the Constitution to the DMCA, which he is required to do by his sworn oath he took when he (allegedly) became a "judge" (remember, judges, like ALL federal officeholders swear an oath to defend the Constitution).
Not only did he fail to apply a Constitutional test to the DMCA, he conviently "forgot" to apply the provisions WITHIN the DMCA that allow for reverse-engineering for the purposes of interoperability. Which I think DeCSS as the key component of a Linux DVD player, clearly IS!
The DMCA itself has provisions stating that it cannot circumvent the Constitution's own provisions for fair use. Which the so-called "judge" completely failed to evaluate.
Furthermore, the DMCA contains NO provision expressely allowing a court to forbid web links! He invented that out of thin air.
TO summarize, Kaplan interpreted the DMCA as applied to the DeCSS case only in the most extreme and narrow manner in the most favorable way to the MPAA as could be done. He has very little in the way of precedent or law on his side to support his judgement, which I expect to get tossed out on the same ass Kaplan should be tossed out on.
Kaplan's own ties to the MPAA previous to his becoming a "judge" alone is reason enough to call into question his conduct in the case. And that's why he SHOULD have recused himself... The Courts are supposed to have NO appearance of impropriety.
Kaplan's actions reprimanding EFF lawyer Martn Garbus for similar and less direct ties to the plantiff MPAA, then tossing off a motion for his recusal with 90 pages of schlock gives any reasonable person plenty of room to doubt and question his motives.
It could be said, because of his behavior in the case, that Kaplan had his bread buttered BEFORE becoming a judge by the MPAA, and his actions were designed to make sure that it was buttered by them AFTER he leaves the bench. Don't forget that Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, is a relatively new judge. And unfortunately, probably representative of the direction the courts are headed...
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
I think you make some very excellent points! Well done.
"Between these poles I think that there is a rational middle ground. The type of rights enforcement technology the RIAA is insisting upon cannot work, as with DeCSS every player has to have the secret key."
Which is why any such scheme that has to rely on "security by obscurity" will fail. Any consumer-level product will end up being broken, simply because it CANNOT change to make it incompatible with any breaks.
Simply put, any replacement of the audio CD will fail if the consumer is forced to replace ALL of his players and/or media every few months to a year because of SDMI "improvements" in response to breaks. Audio and video media MUST be ubiquitous to succeed.
The ultimate piracy prevention is to charge reasonable prices for the product, which is something the RIAA and MPAA are completely unwilling to do. Which is why they are wasting MILLIONS of dollars on doomed protection schemes, for the sole purpose of the ability to FORCE the market to bear whatever price they choose to set, by preventing piracy.
The RIAA and MPAA are charging many MANY times the cost of their product for the product.
I do NOT endorse piracy, but I do recognize that it does serve a legitimate purpose in giving the IP companies incentive to keep the prices reasobable.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
If you read the paper, you'll see that one of the algorithms actually is patentend, and therefore can't be a trade secret -- this is even noted in the paper.
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The paper is not anonymous. Follow the link to the FAQ and you will see several of the participants listed. Additionally, not only did they not take the paper down, they simply posted the RIAA's letter ahead of it. Kinda makes a statement, posting the threat letter at the beginning of the very webpage they want you to suppress, eh?
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Nobody issues a challenge like that if they expect their precious standard to be broken. Oops. Now they're pissed. I didn't realize two year olds were allowed to run corporations.
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Some of the most undereported documents are the ideas Napster had to 'monetize the userbase'. They were all at least as clueless as the ideas the RIAA have had.
Basically Napster would become a clone of AOL, a stiff monthly fee plus lots of intrusive pop up ads.
I agree that the ideas were stupid and Napster never had a chance of succeeding. However they told the billions of dolars story to their VC who evidently bought it.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Sorry, that is SDMI are Loosers (TM)
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
The whole premise of SDMI is pretty funky, the idea is that the device manufacturers will spike their devices to protect the interests of the labels. This is a pretty forlorn hope since the consumer electronics companies bought up content companies to help them sell hardware. Sony and Philips have content divisions but they play thrid or fourth fiddle to the consumer electronics divisions.
For SDMI to succeed there must be no way to get a non SDMI player. That ain't going to happen. The other premise is that there must either be no way to rip a CD - a futile effort in itself or no more material will be released on CD.
The alleged rip protection for CDs on the street at the moment make use of widespread bugs in CDROM device drivers. An audio CD player that encounters an error makes a best effort attempt to continue. A CDROM driver will in many cases report an error and stop. This can be fixed by simply patching the driver to emulate CD Audio players - a process that was already in progress since users were complaining about lack of robustness when playing CDs.
Meanwhile the sales of CDs have actually started to decline for the first time ever. I suspect that this is not just the result of Napster. I suspect that the ultra aggressive tactics of the labels have discouraged many purchases.
I have no sympathy for the crooks running Napster, the idea you can build a billion dollar business helping people rip off everyone else in the music business is one extreeme of the debate. The other is the equally greed RIAA and DVD crew who want to use digital technology that is not up to the task to massively increase their profits. I have sat through presentations from DRM companies who claim that they will not only protect content, they will make higher profits possible through product placement, advertising, co-marketting and extortionate pay per view charges.
Between these poles I think that there is a rational middle ground. The type of rights enforcement technology the RIAA is insisting upon cannot work, as with DeCSS every player has to have the secret key.
I think that a digital download format with a watermark could work. But the detection software would have to be closely held and used only to identify individuals who were ripping lots of tracks and putting them onto the Internet. Their access to the download service would be cut off. Such a scheme would probably be as good a limit on piracy as can be obtained. There would be minimal incentive to break the watermark scheme since it would not prevent a person from listening to the pirate tracks, merely discouraging the piracy. The attackers could not know in any case whether their de-watermarking technology had succeeded. The distributors could deploy new schemes without prior notice.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
These kind of threats by industry groups to prevent the publication of scientific papers that may injure their public image or some foothold in the market is not new. I heard a man named Robert Park speak a year ago. He is a professor (physics, I think, but I can't remember where he teaches) and a writer, and this talk was one of a series of lectures to promote his latest book, "Voodoo Science." After the lecture, there was to be a brief book signing. Unfortunately, lawsuits were preventing the release of the book (libel).
Dr. Park said that these kind of law suits are common, but the courts have a history of releasing academic material in an effort to protect a free exchange of ideas.
The DMCA has so far only protected the rights of big business. The courts have a history of supporting free exchange of ideas. I have faith in our courts. I hope this is not misplaced.
I hope Professor Felten et. al. fight this tooth and nail. Princeton has a legal department, and this is Princeton's fight. I hope they stand behind the professor.
"Dear Sir:
Because we believe that our cool watermarking technology is going to make us lots and lots of money, and because we think that the internet is a fad and will hopefully go away soon, please refrain from exposing what idiots we are and how much our encryption software sucks.
Oh, and please don't let anyone know about all of the hard work you did to prove that. We thank you for that and all, but will attempt to destroy you if you talk bad about us.
Finally, we will have to sue you under the DMCA if anything that you have said, ever, in your life, and we mean ever, could, at any time, in some way, possibly, be used to give someone the faintest idea about cracking this software and maybe using this illegally. we don't care about a better tomorrow as long as we make money today and look good."
Sound right? *sigh*
Random Musings
I suspect that in the /. crowd, the number of those doing so is quite high. Here we have another example where attempts at censorship in a free culture backfire. And yet, in their desire to create a Corporate Police State, companies continue to spend money on legal attempts at thought control even when such attempts are expensive and ineffectual. I don't understand the logic here, but then again, it is well known that Corporations by their nature are amoral, mindless beasts...
I look forward to DVD's playing on my Linux partition in a user-friendly GUI application soon, despite Corporate America's attempts to destroy the very freedoms that have contributed to their prosperity and wealth... well, maybe they'll have more luck in China, where censorship is part of the very society... I feel sorry for the Chinese in that regard.
Jonathan Fisher
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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email: proprietary becomes free, org to com
As for noticably less free, well, we're free from the worry of Nuclear War, something you can't say about '84. Yeah, the Mega-Corporations are trying to limit freedom, but we also have the GPL, Linux and the EFF, things which visibly increase our freedoms, or try to maintain them at least. I mean, in 1984 could you find a fully free (as in speech) Unix-type OS for your computer? Did anyone then think about such things like free software, besides RMS?
I plan to enter politics someday to help halt this slow deterioration, and as someone planning to help fix things, I get frustrated by those who complain and do nothing. Did you contribute to the EFF this year? Or otherwise help enlightened charity and non-profit orgainzations? If you did, I apologize for possibly denigrating your contributions, but otherwise, go out and do something!
We can build a better future than the one we have today- all it takes is honest effort. Like create the environmental equivalent of the WTO to counterbalance their negative tendencies. Or an equivalent organization to promote and spread democracy and freedoms. And so on.
Jonathan Fisher
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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email: proprietary becomes free, org to com
I was under the impression that "encryption research" was specifically excepted under the DMCA anti-circumvention clause. Does this letter take that into account? I would love to see this go to court, even though today's (apparently bought and paid for) federal courts give me little reason for optimism.
Good morning pilots. I'm Admiral Wyman, and I'll be laying out your mission plan for you. Hope you all got a good nights rest!
Mission outline:Corporate conspiracies and suppressive organizations have been causing much traffic on the message board of a one "Slashdot.org" lately. Intel beleives that through the use of confusion tactics, they may be planning to turn the youth and misinformed adult population of both America and world against their governments and fellow citizens.
We have to prevent this, as well as save the publics ability to continue trading of music, despite overwhelming corporate support of these organizations that are built to destroy such abilities.
Misson objective:1. Destroy headquarters of SDMI
2. If possible, strafe any personnel and/or supply vehicles fleeing or entering the targets.
This will be a multi-pronged operation. Flight groups will be launched over Washington D.C., as well as California. Obviously, you are part of the California group. The Washington D.C. group will attempt to destroy RIAA headquarters. Our efforts are synchronized so that neither the RIAA or SDMI may launch counterattacks from their anti-air missile sites. That's right, these have been confirmed to exist, so be careful.
Your FA-18s are now being readied. This is a precision operation, people! All eggs must hit the nest! The operation will commense at 08:00. Dismissed!
Note: This will be moderated down instantly.-- I'll cut you up so bad, you'll wish I'd never cut you up so bad!
Hasn't it been said before that no matter how well-kept a democracy may be, it will almost never last for more than ten generations? I wouldn't be sure this is absolutely true, as the Greeks managed to stave off total political decay for hundreds of years until the Romans had conquered them (still, their democracy was a bit different). However, it seems that there is no perfect government, and I doubt there ever will be.
As much as people like to think that Humans aren't territorial animals, we definetely are, we just manage to collaborate for our own good. As a result, mankind will always stick out as a sore thumb in nature (which we will soon destroy). Human nature keeps us from achieving harmony - greed, lust, hatred - all these things which drive us are indesctructable. We will never rid ourselves of them, and as a result, eventually we will destroy ourselves completely.
We have only been on this planet for a geological blink of an eye, and the simple truth is that we are just a trend.
-- I'll cut you up so bad, you'll wish I'd never cut you up so bad!
Of course, SDMI's lawyers probably aren't this stupid.
If knowing about a technology is illegal(according to the DMCA) the people who submitted the instructions on how to crack it, as well as the people reviewing it(on behalf of the SDMI proponents(mostly the riaa)) would be in violation.
Yeah, this is why the DMCA sucks.
--Joey
Title says all! Maybe napster is the reason GE just layed off a few thousand workers. Damn them, damn napster! Level headed thinking is in short supply over at DMCA perpetuators hq. --Joey
we dare you to try to crack this watermark... ha ha ha... oh, you did? oh, ummmmm.... don't tell anyone ok?
Why does remind me so much of that (somewhat) recent story of the teacher who dared/told/challenged/asked his students to break past the school's security systems? One kid did, showed how, and was immediately suspended for it, while the teacher wasn't even reprimanded for doing such a thing. Besides, even if they don't publish the stuff, they'll surface sooner or later. Just like Nosferatu, no matter how much someone wants for something to disappear or go away, it will always turn up again.
If they can use SDMI and other such techniques now and get 99.99% market share, who will be there in the long run to take them out of business? We do have examples of this (*cough*Microsoft*cough*), and after they have a monopoly there's little the government can do about it.
Why did SDMI have the challenge in the first place? They were enthusiastic about the challenge, but when someone cracks their technologies, they get so upset and were even reluctant to admit that someone had. If they say "try to crack this" they should accept it if someone does crack it, and also accept the results of that. Furthermore, why were they challenging people to crack a watermarking technology that is currently being used???
What's the 'thing of value'? Silence.
_____________________________________
The American Dream went to hell in a handbasket when someone decided that "The Customer" was King, and the customer beli
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No one expects the Spammish Repetition!
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
They also seem to have trouble understanding that watermarking is not technically feasible. It won't take some really smart guys from Princeton to break this or future systems. Given Chiariglione's inelegant and messy technical track record, I doubt they are going to get a technical clue any time soon either.
Let them add poor watermarks to poor content and create players with all sorts of limitations. In the long run, it's only going to hurt their business. Dealing with these people is a waste of time in my opinion.
"ithdraw the paper submitted for the upcoming Information Hiding Workshop, assure that it is removed from the Workshop distribution materials and destroyed, and avoid a public discussion of confidential information"
"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
"the truth" in this case is that watermarking schemes can easily be broken. Truth is not always subective, if you agree that "A is" and "if A is then B is" then you can't choose to see "B" as "is not".
Signed
(Mr. fight relativism)
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Are these people being serious?
Think about what they're saying: "We challenge you to find a way to break our cipher. But if you succeed you can't tell anyone how you did it." I could claim to have broken the cipher, and under the DMCA no one could legally verify my claim.
A more important point is lost here: the only secret about a cryptographic system is whether it can be broken. The fact that it has been cracked is now public news, so the SDMI's cipher should be considered insecure, DMCA or no DMCA.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
In 1633, Galileo was condemned by the Catholic church and subject to house arrest for demonstrating the simple truth that the Earth moves around the Sun. He was forced to publicly recant his claim, but added, "nevertheless, it moves." Although the rest of the world accepted Galileo's evidence (and made significant discoveries as a result), it took the Vatican until 1983 to issue an official apology. Four hundred years later, scientific truth is once again threatened by a powerful organization that refuses to adjust its untenable beliefs ("SDMI is unbreakable") in the face of reality ("SDMI is pretty easy to break"). History has proven time and again that denying the truth puts one at a disadvantage compared to those who accept it. I only hope Prof. Felton continues to make his results available to those willing to listen.
On stereophonic equipment, the monaural sound obtained through multiple channels will enhance your listening pleasure.
If I had received that letter I would have to respond by publishing the results, regardless. DMCA is not near as important as the 1st admendment. They asked to have it broken now they don't us to know how their protection is flawed... typical. I say Publish.
I can't approve "them" putting extra information to bit samples if it turns the quality of audio down.
"No inferior quality DVD for me"
As I understand the agreement, the professors were only under the confidentiality clause if they accepted the cash settlement...They did not, and that is why the SDMI could only "Urge" them not to publish the paper, and make vague threats of legal action. They have every right to put forth their findings, after their work. Also...does it seem to anyone else that the SDMI *completely* tried to fix the contest so that no one would win? The whole point of this seems to be them trying to say "Look at our unbreakable work"...even to the extent of fixing the contest "the 'broken' oracle"
I'm afraid our friend, in spite of his hysterics, is quite correct-- provided data can be played, it can alwaysbe copied. This is a very simple matter-- if there exists a device capable of recording audio or video data, playback can always, by definition, be reproduced: even if it's by some moron pointing his super 8 at a movie screen.
Furthermore, while such crude methods of reproduction (...sounds like an alien watching a porno...) are imperfect, recent history shows us that these things really don't matter where piracy is concerned-- just because something's an analog (or imperfect digital) copy doesn't mean it can't be of exceptional quality (look at a high quality VHS dub of a DVD, or dub a cassette tape if you have one of those 2-deck dinosaurs lying around). All it takes is a single person willing to convert a high-quality analog copy of a movie, music, or whatever to a more portable format (DivX, Ogg-Vorbis, or MP3 for the Morloks) and we're back to square one.
You never know who will get one.