SDMI; MusicNet; Felton

The NYTimes had an article this morning about MusicNet, a new venture of Real and the record industry to provide pay-per-listen music to the masses. (Read the AP version if you don't want to register with the Times.) Meanwhile, CNET reports that SDMI adjourned from their most recent meeting without picking any technologies to go forward with - an admission that they are all thoroughly broken, by the team led by Professor Felton, who spoke yesterday at Stanford.

Comments

Re:Two BIG problem with this strategy

[John Whitley]

The only workable solution to this problem will be achieved through social means.

I'll go one step further and say the following: The only workable solution will be one that obeys the economics of the situation.

The economics of scarcity that permitted the media industries to grow into their present form has been changed irrevocably by digital technology. People are likely to continue to spend money on music and other media, but "how much money?" and "under what circumstances?" have become open questions. It's just gotta suck when your business model goes *poof*. 8-)

Re:heads up...

[nobody/incognito]

> As an American, I have inalienable rights under the constitution to protect my privacy

um ... you do? i don't see that in my copy of the constitution ...

nobody

Fourth and Ninth Amendments to U.S. Const.

[yerricde]

i don't see that in my copy of the constitution

Cornell's copy of the U.S. Constitution contains a Fourth Amendment to protect some forms of privacy and a Ninth Amendment to provide for loose construction of the rights of the people, much as the "necessary and proper" clause allows Congress to spread its powers a bit. For example, the right to fair use is a Ninth Amendment extension of the First Amendment right to freedom of press; without it, the current implementation of copyright law would be on shaky constitutional ground. (Weather report for DMCA: earthquake warning.)

price.

[J.C.B.]

With this service you pay $10 to play 75 songs for a month.

With Gnutella and friends you pay $0 to play several million songs forever.

Which one is the better deal? Which one will users choose?

Re:Goodwill

[connorbd]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: this is economic fascism (as much as that actually means anything). To those laissez-faire capitalists still left out there, you should be chilled to the bone at things like this. (Funny you should mention Nazis -- a question to this effect of mine on /. a couple of weeks ago confirmed my suspicion that this sort of corporate co-opting was Just Doing Business in Nazi Germany...)

But anyway...

The industry has it even worse than that. Economy of scarcity aside (which it is, by now), there has been a general trend, driven originally by youth culture and especially the warez community of the early PC era, towards the total monetary devaluing of IP as we know it. I don't think anyone is going to argue that this trend won't continue now that Napster and Gnutella have blown the whole thing wide open (and Fraunhofer had best kiss its patents goodbye -- if there's any better way to screw up a revenue stream than the nudge-nudge-wink-wink-say-no-more distribution method Apple is using for iTunes, I'd love to see it).

The big question is how long it will take this whole mess to come crashing down. It's not far from that now...

/Brian

Re:when is vorbis coming up ?

[DeeKayWon]

Development moves along as usual. A Quicktime component for OS9 is being worked on, test streaming servers are going up, and Winamp will include a Vorbis plugin in an upcoming version (probably the next version). You can snag a copy of the plugin here. I use it, and it's quite a bit better than the plugin at Vorbis.com.

Comments on the Stanford Speech

[seaan]

A few observations and quotes from Prof. Felten's speech at Stanford. As mentioned in the article, the hall was packed. People were sitting in the isles, and there were even 15-20 people sitting in the front of the hall (where professors normally get to walk). I'd estimate there were 30-40 people listening in the hallway, which is where I was. As a result, I never saw the slides (and Prof. Felten explicitly said he was not going to publish the slides).

Thanks to /. and a variety of other sources I already knew most of the information presented by the speech. There were a number of interesting quotes (from memory). He said the paper leaked to the internet was part of the peer review process, and the final paper was better (no details were discussed). He refused to discuss future strategy, but said he had not given up.

Perhaps the most important clarification to me was explaining exactly why the RIAA could make this threat. The DMCA encryption research exception only applied to researching, not to publishing (i.e. disseminating). Prof. Felten made some excellent points about the value of analyzing existing systems in security research, which is not generally recognized by the legal system. He also repeated several times that analysis is an important tool in many types of research. Although this is currently a computer security issue, he predicts the DMCA as it stands now will have a dramatic impact on many other areas of science and academia.

One of my favorite quotes, which did not make it into the Salon story went to the effect of "They made the threat, and once it was effective, tried to withdraw it". He also mentioned that there were some verbal communications from the RIAA, which made the threat even more clear.

John Gilmore (of DES Cracking fame) was also part of the hallway crowd. He was wearing his mind-bending shirt (a very brightly colored tie-died t-shirt with the NSA seal on it). After most of the crowd had dispersed, we went into the hall, and John wondered when "they" would be coming after him for his part in producing the contraband (he was waiving his co-authored book around Cracking DES: Secrets of Encryption Research, Wiretap Politics and Chip Design).

Indeed, one might almost think this is a government plot, as well as the more obvious RIAA/MPAA plot. Got any encryption research you want to discourage? Just use it in a copyright protection scheme, and now you have the ability to suppress any information about that technology.

You speak from ignorance

[DreamingReal]

Goddammit, I'm sick of listening to holier-than-thou Slashdotters explaining to me that I cannot be against CSS, region-coding, and the actions of the MPAA because I buy DVDs. I own 60+ DVDs and between my computer, my PS2, and my Region-1 player, I own three DVD players. In my opinion, that makes ME more qualified to speak out against CSS and the DVD-CCA than YOU. By your own admission, you do not buy DVD products so you have no firsthand experience with the negative effects of CSS, Macrovision, and region-coding. You speak out of ignorance, merely regurgitating the experiences of those who actually buy the product.

What experience do you have besides wearing your t-shirt? I've used CSS, firsthand, for legitimate ways to access the content I legally purchased. I've used it to avoid the commercials at the beginning of my The Sixth Sense DVD. I've used it to DivX;-) my Die Hard trilogy to watch on my laptop during a recent flight to California. I've used DVD Genie to defeat the region-coding to watch my legally purchased, Region 2 ER Season 1 DVDs without having to lock my DVD drive to region 2. Can you say the same?

I also mirror a DeCSS binary, DeCSS code (multiple versions), and region defeating software. I post explanations why DeCSS is ethical and legal to use. Not Robin Gross' saying "The MPAA sux" but my own, explaining my own legitimate uses with the 60+ DVDs I've purchased. Hell, I even bought the same t-shirt you did and contributed to the EFF. Let the MPAA laywers come to my door - I am a concerned supporter of DVDs who wishes to use his posessions beyond the limited ways the movie studios have predefined for me. I am a living, breathing example of why DeCSS is right.

So stop fucking telling me that I cannot be against CSS and still "have one of these things". The MPAA will not change their tune by you whiny 0.0000001% of the buying public saying, "I won't buy these. So there!" while patting yourselves on the back. Until they, the lawmakers, and the public at large see that THERE * ARE * SIGNIFICANT * AND * LEGITIMATE * USES * OF * DECSS nothing will change.

Flame away.

-------

Talk of the Nation Science Friday

[eclectro]

hour two had a really good show on "digital" copyright today;

http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?PrgDate =05/18/2001&PrgID=5

The had the chair of the SDMI working group on, Talal Shamoon. Also, Jessica Litman, author of Digital Copyright : Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet, and Lawrence Lessig.

It covered topics that have already being milled over here, but it was still interesting to listen to. The conversation was polite, but the SDMI guy was noticeably squirming at a couple of points (they did mention the Felton story). Ms. Litman really argued the need for fair use/public representation well. It ended on a caller saying the music industry is "greedy." All in all a good listen.

Two BIG problem with this strategy

[hillct]

First, Both MusicNet and Duet have:

committed to offering only streamed music -- which has to be downloaded each time -- and "tethered downloads," which have a special license attached to them.

Unfortunately, there isn't a watermarking strategy in existance that hasn't been cracked. In fact, I suggest that there will never be a viable technical solution to this problem. There are simply far too many technically astute consumers and hackers who will be able to crack virtually any SDMI technical solution. The only workable solution to this problem will be achieved through social means. There must be good will between the music industry and the music consuming public. the RIAA has seen to it that this won't happend in the forseeable future.

Second, the systems being proposed in this article aren't flexible enough. Their current model is to alter the consumer music licensing model, moving from a perpetual personal use license, to the rental model mentioned in the aticle:

The demonstration before the intellectual property subcommittee showed that if a person stops their subscription to either service, they may not be able to keep listening to the songs they downloaded. In essence, consumers wouldn't buy music, just rent it.

No consumer would go for this. It ranks up there with Microsoft's software subscription model, but even more restrictive. Microsoft Backed off their plan, and so will these music services.

--CTH

--

This is no victory

[r_j_prahad]

Before everybody starts dancing in the streets, SDMI was only one small battle, not the war. This is like battling the hydra of Greek mythology; you cut off one head and two more appear. Prof. Felten and colleagues may have effectively decapitated SDMI, but the Microsoft and InterTrust heads are springing up to take its place.

As much as I'd like to believe otherwise, content protection is inevitable. You know why I think that? Because every time there is an Anime' story posted here, it's usually only available on DVD and everybody here seems to have seen it. Now if the DVD CCA and its heathen spawn CSS are so evil, how come all of you have one of these things? The only way to make a statement to the RIAA and the MPAA is to vote with your pocketbook, and Slashdot has got more hanging chads than Florida.

And when content protected HDTV hits the market, how many of you are going to "just say no" then? From what I've seen here, probably far too few to even make the needle twitch on the copyright robber baron's give-a-shit meter.

I'm not trolling for flames, just stating what I see as obvious. If you want this copyright idiocy to go away, then large numbers of people have to revolt in the only way that's understood by content producers. If they lose money on this, it will die, but right now any sane person would place all his bets in the content provider's corner.

By the way, I don't own any DVD-related product. Well, except maybe for my DeCSS T-shirt.

The purpose of musicnet and duet

[sleeper0]

I've read a lot of posts here questioning who would use such a service, how it'll be cracked, etc.

My friends, you are missing the point

The big five are not interested in online distribution, and will do everything they can to impede it's process. You've seen this for years. The lawsuits against mp3.com, the locking out of online music companies that had a desire to produce for pay music service working with the labels.

The labels have a very specific agenda. Preserve their very high margin compact disc sales at an ASP of $12-$15. As the digital music revolution has unfolded, the labels knew all along that steadfast refusal to do anything was causing problems. So they invested in companies they didn't want to succeed, and produced trial products that were intentionally poor user experiences. They have intentionally allowed the SDMI spec, once heralded as the way the big five would play online, to wither and die with little direction.

This is not incompetance. Say what you will about rhe big five but you don't become billion dollar companies without the abilility to execute on a plan. While perfection may not have been possible, certainly something was... to date they have allowed years of delays in delivering a reasonable spec... all the while leading partners on by the nose, confusing them and keeping them from working on competing solutions.

Fast forward to 2001, you have Hatch on the hill talking about compulsory licenses for on demand systems. Hatch and other know very well there are at least a half a dozen such solutions complete and backed by well funded partners. The only thing all of these lack are the licenses, which they aren't getting come hell or high water. It was said on the hill, in essence, either you do it or we'll let them do it for you.

So the answer? Launch a pair of mediocre services that don't cross-license and essentially produce a failure. Throw in a couple of launch delays, a relauch, and at least a year to declare them total failures. Tah-dah they've just bought themselves at least two more years of unconteseted cd sales.

And that, brothers, is the cold hard truth.

heads up...

[lokii202]

A direct quote from the AP article reads, "The record labels like this format, since they can keep track of where and when the music is played."

Folks, that raises the hairs on my neck. I pretty much don't want anyone tracking my preferences for music, film, art, literature, or whether or not I have an innie or an outie.

As an American, I have inalienable rights under the constitution to protect my privacy.

This ain't cool and this dog won't hunt.

Goodwill

[Dutchie]

For me personally the Music Industry has very little goodwill left.

Initially when this whole filesharing stuff started, I was of the opinion that I would listen to new songs and buy them if I like them. For quite a while that seemed very plausible.

However, when the RIAA/MPAA started with their nasties, more and more of this plausability turned into a 'no... these people have no relation with 'art' anymore.' If anything has been established by their actions, it is that they have shown their true face, and so have a whole bunch of so called 'artists'.

Art... to me is an expression of one's inner emotions. It shows just how great people can be when they are in the right frame of mind and talented enough to display their art to the public. But Metallica, MPAA, RIAA, and then some, are like a big stinking oozing sewer leaking poisonous chemicals into a sparkling mountain creek. While I used to like Metallica, now when I hear their music, all I think is 'oh it's those assholes'. While the existance of the RIAA was safely hidden from me before this all started, now every CD branded with their logo is tainted.

So no, I will not use their 'service'. Just like I would not buy Nazi memorabilia.

• Imagination is more important than knowledge.