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Felten Will Present SDMI Research At USENIX
iamblades writes: "Edward Felten is scheduled to present his research papers on SDMI on Wednesday at the annual USENIX security conference. Apparently the RIAA backed off their harrassment, which makes sense, as SDMI is almost completely dead already." And a Semi-Anonymous Coward writes: "Despite the RIAA's attempts to silence the Princeton Professor and his students, USENIX will broadcast the SDMI Crack Live via the web. The broadcast will be available for the world here along with a discussion concerning your Freedom."
The lawsuit proceeds. Somewhat by coincidence, our latest set of court papers were finished today, look for them on EFF's site later today or tomorrow.
-J, one of the Felten team lawyers
I run a small, pretty much non-profit record label (See my URL above). Let me tell you, it's about the hardest thing to do in the world.
First, let's start with the basics. Say I want to do a short run of CD's -- in the neighborhood of 500-1000 (Very modest). Any band that is half decent should unload that amount no sweat. That will cost about $1000 - $1700 (Could be cheaper without things like, oh say, cover artwork and tray/shrinkwrap). So fine, let's say you have that kind of cash just laying around and are feeling charitable. You get your 1000 cd's via UPS (Cost you about 300 bucks in shipping -- that many cd's are heavy) and have it at your apartment/home/whatever. How are you getting this to people? Shipping, of course. -- Costing you about $1.25 per CD for 5-7 day snail mail, or $3.00+ for UPS/Fedex. Larger quantities cost less, but very few people order more than 1 CD at a time. So, it cost you about $2 - $3 dollars right there, just basics. This "CD's cost about $0.20 to make" you here is refering to Major Label deals, where they go and press 100,000,000 Madona CD's and get the sweetest deal you can imagine from the plant. Little labels, however, pay WAY more per CD. (Isn't that funny?)
Ok, We didn't even talk about Hosting fee's (For your website -- you do have a website right?) about 10 - 15 bucks a month (Conservative). Tack on Domain Registration ($50 for 2 years??). On top of that, advertising -- People wont buy ANYTHING if they don't know about it -- So you place a couple ads in a few indie zines -- around $500 a month in advertising (This is small fry shit). The cost continues to rise.
Guess what? Only about 5-10 people buy a CD a month! So you figure, you could really rake it in if you had distribution (Ya know, putting your CD's in stores and all that good stuff). You go shopping for Distributor's. First thing you find, is that NOBODY will touch you unless you have a UPC. So you go looking into getting a UPC code for your CD. Anybody wanna take a guess at how much a freakin' UPC number costs? Anyone? Depending on volume and format, it can run you anywhere from $1200 - $100,000!!!!! This is no lie. For one CD, UPC codes cost you as much, if not more than the actual Pressing costs!
So you get a UPC (Because your a sucker), and then go to talk to the distro houses again. Guess what? They STILL won't touch you until you have a catalog of at least 40 LP's!!! So how excatly do you get the capital together to release 40 records, so you can get distribution, and sell more than 5-10 Stinking CD's per month, and EVER hope to cover your costs and not loose $2000 (Low estimate) on each cd you put out?
I think you know the answer. You either charge what the majors charge (What I do -- about $8 - $13 Per CD), or you give up, go home, and stop trying to put out cd's for people (What I consider doing every day).
It's very very very hard to be an independent. Honestly, I don't know how some of the smaller labels with some degree of integrety left (Dischord, Drag City, K, Kill Rock Stars, etc) manage to do it. All you can hope is that you accidently sign the next Sleater-Kinney, Smog, etc.. It's very discouraging.
That, is why nobody has done this idea -- and succeeded.
g00z
"The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
Yes; the EFF is doing so on his behalf.
That's too bad. It was better when the RIAA didn't know how to pick its battles -- they would've lost serious points if this had gone to court.
Is Felten planning a suit for harassment?
First, the RIAA used "us" (I am using that term loosely, as I am not a programmer) to crack SDMI, and will use the work done by "us" to come up with a more secure encryption scheme.
Second, they *were* successful in delaying the release of the SDMI crack long enough where it is no longer relevant.
The only "good thing"(tm) that really happened was we were able to embarrass the RIAA a bit. Mind you, they are embarrassing themselves on a constant basis, and laughing all the way to the bank.
This is not a victory. Far from it.....
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
This guy is such an interesting person. Did other people also notice he was a key element in the DOJ vs Microsoft case? You know, this guy may be, in his own inconspicuous style, one of the best things happening to us as of late. Let's not lose trace of him.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.