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DRM: How To Boil A Frog
symbolic writes "This article on the Register explains their experience with Creative's first attempt at supporting DRM, and also reviews a sneaky little technique for 'easing' DRM into peoples' lives via a free Costello preview CD. Two of the tracks are free from any DRM, but for the two that are DRM-enabled, you have to activate the right to listen to them (up to four times), by accessing a central server via the net. For those in the know, the doublespeak used to inform users of any actions they need to take to enable their DRM rights might be quite amusing. To wit: 'The content you are accessing requires an additional level of security. In order to play it, you will need to update your Digital Rights Management Installation.' Others, however, will think they're getting something, when they're actually having something taken away from them. It's a matter of time to see if consumers will flat-out reject this new 'enabling' technology, or let it seep into and infect their lives like the disease that it is."
ok... tell me how to boil a frog, sounds like fun!
Suck on this, RIAA!!!!
Business rules the world. Consumers will embrace it, heck I even stream 700k windows media format films from cinemanow.com and the cool thing is they even have an adult section. They use drm and I am perfectly happy paying $5 instead of $30 to see if a porn is bad or not.
(Note to self: don't buy Creative. iPod works fine.)
sulli
RTFJ.
Elvis Costello in his prime was ANTI-establishment, ANTI-big biz and PRO-individual. You can see a lot of that from his interviews and comments.
Now he's just a tool. And it is funny as well since his music isn't as important as it once was. He could USE some of the exposure P2P offered. Now he'll be known by the masses as the first person who's CD stopped playing after four times. (At least in the UK.)
"You better do what you've been told. You better listen to your Radio" - EC.
Now, if I remember correctly, we have the right to make backup copies of media, right?
Has this simple little fact gotten lost among all the complexities of the DRM stuff? So, tell me, where is the class-action lawsuit for consumers?
Damn, now I sound like a troll, oh well
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I wonder how long it will take before some of our less DMCA compliant friends figure out a way around this newest effort to stop us evil music pirates.
There's no way to stop people from making copies by plugging a recorder into the output, why doesn't the industry understand and just adapt?
the person whose CD didn't play at all, because everyone threw it out rather than go through all the hassle of playing the WMA files.
sulli
RTFJ.
Does anyone know the origin of the idea of posting a numbered list where the second to last item is a series of question marks and the last item is the word "profit" followed by an exclamation point?
I'm a little teapot. I also eat frogs.
Damn... I was expecting information on frog-boiling. Videos would've been cool.
Microsoft recently announced their initiative to protect the content of their users' media through an initiative known as DRM, or Digital Rights Management. "It is absolutely essential that computer users adopt Digital Rights Management as quicly as possible," stated Microsoft spokesman Al Screwum. "Without this software, people's music and videos remain insecure." "It is only a matter of time before rogue black-hat hacker elements maliciously take advantage of this insecurity and replace parts of or even whole songs with other content," stated RIAA spokeswoman Annah Acker. "Imagine trying to listen to Brittney Spears and being forced to listen to Led Zepplin instead - all because someone exploited your unprotected music files!" "I hope this program is available soon," said Microsoft Windows user Nadja Clue. "Just yesterday I was trying to get the latest Christina Aquilera song off of KaZaa, but when I played it, all I got was static! Maybe DRM will stop the people who deleted the song I had to restart my computer 6 times to download!"
paintball
IMO it's perfectly all right to ship your product copy protected, encrypted, watermarked, scrambled, digested etc etc. But it should be equally legal to try and break said scheme.
I guess it won't be too long before that mega-hit CD has a data track with an unreleased track that requires DRM in order to be played, enabling both the RIAA to get their control over hardware/software and MS to get Windows Media Player more entrenched.
I'd say who the losers are in this case, but we already know that by now.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
And tomorrow both will be a thing of the past. Who's our Harriet Tubman?
that's funny I actually buy cd's that contain static. The Noise genre is excellent /:)
If you do, then you'll (most likely) end up with the beta of Microsoft's latest DRM player (which youn can't easily get off XP), and you'll also have your settings changed so that your installation facilitates DRM, WMA format and pay per play. But don't worry, it didn't cost you anything.*
Doesn't this violate the Microsoft agreement? There has to be a way to take Windows Media Player off your computer. If I am correct, there should be a program to illimate the presence of Microsoft products (IE, and that sorts) from desktop/startup menu. The program should also illimate WMP from these areas as well. Does anyone know for sure if this breaks the Microsoft agreement?
UK Sunday Times newspaper unleashed a neat little trojan that'll upgrade you to Windows Media Player 9
I always thought trojans are bad. This is no exception. I wonder how long it will take McAfee and Norton to come out with a fix for this.
You guys are good at hacking into IIS servers but can't even hack something that's on you own computer. Pitiful.
creative was becoming one of the better hardware companies over the past few years, coming out with nice sounding soundcards that are well supported under windows, Linux and even beos(well when be was alive anyway- did you know beos had emu10k1 drivers well before linux), but this DRM crap goes to far, disabling the digital out so you its harder to create copies that sound like the original, I don't have a problem with DRM for the most part as long as it stays out of my way. but hardware that cripples itself when something uses DRM is just lame, I think I'm going to go out and get a new soundcard, anyone know of any good brands/chipsets that are well supported under Linux that sound good and costs under 70$
For the ones with more initiative than myself, it may be time once again for the good 'ol buy...bitch...return, sequence of events. Be interesting to know if they honor returns. Too bad the CD is free.
Also, go to the review sites on the net and let this info be know about the Soundblaster Live. Amazon's a good place to start, I'm not up to date with all the current popular ones.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
If they're using Costello to promote DRM, this won't become all that widespread. If they start using combination NSYNC/Britney Spears album, then we're in trouble. Because then the world will be saturated with DRM, noise pollution and the pitter patter of little Britneys banging out their first album against the crib.
Now that's what I call object reporting!
So, i have to boot up a windows box and connect to the net to play this cd through my 20 dollar speakers and my 10 dollar sound card?
I can't put it in my cd player and listen to it through real speakers? I can't listen to it in my car?
Ok, well. I dunno what that is, but its not an audio cd, and I don't know how much it costs, but even if its free, its useless to me. Thanks, but no thanks.
--sean
SouthPark, as far as I know ... remember the underwear-stealing gnomes?
Many stores don't do the "return" part, they only exchange it for the Same Thing. Meaning that if you by the latest Stones CD, you can only echange it for the (suprise) latest Stones CD.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Don't use DRM files
Don't hack DRM files
Don't pay for DRM files
Don't do anything with DRM files
As soon as it's known that DRM content doesn't make money it will tank faster than advertising CPMs.
It's funny because as much as everyone complains, its pretty apparent that DRM and Palladium are coming to a computer near you.
/. do you want to be remembered for posting the news, or would you like to be remembered as something that actually made a difference?
Instead of reading how fucked were going to be, it would be nice if we concentrated on what current efforts are being made to fight for our rights. If Slashdot is going to be posting Y.A.S.O.D.R.M.(yet another story on drm). Maybe they could actually do something positive and once a week post about the ongoing efforts to combat it. You know like "this week X happened", and have it be a ongoing thing.
I'm not really sure what page to link to, but someone out there must be organized. It would be great if every Friday their was some sort of update we could all follow along with.
Now I know some of you are saying Slashdot is a "news service" and shouldn't get involved. But gimma a break Slashdot is hardly unbiased and there is obviously no "journalism code" being followed. Amost every submission is heavily biased.
I dunno
Its just a suggestion, but if I had a website read by billions a visitors a day, I'd try to do some good. Are there other more worthy causes? Sure by far(AIDS,war,education etc), but this IS a tech news site and if there is even going to be opensource news to print about, things like DRM and Palladium need to be stopped now.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
MS was pushing this. Creative supports the "secure audio path" stuff, but they didn't invent it. If you don't accept the secure audio path files from Microsoft, then your SBLive will continue to work. When playing non-DRM files (such as MP3 files you encoded yourself) your SBLive will continue to work. Under Linux, your SBLive will continue to work.
I am not annoyed enough with Creative to get rid of my SBLives, and I'm surprised you are. I guess each of us has to decide where to draw the line.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
It's a matter of time to see if consumers will flat-out reject this new 'enabling' technology, or let it seep into and infect their lives like the disease that it is.
OK, I am against DRM too, and will never buy a system with Palladium in it or any DRM-{en|dis}abled media player, but this is ridiculous. If you're going to call it news, please report with some degree of objectivity. The "from the...dept" line is the place for editorial comments. In this case, not only is the title rather suggestive (appropriate, too, but not impartial), but the author goes out and says DRM IS A DISEASE. While I agree, not everyone does, and you will find that your journalism becomes stronger and less controversial/offensive if you smash something subtly (or not at all) instead of openly, especially when the facts speak for themselves.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
I wonder if Microsoft will detect all of their software that I pirated when they send a unique ID. I guess I will never find out since I don't plan to use this new crap
It WAS.... before a neat little piece of legislation passed a few years back, called the "Digital Millenium Copyright Act"...
Now not only is it illegal to try to find ways around it, (or "circumvent access control measures") but it's even illegal to TALK about a way to get around it that someone ELSE found. And heaven forbid you post a web link to their work....
'Free' Costello CD seeds DRM, MS Media Player 9 By John Lettice Posted: 09/22/2002 at 10:55 EST
.ogg files, and which we just recently discovered. It starts out thinking it's a WMA file, but then reports an unsupported file format.
Hardware supporting Microsoft's Secure Audio Path DRM technology seems to have arrived, albeit somewhat bashfully, and as if that wasn't enough, today the UK Sunday Times newspaper unleashed a neat little trojan that'll upgrade you to Windows Media Player 9, complete with all those lovely facilities to protect 'your' music. If you're not careful, that is.
To remind you, Secure Audio Path is a Digital Rights Management technology designed to interpose its body between encrypted digital music and the output device, thus stopping DMCA-breaching criminals diverting the stream to an unauthorised application. In order to work it needs compliant, authenticated output devices, and by a miraculous coincidence we've just been tipped off about one of the first cuckoos to go public - Creative Labs.
Microsoft itself publishes a helpful list of players, marking those including Windows Media DRM, but bear in mind the list is dated May, so there should be quite a few more around by now. In addition, it's not particularly easy to track which PC sound cards and audio systems are compliant, so let's hear it for Creative, which has quietly announced a couple of them in the readme files of its Soundblaster Live update software.
These state:
"Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a technology which enables the copyright owner of an intellectual property (for example, a digital audio file), to control how the listener uses the file.
"To protect against unauthorised duplication, Sound Blaster Audigy [or Sound Blaster Live!, in the other readme] shuts down its digital output when encrypted files are played back through a Microsoft DRM supported audio player (for example, Creative PlayCenter)."
Creative will of course by no means be the only company whose products do this, and we wouldn't be at all surprised if many of them didn't feel the need to inform you of the feature on the packaging, in the manual, in the licensing agreement or even in a readme several folders deep in the software. But one can pick up the odd clue. Here, for example, is one of Microsoft's lists of audio chip manufacturers supporting WMA format. Note the reference to Corona (WMP 9) and, way down at the bottom: "Windows Media offers the industry's only integrated digital rights management solution."
The hardware could get kind of tricky to avoid, but the file format itself is currently less so. Which makes today's Sunday Times exercise rather interesting. As far as we know this is the second such exercise performed via a ST freebie. We didn't pick up on the first (Oasis, sorry people), but we've had a good look at this one.
It consists of preview tracks from Elvis Costello's When I was Cruel - Collector's Edition, due out on Monday. There are some audio tracks, which are unprotected, a couple of unprotected WMAs and a couple of protected ones, which you're only supposed to be allowed to play four times. Wearing our best face-mask and lab coat, we investigated.
Linux finds the file system on the CD alien, and declines to mount it. You can cancel the autoplay and browse the CD under XP, then copy a protected track to the hard disk and try to open it with Ashampoo, which is a nice little player which also supports
OK, so what happens if you let the CD autoplay? You get the Sunday Times opening screen, then clicking continue takes you to a screen listing the tracks, what you can do with them, together with entries for "how it works" and "test your PC." The salient points of the first are that you need:
"-Windows Media Player 7.1 or later, configured to automatically acquire licenses.
-A internet connection is necessary to acquire a license for the protected tracks."
The test routine merely checks if you qualify and points you in the right direction if you don't. Opening the files with WMP, by the way, takes you in pretty much the same direction. You get the following message:
"The content you are accessing requires an additional level of security. In order to play it, you will need to update your Digital Rights Management Installation.
"When you click OK, Windows Media Player sends a unique identifier for your computer to a Microsoft service on the Internet. Click learn more to find out how the Microsoft service protects your licenses, files, and your privacy."
Unhappily, as Agnitum firewall was in the way we never did learn how Microsoft was protecting us. The page of recommended media players is however here. Note that the XP installation is running WMP 8, but that it still needs to have its DRM switched back on (which we presume would happen if we persisted) and to have the unique identifier issued. OK, try Windows 2000 with WMP 6 on it. On trying to play a file with this, you're advised that Media Player 7.1 or above is needed, and if you go ahead and click on upgrade, it takes you through to the Media Player 9 beta. At the bottom there's a link for all available versions, but even there you've got the beta listed first.
So, you've got a free preview of a couple of tracks, and you can listen to them each four times so long as you just follow the instructions. If you do, then you'll (most likely) end up with the beta of Microsoft's latest DRM player (which youn can't easily get off XP), and you'll also have your settings changed so that your installation facilitates DRM, WMA format and pay per play. But don't worry, it didn't cost you anything.*
* We were contacted by a reader a couple of weeks ago with a cautionary tale about players that protect your music. The reader was maybe a little careless, true, but it's easily done for people who never look in their settings, and who might not notice things getting switched on. Say you've recorded bought CDs using WMP, and you decide before upgrading to XP you'll do a clean install, so you back up your music files, vape the disk and then do the install. You did back up your licences as well, didn't you? Oh dear...
A bit offtopic here, but what pushed me to get rid of my Creative SBLive! card was the problems with the VIA chipsets. Replaced it with a nice Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card.
Of course, granted, I probably wouldn't listen to DRM files anyway (if I knew that they were such), but I used to have a 2.1 digital speaker set (now I have a 4.1 analog). So, if I was using that digital speaker set, and the Digital Out is being disabled, how am I supposed to listen to what is being played? (Yes, the speaker set I had also allowed for 2.1 analog as well, but that's beside the point).
Or were digital PC speakers just a fad that never lasted?
-- Joe
Does anyone know of a tool that can reliably test a CD to see if it meets any of the various *book standards published for CDs.
That way it'd be real easy to prove that it wasn't a CD-Audio disc and return it.
The article is over-hyped (more than is usual for The Register) - it's not necessary to download WMP9beta to play the "limited" media files, it just offers you that as the default download if you're lacking WMP or are too far out-of-date.
On WinXP with the default version of WMP (8.1 or something like that), I had to go online and pick up a license file for each track (and fill in a form on a pop-up window for the first one, giving them a BS name and address). There was no super-clever Secure Audio Path stuff when playing back the files on WMP8 and it didn't seem to notice I was ripping the stream to disk with TotalRecorder for later mp3-encoding!
(to their credit, the audio files on the CD are 192kbit WMA which does sound pretty damn good, even after MP3ing)
Didnt work in the 60s when they went after cassete recorders, didnt work in the 80s when they we attacking VHS. *AA alway feel threatend by some enablong technology.
Buy my book!
Ok but my other computer still has an analog in, and I have a nice little cable that will bridge the 2. Start recording on one, play on the other, problem solved. Sure it may not be the absolute best quality but it still allows me to excercise my right to make a backup copy of cds I own.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
...this should make up for it.
It's a matter of time to see if consumers will flat-out reject this new 'enabling' technology, or let it seep into and infect their lives like the disease that it is.
How does this shit get through the editors? timothy, welcome back to my block list (I had you on for several months and put you back hoping you'd gotten better).
I'm just gonna write to Mr. Costello and explain that I am now unable to hear his music at all. I use linux and they don't play Costello on the radio all that much anymore.
Last time I heard Costell was during an interview on Fresh Air on NPR.
-
Many pieces of software are already protected using a license manager or whatnot. Music, like software, is a mathematical piece of art. Like software, it should not be free. If all software was free, I would not be able to pursure my passion as a software developer and still support myself. The analogy is directly applicable to music (I am also an amateur musician). The point is that the DRM must not impede the user's experience. As long as they have the freedom they need to enjoy what they own, I'm all for it. It puzzles me when so many Linux zealots fight so hard for music to be free yet support things like the GPL that they probably don't understand the full ramifications of. Every wonder why BSD is more stable? When I write a song, I want to protect it and protect my rights to it. Why is the medium (audio) being treated with such disdaim when the artist trys to protect themselves. Eventually this will help indy artists as well. Please examine your viewpoint and make sure you're not being a hippocrite. If it takes me 40 hours to develop a piece of software, I expect to get paid. If it takes me 40 hours (probably more) to produce a single I expect to get paid. It is my artwork. Maybe creative doesn't have the right approach but don't discount the notion entirely.
maybe I'm just too much a hardware purist, I don't want crippled hardware even if I don't do anything that triggers it becoming crippled, supporting DRM is one thing if you like drm for some reason more power to you, but I feel sorry for anyone who has the audigy connected via the digital out, If DRM takes off game companies will eventually use it as another copy protection device, again something the audigy is good at that will cripple the hardware, if creative was so much afraid of the digital out being used as a copy device they shood not of put a digital out on it to begin with
I'd also like to say anyone who visits my site, sign up for a user account! We need user accounts to feed our voracious appetite for attention. Also, feel free to email me involving cross-linking with your site. We love cross-linking.
Hopefully the folks at www.litepc.com,(formerly 98lite.net), release their product for Win2k/WinXP.
Divx A few more words... You can read a book written hundreds of years ago, and listen to a record pressed decades ago, because they used simple, open technologies. My single biggest grip about any sort of protection mechanism (aside from inconvenience to me) is that the technologies are so short-lived. If DRM does catch on, how long do you think companies are going to keep the activation mechanisms around? If they want to protect their investment by building mechanisms to prevent illegal copying, they better hang onto them to protect *my* investment so I can listen to my DRM-protected music 40 years from now.
Of course there's the factor that Creative's drivers suck. I though I was cursed when every PC I have had, has had malfunctioning sound. It just never worked. But I realised I ALWAYS had creative cards. It's made me reinstall windoze several times already...
I'm contemplating selling my audigy on ebay and getting a Turtle Beach, Santa Cruz....
I think if they want to try and restrict some of their content, that's fine with me. As long as they restrict it equally. What's not fine with me is having to use Windows to access the content. It's like releasing a CD but allowing it to only play on one brand of CD player. Or broadcasting music over the radio but only allowing one brand of radio to receive the music. Why should a Windows user be allowed 4 plays when I am allowed no plays at all? Is this going to turn into another DeCSS?
This space intentionally left blank.
If I get to see a cute animated padlock icon next to my protected files, then I'm in.
I was anxiously waiting to read about that levitating frog hitting some power line and getting fried...
A few weeks ago, my dad, not a techie by any means, casually brought up the issue of Palladium. "Have you heard about Palladium?" he asked.
/gives/ you rights, and ironically, additional privacy.
I was ready to go into "Yes, I agree, it's dumb-shit" mode, but the next thing he said shocked me:
"I read that it lets you send emails to people that they can't forward or copy. It's called Digital Rights Management."
I've since heard this exact same statement twice more from other, random people, among which, tech-oriented guys that should know better. Somehow, Microsoft marketing has somehow pushed DRM and Palladium as something that
Of course, I told him that how DRM really works, but on a larger scale, the huge "consumer backlash" I've been counting on to end all of these anti-consumer technologies just may be further off than anyone expected. It very well could end up as the next Macrovision: people will think "it's there because copying stuff is illegal, and only bad men want to copy stuff", even after they've bought their 2nd or 3rd copy of the same scratched CD.
The misinformation campaign is obviously deliberate, and real. And the worse part is, mindshare typically goes with the media, which just happens to be the rights-slayer this time.
"It is only a matter of time before rogue black-hat hacker elements..."
You forgot to add "terrorist" to the list.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
Ha! They're already warming you up, just like the frog in the pot.
Seriously, though. I'm playing devil's advogate, but this is exactly what was meant by the title of the article. For now you can play all your files, but what about when the DRM files become ubiquitous? If no one stands up now and tells companies like Creative -- with their strongest voice, their dollars -- that they won't tolerate this, then by the time people cry, "Foul!" on a meaningful level, it will be too late.
Sure, DRM may seem like it's going to be a pain in the ass, but in the grand scheme of things it's not so bad. It's not like DRM is going to be around forever. Today, computers can break the encryption already. In 10 years we'll have 4,194,304 GHz CPU's. By then, computers will be powerful enough that they can break any enciphering schemes. They could probably even generate better music for you than music you could buy. What else are you going to do with that much power? Remeber this the next time you think we're having another "computer armageddon".
I bet most users will install DRM and listen to free tracks. But nobody will actually pay for restricted music or record their own collection in this way. Not when they can get a geek coworker to install MusicMatch and show them how to rip to MP3.
Anyway, I don't have anything against someone giving me a free preview or a stream-only Internet radio service. In both of these cases I don't assume I own any songs. If I like something though, I will only buy it if I can listen to it whereever I want. If they don't let me do it, I will just wiggle a voice recorder in front of my speakers and happily trade off lower quality for convinience.
What about headphones?
:)
If they encrypt the headphone jack, then I have to buy approved signal decrypting phones. What a load of crap that'll be.
But if they don't encrypt the headphone jack, then there's a clean line out to copy from.
Also, right now I pump my computer sound through my stereo. Do they mean to tell me that I won't be able to do that anymore?
This encrypted audio stream thing (or whatever the fuck they're calling it) is total bullshit. I will never, never, ever upgrade a single piece of audio hardware to support this.
Now will I ever (knowingly) buy one of those "music disks that looks like a standard CD.
I guess that depends on your definition of "better". For me, a company that sues its competition into oblivion rather than actually try to compete with them is not worthy of my business.
Yeah, offtopic, ok I know... I guess I'm still pissed that they crushed Aureal before the win2k and linux drivers were finished.
You have to make sure it costs them.
Go in and buy the DRM media. Then take it back and say that it doesn't work on your player. Make sure you get the store manager. Ream his ass out good. Give him techno-babble when he asks what your player is.
Get your friends to do the same at other stores.
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
The title of this story actually makes sense. To boil a frog you can't just throw a live frog into a hot pot of water (it'll jump out). What you do is put a frog in a cold pot of water and slowly turn up the heat, the frog never leaps out because the change is too slowly, then when the water's too hot the frog can't jump out because it's dead (PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, I HAVE NEVER DONE THIS BUT I READ ABOUT IT!)
Anyway what the story title is suggesting is that we're like the frogs, DRM is like hot water. To get us used to DRM (and eventually "killed" by it) they (yeah it's always them) have to introduce DRM slowly so you get used to it, then they add more DRM, then you get used to that, it's a cycle that ends only after it's too late and DRM is everywhere.
By the way, check google for "How to boil a frog" and you'll find where I got my information from (should be the first result.)
Didn't the original DivX players have a similar system? Buy a disc for a few $, and only be able to watch it so many times?
What happened to those players?
The only real snag here is the practically zero cost to the companies for duplicating and distributing the media if it stays purely internet based. And if broadband isn't becoming popular fast enough, then there isn't as much profit to be made in the short run.
=Smidge=
FYI: WHQL certification for WinXP audio drivers *requires* that DRM be supported by that audio driver. Also, all drivers downloaded from Windows Update are WHQL certified. Windows update is something that the public is used to. DRM support in kernel mode audio drivers is spreading as we speak. Windows update is seeing to that.
:-(
So not only Creative is involved here. They are merely herded along this path by MS via the leash of WHQL. Don't have DRM kernel mode components on your system? You sure about that? Do you have WHQL (signed) audio drivers for WinXP? Yes? Then DRM has infected your system.
Just thought you might be interested.
Recently, some discussion with legislators have been pushing harddrive manufacturers to do something similar, in efforts to stem piracy. In march of this year, Senator Hollings introduced a bill that would require it. Lookup "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Act"
This is no different but not legislated, fortunately. It merely means I won't be buying a Creative card when I upgrade.
I strongly suggest you archive some of Creative's current drivers (without the protection enabled) if you plan on using this card in Windows in the future.
then why can't I copy vhs and dvds to video tape? macrovision idiot. its the law that it has to be there and circumvention devices are more difficult to get than heroin!
I still say all the subscription money from slashdot should go towards buying a senator so that we can have a voice in congress.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I don't want to hear it. *please* force players to not be allowed to play it as often.
Your website uses the phrase "Anonymous Cowrad"
This is in violation of my implicit copyright on the name "Anonymous Cowrad". You will be hearing from my lawyers soon. Or maybe you won't.
--
Anonymous Cowrad
The market rejected Divx DVD's that those idiots at Circuit City and others pushed. While this is obviously different, thinking back to that fiasco ending in a huge loss for CC made me smile.
people kinda got tired of jumping through hoops to watch a movie. And the players cost more than a standard DVD player. So, as long as DRM is not mandated by governments, it will very likely fail.
The law is slow, deliberate and generally fails the consumer. However, with the marketplace, consumer demand could easily spell the demise of DRM without having to grease one legislator's palms. Fast. Look at DiVX. If no one buys it, no one will want to make it.
Maybe I am hopeful, but I don't think the generic consumer is going to think, "Hey! Great! The DVDs and CDs I am buying are protected by DRM. They only work at my house so my pesky friends can't steal them!". Nothing that DRM does benefits the consumer except for the pesky friend problem. Consumers want better, bigger, faster. Not complicated, rigid and limited.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
...if the CD is free?
RMN
~~~
here
When there's mindless stuff like this been going on for over 10 years... well....
who knows?
Funnily enough, PlayCenter, a Microsoft DRM supported audio player has a large button that says "Rip This CD" and allows you to rip directly to MP3 (up to 320kbps). Your other choice for format is (surprise, surprise) WMA, but there's a checkbox that just says "DRM" next to to. According to the help file "Click the DRM option if you wish to restrict the transfer of the audio file. Protected WMA files cannot be transferred to other systems." I'm not sure how/if this works as I don't use WMA (or PlayCenter, for that matter) but it seems odd the for such a pro-DRM player you have the choice not to enable it in their integrated ripping program.
Also, how do we reckon this would affect motherboard-integrated soundcards. Can MediaPlayer disable the SPDIF coming from it...do ANY motherboard sound solutions support this now?
Cue The Sun...
Suck it, Gates!
Now that I can actually see happening. How far will we be from this in just a few years?
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Their products have been going downhill for years now... the Live should have been the pinnacle yet was worse sound quality and overall quality than their AWE64 Gold. :-( why?? the Audigy is only a rebranded live with added firewire.
Now they have DRM devices... Will all of them follow suit? Turtle beach? will they fold? how about the 90,000,000,000,000,000 Korean and chineese and other eastern country manufacturers making the knockoffs? will they all comply? I highly doubt it.
So the only way to make this DRM stuff work is to either force all manufacturers to comply and design it in, or to make the non compliant cards illegal.. which will increase the sales of them 10 fold, encourage the kiddies out there that can easily outwit college graduates with masters and doctorates and either design a hardware hack or a software crack, or some simply elegant workaround that will put the genius designers to shame (sharpie marker anyone?)
I am both entertained and appaled at the new era we are beginning... entertained that it is finally proven that the brightest and best people by definition of the large piles of money you have are easily defeated and smacked squarely in the face by children and yound adults. BrRAVO! As I am appaled at the unadultered Greed driving every aspect of industry...
Intellectual property, anyone who is for it is a greedy self serving bastard that more than likely really isnt creative in the first place. 95% of everything you have and use is based on someone elses IDEA! just because you though up something does not make it your property... where would we be if the current levels of stupidity were running rampant 100 years ago? we would all be driving only FORD cars and trucks, buying anything from outside the USA would be illegal and you would have to watch only one TV channel, one radio station, you would only be able to buy an IBM pc, and own a Zenith Television while listening to your RCA records.. Phillips CD's? Banned as they infringe on RCA's INtellectual property of recording audio on disc shaped objects.
programmers, your software is not innovative nor special in any way... 90 people did it before you and 90 more will do it after you. Musicians... let's see something origional.... I dare you... and Movies or photography? Oh come on nothing has been origional for 100 years.
and now we are going to be thrust into the largest black period of creativity all because of some narrow minded dimwits should have been beaten more as children because they cant grasp the idea of sharing....
I am tired of hearing the 3 year olds screaming "GIMMIE! MINE! MINE! MINE!"
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Like I said over the past few years, before then they tried their hardest to have a monopoly over sounds cards, they pretty much had it for a while, I cant think of even one dos game that dint use a sound blaster
I had a Aureal 1 card (still do some ware) other then that neat 3d effect with only 2 speakers it was crap, but in only cost me like 15$
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Tell that to Mr. Gates (as in Bill's father)
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
Some ideas on how to stop this, or at least make it a pain for those selling this crap; feel free to add to this list:
1) Bug reports. You guys remember reading all those stupid questions people have asked on sites like the 'computer stupidities' site? File some. Lots of them. If everyone filed one plausible but otherwise WRONG bug report, it'd drive up support costs for them. Sure, they'll chalk it up to hardware failure on your end, but you can have lots of creative fun.
This is not as crazy as it sounds, especially if you treat the *FEATURES* as bugs. IMO, it's a bug if you can no longer play the music sample... and when they tell you you've used up your allotment, claim that you only got to play it 2-3 times, not 4. You will drive them insane with bugs that aren't there. If they get enough reports of this, some poor slob will be forced to track down what part of the server code is responsible for mislabeling the number of times its been played. This will result in shoddy "fixes" for problems that aren't there; hence you can create nightmares for them.
2) Fake client requests. Have your firewall mangle the requests or something, then see #1. If they want a copy of the files to see if yours are corrupted, be sure to send them ones that have not been tampered with in any way. If you have an uncommon system in any way (e.g. a mac or something) be sure to list yourself as running the most common config. That will make the bug you report more of a priority.
3) More? You don't need more. Phantom bugs & such can drive the poor slobs nuts. Worse, if they come to realize what's going on, they may well misclassify *real* bugs. Oops.
We must stop DRM before they make it such that it's not really YOUR machine any more. And once that happens, consumers (their pet term for us) will get the shaft...
They've been imbedding spyware in their shit.
God spoke to me
It will be as it always has, those who know no better will sheepishly play ball, and not utter so much as a cry while their rights are slowly taken away.
The rest of us will find ways around it. =P
For some reasons it automatically put the last thread I posted to in the message topic... weird.
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
We couldn't help but use it. You've been my troll idol for a while now. Actually, I think it's hilarious you even noticed us. I feel so... non-worthy.
I think this language is very deceptive. By claiming to "protect you" and by claiming they are enabling "additional security", they're implying that you will receive some sort of benefit. What benefit is that, exactly?
This giant PITA scenario illustrates why DRM without force of law is destined to fail: Any solution that requires an end user to think along the lines of an IT department in order to work will not be acecpted by Joe Blow or his family.
Joe isn't going to get the concept of "digital certificates" that allow him to play his media files, and won't remember to backup his licenses.
Instead of starting over, re-ripping everything again (hopefully not in WMA) they're going to look for a way around it, and his 10 year old will know where to download the player software that breaks it, and the port to block to keep it from tattling to Microsoft.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that this does suck but it isn't the end of the world. What we need to concentrate on is defeating the laws that will ban non DRM media players.
As long as we can access non-DRM media players, we are still free. I for one think we should continue to fight like hell to stay that way.
Who did what now?
Isn't the point of DRM that you won't be able to play it 40 years from and will, therefore, have to purchase another copy?
No sig for you.
It was nice doing business with you.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Part B is a continous, non backwardly compatible upgrade cycle:
1) Buy Digital Media player of foo(i) format
2) Buy Digital Media in foo(i) format
3) increment i, change format and goto 1
You know the ??AA industry will do this and the computer/hardware industries will be happy to play along.
What we really need is Open Hardware to go with the Open source software supporting Open Media formats. Imagine downloading a schematic, bill of materials and all needed firmware and a few hours of soldering/assembly later you have an open fomat media player.
and the burner is set on low.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You mean MPEG1 Layer-3 right?
... having Sound Recorder open while I listen to the song?
"Derp de derp."
This may be entirely coincidental, but the copy of When I Was Cruel that I purchased (sic) in its first week of release refused to play well in my recent-vintage Mac G4 tower. The first two songs sounded as though they'd been recorded using the same deck used to record the Watergate tapes, and the rest had mysteriously long bits drop out suddenly. Nowhere did the package or disk itself state that whether it was copy-protected in any way. So did I return it as defective? Nah, 'cause I was too lazy--and it's not such a great album that I absolutely, positively need to have MP3 copies of it for my own use. Sic transeunt iura digitalia.
:wq
I'm tired of people screaming around about the scary DRM/Palladium/whatever stupid-ass control device the big companies are trying to push this week. Geez, why waste time fighting them? Let them have their toy, who cares? Are you really so upset that you won't be able to listen Britney's crap without giving up rights? Is like being afraid of Microsoft, for root's sake: if you know about computers and electronics, and use Linux, Microsoft is irrelevant. There's nothing Microsoft can do that could possibly restrict you in any way. Not even their "Palladiums" and "safe audio paths" and computers with integrated DRM... Shit, maybe I'm not ready right now to make my own computer from spare chips and stuff, but I know I could do it, if I needed to. And would have a lot of fun in the process, too.
My point is that we're the guys that create technology. They can lock everybody but us. If new soundcards only play their stuff, on their crippled systems, then we'll build our own systems and soundcards.
Now, as for stuff to listen to, here's a plan. Artists, the guys that make the music and the movies, the ones that really can give the finger at the DMCA and the rest by making their own stuff, could use some help from us technical people. Say, the problem with independent artists is that we don't know them. Try going to iuma.org. The problem is not lack of material, but the fact that, from all that big heap of music, you probably won't know what to pick.
So, how about building a MovieCritic-like database that can give you hints about what independent music you're probably going to like? Or software and documentation to make it easy for artists to record OGGs or setup Internet radio stations? Or an open PayPal-type of system to let them get money from their fans while cutting the greedy middle-man out? Or just help a local band getting online. You'll have a lot of fun, and you'll be way more damaging to the RIAA than bitching about it on Slashdot.
I don't know, I think those are cool projects, and that we should try spending more time in that kind of stuff, and less moaning about Hollywood, the RIAA or Microsoft.
You're so right. That's exactly how the Holocaust got started. First, the German landowners would be like "Hey Jew, would you mind getting me a schnitzel, as long as you're up?" And of course, the Jewish people were kind and good-hearted, so they'd be like "Da!" But the Germans got too used to the idea. Pretty soon, they wouldn't even ask, they'd go "I'm thirrrrsty, hint hint," and their Jewish friends would go "Yeah, yeah, I'll go hop into the shower so you can kill me." Before long, they were allowed to whip them into submission and fuck their wives. So beware! If we don't nip this in the bud, we'll all allow casual racism to dominate our conversation.
Another reason to get a TBSC, not that TB can't do this too but hopefully they'll want to hang on to thier growing enthusiast market.
I agree 100%!...
/., this comment only gets rated a 3??? C'mon, we've got to rally the troops! As a sister feature to YRO how about YAO (Your Actions Offline)? Action begets action, we need to see it!
WE are the STAKEHOLDERS
DRM IS THEFT (The theft of our rights!)
Here is one group who's very passionate and active www.nyfairuse.org
We must focus our voices and steer our frustration into action. Every complaint must become an action. Englobulators are ramming this down our throats, like it or not. We must take action to our representatives and let them know your feelings about DRM and where your vote will go. We must take action to hardware manufacturers and let them know where we will be spending our dollars if they try to sell us products that take away our rights (not them!). Everyone can DO something whether it is writing them(Yes, snail mail. They carry a lot more weight) or even telephoning your local reps. Phone #'s and address are only clicks away these days. Most importantly, we must explain what is happening to our family and friends in terms they will understand. Corps are trying to seep it into a lazy populace. We need to educate people about the current attack on their rights. Anyone here know about the power of education???
ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS!!!
And hey
This FAQ describes what we can do about public servants abusing their power. Includes such goodies as Public Servant's Questionnaire.
Ver 1.7 seems to be the latest.
http://www.nettrash.com/users/frogfarm/fffaq.html
Any bets on how much the price of CD's will drop since they won't be abled to be copied? The way I look at it, and I'm certain record execs see it the same way, since piracy will drop, they will sell more units and then they won't have to hike up the price as much.
...is precisely because of crap similar to this. Some of the tracks were encoded using Liquid Audio. No thanks!
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
What about my DTT3500 Digital speakers from Cambridge Soundworks/Creative? They are connected to SB Live via a digital connection, will these new creative drivers cause it to stop working while playing secure content?
I just gave the URL to a friend and the reply was "Ew... freak! o_o"
1. You deploy DRM with little boxes, called "key boxes". They come with their own secret private and public keys of which they expose the latter to secondary key providers. These download those keys to the key boxes, safe in the knowledge that the box knows the key, but the owner of the box doesn't. The key boxes can be trusted because they're public keys are appropriately signed.
These key boxes distribute the private keys they hold to display devices (to a limit), and the public keys to anyone. Private keys can be "returned" from the display device to the key boxes. Appropriately signed public keys create a web of trust all around. Basically, you can receive encrypted content and only display it on approved equipment, but make as many copies as you want.
The key boxes also can hold key pairs where you know the private key, but such keys are useless for protected content because the public keys are not "blessed" by the right signing authorities that the relevant ??AA trusts. Still, they conveniently carry your secure keys for email, etc.
2. The content providers lobby for, and get legislation, to mandate the use of this system. The consumer electronics industry ramps up and leads the charge out of the slump. Conversion boxes are used for legacy analog displays at "reduced" resolution. But, new fangled all-digital secure TVs and speakers start to arrive.
3. Having taken a collective Valium, content provides start releasing content over the net, secure that it can't be redistributed at will. The demand for high-speed internet access heats up, for real this time.
4. People start using these "secret" private keys for email. In the event that such keys get lost, provision is made to permit them to be escrowed for safe keeping in recognized "key banks". Again, a key box can disclose a secret private key to a key bank if the key bank's public key has been properly certified.
The government, of course, to appear to strike "balance" in the call for DRM sets it self up as a key bank that all content providers must trust. People use secret private keys for casual email (because it is now so easy). The government drools over the key escrow by fiat it now has, and boasts that it has "secured the internet" (as most traffic will now be strongly encrypted).
And that's how to save the U.S. economy.
No, it won't satisfy everybody. Yes, the infrastructure build out could probably only be undertaken by government as a "make work" project to get the U.S. out of it's tech depression.
See, I am so valuable to the security of the U.S. They ought to gimme the LC1 Green Card already and let me help them implement this.
You could've hired me.
How long will it be before we have great DRM propganda like this:
http://jeff.whoark.org/images/drmpropaganda.jpg
Ok so why would I want to support DRM when I can't output music to my home stereo which cost me $5,000? Oh, yea, let me just drop another 5 or so on a NEW stereo that supports DRM which isn't even available yet. Oh wait, I forgot, this is 100% shutdown of the digital output, so I can't play the sh*t through my stereo anyway. Riiiight.. I'm gonna keep d/ling mp3's like a champ. Screw DRM.
The slashdot crowd has tremendous influence on purchasing choices for friends families and employers. "No sis I don't think you should buy HP they use creative sound cards in their systems, why don't you buy this system from Gateway instead".
"I think we should use gateway's and not HPs for the sales laptops. The HPs have DRM and we don't want sale's presentations getting locked into the laptop and not being able to be backed up".
The next time CL releases a sound card it will get trashed here. They will notice the negative reaction. No company likes terrible word of mouth.
You know, good news sites don't show their bias towards stories, which slashdot does in every single article relating to microsoft and drm.
20/20 should do a a "give-me-a-break" piece on this crap!
Here, let me clean it up for you, Clean Flicks style:
You're so right. That's exactly how slavery got started. First, the [caucasian-american] landowners would be like "Hey [Booker], would you mind getting me a [malt beverage], as long as you're up?" And of course, the [locationally-challenged african-american] people were kind and good-hearted, so they'd be like "[I gleefully acquiesce]!" But then [caucasian-americans] got too used to the idea. Pretty soon, they wouldn't even ask, they'd go "I'm thirrrrsty, hint hint," and their [locationally-challenged african-american] friends would go "Yeah, yeah, I'll get you a [malt beverage]." Before long, they were allowed to [wet-noodle lash] them and [have lain with] their [mutually-agreed-to-upon life partners]. So beware! If we don't nip this in the bud, soon your [mutually-agreed-to-upon life partner] will be ripe with the [love] child of a Microsoft exec, and you'll be singing [a popular work song] as you program in his cubicle farms.
Or you could just not install the software, you [frame-challenged door].
c-hack.com |
Every wonder why BSD is more stable?
Ever wonder why BSD kernels lack so many features?
The analogy of GPL to DRM music is pretty faulty a better analogy would be:
:: open music :: DRM protected music
GPL
copy protected software
and I haven't seen the slashdot crowd be huge fans of copy protected software.
The problem, obviously, is that people do not expect the protection to be "reasonable".
I also compose music and software, but apparently for different reasons than you.
# make clean sig
It's bad enough when the person posting a story puts a biased spin on it in his commentary, but when slashdot allows biased stoires like this to qualify as "news", they need to start examining what they really want this site to be. Apparently, they don't want to present unbiased information, and let the slashdot community decide for themselves what it means through opinions and discussion, but instead prefer to push their agenda on slashdot community.
Vote for Pedro
It is my artwork.
No, it's not. Many people had a hand in getting you where you are today. You would know nothing of music if it weren't for people who came before and paved the path. You'd know nothing of musical theory or composition if it weren't for you instructors, who got their knowledge from someone else. The sheet music you study, the instrument you play, and the songs you cover when you're learning, were all made by someone else. If it were illegal to cover a song without written permission, if it were illegal to "reverse engineer" a song, and play the melody on your guitar just by listening to it, just how far do you think you would have made it composing that 40 hour song? What you did was pull together all the knowledge you've gained from others' work, and with that knowledge, you were able to craft something of your own style. The song you made is not your creation, but rather the culmination of knowledge that came before you, guided by your hand. You don't live in vacuum. Physical property belongs to you, but ideas do not.
No sig for you.
You know, heh I'll bet there is no way in hell apple would ever pull this crap. Gotta wonder if it's getting to be about the time to switch?
Same acronym, but a more accurate meaning. If the phrase "Digital Restrictions Management" were used by those who oppose these measures (similar tactic to "Pro choice" vs. "Pro life"), it may catch on.
I read in this news story on cnet a while back that one Japanese label was going to just copy protect cretin tracks on their disks with midbar's "copy protection" scheme.
I wondered the same thing then as I do now with what creative is doing, why bother? Ignoring how easy it is to defeat, I want to know why are they just copy protecting select tracks. The only reason I can think is that the want to protect the parts that they feel are valuable, or at least create that impression by locking those tracks off.
Another thought more related to the creative incident is that this is a trap set up in order to get the user to enable and "support" DRM by having the user agree to the EULA's and what ever DRM software creative installs. I doubt the users who will try to access the tracks would agree to and install DRM if they knew what they where getting into.
I am not looking forward to more hardware component companies start announcing support for palladium. I would not be surprised to see creative announcing support, and having other sound card manufactures fallow their lead just like Intel and AMD.
No, it is not.
If Slashdot is going to be posting Y.A.S.O.D.R.M.(yet another story on drm). Maybe they could actually do something positive and once a week post about the ongoing efforts to combat it. You know like "this week X happened", and have it be a ongoing thing.
The fight begins with information. Slashdot has been great at documenting abuse and potential abuse. They have also been good enough to report news of those who are doing something besides reporting, and they make it all available at zero cost. What larger impact can anyone have besides telling everyone?
Now I know some of you are saying Slashdot is a "news service" and shouldn't get involved. But gimma a break Slashdot is hardly unbiased and there is obviously no "journalism code" being followed. Amost every submission is heavily biased.
Huh? what do you want to do besides complain about Slashdot? Why don't YOU start a group and then submit a story about it? Then you might end up with that site or even do some good.
That's true, thanks for caring, don't buy that shit.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
yro.slashdot.org is pretty much what you're asking for -- except for the fact that it doesn't limit itself to once a week.
In truth, this is going to be a marketing issue. If the market buys it, it's gonne be with us forever. If the market avoids it like the plague (which I expect, and which I expect to encourage), then it's going to die a quiet and ignoble death.
I can just see it now:
It happened 20 years ago with game copy protection. It happened 10 years ago with business software copy protection. It happened 5 years ago with the copy-protected competetor to DVDs. It's happening today by pushing people away from Windows and onto Linux.
Microsoft's recent licensing Gestapo tactics are probably one of the best things to have happened to Linux in a long time.
(( BTW: 'Red Hot Chill Dogs' is a band put together by a friend of mine. Their most memorable piece of music work was an investigation into the difference between punk rock and pokka (speed and volume). ))
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Just look for the "Compact Disk Digital Audio" logo. That logo is a trademark for Phillips, and they don't allow disks that don't conform to the Red Book standard to have the logo.
In short, if that logo isn't there. don't buy the disk. It has DRM.
How bout we turn up the heat and ask the man himself? www.elviscostello.com has a special section titled "Ask Elvis" where he responds to your questions. Have fun. :)
The same happened to me with the latest de/vision cd. It wouldn't play in my radio station's cd players, nor my pioneer pro-dj player which i use to dj at clubs in the like. So, i decided to post a rant on copyproofcds.org , in case anyone wants to read it.
"Well, that there is no such thing as free music. If a carpenter made a chair and then someone went into his workshop and took it without his permission, that's not free, that's stealing. I think that the Napsters of this world only encourage that."
n te rviews24611.asp)
-Elvis Costello, 2002
The man plainly does not get it.
(http://www.dotmusic.com/interviews/April2002/i
There was a booth for Creative today smack dab in the middle of the UNL campus. I was wondering what they were doing, I bet this must be it. They're probably promoting the "free" CD's (as in beer, not as in speech) to get the people who pirate music the most to switch to DRM.
I've added your site to my tagline.
Nooooooooo! You poor fewel, it's already too late for you! They weren't trying to slip you a DRM warez "mickey". The damage was in the music you listened too. It was infested with high frequency subliminal badness designed by the unholy union of the RIAA/M$/Liberati/Aliens with anal probing devices and you have now been hipnotized to ignore the presence of the level twelve watcher spiders that are presently infesting your domicile and reporting back to them! You're doomed unless you go to this website immediately! Post haste my friend!
About the biggest difference between the New York Times and the Marxist-Lenninist Reporter or Xtra-West (a Vancouver Gay-community weekly) is that the latter two their heart on their sleeve: They all but scream "This is our bias! Read it with a pinch of your favorite offsetting spices" (OK: That would be the Xtra-West way of saying it: the MLR would probably say "read it or die with the proletariat hordes when the revolution hits" -- but I digress)
The New York Times has it's bias. People know, more or less, what it is -- but professional journalists are trained to write in impersonal (i.e. unbiased) style. It's religiously unspoken and unwritten. Like the elephant in the fridge, It's only realy noticed it when it leaves it's footprints in the butter.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Turtle Beach will have to add support to Secure Audio Path to its sound card drivers. Without support for the Secure Audio Path, Turtle Beach won't be able to get Microsoft to sign its Win32 drivers.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The MnP store by my house should stop selling creative crap if they want my business to continue.
Except soon, all hardware available from any manufacturer will support Secure Audio Path. Otherwise, Microsoft won't sign the driver.
On the brighter side, only encrypted .wma files will activate Secure Audio Path. Your .ogg files will still work.
Will I retire or break 10K?
You do get something when you buy a creative card and download the latest media player. You get the ability to play a DRM file. Everybody kept saying they'd pay for mp3's if they were made available for a low cost. This technology makes it possible while providing some protection against p2p sharing. If you never buy a DRM file, you won't even notice that your sound card doesn't output digital audio when you play it. If you don't like DRM songs, don't buy them.
Vote for Pedro
The big picture is that the only reason DRM exists in the first place is because copyright law is broken. Since copyright law's conception, no copyright has ever expired. The length of copyright has been extended by lobbyists over the years, mainly by people like Walt Disney (in his day) and by groups like the RIAA and MPAA. Walt Disney actually had a trust setup before his death to pay for more lobbying from beyond the grave.
It was supposed to be 30 years, but has been extended to "90 years past the artist's death." This is horribly broken.
The only way to fix DRM is to fix copyright law. Then there won't be anything to control. Information is a concept, not a substance to package into neat little, sellable DRM packages.
*kick* *punch*
Seems to me that if even supposedly technically aware people are making the mistakes such as the poster's above, what chance does the average Joe have of understanding the erosion of rights?
Google Bombing has been effective in the past at putting the "real" word out using mob jusice, so why can't we combat the digital cancer of DRM in the same way? Having a government control technical advances is not too far removed from socialist oppresion, and we can see how that helped Russia become the tech powerhouse it is today. This really is the government's/corporation's (they are effectively the same thing in the US) best chance to control your lives and turn you into a statistical resource more than ever. You think DRM is just about "protecting content"? What about the enormous amount of marketting information companies will be able to gather by a few SQL queries matching the "thieving_customers" table with "address" and "purchases". It's a goldmine for the scum pushing junkmail into your lives.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Microsoft and Intel have already outlined a DRM partnership called CDS [bbspot.com]. Now that I can actually see happening. How far will we be from this in just a few years?
Geeez. Moderators: BBSPOT - "BBspot is a satirical news and comedy source and meant to be funny. If you are easily offended, gullible, or don't have a sense of humor we suggest you go elsewhere. "
Unless they force everyone to upgrade to a certified sound card
Or at least a signed driver. The Secure Audio Path won't play sound on a driver that Microsoft hasn't signed with Secure Audio Path permissions. I've written about this before.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Mods smoking crack... Informative for a link to a bbspot article called CDS (Can't Do Shit)?
Sadly, the usual "user" is so patentably dumb that s/he don't understand the difference between a "Start" button and a "shutdown -r now" command, that this will most probably get a large foothold.
I don't know what to say; Shoot all the _dumb_ users? (I wouldn't mind, but who am I to judge)
But think about it: there are very few 'must have' discs from year to year, for each of us, and some of them are huge bands like U2 and DMB, and others are are smaller, but going somewhere. Why on Earth would a band in either group allow DRM on their CD?
The major acts like U2 have some control over their discs, and would probably not wish to offend their worldwide fan base. Bono would ask himeself, "Why would I want to piss off 20 million people who like my music and pay me money?
The up-and-comers would fight to the death to NOT allow DRM on their disc, because someday they want to have 20 million fans too.
We all know about the tactics of the RIAA labels, and we've read Janis Ian's stuff here for a few months now, so maybe I'll be proven wrong by some new scumbag RIAA tactic (like mandating it for all releases of all artists?? God help us...and them!), but I think DRM is starting to smell like DNR, as in Do Not Resuscitate. Let it die.
The Supremes (as in Court) need to render judgment on Fair Use and other DMCA issues relating to buying an object, with an attached 'license.' It can't happen soon enough, IMO.
Like others have commented before me, I can't see how treating your paying customers like criminals is a viable business model.
Tonight, I thoroughly enjoyed streaming some great REM in a Windows Media Player format from an off-shore site, playing on my Gentoo box, through my (fully registered) copy of Crossover. In fact, I liked it so much that afterward I went online and bought two CDs of the music I listened to. (Before someone slaps DRM on those discs.)
Marcus
Hey, how about some of you moderators try reading the linked article?
Where's my clue-by-four when I need it, geez...
We need a political party that wants guns and speech. After all, they are the first and second ammendments. I'm tired of thinking, oh well bush is good because we'll still be allowed to own guns in 4 years, but gore is good because I'll still be able to check out books at a library in 4 years. And libertarians would sell all the damned forests to the oil companies, and let the poor die on the streets, so they aren't a serious option for a real human. We need to get all the people with a real fuckin clue and take over the damn world.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
First they can't enable analog or it "would break the "trusted" display chain" and we could copy it, now they don't want use to enable digital [out on computers] because we could copy it.
Do they not know what they are doing, or are do they just want us to play for stuff and not even be able to view/listen to it?
Right. In fact, the more insidous bias is the unspoken one of the *professional journalist*.
*Objective journalism* is right up their with *bi-partisan politics* pegging the BS meter.
illegitimii non ingravare
Will you give up your own freedom in order to take that same freedom away from others?
This looks like another "do as I say, not as I do" situation starting.
--
"Grades are doing what you're told, IQ is telling what you do."
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
However, he has come out against the free trading of his music. To wit:
So maybe he did sanction the protection on this giveaway. And maybe this confusion about whether his full-length release is protected will hurt sales of it. But maybe he didn't. Remember, there are free songs on it. And I highly doubt he was responsible for the doublespeak about DRM on it.
By the way, I used to host his web page.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
When copying is outlawed only outlaws will make copies.
When the goverment takes away the means and ability to make copies, they control the past.
How can future generations read about the rise and fall of our culture if the information is controlled ?
Maybe 10 years from now it will be against the law to produce mp3 playing hardware or software ?
DRM,Palladium these are the cancer's that infect our society!
Microsoft will have the last laugh. Much to the delight of the recording/movie industry and most of our 'bought and paid for' congressmen, microsoft is trying to force feed the masses DRM. 'They' praise DRM because it will stop all the evil pirates from 'stealing' their cash cows. According to microsoft's EULA they want to disable any software on your machine that doesn't have DRM capabilities (to stop the evil pirates). Doesn't this sound like they're trying to quash their competition once and for all? Congress will gag any software developer or company that chooses not to implement DRM into their softwares as DMCA violations. Opt-in you say? If DRM will be Opt-in (they mean opt-out)then using the simple menu interface to disable it would be a DMCA violation. Microsoft will drastically alter the way we absorb entertainment and won't look back. By the time everyone realizes what happened, it will have been 20 years later and hundreds of thousands of people will have been put in jail for violations of laws that were unconstitutional to begin with. Our current copyright laws have evolved into a separate entity than our forefathers never intended. It's all open to your own interpretation, but they never intened for thoughts to be owned. Copyright was meant for scientific discovery and invention to be protected for the author or inventor. They were never meant to allow monopolistic greedy corporations to enslave the masses into paying them for every possible incarnation of an idea or invention. Due to the nature of human progress, we evolve. We discover and we adapt. We invent and reinvent. If we wanted to take the extreme view on copyrights that the music/movie industry has taken, then we would start charging japan for every television and radio they sell.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I'm not saying DRM is good, but unlike cancer it is not self-evident that it is bad. My point is: when's the last time you looked at a newspaper, or a scientific journal, or just about any publication, and the front story was "smoking sucks"? Probably never, because there is no reason to tell people "smoking sucks." They will ignore you. You have to tell them why smoking sucks if they don't already know, and you have to give them a better reason than "it's EVIL!!!!!"
If you're going to bash DRM, which should definitely be done, bash it objectively. Write an article about *why* DRM sucks, and post it on the web, or send it to a magazine or a newspaper. "DRM sucks" is not news. "Why DRM sucks" could be interesting and informative, but it is not news either. Slashdot is, supposedly, a news site.
Conversely, if you are going to report on DRM, don't say "DRM sucks." If you appear to be unbiased or at least objective, people will take you more seriously. Therefore, if you wish to bash DRM, say why DRM is bad. That way, the people who know little about DRM will know why it is bad, not that some random Slashdot person thinks it is bad. And don't just say, "here's why DRM is bad:". Instead, write "here are some problems with / concerns about DRM". That sort of argument could be integrated into a news article without provoking posts like this one.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
To operating systems that don't support this kind of bullshit.
I've been using DOS/Windows ever since 1992 or so when I was 12. Before that I used Apple II's. Right now I'm using Win2K because like a lot of people I've just sort of followed the Microsoft upgrade path since then. Windows has done what I've needed it to do, I feel comfortable with it, and I've never had to pay for it, so I've never been forced out of my comfort zone with it.
I've just never seen a big enough payoff to switch to another operating system. I'm a professional computer programmer, I build my own boxes, and I've even installed Linux on a couple of them, so it's not like there's technical hurdles to running another OS.
The point is that Windows has been Good Enough (tm) for me, and that there are literally millions and millions of people who continue to use Windows for just the reasons I outlined.
But now, as Windows gets more and more shitty baggage like this, it stops being good enough. It's actively becoming an obstacle to the things I want to do. I've already given up on PC gaming, because the technical troubles are such bullshit that I'd rather play on a console. The last two games I bought recommended that I "buy a new CDROM drive" as a solution to my problems running the game due to their copy-protection schemes. And this is on top of the typical driver-related and other compatibility issues that have plagued PC gaming since Day One.
Now, Microsoft is trying to pollute the user experience even further with this DRM stuff. It turns me off even more. I think Win2K is the last version of Windows I'll be using. Linux and/or OSX is next for me. It's funny, proponents and developers of non-Windows OS's have been frantically trying to promote and improve their products in order to get users to switch... but the real key for a lot of people might be once Microsoft actively starts taking *away* things that users take for granted.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Goddammit, don't post shit like that anymore. Do you want to see beer come out my nose again? And wtf is Bukka?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
It seems to me that the best way to combat DRM is to politely but firmly let the companies that include it know that we will not purchase their products. Those of us here have (comparitively) a lot of influence on purchasing decisions for hardware and software, both through friends that come to us for advice, and because many of us hold IT positions in our companies. In this case, we need to identity which sound cards have DRM, publicize that fact in any reviews/recommendations we do, and encourage people to buy hardware without such restrictions. So, to get the ball rolling, would anyone like to reply to this post with a recommendation for a good sound card that does not have DRM, and preferably has open source drivers?
, which states that the SoundBlaster Live and Audigy series have built in Digital Rights Management (DRM), which will disable the digital output of the sound card if the card believes that the audio signal is copy-protected. Can you confirm or deny the presence of such restrictions in your cards?
To make my position clear, I just sent the following letter to Creative Labs:
---
I am currently the owner of a SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold, and have been very happy with its performance. I am in the process of purchasing a new computer, and am trying to decide what sound card to get. I just read the story at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27232.html
If your cards do contain DRM, I would like to express my distaste that you have included such restrictions without clearly notifying the consumer of their presence, and state that I will no longer purchase your products as a result, and will recommend that my friends do the same.
---
Why not take a few minutes to send a similar letter? I sent mine to sales@soundblaster.com, but I have no idea whether its valid or not - they don't list many email addresses on their website. Perhaps a followup poster can find a more appropriate address?
DRM is sort of like that. People are gonna get mad... "Why can't I open this stupid file?" Et cetera. And guess what? 99% of the pirates out there are tech-savvy users who know that there are other choices around, like that thing called Linux, and they'll switch from Windows to Linux in a second if it means they can watch the pirated version of whatever for free. And you know what? There won't be any difficulty in obtaining audio, video, pictures or whatever you want. If you can display it on a screen, or play it through speakers, you can record it in whatever format you want. All it takes is for one person in the entire world to do this for a song or movie or whatever and it's out there. DRM is not going to work because it's just plain stupid. We still need to fight, but not against Microsoft. They'll realize the errors of their ways when they're cashing their welfare checks a few years from now. We need to fight against the laws that have already been passed, and those that will be passed, that make copyright, patents and trademark last virtually forever. The limits should be returned to their original values, so that a reasonable number of years after something is published, it becomes public domain so that knowledge and ideas and whatnot in this country can flourish. Not the crap that's going on right now, where the huge crush everybody else, and therefore, widely-used software sucks, because it doesn't have to work properly, and movies suck, because nobody needs to make them intellectually stimulating, etc.
If approached reasonably and creatively?
For example a while ago I was doing my home contents insurance. I have a fairly large CD collection and insuring them all would be expensive, especially as they don't fit under general contents above a rather low threshhold.
That got me thinking, I've already bought the rights to a copy of all this music, if those physical copies get stolen then I should be able to replace them cheaply. With a sufficiently powerful DRM system, perhaps I could have some ID that I can use to get new copies of all my tunes (and maybe invalidate all the stolen ones).
Of course, I don't trust the buggers any more than most of you, but it astounds me that they don't even appear to be offering the consumer any enhanced functionality to sweeten the DRM deal.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
It's not reasonable protection.
I am a software developer and amateur musician. I learn other people's songs and play them; I write songs and teach them to others. Much like using and contributing to open-source software.
Limit a copyright to a reasonable period (say, a normal human adolescent) -- so that someone who grew up listening to some music can then find it in the public domain when they're old enough to start making their own art (/product/whatever).
Knowledge is meant to be shared; it isn't useful otherwise. DRM closes the knowledge and sets unreasonable limits on the sharing. Modern copyright law (in the US at least) has the same problem.
Note: meaningful art is seldom profitable for the sake of profitability. If you're making art for profit, you're doing it for the wrong reasons. If you'll notice, most of the art made for profit is worthless anyways.
however, consistently being four or more sizes off and not buying a belt...
united states nuclear device terrorist bioweapon encryption cocaine korea syria iran iraq columbia cuba
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And a major headache this is, too, for me anyway. But I digress.
I do. I wish I had more time to develop software, but I do manage to write a bit while supporting myself doing something else. (Perhaps if all the software my company bought were free, they could afford to pay me a little more and I could afford to spend a little more time on my software hobby.) But the main reason this argument doesn't fly is that most software development is actually not for the shrinkwrap market - it is writing custom software for individual customers. If all software were free, said customers would still be willing to pay for such work.
Uh, I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but by uttering a complete non-sequitur I think you just shot whatever credibility you might have built up. Or do you have a grand unified theory that ties software stability to the use of various non-GPL licenses (some more free, some less) in various releases of BSD-derived software?
Amateur, meaning - you don't get paid for it. Yet you play music anyway. Funny. That's how I am with software.
You have an unreasonable expectation, then. Whoever told you that mere effort guarantees remuneration fed you a line. That's not how markets work. You also have to succeed in producing something the market is willing to buy. If all of us go out and produce lots of free software and put you out of a job, you can hardly just sit and whinge about it.
But all that is beside the point. Traditional copyright law does not restrict the uses to which you may put your lawfully obtained material, except in context of other people. I.e. you can't put on public performances without negotiating royalties, or make copies to "share" with others, but anything you do for your own gratification has been allowed - including backup copies, etc. Now with DRM, The Man wants to retain control over how you use what you have lawfully obtained. This in itself is more or less fair play, and I'm happy with the Spy vs. Spy of creating / defeating playback protection - except that they've rigged the contest with the DMCA so we can't legally play at all.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
"disabling the digital out so you its harder to create copies that sound like the origina"
Which renders the hardware useless for multitrack recording, which, as a musician, has been my bone of contention the whole time. All this "copy proctection" stuff just raises the cost because it "protects" me from getting production quality results from consumer equipment -- which I *could* do if it wasn't crippled.
Well, I guess that is the last time I buy ANYthing from Creative.
I guess "Creative" means "creative theft" of users' rights in collusion with Microtheft.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
"I see you're trying to destroy the music industry, would you like to...."
- DiVX. Same idea. They made it as conveinent as possible. You had to dialin once in awhile to verify/bill or your crap stopped working. They wanted a pay per play. And what did people do?
/me plays the AOL "Goodbye" sound.
- Bible Beaters. The "666, mark of the beast" crowd, and the "this is the beginning of concentration camps and serial numbers on the forehead" crowd that showed up at the Pentium serial debacle have yet to make their appearance. They will, and it will be felt.
/me plays the AOL "Goodbye" sound.
- No Working Examples. I can think of no other real examples of a vendor selling a product successfully to the masses for years, then turning around one day and completely handtieing the enduser, stalking the enduser, monitoring the enduser, etc, that continued to make the same, or more money.
/me plays the AOL "Goodbye" sound.
- The Lawndart Example. Lawndarts were extremely popular at one time. They were dangerous, but everyone had some. They sold quite well Im sure. For outside reasons of safety, the manufacturor of lawn darts was forced to change their product to a more hand-tying, watered down version. They made Nerf and plastic lawn darts as replacements. Same product sort of, but less effective as the original. Now how many people own the Nerf lawndarts? No one?
/me plays the AOL "Goodbye" sound.
- Hacker Challenge. All of this, if enabled somehow will amount to the biggest hacker/cracker challenge on the face of the earth. And I have faith in them. I expect a WindowsXP.2004.FritzChipEMU-hacked.RiSE to be quite popular.
/me plays the AOL "Goodbye" sound.
All this boils down to a picture where this crap is halfass tried, and for every $1 they extort from a naieve person who forks over another $600 for a copy of Photoshop to work from home, they'll lose $2 to crackers, disenfrancheised customers, people who've lost interest in having to work to listen to the latest N*Sync DRM CD, and privacy fanatics who won't go near it. And what happens when things lose money in America?I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Your comment brought to mind a disturbing vision involving DRM-protected content that can't be *deleted*, because you don't have rights to do so.
What an opportunity for entrapment -- just email the victim some kiddie porn (or whatever) that's rigged so DRM won't let him delete it, then call the cops.
I know this sounds farfetched, but what if DRM eventually incorportates a no-delete/no-format feature (which would probably require hardware involvement) that could be used to *prevent* people [think corporations and mobsters] from deleting "evidence"?? A handy tool for catching Bad Guys, but how far would YOU trust it in the hands of certain law enforcement agencies??
Yeah, the cops could just as well have used a data recovery agency, but this is SO much easier, can be inspected on the spot, and besides, the perp *might* be a terrorist!
I think you can see where my train of paranoid extrapolation is headed. I hope I'm suffering from an overactive imagination.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Now that's a good one! w00t!
DRM is not reasonable.
It infringes on the rights of the purchaser of the copyrighted item. Both their right to use the item in a legal fashion, and on the general principle that people are innocent until proven guilty, and should NOT have to undergo constant policing in the privacy of their own homes.
When the copyright expires, DRM infringes on the benefits due to the public at large, who granted the copyright in the first place to get more items for the public domain.
And what is going to happen with my car cd player? Or whenever I want to play that song in my office instead of my livingroom ?
Guess they better don't retire that fast (altough a new management could always cut some cr*p)..
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Macrovision doesn't work on sound. The only thing sound devices record and play back is sound. If you were to take the signal from the TV right before it gets sent to the picture tube, no amount of Macrovision will do anything. Similarly, no amount of anything will stop you being able to solder a couple of terminals in place of a loudspeaker cone and record from there. Anyone who thinks otherwise deserves to be taken out and shot. IMHO.
It seems like all one has to do to get around the DRM in this example is to pretend to be a home recording enthusiast. Buy your sound card from someplace like here instead of best buy and nothing can stop you. Their list prices are very, very high, but if you give them a call you'll find prices are closer to 2/3-1/2 of the list prices. (I don't work there, my friend does.) I own an Echo Mia, it has S/PDIF i/o and I could very easily make a digital copy of the songs by connecting the s/pdif out to the s/pdif in and muting the output of the recording app. The Mia isn't 5.1, but they have that type of stuff also.
Four times my ass.
He painted a unicorn in outer space. I'm askin' ya, what's it breathin'?
And if you are a average (and therefore averagely ignorant) user you will also be forced into using the WMP 9 BETA. (Actually not, but average users don't know how to click the second option... We all know this is true.)
You are beeing forced to use a BETA-product to play music you legally purchased... Hrm.. Hows that for "surreptitiously placing anything on a PC that impairs its function"?
This seems more and more far fetched... Am I loosing contact with sense, reality and ordinary logic, or is it just that simple that MS and **AAs really do hate people?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
You forgot the Microsoft Messenger that as magic shows up in the systemtray everytime you enter a Microsoft site surfing with IE. Thats just sick.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Dont you get what it means if you can buy a CD with DRM for a tenth of the cost of a non-DRMd CD?
:P
:)
It means you can buy a full album for just 2$ !!
You can play it four times, thats three times more than you need to make a mp3 copy of it!
Is there anyone here that believes they can really prevent us from making a copy? Hell no!
The music at the end WILL have to end up in our ears, and if thats the latest spot where i can make a copy, so be it... But, quite frankly, there will be lots of other possibilities, like radio. tv. Always remember, they GOT TO SELL IT!
DRM is your friend. It produces cheaper MP3s, cause you can elect to buy just one play/record session instead of buying the unlimited time as it is now. (which leads to much higher prices)
Also, the general sheepish folk will pay the bill for you, if they dont create copies. Cause they GOT to pay more often, and we do not. Great job Microsoft.
Hold your horses, boy! Is this true? If so, I will -never- install Windows on any of my machines ever again!
What the f... do I need a digital out for, if my DAC doesnt recieve all the freaking signals?!?!? Ok... So it's just DRM-files. Yeay. As if everything isn't gonna be DRMed in the close future anyway.
Guess I'll still stick to Linux, and convert my home Win2k-box when I get a proper network connection....
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Ha! They're already warming you up, just like the frog in the pot.
.WMA files with DRM stuff. Would you get rid of it and buy another brand? Perhaps a non-upgradeable one so you can be sure that you will never ever inadvertently own a piece of hardware with the potential to run DRM?
I don't know what you mean. The sign clearly says "Free Hot Tub!" and I'm just enjoying a good soak.
For now you can play all your files, but what about when the DRM files become ubiquitous?
When DRM files become ubiquitous, my SBLive will continue to work. Unless ninjas come in my window and solder new parts into it, the SBLive will just go on working as it does right now.
Now, if Creative ever comes out with a new card that is so broken with DRM junk that it won't work properly, I won't buy it. But I am not planning to get rid of all my SBLive cards! They are well-supported in the Linux kernel, and they work.
Tell me, suppose you buy a motherboard with built-in audio, and then you find out that the motherboard company has released a new driver that supports the MS DRM stuff. Would you tear the motherboard out of your computer and get a new one?
Suppose you buy a music player that can be firmware-upgraded, and a new version of the firmware is released that can play
And if you want to get rid of this stuff, will you sell it, thus helping disseminate hardware that is capable of DRM, or will you destroy it and eat the loss? Just how far do you recommend I go to avoid being boiled in the hot tub?
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I read the Sunday Times and have my Costello CD, anyone else interested in posting them back (broken in half) to the Sunday Times with a small note indicating how we dislike the nature of the material they are attempting to inflict upon our pc through disreputable means and henceforth shall be refusing to purchase their paper (unless perhaps they discuss DRM in the paper).
Information wants to be high.
He painted a unicorn in outer space. I'm askin' ya, what's it breathin'?
So, if I was using that digital speaker set, and the Digital Out is being disabled, how am I supposed to listen to what is being played?
Simple. Throw those digital speakers in the trash, and buy new ones that are DRM-enabled. Secure Audio Path is designed to make sure that no one gets a clean digital copy of the audio; if you have SAP-enabled speakers, an encrypted copy of the audio goes into the speakers and the speakers themselves decrypt it.
The MPAA wants computer monitors and HDTVs to have similar decryption features. After all, if a movie can be played over an unencrypted digital connector, you could slurp a copy of it and pirate it! Of course, people will still pirate movies even if all this junk gets built into every computer. At least until we all get mandatory DRM chips embedded in our brains.
I'm not a fan of this DRM junk. I'm just not planning to get rid of my SBLive cards, just because Creative has driver support for Secure Audio Path.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
art made for profit is worthless anyways
Stolen concept. Intellectual dishonesty. At least, that's what assholes like to tell me when they preach the dictionary.
"Two of the tracks are free from any DRM, but for the two that are DRM-enabled, you have to activate the right to listen to them (up to four times), by accessing a central server via the net."
So, you have a CD, that you can 'activate' up to four times... now this isn't such a big deal for a free promotional CD (it's kind of reasonable for the circumstances) - but what if you had bought the CD?
Machine crashes, upgrades, etc. - you can easily find cases where you would legitimately exceed an activation limit...
When are these companies going to learn / be told that customers are *not* criminals, and should not be treated as such?
When I worked in a shop, we were always told 'the customer is always right'... nowadays, it seems to be that we're being told 'the customer is always a right thieving bastard'...
Nothing really new here.
I have an old ATI Rage II+ video card with windows 98 drivers that disable TVOut when playing a Disney (Macrovision protected) Dvd movie.
Probably because the card has no macrovision capability, and they would not want the user to feed the unprotected video signal directly to a vcr.
Same principle after all !
No, it's not. Many people had a hand in getting you where you are today.
You couldn't be more wrong. The whole of commerce is comprised of commercial entities and the resources they consume (including their own skilled employees, financing, outside expertise, existing technology, research & development, etc.). Bottom line - whatever arrangement exists between an artist and any peripheral resources has nothing to do with the artist's relationship to you, as a consumer. An artist offering a finished work for purchase is no different than any other business transaction. You either accept the terms under which the artist's product is being offered, or you look for something more agreeable.
Secondly, a musical work is not an idea, it's an expression of an idea, and is therefore tangible in that it can be recorded onto a physical medium. It is this expression that is protected by copyright.
Finally, show me ONE THING having a method of implementation hasn't somehow been influenced by something before it. The evolution of anything, be it technology, art, or whatever, is really little more than the iterative refinement of methods and ideas that already exist.
Just seen an interesting article that the AMD Opteron includes DRM & all the TCPA stuff :(
http://www.chipzilla.net/?article=5516
It's nice to know that the trusted platform appears to be MS only, especially as their website doesn't even work in Mozilla or Opera, just IE.
Still appears there is an interesting site with all the companies details on here.
http://antitcpa.alsherok.net/tcpalist.php
...so apart from all the other nastyness of DRM, we'll be creating a big black hole in history, since all information from the DRM-age will just be strings of pseudo-random zeroes and ones in a few years.
Don't you just love progress.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Isn't the point of DRM that you won't be able to play it 40 years from and will, therefore, have to purchase another copy?
Doubt it will be that long, the people involved are probabaly considering something closer to 4 years than 40...
Could we agree on naming "DRM" Digital Restrictions Management whenever possible, even in the non-geeky-public?
THEY choose the wording to hide their mission from the users minds, WE can change this, if we call the beast by it's real name.
k2r
I went to this webpage and submitted a letter to Elvis Costello, indicating my strong disapproval of him allowing his music to be used as a wedge to take away people's control over their computers; I will not buy any more of his albums until his position changes on this issue.
You might want to do the same...
when you really want to download and here a song, who really does care about rights and crap???
i run linux on my desktop and servers. i'll never use windows (unless of course client demands something developed in it) and that windows will be on a defferent box much less worthy of my linux boxes.
now if you don't like intel and microsoft and their DRM crap, then use linux and amd!
but wait, do you worry amd will be drm as well?
then screw all the x86 architecture!!!
get the mac box, or sparc box and run linux on that!
This could be a good thing in the long run. The DIVX movie disks were pretty much the same thing as this is and the public learned quickly that is was just another way to fleece the end user. This will give people the first taste of the future. It will piss them off just like Divx movies did. Microsoft should talk to Circuit City. This will not help CD sales. It will kill them. Hopefully the industry will learn.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
The DRM as implemented by Creative isn't that bad. It amounts to the equivalent of Macrovision for video cards. Data is still passing unencrypted between the player and the soundcard itself - The DRM wave of the future is to encrypt even this data stream and THEN we should be scared. Currently, the DRM tech is merely shutting down the digital outputs of the soundcard - Same thing as the Macrovision support in the TV-Out capability of every modern video card. Are you boycotting NVidia and ATi because of this?
:)
I'm guessing not.
Like Macrovision, I'm sure it's a matter of a little driver hack to disable this one "feature"
When Creative starts supporting an encrypted data stream between the player and the sound card itself, THEN it's time to start boycotting them.
As someone said, if a card wants WHQL certification for XP, it has to have this form of DRM. Creative isn't the only one - EVERY manufacturer that makes cards with digital outputs will be doing this.
(On a side note - How long did it take for someone to crack this CD? Probably 15-20 seconds.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I wonder what would happen if all of us on RIAA boycott wrote nice letters to the RIAA saying "Well, I make X per year, and of that, I would normally spend Y on CDs, but because of your policies, I have decided to spend my money elsewhere." If enough of those letters came in, I wonder if they'd sit up and take notice.
It certainly works at the microcosm level -- check out the look on the store manager's face when you tell him, "See this money? I was going to spend all of that here today, but since you don't carry this band, and this band, and this band, I'm going to spend it down the street at the cool music store where they do, instead." (BTW, I learned this tactic from Jello Biafra, and it's quite effective, at least on the small scale. I notice that our local HMVs have started carrying the Dead Kennedys and TISM again...)
The problem with opt-out dollar voting is that unless you specifically make your targets aware that they're losing sales, they don't notice, or attribute it to the right cause.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
In the middle ages, when the bubonic plague was spreading across Europe, it was common for an enemy to catapult the dead carcasses of animals that had died of the plague over castle walls. The idea was to infect the people inside with the disease.
The barriers for entry are much lower now, so all that is needed is a free CD
Just how far do you recommend I go to avoid being boiled in the hot tub?
I recommend you start a crusade! I'm going to. I'm going to get myself a pair of digital, DRM-enabled, secure path (and whatever they call it) speakers and disassemble them (with a hammer) and find out how to get the decrypted digital signal back into my computer. I am going to pick up my old SoftICE and look around inside Windows again (I haven't done that in a long time). I am going to make ogg files from all my CDs (which I have just played from the CD for now out of lazyness. I am going to get myself a copy of the new and shiny DRM-enabled Media Player and disassemble it and try and break the DRM. I am going to...
This pisses me off to such an extend that I will do anything I can to make sure this project from microsoft will fail! When I (or someone else) break the DRM I am goin to make an internet worm that will propagate to all windows boxes it can find and install a DRM crack on them!
I am going to post the code I found to break the DRM on the internet whereever I can! On all forums! Everywhere! This horrible DRM idea has got to go!
*pant* *pant* ... *take more pills* ... *relax a bit* ... *lower blood pressure*
So you're saying this free Elvis Costello CD will infect your computer with some sort of virus that will stop you from listening to the regular CDs you have legally purchased? Man, thanks for the warning. Costello must die.
Tell me, suppose you buy a motherboard with built-in audio, and then you find out that the motherboard company has released a new driver that supports the MS DRM stuff. Would you tear the motherboard out of your computer and get a new one?
.WMA files with DRM stuff. Would you get rid of it and buy another brand? Perhaps a non-upgradeable one so you can be sure that you will never ever inadvertently own a piece of hardware with the potential to run DRM?
Nope... Roll back the drivers. If my system can't function properly without updated drivers because of other problems and the DRM-enabled ones are the only ones available, then it's new motherboard time.
Suppose you buy a music player that can be firmware-upgraded, and a new version of the firmware is released that can play
Nope... Just downgrade the firmware.
And if you want to get rid of this stuff, will you sell it, thus helping disseminate hardware that is capable of DRM, or will you destroy it and eat the loss? Just how far do you recommend I go to avoid being boiled in the hot tub?
Raise hell and attempt to return it. I'd fight return policies if I had to. Anything I can't return gets hooked up to an arc welder.
Foremost though, I read up on products I intend to buy in order to avoid such things completely. I'm yet another Santa Cruz owner, for instance. Upon emailing Turtle Beach, they assured me that this card does not support DRM. I'll be saving that email in case their assurance was false.
Most people will accept being treated like a criminal.
I for one will not tolerate it.
(no news here, just an anecdote, move along)
:)
Once, I was given a Microsoft Sidewinder gamepad as a birthday present. 'course, I don't play many games that would NEED a gamepad so I did the logical thing; I went and bought one
The game I chose was Super Bomberman for Windows. The box said it worked with joysticks and gamepads, on Windows. Well hell, all this stuff is Logo Compliant, so yeah it oughta work right? Wrong... The game was written to use analog joysticks and gamepads, while my gamepad was decidedly digital. It took me a while to figure it out, and I also tried to remap keys to buttons and such to make it work, but I couldn't play the game with my controller.
So I took the game back, knowing full well they would try to send me packin' with another copy of the same game, but I wasn't havin' it. I told the manager (MediaPlay, btw) that my game and my pad were incompatible. They had a standard line for that: We don't accept returns for compatibility. Too many people pirating Windows games by claiming to own a Mac? I dunno.
So then I showed him the box, where it said "works with joysticks and game pads". The box had lied to me! "This is false advertisement!" I said, and eventually the manager agreed to refund the purchase price, which I turned around and spent in the same store (on a game that didn't need a joypad anyway, Ultima Online).
All those protected CDs... They're not really CDs! If they claim to be, return 'em! It's illegal to label them as such.
I still want to know what's going to happen when I take a burned CD-R of mp3's and try to play them on their new DRM software. Or play my DVD-R? Will it let me? If so, then there's a huge loophole just waiting to be exploited. However, on the other side of the coin, if Joe Blow cannot play his songs or watch his DVD any longer, then I question how long DRM will be as effective and ironclad as Microsoft's 200 million dollars towards this project had expexted..
--even a broken watch is correct twice a day.
with Lotus Notes. I get stupid messages like that all the time.
Then I take a screenshot of the message, and reply to the original message including the screenshot.
You also can't print these types of messages.
Why say something you don't want passed on. Email isn't designed to replace ALL other types of communication.
How much do you know about DRM? Public Key Encryption (PGP is based on this) is quite well tested.
Now, Imagine for a moment that an email is sent to someone using Outlook Express. Instead of sending a normal Plain Text or HTML text email, Outlook Express notices that your TO: is going to someone you know, with a Passport ID which has a public-key for encryption. The email gets encrypted, and Signed with the rights you choose.
The OS, when it opens it, has full control over it. It does not allow certain actions (Forward, Copy and Paste, Print, etc) because of the signed right's block in teh email. No one else can read it because no one else has the key. The key for decrypting could even be tied to the computer you're using through the hardware ID's.
Sure, there may be ways around it at first.. but those holes will be plugged. Afterall, the OS you're on will not allow you to hack the DLL's for Outlook Express. And the next trick: The CPU and the Harddrive will not allow you access to the drive with unsigned code! SO, If you try to hack it from a linux install, you're out of luck! This will only be useful if hardware end-to-end is encryptable this way, and you'll only beable tomake use of DRM on computers that are protected this way of course. No sending secure emails to ppl on unsecure computers - and if so, they won't beable to read it.
Have an open mind. You're obviously not all-knowing.
If you're a fan of Elvis Costello, and you're offended by this, let him (by way of his management) know.
Don't try to debate him about the advantages and disadvantages of copy prevention mechanisms. Your words will probably never reach him directly.
Hit him in the wallet instead. Let him know that you would rather not listen to his music at all, than use a system that forces rights management devices on you.
Either do not sent messages which may embrass you to untrusted people or risk being embrassed.
If your dad feels good about such cool new features of DRM, that he should also take in account, then there is always someone able to break technology. At least for as long as IQ of said technology is far bellow IQ of living person.
Using such DRM feature is like throwing junk from your window at people bellow the window and feeling "secure" because you are "at the 26th floor". But after throwing enought junk at enought people, someone will do something about it. Examples:
...
So just let the DRM come, let the people trust DRM, let the people send sensitive content to other people they do not trust and then laugh when that sensitive content "escapes" protective bed of DRM and get posted as "everybody can see it and copy it as many times as he likes".
hany
http://www.americas.creative.com/contactus/
The Public Relations link seems to be the only one that lists actual named people (w/email addresses)
They're also pushing thier audigy 2 sound card (which I assume is thier big holiday shopping season product), so I specifically included that in my email to them, FWIW.
Will someone kindly give Arakonfap a +1, Informative? Thank you.
I've been trying to explain this very scenario to a client who thinks DMCA and DRM and suchlike are completely harmless and that the DMCA is a wonderful law (because he has visions of sucking lots of money out of it). The reality, that it's going to make it impossible for him to make a living, is not going to hit him until one day his preferred applications and methods, that he needs for his everyday work, simply won't work anymore due to not being DRM-compliant.
And I forsee utter chaos at the corporate level, the first time someone tries to deploy a DRM-aware email system. Hooboy!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Might I suggest using giFT instead?
GIR: I'm going to sing the Doom song now. Doom doom doom doom doom doom de-doom doom doom doom doom doom doom...
Don't know about older NVidia cards (Well, actually, I do, used to have an Asus V6800 Deluxe), but the GeForce4 cards (or at least my Dell Inspiron 8200's GF4Go) have very nice TV output encoder chips. (There are apparently a few video encoder chipsets supported by the GeForce line, and the I8200 has one that has more features than the others. Not sure if most GF4s have them and other GFs have lower-end ones or if only some GF4s have the good one.)
:)
From what I remember of the V6800, it wasn't nearly as good quality. The I8200 is excellent, if anything it's BETTER than our dedicated DVD player.
And of course, any DVD player for Linux doesn't support Macrovision even though the hardware allows it.
Are you sure the H+ doesn't have Macrovision or is it simply that the player you're using doesn't turn it on? (You specifically said you don't play DVDs - MV isn't going to be turned on for plain-jane MPEG2 files)
And your comparison in general is flawed - I think most of the people bitching don't even use their digital outputs anyway and are calling for a general boycott of Creative products, not just this "boycott of TV out" you claim to be doing. Some great boycott their. You bought the card, you're not boycotting it.
As to CPU usage - Modern video chipsets have 90% plus of the routines for MPEG hardware decoding built-in. Xine uses 10% peak of my CPU (usually far less - the CPU bar is often at zero) when playing a DVD fullscreen. Nice thing is that because many of these hardware acceleration features are generalized, they accelerate MPEG4 too! (DivX playback using Xine and Xvid is silky smooth and just like DVD playback, uses a very small fraction of my CPU.)
Note that I think the Geforce 4MX cards might actually have a few additional HW acceleration features not present in the Tis. I remember seeing a listing of the capabilities of each chipset in the NV driver docs, and it appeared that the MXes (and as a result, the "Go" chips) had MORE MPEG acceleration than the Tis. (One did both IDCT and motion comp, the other just did motion comp)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
You're wrong. A car that I make is mine, because it has physical properties that I can hang on to, and also have taken away from me if someone steals it. A song that I make, on the other hand, is composed of notes and words that, when all is said and done, don't BELONG to me. You can't claim ownership of words and notes. Well, you can under the US legal system, but I think that's flawed. And many people agree with me. Words and notes belong to no one.
Now think about this. If I build a chair and it takes me 10 hours to do, I'm going to want some compensation for those 10 hours. But would it be reasonable to ask for compensation for 20 hours of work, when I only worked for 10? Of course not. So how is that musicians and artists ask to be payed several times over the cost of creating the song? If it took 40 hours to make, then make money off the song until you've recooped the cost for those 40 hours. But how can you ask to be payed more money than that? Artists are performers. They should make the music they produce freely available to anyone, but charge per hour for their performance, like any other honest profession.
No sig for you.
I give it 7 days beyond widespread release of DRM. Once it is out, hurry up and get it because the authorities will squash it like a bug.
How can The Man(tm) continue to foment and exploit the youthful rebellious attitude toward The Man(tm) while still making The Man(tm)-size Money?
fake: "Today in the news: 'Open Source Software Compatibility Bill' was passed today. The bill states that all OSS software must conform to M$ DRM software standards and must license M$ DRM."
I am sure that I am going to have a dejavu about this one in lets say 2 years! Bye bye linux, it was short but sweet...
Free speech is getting expensive...
Free speech is getting expensive...
I had a Muse 3D which had optical out & 4 channels. very tasty bit of hardware. Too bad i nuked it when i upgraded my motherboard.
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
An artist offering a finished work for purchase is no different than any other business transaction.
:-(
Yes, it is. sigh Let me try to put this in terms you can understand, since you seem very determined to view everything as through a window of pure captitalism.
Music (or any other form of "intellectual property") is an act of discovery founded upon previous discoveries, the most important of which are owned called the "public domain", and are owned by a big corporation called the "government". As a shareholder in the "government" (they call it being a "voter"), I have the right to contact the executive officers of the "government", (often called "presidents", "Prime Ministers", "congressment", "members of parliment", "senators", or other such titles), and ensure that they are acting in the best interests of the corporation (called a "country").
Giving away assets of the government (discoveries made based upon government owned intellectual property in the public domain), by granting full ownership of a derived work to a so called "artist" is bad business, and an abuse of government resources.
You either accept the terms under which the artist's product is being offered, or you look for something more agreeable.
Or you make a counter-offer. It's called "bargaining", and it's a cornerstone of modern business. Now, try to do anything without referencing anything derived from the public domain, and tell me which party has better bargaining power in intellecutal property negotiations.
After all, remember that the "consumers" you're talking about own the "corporation" that own the public domain.
-- END HYPER-CAPITALISTIC WORLDVIEW --
Whew! I wonder if CEOs see the world that way? Now I need a shower.
--
AC
well, there are two ways..
;) (then make them give you a refund since the mac "stole" your cd) (use luser mode ;)
First you can buy the CD, come back in the store and try it in their macs
second, go buy the cd and an Imac... if the imac eats the cd, return both for full refund (again luser mode)
third, offer to make an off-site archival backup for a friend, and if it won't happen, then you weren't missing much anyhow.
A song that I make, on the other hand, is composed of notes and words that, when all is said and done, don't BELONG to me.
The words and the notes are not your physical property. You cannot pick up a word and move it from one location to another, as you can with a chair - but then in and of themselves, words and notes have little value. A resultant work based on a unique combination of words and notes, however along with the artful inclusion of other intangible qualities like instrumentation, tempo, rhythm, etc., is quite a different matter. The resultant work has value. What I really don't understand is where and how you acquire a right to this value by virtue of the fact that it exists. In other words, explain why you should be provided with something of obvious value, for FREE.
They should make the music they produce freely available to anyone, but charge per hour for their performance, like any other honest profession.
There's something you have failed to consider. Using your example, the chair that took 10 hours of your time to build, can provide the value the chair offers to only ONE person at any given time. If the chair resides at my place of residence, my neighbor cannot enjoy it. Further, unless I physically move it (which entails a cost in that it requires effort), the benefit I receive from the chair is limited to that one location.
Contrast this with your favorite song- both you and your neighbor (as well as countless others) can concurrently enjoy the value it offers. It is not limited to one physical location, and it can easily be ported from one location to another.
If you insist on turning music into a consumable medium (which it isn't), then in order to make it fair, you'd have to eliminate every musical recording, and limit your enjoyment solely to the availability of live performances by your favorite artists. I hardly think you'd consider this as an option.
If you buy the CD you can only listen to the two DRM enabled tracks 4 times? Sounds like what Circut Cities DivX tried to do (Pay per play). We all know how that turned out.
In other words, explain why you should be provided with something of obvious value, for FREE.
How do you measure the value of a song? My point is simple: you can't sell music. In a pure capitalist economy (with NO government intervention), your music would be worthless because it could easily be copied, at NO cost to you. Copyright law creates an artificial scarcity, that is, an ARTIFICIAL environment, because selling music wouldn't work any other way. Instead of saying, "Lets come up with a business model for making music that WORKS" we just perpetuate this fake reality so that some very powerful people can make lots of money.
I suggested musical artists make their money by performing because it works as a business model. I pay for their TIME, not their music. Isn't that what bards did in the past, travel from town to town performing? And didn't they make money? Did they collect royalties on their songs?
I believe you should give me your music for free because you're fooling yourself if you think I'm going to pay for it. But by letting me listen to your songs on my CD player at home, I just might find you enough to my liking to go see you perform live. That equates to $$$ for you.
If you insist on turning music into a consumable medium...
I'm not. Groups like the RIAA want it to be a consumable medium. They want it only to be enjoyed by one person, for a limited amount of time. Think DRM. Think permits to perform. Think royalties.
Don't get me wrong, I still think you should make money from your artistic skills. I just think that there's a better model for doing it than the current one.
This is a very enjoyable debate.
Cheers
No sig for you.
Music (or any other form of "intellectual property") is an act of discovery founded upon previous discoveries, the most important of which are owned called the "public domain"
What is your source for this?
Or you make a counter-offer. It's called "bargaining", and it's a cornerstone of modern business.
So what has stopped you from making one? If they respond that they aren't interested in your counteroffer, it's over. You have no right to their material, and they have no right to your money.
How do you measure the value of a song?
How do you measure the value of a chair? There's your answer.
My point is simple: you can't sell music. In a pure capitalist economy (with NO government intervention)...
I disagree that you can't sell music. You can sell it, and this is aptly demonstrated by the fact that people can and do pay for it - not because it's the law, but because it's right thing to do. There is nothing in this world that guarantees anyone a right to the fruits of someone else's labor. If the terms of acquisition aren't agreeable, there's always the option to walk away.
Copyright law creates an artificial scarcity, that is, an ARTIFICIAL environment, because selling music wouldn't work any other way.
Artificial scarcity? That's interesting. There are recordings that sell millions of copies, and somehow that represents a form of scarcity?
I suggested musical artists make their money by performing because it works as a business model. I pay for their TIME, not their music. Isn't that what bards did in the past, travel from town to town performing?
I dare say they didn't have recordings back then, so the issue is moot. Today, however, a recording allows you the convenience of experiencing the benefit you derive from an artist's creative talent practically whenever, whereever, and how often you want. I'd say that $15 is a small price to pay for this convenience.
I believe you should give me your music for free because you're fooling yourself if you think I'm going to pay for it.
Then I'll turn this around and pose the following: If it has such little value to you, then surely you won't mind forgoing the opportunity to listen to it, will you?
Don't get me wrong, I still think you should make money from your artistic skills. I just think that there's a better model for doing it than the current one.
The current model of 'record once distribute many' is far more efficient than traveling from town to town, setting up and breaking down a stage, and paying gobs of people to do it. It consumes far fewer resources, and provides you, the consumer, with a maximum degree of flexibility. And you still find this problematic?
This is a very enjoyable debate.
I take that as a compliment.
I heard that DRM compares your files with a "master" via the net. I'm not sure about this but isn't this discrimination for those who have restrictions on their internet plan (or don't have web access at all)?