Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Introduces Its Own CD Copy-Inhibition Scheme
M.C. Hampster writes "MSNBC is carrying a Reuters story about Microsoft's new CD protection technology. At the heart of the technology is the laying of songs "onto a copy-controlled CD in multiple layers, one that would permit normal playback on a stereo and a PC.""
Can I download a version for linux?
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Wait a minute, could the evil and fearless RIAA/MPAA take on the mighty Microsoft?
This reminds me of something ...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Since the music industry is probably going to try stuff like this anyway, (as a consumer) I'm glad to see they're trying something that's supposed to play on everything. As an individual, I'm still annoyed that they're trying this shit, but I'm glad Microsoft is in on it because of their "amazing" security track record.
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
If that's all it is, it's not going to stop anyone from ripping it on pre-Palladium systems, nor from CD players with digital I/O (although that'll only work at single speed).
And what does the article mean by "layered"? Surely not an actual multilayered disk like a DVD? Is that backwards compatible?
More details anyone?
Jon
Where is the protection if the cd can still be played on a stereo, or PC?
Can someone explain this further? What does multiple layers have to do with protecting the CD if it can be played regardless?
user@host$ diff
>one that would permit normal playback on a stereo and a PC.
Uh-huh. That's nice dear. Well done. I'm sure we'll all be using it in 3 years time.
Morons.
Couldn't eject CDs from the drive. Ha. You'll wish for those days...
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The idea of a copy-protected CD won't work. The only feasible way would to have your computer control everything you do on it (kinda like Soviet Russia), which is what Pallidiam is trying to do.
If you can play a CD, you can get the raw sound data off of it. From that raw data, you can make an MP3. If the CD is playable anywhere, you can copy it. What's to say someone won't modify their PC CD-ROM drive so it reads the "normal" data that isn't copy-protected. Someone would figure it out sooner or later, and probably sooner rather than later. And if copy-protection is implemented in Pallidiam, then it probably won't be long before someone finds a way around it, knowing Microsoft's record on security.
I have a copy inhibition scheme too - Sell Crappy Music.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Yes, copying music is sweet because it is free.. but what's even better than it being free is the convenience.. that you can have everything at one place instantly accecible.. now, limit me to an hours' worth of music from one artist per one shiny silver disc, and that becomes a showstopper. I want big playlists of thousands of songs at my convenience instantly playable, nothing else is good enough. That's where they should start.. I still buy CDs, but that is simply because I like to encode my songs myself, as I please. Now, take away my ability to rip these CDs, and what am I left with? That I can play them whenever I want to on my stereo, or even PC?? What good does that do me when I haven't actually played a cd off a cd player in years. It's a BIG HASSLE.
Whoa there! How about the fact that people are sick of proprietary software vendors and their expensive update/release cycles? Or in the case of audio media, prices have doubled in 15 years of being on the market, and being forced to lower prices by the justice department (having been shown guilty of essentially collusion and price-fixing).
Until these companies start listening to the consumers, they'll continue to write their own stories explaining the industries problems that allow them to justify witch-hunts (remember the RIAA seeking authority to hack computers suspected of carrying illegal media?).
Something tells me that history will repeat itself here...
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Ummm...
XP's anti piracy wasn't cracked. There were a half a dozen volume activation keys that were leaked, those got shut down with XP SP1. And someone reverse engineered the code in setup that validates the CD key - which is NOT the same thing as cracking the anti piracy. All that does is allow someone who already has a stolen CD to come up with a CD key of their own, after about 4 hours of crunching on their computer. Once they activate the computer with that key, the key is worthless to anyone else, since it won't work on another computer.
The ONLY keys that have any worth to pirates are the volume activation keys (since the work on multiple computers), and (as I said above) those keys haven't been cracked. Until someone cracks the algorithm to generate the volume activation keys, it hasn't been really cracked.
And M$ has NEVER EVER EVER said that the anti piracy stuff in XP was uncrackable. They've just said that it was harder than was worth the effort for most people.
Let me guess.. this layer will have to be read, parsed and then the file run with some controls deactivated in Microsoft Windows Media Player(tm) and nothing else. Any other software will gladly ignore it (unless MS intercepts this at the OS level) and burn it just fine. If Windows stops you, go Linux. And then reburn as a 100% plain CD Audio disk. Would be a rather nice thing to add to the "Things Linux do that you can't do on Windows"-list. It's not a very long one really...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Can someone explain to me how an industry that reports record profits, year and year, can be called ailing?? That's like calling Microsoft an "ailing software company" because they have the minor inconvenience of the Justice Department. It's just not relevent.
Oh wait, I'm not a pirate, because I've never illegally sold someone elses art, and in fact, I am not bound by any agreement with the recording industry with regard to music that I've downloaded off the Internet, any more than I would be for music I taped off the radio!
Grrr.
Although the article skimped on any sort of technical details (beyond describing it as some sort of multi-layered CD), you won't *need* to crack the protection on such CDs.
They should rip just fine in any machine that doesn't support Palladium. You don't need to circumvent the DRM, just don't use it at all.
With whatever the next format of DVDs uses, we may lose the ability to play on untrusted devices, since they don't care about backward compatibility. With audio CDs, however, not making something backward compatible guarrantees it as DOA (look at DVD audio or SACDs... Or more to the point, try to find one to actually purchase).
People don't care about quality, above a certain point. People don't care about physical form, as long as they can carry one in their pocket. People care about *convenience*. Want to know why *I* first switched from tapes to CDs? One reason, and one reason only - The ability to (nearly) instantly seek any track. And I *do* care about the improvement in quality, very much so, but in the reverse situation (if tapes could seek tracks and CDs only played in-order), I would never have switched.
So, any attempt to copy protect an audio CD will fail, as long as they try to maintaining backward compatibility. And if they abandon backward compatibility, plain ol' market pressures will doom such an effort to a rapid demise.
Oh, as an aside, I just checked MS's site, and they don't seem to have any better info than what the article mentioned. Guess we'll just have to wait on this one, or hope another Slashdotter digs up and links to something juicy...
No... kinda like X-Box.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned such a scheme doesn't do anything for newer CD player playback, Car CD playback, or Linux playback, or Mac playback, and (of course) still doesn't allow you to consolidate your music collection onto one computer or bring it with you on a Rio (solid state music being essential for certain activities, such as jogging or mountain biking).
So, in essence, Microsoft has offered a solution that would increase the reliance upon Microsoft products, and would increase the cost of transitioning away from them. TBNT.
(Hmmm... now where did that old single-speed CD ROM without error checking go?)
- C
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
Ok, we know that a significant percentage of MP3s online did not come from a ripped CD that someone purchased, but rather, from an advance copy, studio DAT, recording studio leak, label leak, manufacturing leak or other non-consumer source. That's no surprise to anyone, and nicely illustrated by unmastered advances (3 months early) of the last Korn and Pearl Jam CDs.
So, exactly how is this expensive MS technology going to affect that content stream? It won't. All it will do is complicate matters for people who actually are honest and purchase the CD.
Also, as someone else mentioned, if the playback device has 2 RCA jacks or a pair of cannon connectors, anyone can get a great copy via analog. Hey, there are already "Analog Rip" options in many major media applications, so what's the point here?
Rule 1: the audio degradation caused by analog copying is LESS than that caused by MP3 compression. So...I don't care what fancy DRM they bring out, if you can hear it, you can copy and distribute it.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
Someone came up with an ingenious way to circumvent the new copy protection scheme. Rumor has it you can buy a strand of copper, and push one end of it in a special socket labelled "Audio Out", and then take the other end of this same strand of copper and connect it up to the "Audio In" socket on the recording device.
Apparently, the theory is, the electrons inside the strand of copper get so excited that they begin to affect neighboring atoms in sort of a cascading fashion.. This happens zillions of times per second, as fluctuations in signal level travel through the copper core of the strand. In order to prevent this power from getting out of hand, they've even got stuff in development right now that uses a vinyl plastic or rubberized outer coating.
Totally fucking awesome. I want one!
No word yet on how much these strange "copper strands" are going to cost (probably hundreds of thousands of dollars considering how difficult it is to create a long, thin, flexible piece of copper in the lab, but, i'm sure the price will go down with time. Regardless, Microsoft aught to be shaking in their boots by now!
Bowie J. Poag
>How do they think it's possible that, one way or
>another, the people who want unauthorized copies
>of multimedia won't be able to make it?
By controlling everything from the bit to the out. It is the only way possible. You have a CD that is digitally encrypted, which plays through a special device that knows you have the license to play it, which encrypts it again and sends it through special wiring to your speakers which also know you have a license for it and allows the sound to pass through. All of your input devices would listen for a watermark that would be embedded in the system and stop recording if they heard it.
Now, is any of that possible? Sure. But how long will it take for all of that to come to pass? Pretty much never.
Random Musings
It's amazing how, in the face of lowered demand and lowered sales, the Music Industry response has been to make their product LESS valuable to an end consumer. $15 for 1 hour of music that can be used across all of the devices in my home, car, and at work is a lot more compelling than $15 dollars for 1 hour of music that can only be listened to in the living room.
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
the laying of songs "onto a copy-controlled CD in multiple layers, one that would permit normal playback on a stereo and a PC."
:-) Or is there a difference between "normal playback" and "copy" that I missed?
I guess we all need more technical information for this not to sound like a real dumbass copy protection.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
No, I think the intent is that an audio CD player sees one "layer" of bits, and a CD-ROM drive sees an entirely different "layer" of bits.
As they both only have one laser, operating at the same wavelength. If you want different layers, it'll have to be something like SACD, which has one SACD layer, and one normal CD layer. But SACD players require another laser for this. So unless you want to ban conventional CD-ROMs in favor of only CD-ROM+"DRM laser" players, that's not possible.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Sorry, you can't patent that... there's too much prior art...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
To my surprise he threw it into my oven and turned it on. Instantly I got very upset, because the CD had become precious to me, but he said, "Do not worry, it is unharmed."
After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said, "Take a close look at it."
To my surprise the CD was quite cold to hold and it seemed to be heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, an inscription finer than anything I had ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth: "12413AEB2ED4FA5E6F7D78E78BEDE820945092OF923A40EEl OE5IOCC98D444AA08E324"
"I cannot understand the fiery letters," I said in a timid voice.
"No, but I can," he said. "The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English, this is what it says:
"One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them, One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them." It is only two lines from a verse long known in System lore: "Three OS's from corporate kings in their towers of glass, Seven from valley lords where orchards used to grow, Nine from dotcoms doomed to die, One from the Dark Lord Gates on his dark throne In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie. One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them, One OS to bring them all And in the darkness bind them, In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie."
~Just a cute little joke I found somewhere... Somewhat relavent to the topic... Smilingirl =)
The Present is the point at which time touches eternity. - C.S. Lewis
Lets say this is implimented. Since it's on the OS level, it'll be kinda hard to bypass and since there is nolonger a lower level OS like DOS running below XP, what if things moved to the hardware level?
Whats to stop peopel from creating a cheap PCI device, much akin to a PS2 mod chip (without the licensing shit), where it will intercept the CD-DA signal from the CD-ROM drive's Digital Audio cable, and create a WAV from it just as if it were captured from the Analog inputs, but without the DAC->ADC loss? Hell, all you really need is to reprogram a cheap soundcard and it'll do the trick.
Even better if you had a board that intercepts via the IDE cable.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.