Slashdot Mirror
Newest Audio CD DRM Proves Ineffective
The Importance of writes "As noted previously, a couple of weeks ago BMG released a new CD by Anthony Hamilton that included DRM. Slashdot readers speculated that the system wouldn't work. Now there is a report proving it doesn't work by Alex Halderman, a graduate student at Princeton's computer science department and the author of an earlier, definitive report (PDF, HTML version) on first generation CD copy protection. Famed computer scientist Ed Felten asks: "Is this the end of the road for CD copy protection?" His answer? "It ought to be.""
Start with a Windows 2000/XP system with empty CD drives. Be sure to reboot the computer first to ensure MediaMax is not running.
1. Click the Start button and select Control Panel from the Start Menu.
2. Double-click on the System control panel icon.
3. Select the Hardware tab and click the Device Manager button.
4. Configure Device Manager by clicking "Show hidden devices" and "Devices by connection," both from the View menu.
5. Insert the Anthony Hamilton CD into the computer and allow the SunnComm software to start. Observe that the SbcpHid device driver is added to the Device Manager list when MediaMax runs for the first time.
At this point you can attempt to copy tracks from the CD with applications like MusicMatch Jukebox or Windows Media Player. Copies made while the driver is active will sound badly garbled, as in this 9-second clip [10].
Next, follow these additional steps to disable MediaMax:
1. Select the SbcpHid driver from the Device Manager list and click "Properties" from the Action Menu.
2. Click the Driver tab and click the Stop button to disable the driver.
With the driver stopped, you can verify that the same applications copy every track successfully.
And oh, yeah, this work is a blatant DMCA violation.
As long as I have an audio-in port on my sound card and an external player, drm is a waste of their time and money.
"Is this the end of the road for CD copy protection?" His answer? "It ought to be.""
Yeah and 64k should be enough for anyone.
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
Who wants to make a little bet?
I have $10 on him being contacted by RIAA lawyers with DMCA references by the end of the day. Any takers?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Now there is a report proving it doesn't work
No doubt written with a Sharpie pen.
Apparently this text is on the back of the CD:
THIS CD IS ENHANCED WITH MEDIAMAX SOFTWARE
Enhanced! Since when does taking functionality away from something mean you're enhancing it?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
No audio CD should be installing *ANYTHING* on my PC, unless I'm aware of it at first.
"Is this the end of the road for CD copy protection?" The industry is stupid, greedy and desperate. I'm going with 'no'.
So they rely on the autorun setting on cd's to load the device driver for them? that's pretty stupid -- on windows it's enabled by default (typical) but most companies disable it because it's a security risk.
The Mac got hit pretty hard with an autorun virus that ended up shipping on many cd's. As a result many Mac users disabled this in OS 9, and I believe OS X has it disabled by default.
This might be effective on most windows home computers whose owners don't change the default setting, but I'm wondering how long before that driver gets infected with a virus....
BMG are geniuses (genii? :P)
Follow this pseudo-proof
Step 1: Release a CD by Anthony Hamilton
Step 2: Put new copy protection on it
Step 3: Nobody copies the cd "illegally"
Step 4: QED. The copy protection works
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
It loads a custom device driver via 'autorun' when you stick the CD in.
So if you hold shift, disable autorun, or run an OS that doesn't do autorun, the CD might as well have no copy protection whatsoever.
This is about as effective as putting a sticker on the front that says 'Pretty please do not attempt to extract data from this CD on your computer'.
I wonder how much money this company got for their incredibly secure DRM system...
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
1.2. Your rights to use the Digital Content are conditioned on your ownership of a license to use and possession of the original Compact Disc (CD) media and are terminated in the event you no longer own or possess the original CD media. (This apparently prohibits using copied tracks as backups in case the original disc is lost, stolen, or destroyed.)
So if the CD fails to remain usable through normal wear and tear, does that put the publisher in breach of contract? They've effectively granted me a license that they are going to renege on should the physical media degrade.
They've got to make up their minds! Is it a physical good, or a digital good? Did I buy a license and the CD was just a nice way for them to fulfill their promise that I'm licensed to use the content? Did I buy a plastic disc (for $15) which I'm free to do with as I please?
$8.95/mo web hosting
A couple of dozen security and cryptography expersts vs thousands of talented hackers and ameture tinkerers. I am not nocking the guys who made this protection but they and there bosses have to understand that they are going to push this rock up a hill for all eternity. Maybe thats there goal: 1. create a DRM scheme 2. Sell it to RIAA dolts 3. DRM broken day it comes out???? 4. Profit
Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990? gb1990.com
The bastards will never learn.
There will never be any copy protection scheme that will work.
If you can listen to it, you can copy it by just connecting the output to the input for another device.
Unless they make it so that nobody can listen to it, copy protection is an exersise in futility.
Death has been proven to be 99% fatal in lab rats.
It's not supposed to be uncrackable. I know it's crackable, you know it's crackable, they sure as hell know it's crackable. Just like any other protection mechanism on anything from a PC CDROM to the XBOX.
What it's supposed to do is limit casual piracy. Make it tougher for the average slob to make a copy with the EZ-CD Copier that shipped with his Dell and give it to his buddies. That's it. Most folks would just give up if it didnt work the first time they tried, they aren't going to jump through any hoops, scribble on it with a sharpie, open up a hex editor, solder a mod-chip into their player, run a distributed cracking engine to decode it, whatever. It sure as hell has nothing to do with preventing some geek from leaking it on the 'net.
That's a *large* chunk of the sales they actually lose. Bob Magoo who gets a copy from his buddy Turd Ferguson because he's too lazy or cheap to run down to Wal-Mart and get his own.
So just friggin relax already, and dont be so proud of yourself that you figured out how to "hack" the technical equivalent of the safety pin that keeps a babies diaper in place.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I believe anti-copy CD technologies will prove unfruitful, and will therefore eventually be abandoned by record companies. There firms may take a cue from the movie industry and increase the value of CDs by bundling interesting bonus features rather than restrictive copy-control software.
An interesting New York Times article today about exactly this can be found here. The article even mentions a band that includes a PlayStation 2 game on a DVD with their CD. Which just goes to show that CD prices have absolutely no relationship with marginal costs.
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
> "Hey...I guess we can't do this."
then: "I wonder if I can download the song off kazaa"
At which point he spends about 30 seconds searching for the song, which some more technologically clued in person has kindly made available.
Users don't grok shift keys and drivers and EULA's. They do grok kazaa however.
MagnaTune
I believe they were mentioned a little while ago, but they're the
"We're a record company, but we're not evil" people.
Seriously. Asside from a few artists I absolutely love, I have started getting my music fix from mp3.com and magnatune. If you're gonna listen to them though, please do help them out financially. It takes a lot of bandwidth to stream mp3s.
no comment
More gasping and thrashing as the death throes of the recording industry continue... These inept attempts of the desperately greedy and self-important to maintain their obsolete roles are somewhere between amusing and pathetic.
Too bad they aren't as endearing as the penniless former aristocrats who were more or less kept as pets by the wealthy after World War One swept away most of the European monarchies. Watch for them in any old B&W movie that features millionaires and mansions. There's always a Count or a Baron or a Duchess at the dinner table. In a few years, after the recording industry is gone, maybe every fashionable Silcon Valley party will include a Geffen or a Rosen.
I rip every disc I attain (none in the past two years for boycott reasons) to secure my fair use right to a backup.
Even under the bullshit of the DMCA, one has the right to reverse engineer or bypass copy protection schemes to excersize his fair use rights.
The exception of course, occurs when one is a minor in a foreign nation that has extradition agreements to the USA.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
you used capital letters, dmca violator1111, you are going to jail1111
Does this mean that anything that is NOT Windows is a DMCA violation?
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Like many iPod users, I actually buy much more music than I did previously. New listening device creates new spaces for listening music and thus increases demand. However, I am not rich enough to buy EVERYTHING I want to listen - usually when I enter a store, 4-5 albums catch my interest, but I can afford to walk out only with 2-3 of them. Obviously, I avoid CD's with stickers like "this CD is copy protected". I know the protection is probably easy to bypass, but why should I bother? I just choose the 2-3 albums without the protection. And here's a weird thing - whenever I put back a "copy protected" CD on the store shelf (carrying in my basket the non-protected ones) echo brings me the sounds of a gunshot and a voice shouting "ouch! my foot!" somewhere in the distance.
Copies made while the driver is active will sound badly garbled, as in this 9-second clip [10].
That's not garbled, that's the Aphex Twin mix!
Or under iMac:
1). Insert CD into drive
2). Take iMac into tech support, so they can "extract" the cd that is now jammed in your computer.
An Autorun will be effective against the vast majority of Windows and Mac users.
This doesn't matter. Who cares if you lock out all those people that aren't technically savvy enough to really use their computers to begin with? These people probably couldn't figure out how to even get on Kazaa anyway.
If you can't even lock out those who know well enough to use the shift key, or to simply disable auto-run to begin with (as the author rightly points out many people have already done), then there is absolutely no hope of keeping this music off of file-sharing networks, or out of black-market pirate CD rings. All this is doing is locking out people who don't need to be locked out, and keeping the music easily accessible to those who (in the record industry's eyes) do need to be locked out. It is therefore completely ineffective and arguably counterproductive.
In fact, it's no better than the pen trick on the old schemes. I mean, if you didn't read Slashdot or CDfreaks or whatever, you'd have had no idea that that worked either. The average consumer probably still knows nothing of the pen trick. But the fact that people who generally do a lot of copying did find out about it made that copy protection method completely useless to the record labels. The whole point is to stop people from copying (and sharing), not to punish those who just want to listen to their CD's (much as it seems otherwise so much of the time).
About the only good thing I could see coming out of this (for the record industry) is a conditioning among average consumers to begin to accept DRM. Over a long period of time, that may change prevailing attitudes among the public. But it won't stop people from copying that want to copy and know anything at all about PC's, which has to be the end goal of all this in the minds of the RIAA and their cohorts.