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DRM Technology To Be Added To MP3 Format
Bob Zer Fish writes "Cnet News.com has a leading story saying that the venerable MP3 music format is getting a makeover aimed at blocking unauthorized copying. Thomson and Fraunhofer, the companies that license and own the patents behind the MP3 digital music technology, are in the midst of creating a new digital rights management add-on. Of course, there are current standards, but most are incompatible."
An anonymous reader points to this brief mention as well.
The Rio Karma, a 20GB HDD-based player, supports Ogg Vorbis AND FLAC, and gapless playback of these formats. It retails for around US$230, and is probably the most advanced DAP on the market.
Already happening.
What about those that encode their own music... as in music they made.
If you record a song to which you do not own the copyright, you have recorded a cover song. If you distribute phonorecords (e.g. in MP3 format) of a cover song to the public, then you owe a royalty to the songwriter('s publisher). If you write your own song, record it, and distribute it, then you owe a royalty to the songwriter('s publisher) whose song you subconsciously copied. Subconscious copying is actionable infringement. Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, 420 F. Supp. 177 (SDNY 1976). Or do you know of a foolproof way to write music while preventing oneself from accidentally copying a copyrighted work?
Several government organizations (supreme court!) use mp3 as one of the means with which they provide transcriptions.
Granted. Works of the United States government enter the public domain upon publication.
I'll bet you anything! Because there are already a number of music players, such as the Rio Karma that play Ogg Vorbis just fine.
Well, Media Player does have the ability to automatically update your WMA/MP3 files with tag info from the internet. So I guess it does already modify your files, if you enable that option (I think it is enabled by default, but you can turn it off during the install).
And in the Copy Music options, the option to 'Copy protect music' is enabled by default for when ripping CDs.
So I guess by some extension you might think 'Copy protect MP3s' would get in there in a future version and be on by default.
But yeah. MS bashing again.
" They will work just fine until the mp3 format license requires the DRM add-on"
Sure. And all those millions and millions of MP3 players out there already will stop working.
They tried this before with the SuperMP3 or whatever they called it. Sank without a trace. Made the titanic look like a "good idea".
Sorry, Fraunhaufer, the genie is out of the bottle on MP3. There are "free" implementations, and 10's of millions of licensed players out there already.
If I'm going to go licensed, might as well use a codec like AAC.
mp3 in not unrestricted. You have to license it and pay royalties. See here.
There's no point during which they're copyrighted between fixation and publication which are distinct events though sometimes simultaneous.
It's true that unpublished works of the US government aren't subject to Title 17, but they're still potentially subject to 18 USC 798 until they're officially published, and some of the Defense FOIA regulations seem to translate "public domain" as "unclassified" rather than "uncopyrighted." I can easily imagine use of digital restrictions management systems to restrict access to works to promote national security rather than "the progress of science and useful arts."
Well, Media Player does have the ability to automatically update your WMA/MP3 files with tag info from the internet. So I guess it does already modify your files, if you enable that option (I think it is enabled by default, but you can turn it off during the install).
.jpeg of the album cover. Ok, more than I asked for, and I don't need Microsoft cataloging my music, but not terrible.
It is apparently enabled by default. I take great care to set up my mp3 tags "just so", using the excellent OSS MP3BookHelper.
I took my portable to work one day, and in order to charge the battery, I plugged it in as a USB drive and played my mp3s with Windows XP's Media Player.
Naturally, Media Player went out and started downloading supplementary information about the tracks being played, including a
But then, once Media Player discovered that there were MP3s on the drive, it insisted on iterating over the entire 60GB drive, in order to make a "convenient" database of my mp3s. Now, recall, the whole point of using Media Payer had been to recharge the portable's battery via USB. Iterating over the entire drive, of course, ran down the battery faster than the USB current could recharge it.
Then, to provide further "convenience", Media Player -- without so much as asking -- also rewrote the Mp3 tags I'd worked so hard to get the way I wanted them, adding proprietary Microsoft tags that didn't conform to the ID3 tag specification (the tag names were longer than four bytes, being prefixed with something like "MediaPlayer/"), and, worse (iirc) using its own judgment to rewrite some existing tags.
It's this sort of attitude on Microsoft's part -- that they are going to "help" me, whether I like it or not -- that more than anything else drives me away from using Microsoft products.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?