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DRM Technology To Be Added To MP3 Format

Posted by timothy on from the what-a-dumb-name dept.

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.

18 of 515 comments (clear)

  1. So What? by Tassleman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does this mean we have to use it? All my old MP3s will work just fine.

    1. Re:So What? by michaelepley · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They will work just fine until the mp3 format license requires the DRM add-ons and players start refusing to play music encoded without the DRM support.

    2. Re:So What? by jeffkjo1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      My VCR and DVD player both play things that are un-macrovisioned. I highly doubt that a company would build an mp3 compatible device with such a large limitation to only play encrypted music. What about those that encode their own music... as in music they made.

      Several government organizations (supreme court!) use mp3 as one of the means with which they provide transcriptions.

    3. Re:So What? by H4x0r+Jim+Duggan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think a concerted push towards Ogg is what we need. Free Software, Free Society.

      --
      Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
  2. One word... by UnassumingLocalGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ogg.

    --
    "Hu, ho, ho-ah-oh-oh-oh. Hu, ho ho-ah-oh-oh-oh. Mario Paint! Whoaaa!"
  3. Try again, and fail again. by Fiona+Winger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yet again, this will be a waste of valuable resources. We all know that any attempt at protection of unauthorized copying will fail. With today's standards of source codes being leaded and what not, someone from inside the company will surely provide a work around, but most likely, that won't be needed. Another genius will find some simple solution that works around the protection.

    1. Re:Try again, and fail again. by ratsnapple+tea · · Score: 5, Insightful

      On the contrary, DRM is amazingly successful at what it intends to do: make unauthorized copying annoying enough so that most people would rather pay 99 cents for a song or whatever it is.

      DRM's just supposed to keep honest people honest. Nobody expects it to pose much of a barrier to people who are hellbent on getting a free lunch.

      Of course, if the implementation is too restrictive, or incredibly obnoxious (like how you have to sit through 10 minutes of commercials at the beginning of the Lost In Translation DVD), then it'll fail in the marketplace. That still doesn't mean all DRM is a wasted effort.

      yours

  4. Ummmm.... by iLL_L0gic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why not just illegally trade the "old format" mp3s then? Or am I missing the totally obvious?

  5. Useless by Tuxinatorium · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It won't stop anyone from using the old mp3 format, much less from distributing old mp3s. And then any music that can be played can be ripped to standard mp3 with simple tools. This will have absolutely ZERO effect on piracy.

    --
    Repeal the DMCA!
  6. What incentive? by re-Verse · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I mean really... why would anyone, except those making a profit off of selling music, adopt this? I guess I can see someone shifting to a new format - lets say a lossless format came out with the same filesize of mp3, but with DRM, maybe people would tolerate it. But this.... this makes no sense? Its just plain old mp3 all over again! Its like saying Hey buy this new TV - its the exact same in every other way from your old TV except it punches you in the face every time you change channels to avoid commercials"

    Am i missing something here, or am I just stupid?

  7. Why does everyone automatically yell OGG? by RalphBNumbers · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You do all realize there's nothing stoping anyone who feels like it from putting a DRM wrapper arround an ogg file, right?

    Just because some people sell music in a DRMed/encrypted version of some open format like MP3 or AAC doesn't automatically make that format evil.

    --
    "The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
  8. More insidious by nuntius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is when MS Media Player (or even Windows) automatically "upgrades" your MP3's for you. Unless you had good backups, all your MP3's are now DRM enabled.

    1. Re:More insidious by Aneurysm9 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, it's modded insightful because it offers *insight* into the dangers posed by technology when our own software can be used against us. The same could be said of Apple or Real or WinAMP any of the other closed-source media player providers. If we don't know what our software is doing there's nothing preventing it from appropriating our own content from us. To extend the GP's fear, what happens when I play an MP3 of my own music and a media player wants to add DRM to it? Who gets the right to tell me where and how I can use my own creation?

      --
      There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
    2. Re:More insidious by timeOday · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Why is this tripe moderated insightful? Because it bashes MS and has some absurd theory in it?
      Or is it because Microsoft explicitly reserves the right to pull this kind of crap?
  9. One word by Pan+T.+Hose · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does this mean we have to use it? All my old MP3s will work just fine.

    One word: patents. They can start enforcing them whenever they want. (See www.mp3licensing.com.) Remember Unisys patent on LZW compression? All my old GIFs was working just fine too, which didn't mean I could keep using them. Fortunately, now with zlib, PNG and Ogg Vorbis, this is not an issue this time.

    --
    Sincerely,
    Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
    "Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
  10. Re:Read carefully, boys and girls by NSash · · Score: 5, Insightful
    As soon as no one buys their crapware, they'll quit trying to shove it up our a$$.

    No, they'll blame pirates.

  11. Some predictions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Some predictions:

    (1) The P2P community will reject the use of the ".MP3" suffix on the new DRM-crippled files. ".MP3" will continue to mean the full-featured format, and something else will be adopted (by informal consensus) to label the crippled files. Expect a new generation of P2P clients that will do this suffix-renaming automatically.

    (2) The owners of the MP3 format will want to (eventually) start forbidding the playback of non-crippled MP3 files. (Without this, there's no way that the DRM-crippled version will catch on.) This will result in:

    (a) a huge demand for black-market "original" MP3 software (codecs, players, etc.), and,

    (b) Microsoft will fight hard to make sure that MediaPlayer doesn't end up rendered useless by new MP3 licensing that forbids playback of non-crippled MP3 files. This fight could get very nasty.

  12. In other news... by serutan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Owners of Everything Decide to Indenture the Rest of Us for Life

    Ungrateful sods and copyright pirates to be imprisoned, executed. "You're lucky to have those jobs we provide you with," says spokesperson for owners of everything.