Slashdot Mirror
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.
Does this mean we have to use it? All my old MP3s will work just fine.
Ogg.
"Hu, ho, ho-ah-oh-oh-oh. Hu, ho ho-ah-oh-oh-oh. Mario Paint! Whoaaa!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Why not just illegally trade the "old format" mp3s then? Or am I missing the totally obvious?
We have AAC/MP4, to name one, which is already superior to mp3 in quality, and ready-made for a DRM candy-coating. The only advantage mp3 really has at this point is penetration, and I'll wager that those days are numbered.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
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!
but anything that makes the RIAA complain a little less is good in my book.
We all knew this was coming. Madonna yelling in the mp3s was never going to be enough!
Free XBox, PS2
Cnet News.com has a leading story saying that the venerable MP3 music format is getting a makeover aimed at blocking unauthorized copying.
And I have a shiny sixpence in my pocket that says people will avoid the new "improved" version like the plague and stick to the older, user-friendly, non-RIAA-bullshit-encumbered version of the standard.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Just one more reason I love ogg.
Besides, someone will just find a way around this, there always is, nothing ever works long against these ingenius pirates.
...since Lame doesn't use the Fraunhofer codec, and is widely available for most major platforms.
Honestly, has anyone even consciously *used* Fraunhofer's codec in the last four years for personal MP3 encoding?
I can hear all the geeks screaming how ogg is the best thing on the planet. only problem is hardware support is almost nonexistent... Yeah, there are a couple of devices, but by and large most devices support one or maybe two formats. mp3 and wma. mp3 is here to stay!
Good - perhaps this is what we've been needing to finally kill off MP3. Thomson and Fraunhofer are morons if they think this will help market share. The *only* compelling feature of MP3 over WMA or whatever is that you don't have to dick around with licenses for your MP3 playing hardware.
Long live Ogg Vorbis.
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?
OK! But we have to walk to dinner. No car...
While they have been very willing to let anyone decode mp3s (charging royalties only for the encoders), there is nothing to keep them from announcing tomorrow that no more mp3 players can be made or released without this new DRM technology.
And that they want a nickel for every download of a player.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
MP3 is so deeply entrenched in its current form, the public isn't going to switch. There are untold Terrabytes or even Petabytes of MP3s in the world that have no DRM. It's pure idiocy to think that people will just switch from the free and open (in their minds, if not truly in reality) format that MP3 currently is to another one.
It's a waste of money to develop an add on and try to force it on the market. That won't happen.
Then again, "Trusted Computing" might be enough to force people.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
OK! But we have to walk to dinner. No car...
Not a problem. The dinner, like the lunch, is free.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
This will not destroy compatibility with existing MP3s, nor will it stop piracy from people ripping. They are just making a DRM-enabled MP3 format for online music stores to sell so that Fraunhofer can start getting the royalties it was trying to get in the first place when it started charging for the MP3 format. Microsoft is getting loads of cash for licensing WMA, and Apple is getting wads of greenies for licensing AAC, Fraunhofer is just trying to get in the game. There will still be MP3s without DRM, just like there are AAC and WMA files without DRM.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
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
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.
The article mentions that the MPEG community and others are working on open standards. I believe they are talking about using variations of XrML as the standard Rights Expression Language (REL). ContentGuard, a company heavily backed by Microsoft, originally owned the rights to XrML, but has stated that they will not control the actual language. What ContentGuard is saying is that they hold patents which cover any type of implementation of any REL - so that while the actual "standard" might be open (lots of discussion points around this in and of itself), any IMPLEMENTATION of the standard is not open.
So, is a non-open source implementatable standard actually an open standard? I would say not.
"What we have here, is a failure to communicate." - Cool Hand Luke
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."
Exactly why companies would be very interested in having something that 'makes sense' to call .mp3. They want the market to be confused in the hopes that DRM becomes more ubiquitous, as it has failed to thus far. People are not crazy about .aac and .wma precisely because the names are closesly tied to the DRM concept in people's minds. True, neither require DRM, but that feature weighs so heavily on the mind of the consumer, the (.wma/.aac)==DRM perception is pretty well entrenched. .mp3==good/free beer is very entrenched and thus people wouldn't have the same issue with DRM-enabled mp3, and the best DRM (in the minds of the RIAA, etc) is where the user doesn't know his file is afflicted until it is too late. If someone wants to retrieve a file, that person has thus far been frequently willing to go a little out of the way to get the 'safe' mp3 format version rather than risk .wma/.aac files even if they are easier to get. If user ends up with crippled mp3 and is a common person, I would give >90% probablity they won't bother to do anything about it so long as they have already went through the trouble and can hear it themselves. Sharing with his buddies is a nice plus, but he won't give a rat's ass if it involves a sufficient amount of work when he has already gone through enough to get what he has for himself.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
Note that it says "unauthorized" copying. Not illegal copying, UNAUTHORIZED copying. Want to listen to it on RIO? Pay a fee. Computer? Pay a fee. Transfer to CD? Pay a fee.
Again, the simple solution to broken music is to NOT BUY IT. The people in RIAA are real smart. As soon as no one buys their crapware, they'll quit trying to shove it up our a$$.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Try the new MpDRM! Now loaded with 50% more crap, 100% more agony, and 500% more incompatability than the equally obscure mp4. MpDRM! Because less really is more, if you live at the RIAA.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
You're smoking crack.
Ogg won't be popular until the developers get off their asses and put a big link on their front page that says "Install Ogg for Windows!".
At the moment they just give out the codec and say "you do what you want with it". Doing something useful with it? Well... ummmm... here's a bunch of third parties that can maybe do something useful with it.
If Xiph want Ogg to be popular they're going to have to break down and make actual usable technology with instant gratification for Win32 users. They don't want to have to know that a DirectShow fiter is what lets you play Oggs in Windows Media Player. They want to double click an installer and have their OS Ogg enabled.
I'll even point this out to you using references avaialable on the plain old intarweb. See Divx. Theres a "New To Divx" section! Fancy that! There used to be a direct "download Divx whatever version" link but it seems the webmaster woke up stupid this month. Then you download a file and you double click on it once it's finished and it gives you Divx! You can double click on a Divx AVI file and it opens in WMP and plays with all the Divxy goodness.
Xiph needs that for Ogg. They don't need a third party to fill the gaps. They don't need a billion programs nobody cares about with Ogg support. They need a standard installer package with instant fucking gratification and until Xiph get that through their heads people will either switch to WMA or download iTunes and switch to AAC.
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.
too late there out there http://wiki.xiph.org/VorbisHardware
De sig boss de sig
Trying to make bits not copyable is like trying to make water not wet.
Obviously the new format won't affect the legacy, but it might pollute the waters.
History lesson: Anybody here remember .arc ? Probably not - when its owners flexed their tiny muscles, it disappeared in a .zip. Yes, I know it was for different reasons, but the point is that in this digital age, things can adapt in a flash.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Copyrighting music is just plain stupid
"Hey man, put your jack in here to listen to my iPod this tune is great"
"Sorry dude, i don't own the rights to that song, maybe another time".
"Are you sure, here i'll put it on my portable speakers"
"NOOO I DONT HAVE THE RIGHTS AND NEITHER DO THESE PEOPLE ARGH MY MORAL CONSCIENCE"
(falls on floor in convulsions)
Can you imagine that? Come on. If you like Open Source so much, i believe you might want the same to music. I agree with protecting your hard work but it's getting out of hand.
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
One already has. It was called Diamond Multimedia, the inventor of the Rio. If you'll recall, they stared down both barrels of an RIAA lawsuit, fought off a preliminary injunction (the RIAA tried to use the AHRA and the absence of a "serial copy management system" to interfere in the marketplace) and introduced the first commercially successful portable MP3 player.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Welcome to the hall of corporate shame Mr Thomson and Mr Fraunhofer! Help yourself to the complimentary Crystal Pepsi and New Coke. In a few minutes, a waiter will swing by of a Segway with some Doritos 3D's and we'll start off the welcoming ceremony by awarding you metals made from recycled metric highway signs from the 70s. and top it off with a back to back showing of Gigli, Kangaroo Jack, and Glitter.
I'm so glad right now that I drink Pepsi. Even after their lovely promotion I'll continue to purchase iTunes AAC locked type format. It's easy enough...
:)
... if I can hear it I can copy it (heck, on a Mac the same applies that if I can see it [motion or otherwise] I can copy it :)
Download.
Import with Quicktime
Save as AIFF
Import to iTunes
Convert AIFF to MP3
Copy over the tag and delete M4P and AIFF files.
(hint: easy enough to automated through Applescript
And frankly I can't tell the difference from a original CD to their AAC format to the newly converted MP3 file. As long as it passed my ear test I'll just stick with their DRM scheme and work right around it (the day I can't is the day I stop buying).
Of course with tools like AudioHijack
Bah -- DRM.
" 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.
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.
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
WTF? Is this supposed to mean that no one can create anything new anymore, because it has "all been done before" ?
I know a large number of independant musicians and artists who would now like to beat your ass.
Maybe if you would get your ears out of the Top 40 drivel, you'd realize there's still a lot of original content being created daily.
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."
Any incompatibility this DRM upgrade introduces to MP3 is an opportunity to switch to a better codec. Unencumbered by DRM, patents, religious wars, brand stigma, merely adequate compression ratios and audio quality. If the alternate codecs/ players community is ready for the opportunity, this will be the best thing to happen to music playing since, well, MP3.
--
make install -not war
Is this supposed to mean that no one can create anything new anymore, because it has "all been done before" ?
I once read a Slashdot journal entry that concluded that the chance of copying something copyrighted was so great that the risk of having to spend the funds to defend oneself in court wasn't worth it. The legal standard for copying is "access" (has the defendant heard the plaintiff's work even once?) plus "substantial similarity" (are they similar?); once Their Experts have presented strong evidence that the songs are in fact similar, you'll probably bankrupt yourself before you can get Your Experts to prove that you'd never heard the song.
Oh here it is.
New advertising campaign:
With a name like "Ogg Vorbis", it's got to be good...
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
Yes, but if you're a defendant, how will you afford to prove that you have never, even once, heard a particular song on the radio in all the years you have been alive? Unlike with computer programs, where it's easy to avoid reading somebody else's source code, it's almost impossible in the United States to avoid hearing songs on the radio.
For developers it's not having to pay thousands in licensing costs. That's an easy sell. There's no reason for a developer to say "no" to Ogg. I have a plug and play DSound 8 class that plays Ogg. It's available at IcarusIndie.com
But, until MP3 becomes annoying Joe User isn't going to care. There's really no way that companies are going to make it cost effective for the user to choose a more open format.
What companies fail to realize (or think the DMCA protects them) is that if you can see or listen to it, you can rip it to any format you want. And unless you're silly and start flaunting your rips for the whole world to see, there's nothing they can do about it. Who's to say that sound blasting from your stereo is comming from an "unauthorized" rip?
I say let them do their thing. The sooner they get going DRMing everything to death the sooner they go out of business under the weight of their own stupidity.
They should just stick to frying the big fish and not worry about how many fish are in the sea. If Joe User can rip a CD, oh well.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Captain: What happen?
Mechanic: Someone set up us the update
Operator: We get DRM signal
Captain: What!
Operator: WMP turn on.
Captain: It's you!!
RIAA: How are you gentlemen!!
RIAA: All your MP3 are belong to us
The problem with all the schemes is that, at some point, you have to unencrypt the data. This means that you have two big points of succeptability:
1) The location of decryption. All someone needs to do is modify the device to get at the data. I mean lets say you invent a scheme where the data is encrypted the whole time until it hits the audio card. Not decrypted and re-encrypted, but simlpy kept encrypted until the soundcard. That then decrypts it. Well what happens when the data is decrupted? It gets fed to a little chip made by Texas Instruments or Sigmatel or someone like that. That is the digital-analogue converter. So you just go and tap the signal right there, which will no longer be encrypted and you're good to go.
2) The far easier method: The key. Encryption is inherantly a technology if trusted parties. You give the key to the people you wish to be able to decipher your message. Doing that, you lock everyone else out from being able to read it. The problem with DRM is that you are trying to lock EVERYONE out, including the person you give the message to. That doesn't work, you HAVE to give them the key in some form or another at some time or another. If you do that, they can find it, and make use of it to decrypt the data themselves. This is the problem with things like game copy protection. They release some new version of SafeDisc with 2048-bit, uber-secure, penis-enhancing encryption to keep the evil haxors out.... Which the key to resides on the disc. So, you debug the program, find where it gets the key, grab it yourself, decode the data, write it to disc and call it a day.
However for things like audio, it is generally just easier to say fuck it to digital and capture it analogue and re-encode it. It's real easy to get soundcards that exceed the CD spec for a reasonable price, never mind the quality of compressed audio. Just re-record it and go. Sure you loose a tiny bit of quality, but if done right no one but people with good ears and high end gear will be able to tell (who won't put up with compressed music in the first place).
Of course, once something is available unencrypted it can be quickly distributed.
Companies pretty much just need to knock it the fuck off. People WILL violate copyright, it's just life. Been happening forever. Now I don't object to some non invasive controls to make it more than just pressing copy to keep honest people honest, but it just gets stupid. No matter what you do, you won't lock out the hard core people, and you'll just piss off the legitimate users.
Game copyprotection has gotten really bad. Time was you were better off having a warez version of Neverwinter Nights. The new Securerom copyprotection was so screwed it wouldn't work on a ton of CD-ROMs with perfectly legit discs. It actually was punishing legit users, whiile doing nothing to stop the game from being copied by those that wanted to.
At least, not as copyright law was orignally written and not as the constitution intends it to be.
The part of the constitution that allows copyright and patent laws to be created is Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 8 which reads: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
Now as orignally written and enforced, they did just that. You'd make a creative work and get a copyright for 14 years, which you could extend once. During that time nobody could go and copy the work without your permission. This allowed you to profit from it. Remember, the U.S. is a highly capatalistic country so profit motive is important. Then, after your copyright expired, your work became the property of the people.
28 years was a good long time to profit, I mean that's over a quarter of even a long life. However it ensured that your work would fall into the public domain in a reaonable amount of time. You couldn't horde control over it forever, just for awhile. The idea being, of course, that it would encourage people to create, since there was an ecenomic incentive.
Also, your control wasn't absolute. You just got to control who was allowed to make copies. You couldn't control everything. People could resell copies they had legitimately purchased. Copies of portions could be made for education. People (or libraries) could loan a copy to a friend, then take it back later, and so on. This is what is collectively refered to as Fair Use.
There was not a problem with this system. It gave profit motive, which is important in a capatalism, for creative works and saw to it that society reaped the benefit.
The problem is with how copyright laws have changed. First there is the problem of extension. It is getting to the point of stupid how long a copyright lasts. Right now it's the lifetime of the author plus 50 years. Are you kidding me? How the hell does the +50 years have to do with profit motive for the author, not to mention that it flies in the face of the "limited times" clause.
Then there is this concept that you don't actually own the rights to do anything with the copy you buy. You can't use it in ways the author doesn't like, you can't trade it, sell it, etc. Well the law hasn't actually changed to say that, they just passed a new law, that says those things can be forced on you technologically and there's jack you can do about it. This of course clearly flies in the face of the "To promote the progress of" clause.
THAT'S the problem. Copyright is a good, and necessary, idea for a capatalistic country. It might intrest you to know that copyright is the reason the GPL can exist and be legally enforcable. With no copyright, the GPL would be worthless.
What's bad is that copyright is being twisted to add levels of control that are not intended or allowed by the constitution.
GIF is in the public domain now...
When thou MP3?
Being a lazy ass, and not about to look it up.
My point, I guess, is basically a quote from a Great Russian, General Zukoff IIRC(sp?) and I will badly paraphrase it I'm sure, as the beer is good:
(Trying to provide attribution, please excuse)
"The enemy of better is good enough."
The current format works well.
Everyone and their dog has MP3s, and the dog probably has a device that can play them.
Anything that kills compatibility and the ability to move files, or god forbid, SHARE files, will sell like dog shit on a bun.
They'd have to modify all development tools and backup software as well.
;
I mean, it would be simple to do something like this:
#!/usr/bin/perl
open($orig, "mymp3.mp3");
open($copy, ">", "piratecopy.mp3");
$copy =
close $orig;
close $copy;
And whatabout even the most simplistic backup tools?
tar xv
would normally read a directory from streamer tape. How can they even MAKE tar distiungish between illegal copied mp3's and ones that you lost during a harddisk failure?
Anyway, IMHO the greatest threat to RIAA (and similar organisations) is probably not the file-sharing per-se but the ability of artists getting noticed (and therefore money) without having contracts with the Fuhrers in MusicCity Headquarters.
Remember: the greatest threat to any monopoly is that your worst enemy finds good and cheap distribution and advertising channels! Even well-known artists start releasing some of their songs for free. To quote SCO: "Giving away something for free is against the law because it hinders us to make profit!"
(Maybe they should sell products that are worth our money instead of pestering us with technology that won't make it anyway)
Look, this thing is totally safe! Built it myself, you know. You just press that button like this and then turn that lev
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.
The problem with converting mp3 to vorbis is that both are lossy formats and the have different encoding methods: when you convert an original piece to mp3 you lose one part of the sound, then when you convert from mp3 to ogg you lose another part. See the Ogg Vorbis FAQ for more on this.