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.

Comments

So What?

[Tassleman]

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

Re:So What?

[michaelepley]

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.

Re:So What?

[oohgodyeah]

I say it's time to start saving the setup files to the existing MP3 players w/o the DRM crap attached.

Re:So What?

[jeffkjo1]

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.

Re:So What?

[Fiona Winger]

Its also been rumored that Longhorn will try to incorporate some versions of Windows Media player that will only play DRM MP3's.

Re:So What?

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

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

Re:So What?

[lambent]

mp3 in not unrestricted. You have to license it and pay royalties. See here.

Re:So What?

[mkro]

Let us hope Longhorn will let you install them, then ;)

One word...

[UnassumingLocalGuy]

Ogg.

Re:One word...

[the_mad_poster]

Yes, yes. Yap yap. Ogg ogg. Zippity doo da and the yellow-motherfucking-brick road.

In case you haven't noticed, mp3 has made a successful push into the consumer market through concerted marketing efforts. Now, all the geeks can scream OGG! until they're blue in the face - hell, it's the first thing I thought of when I read this (followed closely by "why do I give a shit, I have plenty of mp3 encoding tools that will work just fine") - but nobody is listening.

Not enough people in the mainstream consumer market are going to adopt Ogg because nobody will support it and they don't know to ask for it. Unfortunately, unless you're preaching to them, you're preaching to the choir.

As usual, the ignorant consuming masses will continue to get raped on new technologies because they don't know any better and it's in various industries' best interests to keep them ignorant.

Yippee freakin' ki-yay for capitalism at its shit-eating modern-American finest.

The government really ought to just lock up the whole population for whatever reason happens to be most convenient, liquidate all their assets, and then turn them (the assets, not the populace) over to the various industry leaders. It's really the only thing that'll make them truly happy.

Re:One word...

[micromoog]

Not enough people in the mainstream consumer market are going to adopt Ogg because nobody will support it and they don't know to ask for it.

That, and because Ogg Vorbis is the worst fucking name of all time.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Try again, and fail again.

[Fiona Winger]

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.

Re:Try again, and fail again.

[ratsnapple tea]

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

Re:Try again, and fail again.

[MikeCapone]

DRM might eventually get easy to get around for the "average joe" on computers (some kind of popular deDRMizer software), but I'm not sure that the average joe's mp3 player/DVD player/whatever will be as easy to crack.

Ummmm....

[iLL_L0gic]

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

Re:Ummmm....

[lightspawn]

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

Officer, arrest this man. He is obviously a user, and probably a dealer, of a terrorist-grade operating system weapon, capable of running audio playback software software (and undoubtedly encryption software too) not expressly authorized by the ministry of rights (MiniRight).

Yes, I know it sounds like a joke, but so did the DMCA before 1998.

What? Why?

[Liselle]

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.

Useless

[Tuxinatorium]

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.

Of course

[savagedome]

We all knew this was coming. Madonna yelling in the mp3s was never going to be enough!

Too bad, the cat's out of the bag already

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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.

Re:Too bad, the cat's out of the bag already

[kakos]

I have a shinier sixpence in my pocket that says most people that use MP3s won't know the difference and will use it out of ignorance.

For every anti-DRM nerd out there, there are 50 (or more!) common people that just want to listen to music.

Re:Too bad, the cat's out of the bag already

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

For every anti-DRM nerd out there, there are 50 (or more!) common people that just want to listen to music.

Yep, I agree, people are mindless drones who'll buy players, then will buy music, then will play music and not think twice about it.

Then one day, they'll change their player and the new one won't play the 3 year old music files they had bought, because the "standard" has changed, and since the previous standard was not open, they'll have to buy their music *again*. And that is when the drones wisen up and begin to hate the music industry and stick to older, more "illegal", but open file formats.

Won't Make A Difference...

[gotroot801]

...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?

What incentive?

[re-Verse]

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?

Re:Hi Ogg

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Hi Ogg, nice to meet you, i just broke up with MP3, want to go out?

OK! But we have to walk to dinner. No car...

Don't forget the power of the patents

[Qzukk]

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.

Too Late

[Lord Kano]

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

Re:Hi Ogg

[Trogre]

OK! But we have to walk to dinner. No car...

Not a problem. The dinner, like the lunch, is free.

You're all missing the point

[sahonen]

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.

Re:not ogg again!!

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I can hear all the geeks screaming how ogg is the best thing on the planet. only problem is hardware support is almost nonexistent

Dude, you so don't understand the ogg philosophy.

See, ogg is the true geek music format: it is therefore *expected* not to be widely supported, otherwise it'd be taken over by big bad corporations, taken on by the music industry, and it'd become well-known and geeks couldn't go about preaching the good word on how good it is to the ordinary pleb.

Anyway, no need for ogg players, true geeks listen to Metallica just by reading the hex printout of the ogg files, printed with mpage -16.

Why does everyone automatically yell OGG?

[RalphBNumbers]

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.

Re:Why does everyone automatically yell OGG?

[dtfinch]

Already happening.

More insidious

[nuntius]

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.

Re:More insidious

[Aneurysm9]

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?

Re:More insidious

[timeOday]

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?

Re:More insidious

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi my name is clippy, I see your playing non-DRM MP3s would you like me DRM enable them?

Re:More insidious

[phrasebook]

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.

Re:More insidious

[iq in binary]

Wrong, the parent posts a good question because the answer is not only quite potent but quite obvious: they do . And we have made that way ourselves, people. The problem is many of you don't know that.

The reason they get to decide is because of the DMCA, an act passed by our representatives in government. People that we elected. Is this situation a problem? Yes. Who's fault is it? Ours .

The good thing is we can rectify this problem by being more responsible with our voting than we have been in the past. Look at Bush, only in the office in the first place because people felt picking the lesser of 2 evils (Gore would have been a nightmare)was prudent. Yet they had more than 2 choices. It's time to start looking at the ballot carefully folks.

All would-be presidents promise to fix problems. Noone has made it to office on the premise of changing things, just on the premise of fixing broken things. Half the time, what they promise to fix isn't broken and the change stands to make the candidate's current employer benefit greatly. The promise of fixing things is their trick, it makes you think of his intentions as opposed to his motivation. Although determing motivation is hard, there is a way to vote responsibly even not knowing this information.

Next time you go to the ballot, try thinking about things like a natural human being. Think about their negatives. All the advertising is meant to focus your mind on things the are a benefit to them when you see or hear their name (even accusationally slanderous ads, everyone knows who funded those ads--the opposing team). If everyone thought about the problems Bush would cause as opposed to the "good" things he'd do, he would have never been elected. Same thing could be said about Gore too, but if everyone had taken my advice 5 years ago they would have never been elected to candidacy either.

Re:More insidious

[orthogonal]

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).

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 .jpeg of the album cover. Ok, more than I asked for, and I don't need Microsoft cataloging my music, but not terrible.

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.

Not Open Standards

[jfrumkin]

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.

One word

[Pan T. Hose]

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.

Re:Extension?

[Junta]

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.

Rio Karma

[BlastM]

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.

Read carefully, boys and girls

[buss_error]

"Cnet News.com has a leading story saying that the venerable MP3 music format is getting a makeover aimed at blocking unauthorized copying.

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$$.

Re:Read carefully, boys and girls

[LordK3nn3th]

That's why it's called DRM. So they can 'manage' your rights.

Re:Read carefully, boys and girls

[NSash]

As soon as no one buys their crapware, they'll quit trying to shove it up our a$$.

No, they'll blame pirates.

Re:Read carefully, boys and girls

[jnicholson]

The people in RIAA are real smart.

I have yet to see any evidence of this.

Re:Read carefully, boys and girls

[bigberk]

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$$.

Exactly! Don't buy RIAA music. Download your shit online, use filesharing applications with bandwidth-limiting enabled so you are harder to detect. Change the default port numbers. Use obscure file sharing apps. Set up a node on freenet. Complain to your ISP and threaten to leave if they poo-poo P2P use. Teach others how to use file sharing properly. Avoid using file sharing at school, university, or work. Support BitTorrent by leaving your client running well after you're done downloading. Don't leave your filesharing apps unattended 24 hours a day. Keep your host free of viruses. Keep your music collections clean of tainted files or corrupt downloads.

We're slowly killing the big record labels... keep up the good work. I'm not being sarcastic, I really want to see these evil bastards go poor.

Re:Read carefully, boys and girls

[Ogerman]

Exactly! Don't buy RIAA music. Download your sh** online

What you describe is only half-right in terms of solving the problem of a corrupt entertainment industry. The correct solution is this: Don't buy RIAA music but support independent / local / non-RIAA artists. That's right -- don't even share RIAA crap. Doing so only makes it more popular - and thus keeps people buying CD's and merchandise, watching MTV, and going to RIAA-artist concerts. And. incidentally, Hollywood is another good boycott target. Don't want DRM-laden HD-DVD's and HDTV components? Stop buying today's DVDs and going to every movie that hits the theaters! Cancel your ridiculous cable/satellite premium package! These people can do evil things only because YOU enable them with your dollars.

Look to software as an example. The answer to Microsoft's monopoly is not warez sites; it's Open Source. And it's working.

When alternatives exist to fight corruption, the legal one should be chosen first--not necessarily because the law is just, but because it's the easiest path. Unjust laws can be changed far more easily after monopolists have lost the reins.

Try the new MpDRM!

[dj245]

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.

I think

[Talez]

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.

"Their own music"

[tepples]

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.

Re:"Their own music"

[Samrobb]

Or do you know of a foolproof way to write music while preventing oneself from accidentally copying a copyrighted work?

Unacompanied Sonata

(To avoid the inevetable off-topic moderation: this is a story about a young musical prodigy who is raised completely separated from any outside influences, so he can create "pure" music.)

Re:OGG

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Copying protections

[Scott.Simpson]

Trying to make bits not copyable is like trying to make water not wet.

Oh, Golly, Gee...

[Snork Asaurus]

...there's another format that's consumer friendly and sounds better to boot.

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.

Stupid scenario

[AvengerXP]

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.

Re:OGG

[base3]

Not player manufacturer will go openly against the RIAA maffia [sic] ever. Period.

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.

This is sure to be a success!

[ZackSchil]

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 don't think it will work

[Anonymous Coward]

" 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

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

DRM covers more than just copyright enforcement

[tepples]

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."

roadblock is an offramp

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Combinatorics says you'll end up in court

[tepples]

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.

Needs a selling point

[KalvinB]

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

In AD 2101...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

It's much harder actually

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:Can DRM actually work?

[cavac]

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)

In other news...

[serutan]

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.

Re:Time for oggasm

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

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.