Microsoft Preps 'Janus' Music Copy-Prevention Scheme

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft is expected to unveil copy-protection software this summer that will for the first time give portable digital music players access to rented tunes from all-you-can-eat subscription services -- a development that some industry executives believe will shake up the online music business." Janus is the Roman god of doorways, gates, passages, preventing people from copying music, etc.

Comments

Are they kidding?

[erick99]

This will get hacked very quickly by folks who would like access to high-quality downloads and the fast download speeds that commercial sites afford. I am assuming that Microsoft and the record labels know this but figure it will be a small problem? It is a shame that my first response to this is not "how cool is this?" but, rather, "this will be hacked." But, since all of this is in response to piracy, I am surprised that these folks will hang their hats on a software solution. Oh, well.

Happy Trails!

Erick

Re:Are they kidding?

[blowdart]

This isn't new, you've been able to enforce time limits since DRM v1 for Windows Media. Windows Media downloads have also been available in Europe for a couple of years, including an all you can eat, time limited service. It's still going, unhacked.

When freeme came out a patch was available in about 48 hours which still hasn't been broken. So that's about 2 years no hack.

Re:Are they kidding?

[mlush]

This will get hacked very quickly

and the bettings good that the cracking program will be called Hugh allowing one to Hugh .....

Re:Are they kidding?

[dragoncortez]

oh come on, the article says, "Janus would add a hacker-resistant clock to portable music players for files encoded in Microsoft's proprietary Windows Media Audio format." We all know that when Microsoft makes something hacker-resistant there's just no way to crack it.

Re:Are they kidding?

[Anonymous Coward]

Janus will soon become "Anus"

and microsoft will be making an ass out of themselves...again.

Re:Are they kidding?

[bl8n8r]

Think about what is going on here in order to hack it. You would have to reverse engineer the software, bypass the authentication/security mechanism, then connect to a server with your IP address to pilfer music. All the while, M$CO and the RIAA are sitting back with a piracay and DMCA greivance. This would be about as bright robbing a bank naked, in broad daylight, and using your own car as the getaway vehicle.

Re:Are they kidding?

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

This would be about as bright robbing a bank naked, in broad daylight, and using your own car as the getaway vehicle.

Think about the kind of people who are reading this right now...

Now picture them naked.

Ok, now think about what kind of sick, twisted, perverse people are actually going to take a good look at those kind of naked people and ask yourself, "Do any of those sick, twisted or perverse people work at my bank".

If the answer is no, then this might actually be a feasible plan...

Re:Are they kidding?

[AsimovBesterClarke]

> Think about the kind of people who are reading this right now...
>
> Now picture them naked.

Now, picture who would think of these kinds of people naked.

Granted, your post made me shudder. But I think I've made myself sick.

Re:Are they kidding?

[Short Circuit]

They better make it an extremely accurate clock, or one of two things will happen:

If the clock's fast, people will bitch about not getting what they're paying for, and they'll switch to a different service.

If the clock's slow, the provider's will feel cheated, and may likely switch to a different service.

Oh, and as MS DRM becomes more pervasive, we're bound to see some sort of antitrust court action. (I guess the biggest question right now is will it be in one year or five?)

Re:Are they kidding?

[vlauria]

I for one thing this is a great step in the right direction. Initally, it seems like a great thing to "hack," but if a large population had a subscription service, like cable, then there would be little insentive to hack. Currently prices are way too high, but if you have 60% of the U.S. all paying $10 a month to listen to unlimited music, then 3 things will happen:

1. Record compaines & distributors will continue to make a lot of money.
2. The cost saved by "hacking" is fruitless.
3. I finially get the music model I've been waiting so long for.

Although we will have to wait some time until this can be streamed to ALL devices, home radio, portable player, office, ...

Re:Are they kidding?

[Cumstien]

Bart: Uh, yes I'm looking for a friend of mine. Last name Jass, first name Hugh.
Moe: Hold on, I'll check (to crowd) Hugh Jass. Hey, I wanna Hugh Jass. Oh, someone check the men's room for a Hugh Jass.
(A man approaches Moe)
Hugh: Uh, I'm Hugh Jass
Moe: Telephone
(Moe Hands hugh the receiver)
Hugh: Hello, this is Hugh Jass
Bart: Uh, hi
Hugh: Who's this?
Bart: Bart Simpson
Hugh: What can I do for you, Bart?
Bart: Uh, look, I'll level with you, mister. This is a crank call that sorta backfired and I'd like to bail out right now.
Hugh: All right. better luck next time

Re:Are they kidding?

[spinozaq]

You bring up the exact point that makes this an entirely different beast. As much as M$ doesn't get security right, some over there much be reading some theory books. Real security requires authentication as well as encryption. This is why those self signing AIM certificates don't make sense... no authentication. And if you pay for the authentication, then save the stream and crack it... your name is even closer to illegal act, much easier to figure out it was you. The line-out re-record is never going to go away. Most people don't mind the slight quality loss. However, it is a "process" and time is money, the majority of people won't bother, and that's the point. Nothing will ever be "uncrackable" you just have to make it hard enough to be a nusience.

Re:Are they kidding?

[Oriumpor]

I'm sorry, until my headphone jack comes with built in DRM how does this stop me from realtime ripping?

It doesn't, and if the media distribution is cheap enough it's not that hard to loopback locally.

Screw you M$.

<3 Fair use.

Re:Are they kidding?

[Vancorps]

Ask yourself how many apps out there break WMP 9 drm?

I'd say Microsoft has learned how to do DRM since there is no legacy code to bitch with

Re:Are they kidding?

[mcheu]

Erm, no. That's not quite the analogy I'd go for. It's more akin to going to the video store, renting a movie, copying it, and returning it. There's a record that you rented the video, but that's it. There's no record that you made the copy, aside from the evidence under your VCR. Also, in the privacy of your own home, it really doesn't matter if you're naked, in daylight, or whatever. (ick. Makes me want to wash my hands before touching the popcorn...)

As far as the music service goes, their service only knows that a legit customer logged on and borrowed selection #45, #238, #2, from their library. Sure, they have your IP, credit card#, name and address, but so what? As far as the service goes, this is what you're supposed to do. They can't fault you for using the service they offered, and you paid for.

Re:Are they kidding?

[Bull999999]

Dude, some people view slashdot while eating.

Re:Are they kidding?

[js3]

I'm beginning to think microsoft's strategy to dominate the world is to create applications full of holes which allows the 3xpl0it3r gene in us use it. dos, windows, outlook, ie, iis all popular apps riddled with bugs.

Now they are taking on the media industry, with a format that sounds good to the suits but full of bugs to let mere mortals exploit. sounds like the winning move to kill the competition

Re:Are they kidding?

[bugnuts]

SecureID cards, GPS's, and tons of other devices have very accurate clocks. The accuracy of the chonograph is not really an issue. If they're doing what I think they're doing, it doesn't even need to be very accurate... they could have it work if the clocks were synchronized within an arbitrary time, like 5 minutes.

Re:Are they kidding?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

J-ANUS

This is the name of a Roman god - with Indo/Aryan origins. Interestingly, Janus was - literally - "two-faced".

TWO-FACED: Dictionary Entry and Meaning
Pronunciation: 'too`feyst

WordNet Dictionary
Definition: [adj] having two faces--one looking to the future and one to the past; "Janus the two-faced god"
[adj] marked by deliberate deceptiveness especially by pretending one set of feelings and acting under the influence of another;
"she was a deceitful scheming little thing"- Israel Zangwill;
"a double-dealing double agent";
"a double-faced infernal traitor and schemer"- W.M.Thackeray

Synonyms: ambidextrous, deceitful, dishonest, dishonorable, double-dealing, double-faced, double-tongued, duplicitous, faced, Janus-faced

Re:Are they kidding?

[daviddennis]

I don't like this model for two reasons.

First, I don't like committing myself to monthly payments for the rest of my life.

Strangely enough, this is true even if I voluntarily spend more each month at the iTunes music store than I would pay in the monthly fee. I still want the right to be able to stop spending money if I so wish.

My other major objection is that I have a feeling my favourite artists might get shafted, while Britney Spears and her minders get most of the bucks. Think about proposals for taxes on CDs, where the tax money goes to the best-selling artists, not the ones you're actually playing.

Or are they actually going to hook something up to my portable music player that will report the number of times I've played each song to the mother ship, so they can approportion some puny percentage of that $10 to the artist? That's hardly less objectionable, is it?

D

Re:Are they kidding?

[LabRat007]

I'm with you buddy. Even if you have the best most amazing software in the world if the device has an analog output you can skip Janus and line into another device for recording, converting and relabeling.

Sometimes I wonder if they just dont have enought to do?

Re:Are they kidding?

[trentblase]

Dude, some people view slashdot while eating naked.

Re:Are they kidding?

[vlauria]

First, I don't like committing myself to monthly payments for the rest of my life.
- So you can cancel on a monthly/weekly/daily basis, just like your phone service.


My other major objection is that I have a feeling my favourite artists might get shafted, while Britney Spears and her minders get most of the bucks. Think about proposals for taxes on CDs, where the tax money goes to the best-selling artists, not the ones you're actually playing. Or are they actually going to hook something up to my portable music player that will report the number of times I've played each song to the mother ship...
- I think it's safe to say that in the near future, you will never download the actually song to your device, you will just live stream it from different types of wirless sources. Just like you stream FM radio now. The only difference is that you could skip/choose songs. In the future, nobody will need their own personal *copy* of a song, just access to a central repository.

On Demand baby!

Re:Are they kidding?

[Bingo Foo]

J-ANUS

So it's written in Java, then?

Re:Are they kidding?

[KlomDark]

Take a piece of metal, shaped like a J, ram it up your anus, then try to get it back out... That's what they mean... J-Anus.

This could get modded funny, or it could get modded insightful...

Re:Are they kidding?

[daviddennis]

So you can cancel on a monthly/weekly/daily basis, just like your phone service.

But then I can't play any music anymore. So as long as I spend $10 a month or less on music (i.e. buying one album a month), I'm significantly better off with the purchase model. If I buy loads of music every month, then I'd be worse off, but only if I consistently did it each and every month for the rest of my life, which seems unlikely.

Judging by how well (ahem) my cellphone works up in the hills where I live - and how well other people's cellphones work even in the flats - I'd say those days are quite a ways away.

After all, people still get wired cable TV and DSL. I think it will be a long time before wireless is mature enough to do what you want it to.

D

Re:Are they kidding?

[BuckaBooBob]

Days from Offical Release of Janus to Exploit : -14 (It will be hacked Before it is even implimented)

Service Packs before its difficult to Exploit: 3

Security Holes added to Windows trying to Fix their DRM : 42

The Look on Bill Gates face when he finally admits MS cannot build a secure Software solution: Priceless

Re:Are they kidding?

[Anonymous Coward]

bullshit. Even if it were off +- an hour every week, nobody would notice.

Re:Are they kidding?

[the argonaut]

How many people have really tried? Considering that there hasn't been a need to even bother with trying to crack it (anything that you would want to get is probably available somewhere in MP3/OGG/non-DRMed format of choice for free), there really isn't a whole lot of incentive other than for glory and fame. And if that's what you're looking for writing a virus that will take down half the Windows installations in the world is a whole lot easier.

That being said, the motivation to crack WMP9 will probably come if the suits from the RIAA mafia somehow find their miracle solution that will allow them to shut down/significantly curtail P2P networks.

Re:Are they kidding?

[vlauria]

Good point on the canceling of your membership and then not being able to lisen to the music. I didn't think of it that way.

But I think people will accept music as a "service" just like cable TV. Hopefully in the future, this service will be so cheap that everybody subscribes to it, and the music companies don't mind if you "Tivo" your own copy.

History *will* repeat itself..

[grub]

Pay for time limited, rental media? Has Circuit City's DIVX fiasco taught them nothing?

If there were a demand for such an item I can see them working on it but the media companies try these silly schemes that have no consumer interest. Naturally they'll end up somehow blaming P2P for this system's inevitable failure.

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sick of this argument that DIVX failed because of the rental model. DIVX had so many things going against it that most consumers rejected it before they even figured out how the rental model worked:

+ Only available at Circuit City
+ Only on crappy, non-brandname players
+ Smaller movie library
+ All DIVX player play DVD, not all DVD players play DIVX - the standard was obvious.

In short, it was basically betamaxed out of existence. Besides, just because geeks hate the rental model doesn't mean Joe Sixpack wouldn't find it appealing.

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, just because geeks hate the rental model doesn't mean Joe Sixpack wouldn't find it appealing.

There are countless more "Joe Sixpacks" than there are geeks: why then did DIVX not take off?

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[sqlrob]

Oh, and allowing it in standard players worked much better?

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[Anonymous Coward]

There are countless more "Joe Sixpacks" than there are geeks: why then did DIVX not take off

Are you a moron? The person you replied to gave a bullet list of 4 perfectly good reasons why DIVX didn't catch on (and there are other reasons he didn't even mention). Try to read more than the last sentence of a post before replying.

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[bergeron76]

I think they're trying to duplicate the "NetFlix" phenomenon. You pay a flat rate per month, and you can just listen to any X number of tunes. Once you've reached your "max" number you'll have to either delete some tunes, upgrade your subscription, or "expire / return" some tunes in order to free up some capacity.

An example would be:
user pays $20 / month for ANY 20 songs from the library. He picks his favorite 20 songs. A new artist comes out with a PHAT NEW TRACK that he MUST have.

He can either:
a) "return" or "expire" one of the tracks that he has oustanding
or
b) upgrade his subscription to $25 per month for any 40 songs.

I think they're trying to lock people into a subscription model because it keeps revenue streams alive (for the company) and it's [relatively] difficult for people to drop subscriptions. For example, if you had to choose between paying your internet bill or buying the latest and greatest X-PS4-Game-Box-Cube; you'll probably be more likely to pay your internet bill (or music bill in this case).

I'm not certain that's their idea, but it sounds like that's what the business plan is at this point.

It's kind of brilliant from a business standpoint, but let's just see if the market takes kindly to it.

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[pyros]

Everyone I know who thought DIVX was a good idea was not aware they had to go to the store and buy a disc they would have to pay for every time you watch it. They thought it was on-demand streaming. The moment I told them they had to go buy a physical disc they agreed it was stupid. The liked the rental model, and didn't care about anything else you mentioned. They just thought it would save a trip to the rental store.

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[BlueCodeWarrior]

Posting as an AC and using 'I just listed you 4 reasons'.......


Yeah, we have no idea who you are. :-p

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[Anonymous Coward]

well.. not only did I just list 4 reasons, I also sucked off my dad 20 minutes ago and let him fist fuck me. I'm a proud AC gutless fuck!

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[Del Vach]

Only on crappy, non-brandname players

That's the only bit I don't agree with, I've got a Sony.. not sure what year it is, but it has DIVX support (Christmas present).

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[Anonymous Coward]

Editing mistake. Hey, post AC so you don't have to preview.

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[shatfield]

They are creating a solution for THEIR problem, not a problem that anyone in the real world is having. This is catering to a "product" driven marketplace rather than a "market" driven marketplace.

These situations are almost always bound to fail, because the law of supply and demand is being ignored. If there is no demand for your product (well, except for 5 Record Companies), and there are hundreds of millions of people all the world that want to see your product fail... what does that say?

It says to me that Microsoft (which isn't a stupid company, no matter what you personally think) is getting paid a LOT of money to give something to the Record Companies that they can stuff down the throats of hundreds of millions of people, whether they like it or not.

Kinda sounds like the "pop music" concept, doesn't it? This means it may just work...

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[banzai51]

You may be sick of hearing it, but it is true. Why would you "buy" something that won't work in the future? Espcially when real DVDs are setting there and aren't much more expensive. People rejected this because they won't go for a pay per use model.

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[Anonymous Coward]

> Espcially when real DVDs are setting there and aren't much more expensive.

I think DIVX was assuming that DVDs would retail for $30-$50 like VHS tapes. When they came in at $20, it was a fatality blow.

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[NanoGator]

"Pay for time limited, rental media? Has Circuit City's DIVX fiasco taught them nothing?"

Probably not, seeing as how DivX is completely unrelated to this story. With DivX, you had to buy physical media (that didn't look any different from the normal media, mind you) and then deal with 'renting' the video. It's really hard to justify pay per play when you have the stinking media in your hot little hands. With the music stuff, instead, they make the music available, and you unlock it for a fee. The difference? It doesn't cost you ANYTHING to get the media. Just go download it. Though I think there will be some resistance to this idea, it's midly better than DivX given a.) You don't have to pay to download the file and b.) Music is undoubtedly going to be a lot cheaper than movies.

It'd be more correct to substitute 'DivX' with "Pay per View".

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[jimsum]

People could reject this because there was a choice available. It was a close thing when DVDs were introduced, big names like Disney and Steven Spielberg swore they would never sell digital movies. If the copyright holders had decided to support only DIVX, history would be different.

Fortunately, customers had a choice at the time and could show the companies they liked DVDs better; and more importantly, that there was lots of money to be made selling DVDs.

Unfortunately, the copyright laws are being changed to give complete control to copyright holders; so the next time there is a decision about what format to use, consumers will get no voice in the matter.

I hope history does repeat itself in one way. I hope the copyright holders succeed despite themselves, like all the other times they tried to stop new technology (e.g. video tapes). I'm afraid the RIAA will get its way this time, and actually get a chance to ruin the music industry.

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[banzai51]

I've heard this arguement before, and it hasn't panned out. The people who hold the cash always have the choice of not paying. And when the music industry finally offers something that doesn't give the customer value for their dollar, they'll walk.

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[OMEGA Power]

The liked the rental model, and didn't care about anything else you mentioned. They just thought it would save a trip to the rental store.

People are used to the idea of renting movies and the vast majority of the time a person will only watch a movie once or twice. However, peoplle are used to buying music and often listen to the same song many times.

For example, I gladly pay a monthly subscription fee to Greencine (like Netflix but with a better selection of cult, foreign and indie films) and nine times out of ten I'll watch a movie once and then return it but I have no interest in paying a subscription fee to rent music cause when I buy a song I like to be able to listen it to when I want, where I want (on my computer at home, on my computer at work, on my iPod, on a CD in my car, etc) and as many times as I want.

There is also a significant difference in price. If someone recomends a movie to me I am far more likley to rent it and see if I like it then to pay $15-30 for a DVD. On the other hand if someone recomends a song from a group I've never heard of I will have no problem paying $0.99 to buy it from iTMS.

Because of these reasons I think a subscription model would work for movies (and I for one will sign up as soon as someone offers a online VOD system with good (near DVD) quality, a good selection and reasonable pricess) but I don't see a subscription based music service working.

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[pyros]

I agree. I used to use Netflix to get a bunch of anime series. Problem was they would routinely not have a particular volume, and I couldn't enforce a praticular shipping order, so I'd have to keep my wish list trimmed down to just the amount of movies I was allowed to have out, or risk getting them out of order and sending them back to put them back on my list to get later. I was just pointing out that my personal experience painted a different picture of what people liked and disliked about DIVX than what the post I was replying to stated.

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[bugnuts]

There are several responses about the divx problem of "buying" a disk and discovering you're only "renting the content" for a limited time, and have to repurchase it just to watch it again. They attribute the failure of divx to that, but others say there were other availability issues.

History does repeat itself but some folks actually learn not to throw good money after bad. I believe the right of first purchase being undermined does play a huge role in what consumers will tolerate. If I buy a book, I am damn well going to read it again if I want without having to pay for it a second time. Or sell it, or give it away (depriving myself of the use).

Re:History *will* repeat itself..

[nb caffeine]

the problem is people consume music and movies in different ways: for a lot of people, music is in the background all the time, driving to work, etc. Movies are only watched ocationally. Thats why netflix can work, but im very wary (however interested) in this scheme and the planned service.

I would say i get more entertainment out of a CD then i would a dvd over the course of a year. I might use the dvd once or twice, but id listen to the album dozens of times. Good thing the prices are going down (well, still free... heh heh)

Divx, anyone?

[punkass]

Didn't we already learn that people don't want subscriptions, they want the actual media to keep for posterity?

Re:Divx, anyone?

[kamapuaa]

I rent videos. I listen to the radio. $10/month for a subscription where I can hear any song I want to (which I doubt is the case, but I haven't looked around on Napster or the other fee-based downloading services) sounds like a very good deal to me.

People pay much more for their monthly cable TV bill, and for me, music is better than cable TV any day of the week. Or, satellite radio is a more exotic & inconvenient technology than playing .wma's, but Sirius and X-Radio are both still going, with people paying $10/month.

At some (perhaps future) point where this technology has evolved, why even bother to own the music, when you can conveniently access a music subscription? The reason I own isn't because I'm collecting plastic, it's because the sound quality and convenience is so much higher. If these issues can be addressed, there's no reason to be categorically opposed to the idea of subscription-based music.

Re:Divx, anyone?

[NanoGator]

"Didn't we already learn that people don't want subscriptions, they want the actual media to keep for posterity?"

How do you know what millions of people want? Ever notice how some people buy houses, and others rent apartments? Why? Depends on how they want to pay for it. Same can be said for entertainment. Do you have HBO and buy movies? Do you know people who do?

The truth of the matter is that there is room for both subscription and "pay more to keep it" business models. Heck, I'm subscribed to a music service right now. I pay $10 a month, and I have unlimited access to all their music. Why would I choose this over iTunes? Simple. This service makes it real easy to find new music for me to enjoy. None of that 30 second clip bs, I can just queue up a bunch of songs and start picking out the ones I like. All for less than the cost of a CD a month. It's more appealing to me. If I want to buy a particular song, $1 to burn it. Not too shabby at all.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if this service started catching on. I have a LOT of music I listen to regularly, but I don't have gigs of space taken up on my computer. I don't have to make emergency backups or anything like that . I just need to be able to get on the net and all my music's there. I don't even touch P2P anymore.

It may not be ideal for you, but don't assume that everybody in the world just MUST have their own copy of the music. They're only a bad sector away from wanting an easier alternative.

Re:Divx, anyone?

[MarkLR]

So why do people rent from Netflix instead of just buying the movies? Why do people pay for HBO instead of just buying? Sometimes people would rather pay for continual updates then be up to date once.

$10 a month for all the music you want in a month sounds reasonable. There's likely sometimes new every month that you want. Yes you lose all the items if you stop paying but in the meantime you would gain a much greater selection.

Re:Divx, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

netflix? because renting a movie once and copying it is cheaper than buying it.

More on Janus

[spoonboy42]

Lest we forget, Janus is also two-faced.

Re:More on Janus

[Delirium Tremens]

Lest we forget, Janus is also two-faced.

Indeed. Very good point. And that's scary.

Re:More on Janus

[Saint Stephen]

In the Yin-Yang sense, the dualistic animal/noble nature of man.

Re:More on Janus

[Anonymous Coward]

Janus is the god of beginning and ending. Hope it's ending for m$ this time =)

btw january comes from his name.

Re:More on Janus

[pizero]

Perfect software name for Microsoft.
" Janus head is a popular phrase for deception, that is, when action does not match speech."
From: Wikipedia.

Re:More on Janus

[Just Some Guy]

...which is why my dual-boot PC (WinXP and Debian) is named "janus". I have to leave Windows on it because I have to run some proprietary stuff every third month or so, so that seemed like a very appropriate hostname.

Since Microsoft had to go and ruin my perfectly good name for a dual-boot system, I guess I'll have to re-christen it. How does "tainted" or "infected" sound?

Re:More on Janus

[rufo]

I've called my Windows box Saruman.

Of course, I'll be upgrading in a week or two, which means I'll have to re-christen it Sauron or something more evil.

But many of my computers have had names from LoTR. I guess that kinda marks me as a geek, doesn't it?

Re:More on Janus

[Just Some Guy]

But many of my computers have had names from LoTR. I guess that kinda marks me as a geek, doesn't it?

Don't take this wrong, but it marks you as a not-particularly-original geek. I mean, how many tens of thousands of "gandalf"s and "frodo"s do you think are on the 'net right now? There are a lot of worthy scifi/fantasy novels that can be mined for hostnames - why pick the obvious three?

On the other hand, my home PC is "pooh", my server is "kanga", and my firewall is "gopher" (he digs tunnels). When I see "tigger" scrolling across a log file on a random server, I know that my wife is online - you just don't see that many Winnie The Pooh characters around.

Re:More on Janus

[the pickle]

Also the perfect name for a Bond coworker-turned-villain.

And since Gates was recently knighted by Her Majesty...does anyone ELSE smell a conspiracy here? Or, at the very least, another 007 plot? /rolls eyes.

p

Re:More on Janus

[rufo]

No, I agree with you on that point - I've never been an especially creative person, and I certainly don't think that naming my computers that is original or anything. But, y'know, I started doing this when I was around 10-11 (probably just read the Hobbit, not LoTR - the LoTR character names only came in after I read the trilogy) - so give me a f'n break, man. ;-)

Same ol' Same ol' - confusion

[SuperKendall]

So to start with, you'll have to get a different player that supports this "secure clock". Then you have these issues:

Music service executives said they were still in negotiations with record labels over how to treat the new technology. Allowing people to bring thousands of songs at a time to portable players may wind up costing more than the $10 a month that most subscription services charge today, the executives said.

Well that's certainly going to help - keep up the level of confusuin with different rate plans based on what you might want to do.

Nevertheless, some music services are eager to drive more consumers to subscription plans, since per-song download stores have tiny or even nonexistent profit margins.

Because what always excites the consumer is helping a company make more money.

I would think artists would not be too fond of subscription services - they must get quite a bit less (if anything?) from such services. As someone who wants to help out an artist why would I want to support a subscription services? Seems like just another refined means of ripping off people who make the music.

Re:Same ol' Same ol' - confusion

[JoeBorn]

Actually, I think the artists generally like it because it's potentially more efficient promotion. The artists hate the radio industry. If used correctly, Janus should really present the consumer an experience that's more like radio than netflix. Artists promoting directly to fans with out clear channel as a middle man.

Get that to work and you'd really have something, it would bring radio back to where it was a place you could actually get introduced to new music. Then sure, you'd be able to crack the encryption if you wanted, or just buy the song for $1. Same way some folks used to tape off the radio and others bought the albums.

Everyone complains bitterly anytime there's the mere mention of DRM, but if you compare it to radio and think how much it could improve on commercial radio (or even satellite) then you can see that it could really be a big benefit to consumers if done right.

Next Slashdot poll...

[whoever57]

How long before someone figures out how to bypass the restrictions.

Re:Next Slashdot poll...

[stecoop]

Plug the ouput of my sound card into the input. If I can hear it, I can record it. Be it a digital record or on a casset tape, it can be done.

Re:Next Slashdot poll...

[aminorex]

Already done.

what will happen

[enrico_suave]

what will happen to my music when this little fly by night company "microsoft" goes under?

=)

e.

Re:what will happen

[jimsum]

And equally relevant, what happens 150 years from now when the copyright expires?

A prediction about Janus

[CleverFox]

I predict Janus will be broken within a month of release. The army of teenage hacker wannabes will not be stopped by mere encryption technologies.

Janus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does a DRM scheme named after a two-faced god not surprise me?

Re:Janus?

[Keith Russell]

Sounds more like a name of some diabolical, secret plot to rule the world.

Actually, it's a diabolical secret plot to genetically engineer the perfect Judge. That Janus project failed when it produced Sylvester Stallone and Armand Assante. If only Microsoft's effort would meet the same fate, with Rob Schnieder as a sidekick.

Re:Janus?

[LordPhantom]

Hmm.... those sharks have friggin 'januses' strapped to their foreheads....

(puts finger to corner of mouth)

Re:Janus?

[Ubergrendle]

Already done. Something like "The Janus Syndicate" or "The Janus Organisation" was what was run by Sean Bean's character in _Goldeneye_. And interesting play on the two-faced aspect of Bean...he was supposedly a double-oh agent, but in reality betrayed the MI-5.

Its the best James Bond film since _The Living Daylights_ in my opinion, and you have to go waaaaay back before that to get a Bond film that's not campy/over the top.

Notice also how the villan uses OS/2 on all his PCs at his secret hideout. Evvvvvilllll.....

Re:Janus?

[infinite9]

"Janus" was the name of the daily flights of mysterious unmarked airplanes from las vegas to area 51. Maybe it is diabolical.

Re:Janus?

[js3]

it is brilliant! they took out "ur" and replaced it with "j"

An MS product named after a two-faced god.

[Trespass]

How appropriate. So, have the eastern europeans hacked it yet?

When will they learn....

[axis-techno-geek]

...what will it take, I'm guessing less than a year before someone figures out how to circumvent this copy protection.

"Making bits uncopyable is like making water un-wet." -- Bruce S.

Re:When will they learn....

[The Other White Boy]

hacker-resistant : hacker-proof :: water-resistant : water-proof

=)

Re:When will they learn....

[sTalking_Goat]

Everytime I hear someone use the phrase "hacker-proof". I think of the Titanic's designers calling it "unsinkable"

Re:When will they learn....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Making bits uncopyable is like making water un-wet."

You mean I have to listen to this music while being exposed to super-heated steam?

No thanks!

Re:When will they learn....

[Anonymous Coward]

Bits might be copyable, but they will surely be previously watermarked with the legitimate owner's ID.

So... the "offender" can be prosecuted and captured. Sadly.

Re:When will they learn....

[proverbialcow]

It makes we wonder why a crack for Apple's AAC format (used in iTunes/iPods) hasn't really been much of an issue.
Granted, with iTunes, you can burn all your songs to CD, so people might just burn CDs and rip them, but surely an AAC-to-mp3 converter would be easier, no?

The idealist in me likes to think it's because Apple's put a friendly face on music distribution, giving people what they want at a reasonable price, and the realist in me knows it's not because the crypto is un-crackable.

Any ideas?

Re:When will they learn....

[Jane_Dozey]

my watch is classed as water resisitant... ...the lable also says that getting it wet is likely to damage it. water resistant != water proof hacker resistant != hacker proof

Re:When will they learn....

[doublem]

If I'm remembering the National Geographic special about finding the wreck of the Titanic, it wasn't the designers who declared the ship unsinkable, but the investors and owners who wanted to sell tickets.

So the Janus / Titanic analogy is even more appropriate.

That said, Janus is a two faced god of deception. Think Microsoft is trying to tell us something with the product name?

Re:When will they learn....

[PalmerEldritch42]

I fully agree. In fact, it almost sounds like they are daring the hackers out there to try and break their unbreakable encryption.

Good luck and happy hunting....

Re:When will they learn....

[pla]

It makes we wonder why a crack for Apple's AAC format (used in iTunes/iPods) hasn't really been much of an issue.

First, a crack for Apple's AACs already exists. Check out VideoLan, which can unprotect them for you (without transcoding, as I understand it, thus no loss of quality from the original AAC).

Second, you still need to pay, per-song (or per album, but not much difference), for iTunes music. Yes, a rather small between-friends potential for piracy exists there, but they still need to buy them up-front.

Compare the second point to truly unlimited music, for a flat monthly rate. Crack that and you basically have free and superficially legal (ie, it doesn't "look" like stealing to the RIAA) access to the entire active catalog of every major record label on the planet. So, for example, saturate your DSL/cable modem for a month or two, fill a few 200Gb drives, and for the cost of the drives plus one month's subscription ($10 or so?), you will have every not-completely-obscure song ever released in your private collection.


Now, personally, I wouldn't go that far, but I'll admit I would seriously consider filling in all the "one hit wonder" gaps in my music collection - Stuff that you'd never get around to buying, but has one or two really catchy songs. A few hundred of those, and I could consider my back-catalog buying done forever.

Very tempting. Even more so becase it does include paying for the service - No, most people couldn't actually claim ignorance of breaking the law to do what I describe above, but the fact that people pay for it (even if they pay for something technically unrelated to the music itself, ie, a "subscription" to a service), it makes rationalizing the "mere" keeping of what they download all that much easier.

Re:When will they learn....

[MyFourthAccount]

Everytime I hear someone use the phrase "hacker-proof". I think of the Titanic's designers calling it "unsinkable"

Nah, there actually was a remote change that that statement was going to be proven true.

Re:When will they learn....

[Anonymous Coward]

With the added benefit of unintentionally challenging the icebergs to come sink it.

Re:When will they learn....

[WNight]

The difference is that when one water resistant jacket leaks through they don't all, world-wide, begin to leak.

As soon as one person writes a program to crack the drm and distributes it, everyone can copy their music or download unencumbered music from some Russian ftp site.

It's like a master-key scenario. With one exploit you've opened all the locks you want, instead of investing time on each lock.

Re:When will they learn....

[Shadarr]

A year? I'm thinking zero-day.

Re:When will they learn....

[evilviper]

"Making bits uncopyable is like making water un-wet."

There are several problems with this statement. First off, throwing water into your freezer tends to do a quick job of making your water un-wet.

Also, nobody is trying to make the DRM'd songs uncopyable, just unplayable. You can make as many copies of the file as you want, you just can't play it... Just as you can copy my PGP-encrypted data all you want, you just can't decode it.

Finally, anybody who knows a little bit of science will tell you that water really isn't all that wet to begin with. Drops of water hold together because of surface tention... 'Wet' objects don't have surface tention. That's one reason why oil-based soaps clean better (they are more wet).

Re:When will they learn....

[cfuse]

Everytime I hear someone use the phrase "hacker-proof". I think of the Titanic's designers calling it "unsinkable"

"Idiot-proof" springs to mind for me. If it can be done, it will be done.

Re:When will they learn....

[axis-techno-geek]

There are several problems with this statement. First off, throwing water into your freezer tends to do a quick job of making your water un-wet.

First, not my statment, this is a statment from Bruce Schneier, someone who has forgotten more about encryption than most know. Second yes, you can freeze water, it then called ice, but you don't need an "approved" thawing device to get it back to being water.

Also, nobody is trying to make the DRM'd songs uncopyable, just unplayable. You can make as many copies of the file as you want, you just can't play it... Just as you can copy my PGP-encrypted data all you want, you just can't decode it.

If it is "unplayable", what good is a copy? "Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink."

Well if I got your private key I could ;) Most are "protected" with very weak passwords as humans are lazy.

Finally, anybody who knows a little bit of science will tell you that water really isn't all that wet to begin with.

Not all that wet, I'm sure Jacques Cousteau would disagree, for a liquid it sure seems wet. The lakes, rivers, and oceans I have visited sure seemed wet. Actually oil has a higher viscosity than water, this is why oil spills "float" on the ocean as it binds together better.

Instant water available, just add water... ;)

Copy protection

[October_30th]

Copy protection?

Yeah, right.

I remember those things from the 80s - never stopped C64 game sharing.

Re:Copy protection

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! - Now we have gone full circle! and will be recording the music directly back onto C90 tapes! - Just like C64 games in the 80's!

Well done Microsoft!

=)

Re:Copy protection

[AnyNoMouse]

I remember those things from the 80s - never stopped C64 game sharing.

Just wait till we get the little prisms and red cellophane squares to decode secret messages so we can play music.

"Hacker-resistant"

[GillBates0]

Janus would add a hacker-resistant clock to portable music players for files encoded in Microsoft's proprietary Windows Media Audio format

some people never learn

Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Has Apple iTunes been hacked yet? As in giving people un-encrypted, un-watermarked AAC files?

Re:Serious question

[user no. 590291]

Yes.

Re:Serious question

[b17bmbr]

Has Apple iTunes been hacked yet? As in giving people un-encrypted, un-watermarked AAC files?

actually, i think someone did. there's also i think a windows/itunes app that captures the stream. but more importantly, the whole drm thing is moot. you can go

aac -> cd audio (for car, etc.) then go cd -> aac/mp3. the resulting aac/mp3 is drm free. (i kow becasue the mp3's play fine on my linux box as well as my ibook). and i haven't noticed a drop in quality from aac w/drm -> cd -> aac w/o drm. so the whole cracked scheme is not important. all it takes is a $.25 cd and a few minutes.

note: no, i did md5sum the two aac files, becasue they would of course be different. but, if someone has audio software to measure levels, etc., i'd be curious.

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you are re-encoding the file, so you are probably experiencing a large drop in quality. Whether or not you notice/care is another issue.

Re:Serious question

[barthrh2]

Steve Jobs knew this from the outset. Accorting to a Fortune article, he went to the labels and said "Look, we have some really smart people who know this drm stuff down cold, and you can't stop it. What makes it worse, is that once you have the key you can unlock every door". He used this as the justification for an uncomplicated scheme.

Getting hacked would therefore come as no big surprise to Apple/Jobs. But when you add it up:
Unlimited burns + no expiration + multiple devices + multiple computers = Not worth the trouble.

The iTunes model is so open, there is little reason to hack it. Of those who would want to, you then have a subset of those with the skills to do so, and you end up with an insignificant number.

The new MS model, with an expiration date, screams for a hack. But then again, there are a lot of time limited software demos, and I don't suppose that anyone tries to hack those...

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't kid yourself -- MS thinks just like Steve Jobs, they just aren't going on CNN to tell you that it's not air-tight.

It's all a little cover to get the RIAA to feel better about adopting Internet business models.

Whether or not people want to rent music is a different question (maybe, given a nice "radio" streaming interface, they will).

Re:Serious question

[calebtucker]

But then again, there are a lot of time limited software demos, and I don't suppose that anyone tries to hack those...

You're kidding, right? Go run a search here for any semi well-known piece of software that stops working after 30 days. There's most likely a crack for it.

Re:Serious question

[andy landy]

But then again, there are a lot of time limited software demos, and I don't suppose that anyone tries to hack those...

You say that, but look at sites like astalavista it's chock-full of cracks for time-limited, reduced, or otherwise restricted pieces of software.

Put quite simply, as we all know, DRM does not, can not and will not ever work. People will always find ways round this, and for every 1 industry programmer writing this stuff, there are 10 black-hats out there trying to defeat it.

The above point about iTunes is definitely on the ball, If you don't put in the protection measures, people see no need to crack it.

I'm sure there are plenty of shareware authors out there who make enough out of their totally unprotected products, simply guilt-tripping people to pay, rather than enforcing un-usability.

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

missing the sarchasm maybe ?

Re:Serious question

[fshalor]

I read this headline and immedidly knew the'd be about 50 posts in the first 100 prophecizing (sp) this being hacked in like 2 weeks flat. Sure enough... /. met my expectations.

But Jobs has a grasp of the whole DRM thing that Gates doesn't seem to be close to realizing.

If we had some DRM which REALLY freaking worked. I mean, actually was something that actually protected the rights of the digital media AND more importantly didn't annoy the end user/listener, then it wouldn't be hacked.

Jobs went as far as they felt they could go given existing practices and ended up with a good system, that doesn't annoy users, and that does make it non-trivial to pirate. Yes, you can do it, but it takes a few steps, and a little bit of knowledge. People are intrensically lazy, so aren't just going to do it the majority of the time.

(Also, do you have any Idea how many people out there *can't* figure out how to write a cd?)

Any whokoewho.. Just like parent piped, iTunes got it exactly right. It's a level of protection, and it makes you feel good about following it. BIG difference to the M$ approach.

M$: "Where do you want to go today...as long it's where we tell you."

The're trying to play some demigod rear guard by dictating how people live their lives on the computer. I see this Januas getting stompped faster then DeCSS.

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

i think your sarcasm detector is broken.

Re:Serious question

[Some Bitch]

Of those who would want to, you then have a subset of those with the skills to do so, and you end up with an insignificant number.

All it takes is one.

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>MS thinks just like Steve Jobs

except jobs isn't stupid (in this particular case), he knows that subscription won't fly.

teens collect.

teens swap.

teens don't subscribe. they think it's ghey.

just put a picture of bill gates face next to big giant phrase: "rent to own, sans the own part!"

that'll cause a stampede of customers...heh...yea.

Re:Serious question

[malfunct]

The key is to make it difficult enough and unsavory enough to crack software that the average person in your target audience won't go through the trouble to do it. That way you pretty much revenue from the product as you were going to get anyway, those that take the trouble to pirate it wouldn't buy it in the first place.

That said I'm excited at the prospect of being able to join a music subscription service (I use napster premium and its pretty cool) and have that subscription available to my portable player. That way I have music on demand any time any place, that would rock.

Re:Serious question

[Talinom]

Quoth the article:

Janus would add a hacker-resistant clock to portable music players for files encoded in Microsoft's proprietary Windows Media Audio format.

So how long until someone tries to set the clock to December 31st, 2010? The 30 day time perios won't expire for about 6 years or so. After all, there has to be a mechanism for setting the clock should the battery run out.

That hack has been around for eternity. Change the date on your computer to Dec 1st 2010, install the time limited software which sets an expiration date of, say December 14th 2010, then reset the clock back to normal when you are done. Of course, the good programs don't fall for that one anymore.

If they are smart, the will make certain that the song will only play if it is within a 30 day window according to the time on the clock on the device. It should also update the clock (via NIST or somesuch) when you transfer the file to the portable player thus nullifying any tampering each time you get new songs.

This could be a windfall for Microsoft. They are again following their strategy of not selling a product (music or software) but selling a service (rental of music or rights to use their software).

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand. Gates isn't renting out music -- he's selling software that allows others to rent out music. If thats a bad biz model, that's no skin off Gates' ass, because he also sells iTunes-like DRM.

Re:Serious question

[Salvo]

... But then again, there are a lot of time limited software demos, and I don't suppose that anyone tries to hack those...

Most of the Time-Limited software Demos last for 30 Days. I've never had a Windows 98 Installation stable for more than 30 days on my old POS K6-2/450, so once a month I'd have to reinstall everything anyway. :)

On my Mac, however, I might have to actually Purchase a version of Illustrator or CorelDRAW. Damn Stable Operating Systems :(

Mod me down for OffTopic.

Re:Serious question

[mdarksbane]

This isn't really a crack, as you have to have the legal rights to those files to be able to crack them in the first place.

A useful crack would be to strip the DRM off of someone else's files that you had downloaded. This only allows you to go through a lot of effort in order to distribute the files you obtained legally in the first place. It's not really useful enough to say that iTune's DRM has been "cracked."

I've got an easier crack; burn the tracks to cd and play those in another computer. Or if you want to get fancy, capture the stream from CoreAudio with something like Audio Hijack. These only lose you quality if you feel like reencoding them in something else lossy.

Re:Serious question

[mrogers]

Yes, you can do it, but it takes a few steps, and a little bit of knowledge. People are intrensically lazy, so aren't just going to do it the majority of the time. (Also, do you have any Idea how many people out there *can't* figure out how to write a cd?)

But the point about digital copying is that only one person has to crack it. After that it's just a question of distribution. Look at the warez scene - the big problem is finding distribution channels and staying one step ahead of the law (am I quoting the Dukes of Hazzard there?). Cracking the software in the first place is a relatively small piece of the puzzle. That's why the real battleground is not DRM, but P2P.

Re:Serious question

[gl4ss]

ever heard of cd-rw's?-)

-

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

>>because he also sells iTunes-like DRM.

yep. he does. how astute.

you failed to mention that after 8 years of DOMINATION in desktop OS and Office Suite, that's he's failed to make headway in any other markets AND be self sustaining (i.e. not being propped up by the profits from desktop/office suite divisions)

giving away X-Boxes means nothing. (and they ARE giving them away..might as well just stand on a street corner and hand them out, while begging people to buy the games)

when it comes to new markets (including both versions of drm you mention) he fail/will fail it.

and so do you.

Re:Serious question

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Wrong. It IS a crack. Maybe it doesn't have a slick GUI and make you coffee, but it IS a crack. Don't be such a noob and say "but it doesn't do blah, or blah blah". It cracks the copy protection and that's that. It's a crack.

What else do you want? You want it to forward the file to your AOL account or something?

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

In the end we know Apple will end up with 3% of the music market as they have done in all other markets they have tried. Thats why nobody cares to crack it, thats why there are no viruses for mac. Thats why mac users can have holes bigger than goatse.cx in the OS without getting cracked.

Re:Serious question

[BuckaBooBob]

Just reset your country in Windows to Canada and the DRM should let ya do pretty much what ever you want :)

Re:Serious question

[blaksaga]

It's much simpler to write the files to a cd image and then rip the image to mp3 or ogg or whatever. You save 25 cents as well as a little time.

Re:Serious question

[fshalor]

(in response to big bro's sig under parent) You just don't know... untill you've played Doom via ham radio microwave...

One day I'll do this, and feel the freedom...

Yeah.. it's kind of like whole "what's your zip code" thinky with some of the sat TV boxes... If you DON't enter the zip when you set it up, you miracuously get all kinds of "local" channels...

Re:Serious question

[drinkypoo]

There is a program for windows called totalrecorder which mimics a sound card and allows you to record any sound which gets sent through Windows' sound driver at full quality. There are probably others as well.

There IS a loss in quality when you transcode any audio compressed with a lossy scheme. But, if you start and end with a high enough bitrate in your scheme of choice, and you don't do any resampling (44.1 -> 48KHz or the reverse, or something similar) then you probably will not lose enough quality to make a significant difference.

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

M$: "Where do you want to go today...as long it's where we tell you."

Have you ever heard of janus being two faced?? [:evil grin:] Is it any wonder why it is Microsoft's new patron diety.

Re:Serious question

[thehomeland]

from aac w/drm -> cd -> aac w/o drm. so the whole cracked scheme is not important. all it takes is a $.25 cd and a few minutes.

This is the solution that makes the most sense to me, in addition to the recommendation I was going to make -- that eliminates all copy protection -- just record it analog. Play it out the PC speakers, but have a laptop receive the input cord to its sound and record to wav, and compress. It's not "rip" speed, but it gets the job done and with identical quality.

Re:Serious question

[larry bagina]

Real Audio has been renting music for about half a year now... has anyone cracked them? (other than capturing the raw audio stream).

Re:Serious question

[Any Web Loco]

Hi - OT question for you, but how did you manage to know what your /. user ID was going to be when you chose your nick?

Re:Serious question

[user no. 590291]

Have a look at the friend/foes/freaks system--it looks up users by ID. Binary search from there makes predicting the next one trivial. Enjoy :).

Re:Serious question

[DeICQLady]

Unlimited burns + no expiration + multiple devices + multiple computers = Not worth the trouble.

However, thats at 99cents a song. Is it worth it when they want to raise the tarriff to $2.75 or so?? I am not in favor of the rent scheme, and it's easy to say vote with your wallet. But it's hard to vote when you are getting reamed on all three sides @_@

Pricing?

[baudilus]

I can't see much good, when you can already buy tunes with iTunes and Napster and the like, for just $.99 per song. Can the price of a rented tune be that much less?

On a side note, unless they find a way to copy-protect sound waves, they will never be able to defeat copy protections. You can always play the song and record it in real time on an analog source.

Re:Pricing?

[b17bmbr]

You can always play the song and record it in real time on an analog source.

unless you control the bios and have software control of sound cards, etc. what if you make it playable ONLY in players, or only out of certain soundcards, or, you have an adapter, or you have a slightly different earpiece plugin. looking at microsoft's activation schemes in the past ocuple of years, it doesn't sound to far fetched. or, what if you added to the analog source a note beyond human hearing, but noticable by the OS? just somewhere in the song. then the import crashes.

Re:Pricing?

[baudilus]

Ever heard of a standalone CD-recorder?

Re:Pricing?

[John Courtland]

Dude, if you can hear it, you can copy it. It doesn't matter how many levels of bullshit the file has to go through to become audio. Once the speakers start moving, no amount of modern copy protection will stop you from copying it.

Re:Pricing?

[jimsum]

It can be made illegal if there is no way to buy a recording device. All existing recording devices could be made obsolete by making the media illegal. Then only approved recorders would work. If you figure out how to spoof the recorder, simply repeat the whole illegal media thing.

Copyright holders have plenty of money and a huge financial stake in continually strengthening copyright laws. There is no money to be made in arguing for looser laws, so you can easily guess whether laws making analog recorders illegal would work.

I know someone could build their own recorder or horde existing recorders and media; but the record companies are only interested in making money from unsophisticated consumers. A credible threat of legal action is all they need to scare the herd into a corral, and that's enough for them.

Re:Pricing?

[John Courtland]

You can make a sound recorder from parts you buy at radio shack. It's impossible to deny the public this without making damn near every electronic component illegal. No judge on earth will allow a lawsuit for buying electronic components for the purpose of making a recording device illegal. And if they do, good bye America.

Re:Pricing?

[CyanDisaster]

...unless you control the bios and have software control of sound cards, etc. what if you make it playable ONLY in players, or only out of certain soundcards...

Sound is sound. If you can hear and make sense of it, then so will your soundcard, unless of course Microsoft decides that your soundcard will no longer accept input of any kind...

...or you have a slightly different earpiece plugin...

It wouldn't, or at least shouldn't, take much to splice a new end onto any proprietary headphones, allowing you to pipe the music from the player, through the custom jack, into a standard jack, and into your computer/stereo/recording device. Easy, no?

Hope be with ye,
Cyan

Re:Pricing?

[Paddyish]

Bingo.

The record cartels are pretty much screwed at this point, because the laws of physics and free society are set against them. The day it becomes illegal to make an audio recorder in America is the day the founding fathers were sold out and betrayed in the worst manner by the greediest of people.

Analog 'loophole' my ass. Dumbass meatsticks.

Re:Pricing?

[SoSueMe]

You can make a sound recorder from parts you buy at radio shack. It's impossible to deny the public this without making damn near every electronic component illegal.

Good point.
Can you imagine a day when "consumer" and "electronics" aren't able to be used in the same sentence?

Re:Pricing?

[SoSueMe]

...the day the founding fathers were sold out and betrayed in the worst manner by the greediest of people.

Sorry, but didn't this already happen?
Nevermind the sig, I'm serious.

Re:Pricing?

[Paddyish]

Depends on where you stand, I guess. I prefer to maintain a hopeful outlook in matters of national integrity.

Re:Pricing?

[jimsum]

I don't know how to make a recorder out of parts from Radio Shack; someone would have to tell me. We know that the government is willing to pass legislation making it illegal to tell people how to copy, they passed the DMCA.

It will always be possible to record on a small, personal scale. It isn't possible to record on a larger scale if the government can arrest you for clearly explaining how to do it.

rented tunes

[Coneasfast]

The summary was a little misleading, this is what the article means by 'rented tunes':

"Fans of portable players could then pay as little as $10 a month for ongoing access to hundreds of thousands of songs, instead of buying song downloads one at a time for about a dollar apiece."

Re:rented tunes

[SFBwian]

So essentially, it's more like NetFlix, on a larger, musical, scope... right?

Re:rented tunes

[Anonymous Coward]

They mean you can listen to all the music you want if you pay for the monthly fee. If you stop the subscription then you have nothing to listen to anymore.

Dammit

[mix_master_mike]

They are working in the wrong direction. It's not about copy protection anymore - the niche market that the ipod hit is no longer a niche market. The name of the game over the next few years will be make a store with music you can easily put on anything, take anywhere. I predict Apple makes their flavor of CP open.

One Question

[MrRuslan]

Can you "disable it" by holding the shift key while inserting the cd?

I could be wrong, and if I am I'll eat a bug, but

[93 Escort Wagon]

My gut reaction is this won't fly, because who's gonna be willing to keep forking out money in perpetuity in order to have useable access to their music and/or player? But then again, isn't this similar to the Tivo business model?

Reminds me of something else...

[airrage]

I recently tried out the Wal-Mart 99c per song download and found it pretty cool, DRM and all. I was able to download to my work computer and then copy to my home computer (with the license). So both are viable in both locations.

The only downer is the fact that if you lose the licenses you're screwed.

Also worked on my MP3-player so I can take the song running.

The interesting note is I charged the song. So it ended up being 99c. This was the only charge for the month on my credit card. However, my balance for the month was zero! Wal-Mart had given me a 'Small Balance Credit' which I assume is that it's probably less of a loss (99c) then some transaction fee (several dollors) from the credit card company.

So I guess you get twelve free songs a year if you handle this correctly!

I don't want to rent...I want to OWN.

Re:Reminds me of something else...

[blowdart]

"The only downer is the fact that if you lose the licenses you're screwed."

Start Media Player. Pull down the Tools menu, then select License Management. Choose Back Up now.

Tada. You're no more screwed than anyone else who doesn't backup.

Re:Reminds me of something else...

[morcheeba]

that's twelve free songs a year per credit card! I only have two cards, but I can imagine someone getting 6 songs/month, especially if you use freinds' and/or family's cards.

Re:Reminds me of something else...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most credit card companies I have worked with/for charge more along the lines of a $0.05USD transaction fee for amounts of this nature.

I'd hazard to guess they zeroed it out for either a) their bookkeeping made easier or b) good will on what is a small amount. Either way I'm sure they stuck it back onto the vendor :-).

Re:Reminds me of something else...

[Anonymous Coward]

.....And who doesn't upgrade their PC too often

Re:Reminds me of something else...

[greggman]

If you are only going to listen to them on your computer then sing up for listen.com. It rules.

Re:Reminds me of something else...

[Zhe Mappel]

I recently tried out the Wal-Mart 99c per song download and found it pretty cool, DRM and all.

Dude, Wal-Mart is to cool as Iraq is to WMDs.

There's Irony in there naming...

[sTalking_Goat]

Janus is the Roman god of doorways, gates, passages, preventing people from copying music, etc.

Society of Janus is a San Francisco based BDSM education/support group...

know what it is exactly you're consenting to when you click accept on EULA.

Janus?

[arevos]

Sounds more like a name of some diabolical, secret plot to rule the world.

"Launch project Janus!"
"You'll never get away with this!"
"I already have, Bond! Within minutes, the world will have no choice but to bow to my demands... or face the consequences."
"You fiend!" ...Maybe I've had too much caffeine recently.

Janus

[Debian Cabbit]

IIRC, Janus was also two-faced. Kind of reminds me of Microsoft, actually.

ooooh wonderful

[tekiegreg]

So a copy protection standard gets the name of a Mutual fund company whose investments in I've been questioning, I guess it's time to liquidate my shares in that fund completely now...

Re:ooooh wonderful

[Anonymous Coward]

Also a mutual fund company caught up in the after hours trading scandal.

Michael's At It Again

[Anonymous Coward]

Janus is the Roman god of doorways, gates, passages, preventing people from copying music, etc.- michael

From wikipedia:, Janus was the god of gates, doors, beginnings, endings and doorways.

Curiously, I see no mention about preventing people from copying music.

Perfect.

[tm2b]

A two-faced god that claims to stand between the primitive and civilization, but is in fact just a product of the primitive superstition of a decrepit culture.

Perfect.

Re:Perfect.

[Bitseeker]

Yes, it is perfect:

Janus: A two-faced god that claims to stand between the primitive and civilization, but is in fact just a product of the primitive superstition of a decrepit culture.

+

Janus is the Roman god of doorways, gates, passages, preventing people from copying music, etc.

=

Gates, the two faced god of software that stands between the primitive masses and the high-tech industry, feeding off of the cash of the former while siphoning off the innovation of the latter all in the name of making the world a better place.

Yep, I dub the effort MSMusIVX!!

[SuperKendall]

It should be really interesting to see how quickly this gets adopted. Like you say the model is really similar to DIVX and people in general just do not like rentals.

TV subscriptions are one thing because most shows are transient, and you can record forever the ones you like. But a music subscription offers no similar benefits, only an ongoing cost and limitations on use (can you burn real CD's with a subscription service?)

Re:Yep, I dub the effort MSMusIVX!!

[Qzukk]

It should be really interesting to see how quickly this gets adopted. Like you say the model is really similar to DIVX and people in general just do not like rentals.

I suspect the parent has the wrong idea in connecting this to DIVX. With DIVX you received a permanent object that was "yours". And yet you still had to pay to use it. This is what caused consumers to dislike the idea. There is just something psychological about paying money and getting a physical object.

With this, its clear that there is a rental structure in place, even if (especially if) the medium is entirely electronic. There might be other considerations (will these players play my mp3s? if so, why rent music, if not, why buy the player?) If you look at Blockbusters, you can see that the rental concept is alive and kicking, even if it has been having economy-related-issues.

Re:Yep, I dub the effort MSMusIVX!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I think given the right interface, this could work.

Imagine a Internet "radio station" that you can listen to. When you hear a song you like, you press a button and it's automatically copied on to your digital music thingy. When you put on the headphones, it automatically plays a rotation of whatever songs you selected. Eventually the songs expire/disappear, just like they do with radio airplay.

Since as you said, there's nothing physical involved -- it's a "service" like the radio -- the Britney Spears Pop Music crowd may go for it.

Re:Yep, I dub the effort MSMusIVX!!

[drinkypoo]

The thing that ruined divx was that your system called up for authorization every time you played the dvd until you fully unlocked it. Then, the data (as I understand it) is stored in the player, and if the player dies, then you lose your media rights until you can get them back from divx... which went under. Which we all knew would happen EVENTUALLY, though through our determined efforts (us == geekdom) we made people aware of what a breach of privacy it entailed and the system was destroyed.

Using actual DRM means that you don't need to get validation every time you use the product, only when you download it. Being time-limited means that the media will likely expire before your hardware. And the content is delivered electronically.

In short, this is almost nothing like divx.

Re:Yep, I dub the effort MSMusIVX!!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, people in general do not mind rentals. But if you have inferior crap for rental (divx...remember, it did not have any letterboxed titles or any other cool features that non-divx DVDs have always had), people will tend to shun it.

Of course, the divx numbnuts priced their "unlocked" product slightly higher (when you include your first "rental") than normal DVDs.

Costs more, less features. Not a good marketing plan.

When the price point of normal DVDs was in the realm of "Oy, I spent $25 on 'Ultimate Soldier'. What a waste! I'll just give it to my little brother. No more Dolph Lundgren movies!" being an acceptable tradeoff for most people who chose poorly, then divx was quickly doomed.

Then, what happens if need to move cross-country? Is your divx player's information stored on a smartcard? Is it stored in a sort-of non-volatile RAM that will fade in about 30 days? So, you have to pay again for the full-unlock if you buy a new player or your divx player goes without power for awhile? Again, not very customer-friendly...

seems incredibly easy to bypass

[TheUberBob]

I mean, i dont need to read the technical specs to know that it produces sound. Hello? There should be any number of ways to simply hookin on the transfer of data at the software level or, failing that, just grab the actual output. It's not like it requires much processing power to rip it back into something non-copy-protected.

It'll probably happen, but it will take longer...

[Johnny Doughnuts]

Microsoft learned some hard lessons from the X-Box. They were selling them at a loss, and then people started to put linux on them, or putting a larger hard drive into it and a new dashboard. They could copy the games onto the harddrive, and not need the DVD.

I doubt they're going to do something idiotic again, but... it is microsoft...

And when it comes out

[Diclophis]

I will look forward to downloading the hack to let me copy the music... or just plug the headphone jack into the mic in, and use sndrec32.exe to make a nice .wav of it.

and it also looks like j-anus

[GillBates0]

which is two cheeked

Re:and it also looks like j-anus

[lambent]

Shouldn't that be four cheeked?

What the hell...

[Azureflare]

What the hell is "rented music"??

Sure, I can see rented videos...But rented music? Who the heck rents music?

Little digital audio player with Microsoft 'Janus' technology.... Meet my digital-in connector =D

(or if they don't have digital out (which sucks and I wouldn't buy it anyway) then analog-in works fine too...)

Hundreds of thousands of songs! For 10$! Can't beat the price. W00t!

These guys are REALLY really dumb.

Re:What the hell...

[blowdart]

What the hell is "rented music"??

You're thinking of it in the wrong way. Imagine a BlockBuster where you pay a monthly fee and you can watch whatever you want. So change it to music. I'd happily pay 10 pcm to access the entire catalogue for say, EMI.

Re:What the hell...

[aristotle-dude]

Except that movies are a visual medium and visual things have a greater impact on humans than audio mediums. Don't you ever have trouble remembering how a song goes that you heard recently? Do you have a lot of trouble remembering the plot to a movie you saw recently? Renting movies makes sense. I still can remember movies I saw a year ago. The same cannot be said for songs I've heard.

Re:What the hell...

[Sunda666]

On the old days, you could rent audio CDs in some rental stores... CDs would cost like $20+ back then (1992-1995, if I remember correctly). People used to rent them by $2 and then tape the best songs... Sadly, they stopped renting CDs as soon as CD-Burners started to get mainstream, but I was still able to get some gzipped wavs out of these stores, that later became mp3s... of course, with the prices of the megabyte of storage back then you had to be very picky.

cheers

Re:What the hell...

[blowdart]

I guess that's a personal thing, I can still sing along to tunes I liked in the 80s. Of course being able to sing along to Duran Duran is not a survival trait.

Re:What the hell...

[forrestt]

The only problem with this method is an MP3 can copy in about 2 seconds. A song copied with your method takes about 3 minutes. So, If you were able to do this straight for an entire month:

3songs/minute * 60minutes/hour * 24Hours/day * 30days/month = 14400 songs

However, I think you would probably only be doing it at the most about 8 hours/day, so that is 4800 songs per month. But most people would probably be closer to being able to do it for about 2 hours a day or 1200 songs per month. But you probably would have some days where you couldn't do it, so lets say that you are super industrious and are able to do it 5 days a week. That is 850+ songs/month, which is just over $.01/song. Still a pretty good deal.

Now all you have to figure out is when are you going to listen to music you actually WANT to listen to instead of downloading music you haven't already heard yet?

Re:What the hell...

[Anonymous Coward]

Renting videos makes sense because the effort of renting and copying a VHS is more than most pepole want to deal with, and you can choose your level of investment "$2 for 5 nights from Hollywood Video or $20 to own it?"

As stated elsewhere here, copying audio is a *lot* easier, which is why you don't see places renting albums, tapes, or CDs.

Re:What the hell...

[cavemanf16]

Better yet, get the mp3's to wifi enabled comp, transmit the digital stream of music as it's being played to a receiver on another computer. (Just write a software app to grab the 1's and 0's from the media app as they flow through your audio card) Voila, free mp3 copies of your music. As I'm learning in both of my classes right now, NO software is immune from prying eyes unless there's DRM'd hardware of course, which hasn't been invented (or at least implemented, yet) so no matter what scheme they come up with, it's bound to fail. At least in the short term.

Re:What the hell...

[MoonBuggy]

Little digital audio player with Microsoft 'Janus' technology.... Meet my digital-in connector =D

Microsoft...meet bash on head from my iPod.

Re:What the hell...

[dmarx]

Who the heck rents music?

Actually, they have CD rental shops in Japan.

Re:What the hell...

[bmarklein]

You can already do this with Napster, Rhapsody, MusicNet and MusicNow. All of them offer unlimited streaming to your PC. No need to transfer to your digital player first.

Cracker is the Roman god of....

[Anonymous Coward]

....keys, passwords, serial numbers, combinations, and sledgehammers.

yeah. right.

[kulakovich]

"a hacker-resistant clock"

Like that water-resistant watch I used to have.

It wasn't water-proof

kulakovich

Re:yeah. right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or better yet, when you forget to charge the player and the battery dies.

Hacker resitant?

[Pranjal]

Janus would add a hacker-resistant clock to portable music players for files encoded in Microsoft's proprietary Windows Media Audio format.

Yeah sure. Like those two words can go together.Hmmpf

Seems like a strange thing to name a DRM scheme.

[tuxedobob]

"Janus head is a popular phrase for deception, that is, when action does not match speech."

So says Wikipedia ..or perhaps a very appropriate one?

How Fitting

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

Is that Janus, as in the two-faced?
What an interesting choice of names. I don't know what aspect of the project they are refering to though. Two-faced because they pretend to help customers while back-stabbing their fair-use?

Two-faced because they will sell this to media providers and then act suprised when it is hacked?

Or two-faced just because of the company it came out of?

Maybe all three? Time will tell.

Re:There's Irony in there naming...

[sTalking_Goat]

forgot the url

Society of Janus

/. needs an edit option

Broken already

[Anonymous Coward]

Connect digital out from pc sound board
to digital in of sound board on next pc
over. Record. Play. Distribute.

Better yet, install Windows on bochs,
and connect bochs audio output to a file. Distribute.

uh, oh!

[rock_climbing_guy]

When I say that this involves Microsoft, I somehow parsed this is "Microsoft will unevil copy-protection software."

Here we go again.

[NetNinja]

Another 2 million used to prevent the inevitable.
A challenge!

Minor Edit

[Anonymous Coward]

Janus is the Roman god of doorways, gates, passages, preventing people from copying music, etc.

Should read: Janus is the Roman god of doorways, Gates, passages, preventing people from copying music, etc.

Why Rent When You Can Own?

[dslpwr]

I read the article this morning, and sent to some friends. I have multiple problems with it.

1) I don't want to "rent" my music. I want to buy.

2) I don't want my music in crappy WMA format.

3) The tinfoil hat wearer in me sees this as a way for the music/software industries to indoctrinate the next generation of consumers with the idea that you don't "own" anything.

As the sidebar in the article says "If fans of iPod-like devices can be convinced to drop the idea of owning song files, they could shift to paying a subscription fee for ongoing access ..."

Pass.

Re:Why Rent When You Can Own?

[von_blapp]

I also fired this off to like-minded comrades. 1. My biggest issue with this "Janus" software is the sheer lack of a compatible ADC or DAC protection. That alone makes me think I can just convert from analog to digital and vice versa. 2. WMA? Honestly? what drug addicted 6 figure marketing director came up with that idea? I personally prefer open media platforms. 3. To beat Janus all one must do is boot up a good ole copy of Adobe Audition, re-encoding into MP3 works for me.

Re:Why Rent When You Can Own?

[jimsum]

I want them to let me download music from their out-of-print CDs at a reasonable price, like $5 per disk; I'll pay for the production of the CD. I want the uncompressed CD image naturally; you can keep your crappy compressed music, actual CDs (state of the art 15 years ago!) are barely adequate.

The record companies are sitting on a goldmine that they don't even recognize. For example, I have spent 15 years looking for a CD of Camel's album, the Snow Goose. I had a cassette copy from a used record I borrowed from a friend; I finally found my used CD copy a few months ago. How on earth does it help the RIAA that I had to search for 15 years to get a legal copy of this album? And I was lucky I found it used for $9 (Canadian) rather than a new $40 import.

These record companies have already spent the money to record and master these CD; why should it ever go out of print? Surely making $5 is better than nothing; or do they really think I'll buy the latest American Idol CD they are expensively promoting instead?

Re:Why Rent When You Can Own?

[efedora]

How on earth does it help the RIAA that I had to search for 15 years to get a legal copy of this album?
The reason that you and I can't find (name your old artist here) CD's is simple. If they were available then no one would buy the new stuff. Every buck spent on out of print CD's is a buck they won't get for Brittany.

Re:Why Rent When You Can Own?

[stubob]

Every buck spent on out of print CD's is a buck they won't get for Brittany.

But this is not the scope of the problem. You forgot option three: buy nothing. If I can't buy what I want, I'm not very inclined to buy something else just for the sake of being a good consumer. Wow, I hope the music executives aren't that bad at economics.

Re:Why Rent When You Can Own?

[drinkypoo]

No, they're better at it than you are. The effort of producing your out of print CDs is significant. Meanwhile the vast majority of people will keep lining up at the trough as long as they fill it. Anyone can tell you that volume is the way to make money. I don't know dick about economics, and I can tell you that. Besides which, if it were cheaper than a new album, people would have more incentive to buy the older and better music.

Before someone claims I'm just getting old, which I am at the usual rate, there's music that comes out today that doesn't sound like what I'm used to that I like - Just not as much of it. There hasn't been a new kind of music in a little while, or at least nothing I've been exposed to, so I don't think you can chalk it up entirely to the fossilizing process.

Re:Why Rent When You Can Own?

[javacrypto]

... I have spent 15 years looking for a CD of Camel's album, the Snow Goose.

Wow, so there's another Camel fan in the world. I thought I was the only one.

Here's a Camel joke:

Q: What's the difference between a Camel concert and a Pink Floyd concert?

A: At a Pink Floyd concert, everyone in the audience knows the name of everyone on stage. At a Camel concert, everyone on stage knows the name of everyone in the audience!

Seriously, I suffered for years because I no longer had a record player, so I could no longer play my Camel albums. Then I found the CDs on Amazon and went on a little spending spree trying to get them all. Later, I noticed there were "new, enhanced" versions of all the old albums on CD that included live tracks and other extra stuff. Now I have to collect them all over again.

Sadly, my wife does not understand my enjoyment of this band. I end up listening to Camel at work with the headphones.

I feel sort of the same way about the first two records Ambrosia put out.

Re:Why Rent When You Can Own?

[jimsum]

I disagree that there has to be significant effort to produce out-of-print CDs. With their current business model where they print up a few thousand copies and try to convince record stores to buy them, obscure music is expensive; but couldn't they try something new?

But why not just open a website with access to a database of CDs that have already been mastered? The cost of mastering the CD was high, but that money is already spent; loading a CD full of data onto a hard drive costs next to nothing. As I said, I'd pay $5 to be able to burn my own CD, and I'd live with online art for the CD booklet. If they don't offer the out-of-print CD for sale, they earn nothing, why not take me up on my generous offer?

I'm annoyed that we accept the convenient record company definition of volume. They'd like nothing more than to sell millions of copies of the same item; it is a lot less work for them. But what about the volume of obscure older music? It may not be possible to sell more than a few hundred copies of an obscure record, but multiply by the shear number of obscure bands, and that is significant volume.

Internet technology could be expanding the market for music; downloads of out-of-print CDs is just one possible way. Instead, the record companies are fighting tooth-and-nail to preserve their high-volume, low-variety model which is bad for both consumers and for artists (except those lucky few that are promoted by the record company).

Record companies want us to give them additional monopoly powers by strengthening the copyright act in order to stop file-sharing, a practice that doesn't cause them any easily measurable financial harm. File sharing is winning in the marketplace because it offers huge variety at low prices. Facing this competition, the record companies have raised their prices and reduced the variety of CDs they offer for sale. I think the record companies ought to try competing with file sharing first before just claiming it is impossible.

High Cost of DRM...

[SuperChuck69]

It's kind of a naive question, perhaps, but is the cost of creating strong copy protection worth the savings in pirated items?

Before MP3s were Satan, I had a stereo system (hi-fi for us old folks) that could easily "rip" CDs, records, or tapes to cheap portable media (blank tapes). It didn't seem to be an issue then...

I would actually be very interested in an all-you-can-eat music subscription, provided it gave me files in the MP3 format. I have an MP3 player in my house, office, car, and person, but I don't have a Janus player anywhere!

Stop spending all your money trying to stop me from sharing stuff, just sell me stuff I want.

Re:High Cost of DRM...

[Flyboy Connor]

It's kind of a naive question, perhaps, but is the cost of creating strong copy protection worth the savings in pirated items?

Never. It's mathematically certain that any copy-protection scheme can be hacked. As soon as it is worth the money to hack it, it will be. And if it isn't worth the money to hack it, it wasn't worth the money to develop it in the first place. So in the end, you save nothing on pirated items.

Re:High Cost of DRM...

[baudilus]

I don't think Microsloth cares about DRM for music in and of itself, they care more about the pervasiveness of their WMA format, which would generate royalties for them. The subject of article says it all, (Microsoft's Ipod Killer?), they are out for market share, plain and simple. If they can get enough of the market, businesses will start using it more and more. Wouldn't it be funny to see Apple's iPod supporting WMA format? Imagine, Apple paying royalties to M$...

On second thought, it'll neva happen.

And I'll never give up my iPod either...

Re:High Cost of DRM...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding -- the RIAA through a shitfit over "dubbing" just like they threw a shitfit over MP3s.

In fact, every blank tape now includes a federally-mandated RIAA Tax.

Re:High Cost of DRM...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really all MS has to do is sit back and wait and WMA will be pervasive. Why? Every random korean electronic firm can licence WMA DRM, and nobody can licence Apple DRM (unless they buy the whole player like HP).

Hey, the iPod is great and all, but in a couple years digital music doohickeys will be cheap and ubiquitous, and iPod will have the same elitist 5% marketshare as MAC computers.

Re:High Cost of DRM...

[Anonymous Coward]

> And I'll never give up my iPod either

Well, not til the battery runs out anyway.

Re:High Cost of DRM...

[bergeron76]

Why limit yourself though?

In 20 years when the world is listening to 8-channel audio/video files, are you still going to be happy with your 2-channel CD's? You'd be naive to think that "it'll be good enough".

Every couple of years, I adopt the latest technology and realize that I really can't go back to the older stuff. For example, I wince everytime I walk over to a Win95 machine. Luckily, better technology has emerged (I'm thinking Linux, not XP; but that's just my opinion).

Keep in mind that WE drive the market, not the other way around. They can't force subscriptions on us if we don't want them. However, they're targeting the lowest-common-denominator of society (the uninformed) and as a result we might have already lost the right to "own" music. Educate your friends, peers, etc. It's the only way to stop consumer abuse like this.

Big business will phrase it as if you have no choice, but keep in mind that your wallet is the great equalizer.

Re:High Cost of DRM...

[banzai51]

You're right that MS doesn't care about DRM music. But what they DO care about is the RIAA and MPAA running to Congress screaming like 2 year olds. MS realizes that if industry groups run to Congress screaming about the computer industry that MS will be a target again. Cast aside the DOJ trials and remember when non-computer industries started asking Congress to make computer hardware incapable of violating copyrights. MS (and the rest of the industry) with DRM can say, "look, your little DRM schemes don't work. It isn't our hardware/software that is to blame, it is your business model."

Re:High Cost of DRM...

[ozric99]

Before MP3s were Satan, I had a stereo system (hi-fi for us old folks) that could easily "rip" CDs, records, or tapes to cheap portable media (blank tapes). It didn't seem to be an issue then...

Did your stereo also connect to hundreds of thousands of others and allow them to listen to the song you just taped?
That's why it wasn't an issue then.

Re:High Cost of DRM...

[SuperChuck69]

Yes. It attached, via sneakernet, to my friend's stereo, which attached to his uncle's, which attached to...

You don't need wires to be just as connected.

Re:High Cost of DRM...

[jimsum]

According to the Harvard Business School study released a few days ago, file sharing does not affect music sales. It follows that if file sharing doesn't cost anything, there won't be any benefit if it is stopped. If it costs anything to stop file sharing (i.e. if the record companies aren't able to pass all the costs onto consumers), it will not be worth the cost.

Re:High Cost of DRM...

[Sexual Ass Gerbil]

2 channels ought to be enough for anybody... who listens to music with headphones. After all, we only have two ears.

Re:High Cost of DRM...

[drinkypoo]

If you share a song on the internet, then anyone who can find it (basically anyone willing to try to read your language, and then some) can download it. This is people all over the world. Those people are in turn connected to many people. Whether you realize it or not you are "connected" to more people than you ever might think about by very few steps by the internet. Imagine, people on these little peer interaction sites (myself included) who are only connected to about six or seven people, rapidly connect to tens or hundreds of thousands of people, and that's just the people who bother to sign up for these things. It's safe to assume that many of these people overlap from network to network as well, so I doubt they're really significantly cumulative, except between nations.

Now given enough time, recordings of whatever piece of music you have could work their way to every man, woman and child who acquires recordings like the one you have copied from whatever source, but it requires that you produce a large number of new copies of the work (or pass your "original" on to someone else who will after making the best couple of copies you can for yourself) for several reasons. The process is inherently lossy. This is not a problem with digital media - given sufficient precaution data can feasibly last "forever". This means as long as you'll have a use for it, basically, or the means to do anything with it. Magnetic media degrades over time in the best conditions, and it will not last forever. When you make a copy it can't possibly be any better than what you're copying, and it will age at the same rate, time being inexorable.

On the other hand, while the media your digital data is stored upon will degrade, sufficient care and copying can preserve the data itself more or less forever. Presumably as technology marches on we will find more and more imperturbable media upon which to store digital data, useful as we find more ways to consume storage capacity. The more data you have, the more durable you want each piece of media to be. Naturally, redundancy is part of a responsible data management system, as well as physical separation and heterogeneous copies.

The only way you don't need wires to be as connected is by using wireless digital networking. The only thing that comes close is the phone, and then only if you didn't have to pay extra to make long distance calls, and could get guaranteed-quality communications with CD-quality (at the bare, pathetic minimum) audio. Then, all you would have to do with someone to transfer a song would be to play it to them over the phone. Now this is much less quality than you can get today in the most extreme cases, like concert recordings, which are sometimes encouraged by the bands and seldom cracked down on in the way that copies of commercial recordings are. And, it must be done in realtime, which if you have a decent internet connection is comparably pretty slow, plus you can only do one at a time per phone line, and music player, and recorder, where the limit is the least number of any of these things. (The math still works if they are integrated.) Using the internet, you can download many songs at once. Or movies, or software, et cetera.

Re:High Cost of DRM...

[evilviper]

Before MP3s were Satan, I had a stereo system (hi-fi for us old folks) that could easily "rip" CDs, records, or tapes to cheap portable media (blank tapes).

Yes, but there's a great big difference. First, you lost quality by doing that. Second, you had to do it in real-time.

With computers, you can make a copy of a CD in nearly a minute flat, and that's with a single CD-Recorder. Not to mention that is without any quality loss.

MP3s are evil only because it made things easier for you. Tivo is only evil because it makes not watching commercials easier. And on and on it goes...

Re:High Cost of DRM...

[SuperChuck69]

The obvious retort is the Kevin Bacon game. Sure, it's just a silly game, but it demonstrates how well-connected we really are.If I recall correctly, seven really is the average number of people between any 2 people on the planet. So-and-so knows so-and-so, who knows so-and-so.

For example, I have 4 degrees of separation to Kevin Bacon, purely by luck. I used to work with a guy whose daughter was in a movie with Charlize Theron, who was in Trapped with Kevin Bacon. I'm not some Hollywood bigshot to get the link, I just took a software job.

My point? You're more connected without the Internet than you think you are. When you get that bootleg copy of Appetite for Destruction, who knows where it's been. If it originated from outside your immediate friends and their immediate friends, the original may have ben purchased by none other than, you guessed it, Kevin Bacon!

The paradox of the whole "Evil Music Sharing" phenomenon is that you only need one person to buy one copy of an album. Singlehandedly, this could sink the music industry. But that's not what happens. Maybe just because people are too disorganized, but it doesn't happen. Millions and millions of people go out and buy the album, and rip the album, and place it within public grasp, and in turn get music from other people, who are also amongst millions who purchased said album.

And despite the fact that we can download music off the Internet bing-bang-boom-style, if you asked around, you could probably find someone who has the album, whose kid has the album, or who could borrow the album from Kevin Bacon. It's a little slower and more mechanical, but it's a sneakernet search...

no hacking required

[Anonymous Coward]

Get Total Recorder. Listen, grab, rip. You're as good as gold.

Re:no hacking required

[Anonymous Coward]

But you can't re-compress it without a big quality loss, especially if it's music. You're stuck with WAVs/APEs/FLACs and burned CDs.

With MS behind it, Janus will be HUGE

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, repeat after me, MicroSoft's HUGE JANUS! I want to get downloads from Microsoft's HUGE JANUS!

2 faced

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to point out that Janus is often depicted as 2 faced or in reference to someone having 2 faces. That is figurative, of course.

microsoft copy protection?

[Anonymous Coward]

Been there done that...this is just another thing to hack, crack, bypass, or in general step arround.
Just saying that those who dont learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Hmmm

[da3dAlus]

I wonder what Janus Capital Group will have to say about the use of their name? ...
Oh c'mon, I'm sure that if Pheo-Firebi-Firefox gets a request to change their name due to previous claim, why not MS? Oh, right.

Name already taken?

[nadda]

JANUS is already used for information retrieval by some libraries.
What will MS do, buy them out?

As a Canadian...

[IamGarageGuy 2]

I can see no reason to buy a player that restricts my ability to play music. Sorry, I'm still all a flutter with the news yesterday about downloads.

Re:As a Canadian...

[Anonymous Coward]

As a canadian?
Wtf does that have to do with anything?
Lemme guess, you have a canadian flag on your backpack, eh?

Re:As a Canadian...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Lemme guess, you have a Canadian flag on your backpack, eh?

As if Americans don't have little USA flags on THEIR stuff? Gimme a break.

Re:As a Canadian...

[IamGarageGuy 2]

Not sure what you are talking about. I am Canadian. Music download ruling yesterday. Any of this ringing a bell? BTW, yes I do have a Canadian flag on my pack. Sucked-in again. This is the reason that I set my filter at AC-6.

Re:As a Canadian...

[jimsum]

A judge recently ruled that file sharing is not illegal in Canada.

Re:As a Canadian...

[Anonymous Coward]

See also, "1st April, World Fools' Day"

Come on, people.

[NaugaHunter]

Unless they've already developed a new, proprietary headphone, a high quality 1/8" to RCA cord already circumvents this. Or -hello- get it from the CD. This 'prevention' will only matter if they can actually get exclusive content that people want, and anything that can be listened to can be copied.

File this under "Too little; too late". If this was here 10 years ago it would have ruled the market, even 2 years ago before iPod/iTunes made legitimate music buying easy* it would have had a chance. Now it's just another unwanted product; at best a footnote in a future history book.

* I'm thinking specifically of when the iTunes Music Store came to Windows. To head off the 'no ogg/Linux support, so no business from me!' posts, that most assuredly applies to this new product as well and is pointless in a comparison.

Re:Come on, people.

[Anonymous Coward]

i doubt it's as easy as you say. even for copy protected audio cds, many of them are unable to be copied through conventional means such as you suggest. digital/analog outs have already been dealt with to an extent where most people are unable to copy those cds. i'm sure the same will be true with microsoft's solution. SOMEONE will hack it, but the people with the technical know how to do it will be extremely limited. do you know how to copy an audio cds data to your ram to circumvent protections? doubt it ;)

So how are we calling the cracking project?

[EulerX07]

Project Hades?

Or maybe project Zeus, with lightning being the metaphor to the elapsed time between the release of software supporting Janus and a hack/crack.

I've already hacked it.

[baudilus]

Step 1) Rent song.
Step 2) Put rented song on mp3 player.
Step 3) Go to Radio $hack, buy an adapter cable to connected mp3 output back into PC.
Step 4) Record song from Sound Card's 'Line In' using a high-quality program like Goldwave.
Step 5) Enjoy all the choonz you want for $10 / month.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[rastakid]

Step 4) Record song from Sound Card's 'Line In' using a high-quality program like Goldwave.

Yes, and this is where it goes 'wrong': recording a song non-digitally (analoge) isn't really good for the song's quality.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[BeerCat]

recording a song non-digitally (analoge) isn't really good for the song's quality.

True enough, but it didn't stop generations of people copying vinyl LPs onto tape. The quality doesn't have to be "perfect", just "good enough" for Joe Schmo. It's only those intent on piracy who will be peturbed about the degradation in quality.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[Metasquares]

There are still software drivers such as TotalRecorder which are able to record outgoing audio as an input stream. I'm not sure of this, but I imagine that that sort of thing doesn't suffer the loss of quality that trying to recapture the sound after it's been outputted does.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Digital-Analog-Digital conversion is not exactly "audiophile", but if done correctly 99% of people will never notice.

A bigger problem is re-encoding the files back to MP3s. That sounds like crap.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[micromoog]

But the loss isn't enough to matter to 95% of listeners. Use good sound hardware, and it's more like 99%.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[BlueCodeWarrior]

Ummm....isn't it the general consensus that analogue (records) are
much, much better sounding than digital?

Re:I've already hacked it.

[modifried]

There are still software drivers such as TotalRecorder which are able to record outgoing audio as an input stream. I'm not sure of this, but I imagine that that sort of thing doesn't suffer the loss of quality that trying to recapture the sound after it's been outputted does.

This feature is also available in SoundBlaster Audigy2 cards. I often set MP3/WAVE out as Mic In to stream songs to friends over chat programs. I've also used it to record audio off of a digital radio stream, with no apparent loss in quality.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[silas_moeckel]

MP3 and Quality in the same sentance if your worried about quality you dont play MP3's you play FLAC or uncompressed. OK granted I dont thinkg the DVD-Audio spec is good enough to replace first gen studio tape and thats the quality level I would like for my audio.

I guess all things are moot if your just coping Brinty Spears latest audio excriment. But thats a personl oppinion.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[Jeremi]

Yes, and this is where it goes 'wrong': recording a song non-digitally (analoge) isn't really good for the song's quality.

Neither is encoding a song into mp3 format, or transmitting it over FM radio. The thing is, most people don't care, if they can get it for free. The small percentage of people who do care will either pay the subscription fee, or find a way around the DRM on the digital side.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are using Windows Media, loopback features can be disabled via instructions in the media stream.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[pyros]

recording a song non-digitally (analoge) isn't really good for the song's quality.

Right. Because taking discrete samples of an analog wave and interpolating that data to approximate the missing data is always as good as the raw analog data. I'm not saying analog is flat-out superior, but I think it's a mistake to make the blanket statement that digital is better too.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[KozmoStevnNaut]

That depends on your definition of "better sounding".

If better sounding is a 100% perfect reproduction of sound, digital is "better".

If better sounding is a warmer, more alive sound (with a dramatically higher noise floor), then records are "better".

Just as a solid-state amp is best for playing music and a tube amp is best for creating music. Jon Lord's magnificent playing just wouldn't sound as good if it was originally created with a solid-state amp and some digital effects, would it? But on the other hand, why introduce even more distortion by playing it back through a tube amp?

In short:

Digital for reproduction, analogue for athmosphere :)

Re:I've already hacked it.

[jeffmeden]

This is exactly what everyone predicted what would happen when VHS was unveiled and coupled with cheap recording devices and rental stores. The ultimate problem is that copying a song analog with no automation at all is a *pain in the ass*. The thing that scares the record companies about CDs and P2P is that Getting songs from the media is extremely fast, popping in a cd and clicking 'go' in your favorite ripper results in a perfectly packaged CD in a few minutes, no errors, no degrading of quality. After that, hundreds of songs or even hundreds of albums can be copied to friends/strangers at once, with the click of a button. Even if there are ways around this, as long as they are cumbersome it will be worth it for the majority to not evade it.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[Jerf]

You can make a blanket statement that D->A->D will never improve the quality of a sound, and will almost inevitably degrade it.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[pyros]

i guess i just read the statement i quoted too literally.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[SnappleMaster]

We're talking about MP3s that are mostly listned to on walkman headphones. A slight quality loss is not an issue.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[simon_aus]

You won't really know the difference if you do it properly. Most of the back catalogue CD's you buy are AAD (recorded in analogue, mixed in analogue, mastered to digital). Generally if the source has a low bit rate and sampling rate the output will be shitty without a generation loss.

I have a laptop and Extigy in the stereo rack for recording old vinyl (about 1000 out of catalogue) as I play them. Clean 'em first, record off the NAD preamp, not the Kenwood - pass the wav through some noise reduction / aural excitement and the result can be better than most of the first generation of CD's we paid TOO MUCH for (who has the original Who's live at Leeds CD). The duty cycle of the stylus is critical here - remember them, they don't work well in the car.

Probably too much effort for someone who downloads and sees music as a disposable item, but if you are paying for the tracks it's another story

Re:I've already hacked it.

[Vindicator9000]

small nitpick: Many extreme audiophiles run very expensive tube amplifiers in their home setups. I can't seem to find a link right now, but I know I've seen tube home receivers for sale at costs of upwards of $2-3 grand. I haven't actually ever heard one of these, but they're probably pretty decent if people 'in the know' are willing to spend that much on them

Definately agree that tube is better for creating music. I can proudly say that I own a Peavey 5150 half-stack that will never again see the open market, because its tone so amazingly exceeds the long line of solid state amps that I had before it.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[harlows_monkeys]

That's not all that interesting, since you can already do that with the existing stream-on-demand subscription services.

There are three kinds of people (roughly) who download or stream music.

1. Those who will actively try to circumvent the license restrictions.
2. Those who generally want to obey the license restrictions, but don't want to think about them. If they can easily do something, they assume it is OK. This is the largest group.
3. Those who are aware of the license restrictions, and make sure they obey them.

DRM is aimed at (a) making it so that for group #2, it just works--things they are licensed to do work without too much hassle, and things they aren't licensed to do fail, and (b) stopping the less sophisticated people from group #1.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[crackshoe]

I find it hilarious that a lot of audiophiles go all crazy for speaker cable and patchbay cable quality - i've met people who refuse to use those "low quality" expensive monster cables, that "dirty up the sound", and pay hundred of dollars for extension cords. Nevermind that they have dirty evil copper in their wall, and the recording studios almost always use cables that would make the audiophile squeel in terror. and tubes... For large sound reproduction (poweramps blasting out 4 full stacks for a concert, say) you don'y want to deal with tube, and its not a particular benefit over solid state. but for small amplication, and music amping, its amaing. i was working in a repair shop, and wefound a late '70s fender bassman tube amphead. we sold it to a salesmen at the shop for 60 bucks after he fired it up and startted playing speed metal. i nearly needed new pants.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[BuckaBooBob]

Umm... BUZZT! Wrong anser! Analoge is the highest Quality you can get... Analog can suffer from a wide range of things to degrade the quality where as digital is resistant to pretty much all of those factors...

All sounds are analoge to begin with.. there is nothing digital about sound itself... Once you force sampling on to analoge you get Loss.. Quality is degraded(mind you its loss in fedality to the untrained average joe ears but still its Loss of quality).

If you use all the right hardware the quality loss should be unaparent to the listener.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[BuckaBooBob]

Its the medium that the Analoge signal get stored on that degrades.. (Also gunky Audio Equipment can ruin it too :) ).. If there were a Perfect storage medium for analoge that was cheap to produce.. a little marketing twist and you would have a replacement for 45's :)

Re:I've already hacked it.

[Ieshan]

This is so friggin backwards.

Write a fake CD drive that captures data and writes it back to the hard disk in wav format instead of burning it to a CD.

It would be a *lot* faster.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[drinkypoo]

Given quality hardware for both processes, LP to tape will lose less quality than ac3 to mp3, if you do not count what is lost due to the lack of capacity of the media. The tape has nothing like the range of the LP. But since they are both analog, you won't be making an approximation of an approximation.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[dunedan]

Analog can actually reproduce sound better than digital equipment can.

In theory if you sample higher than the Nyquist frequency(double the maximum frequency you want to reproduce) then you can reproduce perfectly the original signal.

That unfortunatly assumes that you use an infinite number of bits to encode each sample eliminating quanitization error, and that you have perfect DACs on you playback hardware.

Neither of these features are currently available on commercial equipment and "rumor has it" that the error introduced by high end digital audio stuff is higher than the error introduced in analog stuff.

And the analog stuff sounds better. It just costs a lot more.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[the argonaut]

Regarding your sig: I think what you mean to advocate is Condorcet Voting. Unless you really do like having a two party system.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[Rocinante]

Yeah, but with VHS tapes you had to go through the whole cumbersome process each time you wanted a copy. These days, only one person needs to go through this obnoxious process and throw the result up on the Network. This will only cause people who currently buy CDs and rip them to more useful, unencumbered formats to go to P2P exclusively.

Re:I've already hacked it.

[Ultra64]

I think I've broken the encryption on this comment:

"MP3 and Quality in the same sentence? If you're worried about quality you don't play MP3s, you play FLAC or uncompressed audio. OK, granted I don't think the DVD-Audio spec is good enough to replace first gen studio tape, and that's the quality level I would like for my audio.

I guess all things are moot if your just copying Britney Spears latest audio excrement. But that's a personl opinion."

Guaranteed hard-failure of player?

[SuperKendall]

Given that the system relies on a "secure clock" - it must be some kind of chip set with a time and then sealed with a battery. Otherwise, how can it continue to keep time independant of that player loosing battery power or knowledge of time?

So then - what happens when the power for this embedded secure-clock runs out? Your player needs to go in for repair, as I doubt the "secure clock" is user-servicable.

Or, perahps the chip just counts up as long as it has power. So if you only use it now and then you might be able to keep the song-embers alive for years as you slow time to the device.

I guess it won't matter since the system will be cracked before it becomes an issue, but it's kind of like buying a car with a pre-wired explosive charge under the hood set to go off in severeal years. "Not to worry!" the salesman says, "You'll have a different car in seven years anyway!".

Re:Guaranteed hard-failure of player?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's kind of like buying a car with a pre-wired explosive charge under the hood set to go off in severeal years.

These already exist, they are called Volvos.

Re:Guaranteed hard-failure of player?

[Anonymous Coward]

lose:win
loose:tight

Re:Guaranteed hard-failure of player?

[drinkypoo]

It's been my experience that every car manufacturer hides the explosives in a different part of the car. Volvo and Mazda both put it under the hood. Chevrolet puts it in the transmission, and ford, the engine. Nissan distributes theirs throughout the suspension components (actually they use an acid that will consume rubber, and they hide it in the silicone and occasionally in electrical components.) And speaking of the electrical system, may I call your attention to MG, Triumph, and Jaguar? Volkswagen just went ahead and made their vehicles out of magnesium and pot metal, cutting out the need for expensive arming mechanisms, and I'm not sure where they're putting it these days. Maybe driving a VW is punishment enough :)

Sounds more like ANUS

[Marble68]

As in, ripped or torn.

Fits MS perfectly

[Bendebecker]

Janus, the two faced god. They claim to help the users and then stab them in the back for the sake of the corporations.

There goes our project's name

[leoboiko]

I've been working for a year in a project to analyze legacy databases from my university and make predictions from them. I tought a good name was Janus, the two-faced god who looks to the past and to the future simultaneously.

/me hates namespace pollution.

Release the Kraken

[imgumbydamnit]

...from Clash of the Titans.

Subscription Models suck..

[nurb432]

I would never get a subscription to view TV.. err... Ok i would never get a subscription to listen to satellite radio.. ummmmm

well id never get a subscription to drive my errr ummm car.... or live in my apartment..

The general public is used to subscriptions ...its all around them.... i doubt they will balk about this..

*we* may refuse .. but the general public is used to not being able to own anything anymore, to them its just one more monthly fee to 'get stuff'......

Re:Subscription Models suck..

[twofidyKidd]

Fuck that shit, I OWN my car, my house, the movies that I have on DVD that I watch because I never watch TV, my iPod with all the music I can fit on it... Sure, people may be USED to that sort of thing, but does anyone really strive to see how much stuff they can rent? Yeah I have magazine subscriptions...but those magazines are mine when they come in the mail, I'm not sending them back so I can receive a new issue. Incidentally, I also own the computer along with all the audio equipment attached to it that would allow me to easily record via analog anything that is played from my computer. Bring on this so called "subscription." I'll OWN every last song I can play for $9.99 a month.

Re:Subscription Models suck..

[BeerVarmint]

I very much agree with your statement, but I am damned proud to say that I am an exception to the rule. I watch broadcast TV (mostly just simpsons), I own my car, home, and movies I intend to watch more than once.

The fact that you are so correct is just depressing though.

Re:Subscription Models suck..

[sweetaction]

this being said, in a world where people are used to not being able to own anything, it is nice to be able to own something. my music is a good place to start.

Re:Subscription Models suck..

[/dev/trash]

You mean you didn't have an auto loan nor a mortgage?

DVD's are a license.

Re:Subscription Models suck..

[bmarklein]

"I'll OWN every last song I can play for $9.99 a month"

You can already do this with Rhapsody, MusicNow, MusicNet and Napster. All of them have unlimited streaming to your PC for $10 per month. No need to transfer to your portable player.

For 10$ per month this is too much hassle

[lupine]

You can get satellite radio with 100+ channels this includes 60-70 commercial free music channels for less than $10 per month(after paying $100+ for the hardware). I think this is clearly the way to go for non-stable audio. If you want to fill up your ipod you could just plug the audio inputs into your computer and record a few hours of a station with a good mix. Circuit City thought they could convince people to buy into pay-per-play for movies, this will fail for the same reasons.

Since it has the word "anus" in it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume it will be an outlet for all the crap the music industry can't sell.

Janus the God

[Anonymous Coward]

In A.D. 2004
War was beginning.

Jobs: What happen ?
AppleTech: Somebody set up us the DRM.
AppleGuy: We get signal.
Jobs: What !
AppleGuy: Main screen turn on.
Jobs: It's you !!
Janus: How are you gentlemen !!
Janus: All your audio users are belong to us.
Janus: You are on the way to destruction.
Jobs: What you say !!
Janus: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Janus: Ha Ha Ha Ha ....
Operator: Captain Jobs !!
Jobs: Take off every 'iPod'!!
Jobs: You know what you doing.
Jobs: Move 'iTunes'.
Jobs: For great justice.

Original script ripped off wikipedia

Re:I could be wrong, and if I am I'll eat a bug, b

[forevermore]

who's gonna be willing to keep forking out money in perpetuity in order to have useable access to their music

Dunno, sounds like it could be a good deal for some people. I pay $20/month to netflix to get 3 DVD's at a time to keep for as long as I want (why buy dvd's again if I can just add them to my queue and have them show up in 2 days?). I can see a lot of people saying "$10/month to have access to almost any song, any time I want? Cool!" After all, that's the equivalent of buying one CD every 1-2 months, which is a lot less than many people buy.

Too bad it's WMA and won't play on my iPod, and that given my tastes for obscure groups, I wouldn't be able to find most of the music I like listening to.

The Problem with this protection (and others)

[SamiousHaze]

The problem with 'cd copy protection' is that you can simply record the output (port for headphones/speakers) of the audio device into a format (such as mp3) that you can share. And there is no way they can stop this method. Ok i'll give that it takes a little longer (the length of the song) - but the quality is exactly the same.

Re:The Problem with this protection (and others)

[Baron_Yam]

Well, no, there is a loss of quality.

However, if the recording is made with good enough equipment, only the kind of people who fork out for that equipment will care about the almost unnoticable quality loss.

Must be an April Fools Prank

[KJSwartz]

Just too much wrong with this article that its obviously someone pranking us all. Microsoft/Janus and getting MP3 hardware to sync up is just TOO coincidental.

So would I!

[Azureflare]

Hey I'm not saying it would be a bad thing, read the rest of my original post.

The whole catalog of EMI...

Recorded into my computer out of my audio player...

For 10 dollars...

I'm just saying Microsoft is really dumb to think people won't do this.

Re:So would I!

[banzai51]

Maybe they plan to go the emusic.com route and email threating letters when you download too much?

Hey you! Loser! We noticed you're downloading a lot of songs. Stop doing that or we'll sic the lawyers on you! We said unlimited, but we didn't mean unlimited!

How about Janis?

[Washizu]

I'd prefer the Janis Protection Scheme

I've found that to be true myself; every time we make a few songs available on my website, sales of all the CDs go up. A lot. - Janis Ian

Janus

[Silicon Snake]

is also a two-faced god.
"Excuse me, are you looking at me or at my pockets?"

Quality and possibility

[SuperKendall]

I would never get a subscription to view TV.. err... Ok i would never get a subscription to listen to satellite radio.. ummmmm

But when you record a show from TV you can keep it forever - and most things people watch they only watch once (like sports or sitcoms). And then most people have few places they watch TV.

Music you listen to again and again, in all sorts of uncontrolled places (lik ethe gym or jogging or whatever).

Satellite radio people pay for because free radio is so poor, and it's a lot more liek TV in that it's temporary entertainment in much the same way real radio is. Songs you go to select youself have a different meaning to them. It's like the difference between the radio and buying CD's - people still buy CD's for songs they can hear on the radio all the time.

well id never get a subscription to drive my errr ummm car.... or live in my apartment..

Lots more people buy rather than lease (leasing is a luxury few can afford), and buying a house is a lot more desireable choice that renting - and a choice people make when they can. Only when buying is not an option because of price do people resort to renting.

*we* may refuse .. but the general public is used to not being able to own anything anymore, to them its just one more monthly fee to 'get stuff'......

The general public is smarter than most people realize - or at least, as a great innate sense of distrust for being "ripped off".

-1, Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

No, It never left digital, so there is no loss of quality.

Re:-1, Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad someone modded you as funny, because you are probably serious. Google on "lossy" a bit, will you?

So when we break the Janus DRM, does that mean ...

[burgburgburg]

that Microsoft will spank us? I think the paddle manufacturers should start ramping up production right now. There will be a lot of bottoms in serious need of corporal correction very soon.

Digital Music Library

[TwinkieStix]

So, is there any reason that this can't lead to "digital music libraries" where the songs are "checked out". This could make legal downloads nearly costless (like checking a book out from the public library). The only hurdle is to keep people from checking out copies for super-extended periods of time such that nobody else can check that copy out.

Re:Digital Music Library

[KevinKnSC]

The "problem" with this is that there's no revenue for record execs in this model, and it's unlikely to have the inherent protection that libraries do. If the recording industry won't make money off of it, then they won't go for it.

Re:Digital Music Library

[TwinkieStix]

But, they don't have to "go for it". It's not their choice. Just like the publishers of books probably wouldn't like public libraries to exist. But they do exist. I believe, and I could be wrong, that if I pay full price for a CD, I can lend it to a friend so long as no copies are made, and I am not violating any law or copyright. I believe this is would fit the legal definition of "transfer of license", where I own the license to listen to the music and I am transferring it to my friend for a period of time. Sharing the songs digitally would in effect be the same thing so long as nobody can be carrying around the same piece of purchased material as anybody else.

In fact, my public library has some music CDs and books on tape you can check out. So, I don't see how doing this digitally would be any problem at all - maybe my library will offer it.

Re:Digital Music Library

[KevinKnSC]

This really ought to be legal, and I'm only playing devil's advocate here because I had a similar idea and ran into this roadblock.

I can't get around the fact that any reasonable method of sharing music digitally involves, somewhere, the act of copying the music. As soon as you're sharing the music (i.e., no longer just using said information for personal use), you're distributing a copy of copyrighted material that is not yours to distribute. Even making sure that the original isn't used while the copy is on loan doesn't change the fact that you distributed a copy.

That's where worthless-record-exec comes in. He sees that you distributed a copy of something to which he owns the copyright, and that he didn't make any money on the deal. That's pretty much the end of it.

A large chunk of code for a file sharing network built around an idea like what you described are still sitting on my computer, so if you can find a legal way around this, please let me know.

Re:Digital Music Library

[TwinkieStix]

It depends on what the legal definition of a "copy" is perhaps. If I make a backup copy of windows XP, and loose the original, and then sell the backup on ebay with the license and cd-key, I believe I have not violated a copyright restriction or a law. The "copy" becomes the original when the original is destroyed. That's the purpose of fair use. I believe that some elected official of judge will need to clearify this for us.

Why rent if you can own?

[Leykis101]

Renting tunes?
Without the gimmick of ownership most people won't care about this service.

It's like XM RADIO but have to use computers and the portable media player.

Why have a portable media player for rented tunes?
Might as well rip your own CD and put them in your portable media player.

I'd rather own DVD that I like than renting them.

That's my personal preferences.

Look! It's a huge Janus!

[payndz]

1: *Renting* music? Even though every monthly 'stop paying and lose all your tunes' subscription model to date has been a miserable failure? Fuck that.
2: Tied in to proprietary MS DRM? Fuck that.
3: If it can be heard, it can be copied. So all the protection... fuck that.
4: Janus was the codename of the villain in Goldeneye. So fuck that too! Why not just call it 'Blofeld' and be done with it?

a telling quote

[X_Bones]

"To us, Janus finally provides the platform on which we can build a new type of experience for the consumer," said Zack Zalon, president of Virgin Digital, the British conglomerate's new online-music division. "We believe this is it. This is what consumers are going to want. We want to be big participant in changing consumers' attitude towards what music really is."

This is why online music purchasing is in such a sad state: it's because of people like this guy. He and others believe they can tell consumers (not "customers," not even "people," but "consumers") that the DRM widget du jour really is what they want when they look to buy music online. Screw what their customers actually ask for, and never mind that positive shopping experiences and word-of-mouth advertising are every bit as important as the profit made on any one purchase; it's obviously far better to license some new technology almost guaranteed to be broken within three months, shove it down the throats of unwilling customers, and pass on the costs.

Guess what, pal. We don't want a "new type of experience," or people "changing attitudes towards what music really is" (whatever that even means). Just offer us unencumbered MP3s at a buck a song, and watch people flock to your service. Is that so hard to understand?

Re:a telling quote

[bmarklein]

Wow, new, innovative thinking. Fire that man! Hasn't he learned the lesson of Netflix - that consumers just want to rent videos one at a time at Blockbuster? Oh, wait a minute, Netflix is a huge success and Blockbuster is toast!

Seriously, this product rocks! Access to basically all music ever recorded, wherever and whenever I want, for $10 per month? Fill up my 60GB player with tunes, grab every new release that comes out, like one song from an artist - grab their complete catalog? Sign me up!

You keep paying a buck a track. I'll be enjoying the celestial jukebox.

Re:a telling quote

[JoeBorn]

I agree. I happen to like virgin's streaming radio stations and I'd be willing to pay $10/mo to have a similiar experience on my portable player (but better because I can delete, fast forward adn rewind to my hearts content) then when I hear music worth owning, I'll buy it for a buck.

Again it sounds horrible if you call it music "rental" but it sounds great compared to radio IMHO.

J-Anus.

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh huh, huh, huh huh huh.

There's, like, a J, and then there's the word `Anus.'

Hey Ballmer, you said Anus. That's pretty cool.

Shut up Bill.

Completely off topic

[krgallagher]

"Janus is the Roman god of doorways, gates, passages, preventing people from copying music, etc."

I thought Gates was the antichrist. How can Janus be his god?

Re:Completely off topic

[Bombcar]

The god Janus has a first name.

Hugh.

And Microsoft's copy protection will soon look like the goat guy. :)

Re:Completely off topic

[DrewCapu]

The god Janus has a first name.

Hugh.

Except instead of having two faces, this thing has 2 ...

iPod owners?

[baudilus]

Being an iPod owner, I'd have to say "no way." This would defeat the purpose of having several GBs at my fingertips - Who wants to re-download 40GB worth of music every month? I sure don't.

Besides, after a while, you end up paying over and over for the same songs. I'd rather pay once and get it overwith.

New poll

[xv4n]

How old is going to be the first script-kiddy to hack Janus?
A. 14-16
B. 16-18
C. 18-20
D. CowboyNeal

Longhorn??

[niktesla]

Considerable time has elapsed since then, but sources say Microsoft developers finally appear to be reaching the finish line. Beta, or test, versions of the software have gone out to some developers within the past month, industry sources say. The software is expected to be released by late summer or early fall, with some citing a date as soon as July.

So it will come out when Longhorn does? :)

Re:I could be wrong, and if I am I'll eat a bug, b

[cayenne8]

"... who's gonna be willing to keep forking out money in perpetuity in order to have useable access to their music and/or player? But then again, isn't this similar to the Tivo business model?"

Not sure what you're talking about. I paid one price for tivo, one time lifetime service fee...and no more. And, as I swap out HD's on the unit (keeping the original in a safe place), I can pretty much keep the unit going perpetually.

I can't understand why anyone would pay the monthly 'subscription fee' forever. I would not have purchased one if I had to pay a fee forever on the thing.

Online music done right...

[chhamilton]

IMHO, the best online store out there is www.allofmp3.com. This company is Russian based, and because of their somewhat lax copyright laws and much more lenient recording industry, they offer non-encumbered downloads at cheap prices. Basically, the site is pay-for-bandwidth. If you download a song at 128kbps MP3, you essentially pay a penny per minute of audio.

The other awesome thing about that site is the ability to selecte your download format from WMA, MP3, OGG, FLAC, etc, plus the particular quality settings. For most downloads the audio is converted on the fly from a high quality archive (~400kbps), and for others it is actually converted directly from the CD-DA source. In "Advanced Mode", it's almost equivalent to selecting your command-line switches for the transcoder of your choice!

I'm in no way affiliated with these guys, but I love their service. It's actually faster and more reliable for me to download music from these guys than it is to try and venture out onto the P2P networks. Heck, for quality 7 OGG music, I'm paying roughly $0.02 CAD/minute. Plus, they let you pay with PayPal, so it's not like your sending your credit card info to some random Russians.

Re:Online music done right...

[t_allardyce]

Sounds like a good service that actually gives you a service! The main problem with online music stores though is that while the p2p networks have everything stores usually only have music from a few labels that have authorised it, competing with a free system where you can get absolutely anything inst going to work unless you atleast offer something like this - music in the format you want at the bitrate you want and guarenteed to be a good file, ofcourse most people dont care about format, bitrate or 'rip quality.

Re:Online music done right...

[Ubergrendle]

This site looks awesome, but...

Its a russian website, leveraging questionable copyright principles, with no legal presence in north america.

I'm sorry to say that I would never trust them with my credit card, and I'd be worried about any time of persistent connection between my computer and their website. I hope I'm wrong and its a legitimate attempt at a new online business model, but I've seen enough SPAM and ebay and paypal scams to be very nervous about this proposition.

Re:Online music done right...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are paying money to pirate music. This makes bottled water look like an investment.

Re:Online music done right...

[chhamilton]

They do payments through PayPal, so you don't have to feel like you're giving private info to some dubious Russian folks. It's pretty easy to verify that you're truly at a real PayPal site, and not some fake front, so with a little caution you can feel secure in who you're dealing with.

Re:Online music done right...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd gladly pay a penny per megabyte to be sure of the quality of the track I'm downloading, even if it was from a pay-per-use P2P network. Have you actually tried getting decent music off of P2P lately? They're so bloody swamped with junk nowadays that it's not worth the hassle or effort. Five cents to download the song I want, in the quality and format I want, at good transfer speeds and without any time spent searching--sounds like a good deal to me.

two-faced deception

[Anonymous Coward]

> Janus is the Roman god of doorways, gates,
> passages, preventing people from copying music,
> etc.

Janus is also two-faced.

From Wikipedia:

"Janus head is a popular phrase for deception, that is, when action does not match speech."

things to come?

[t_allardyce]

Ironic really that if you pay for music online you actually get something worse than if you got it for free, but then thats the sort of crack addict business idea id expect in a time when business ethics means "lets trick all those dumb consumers into buying locked down hardware" If they start selling 'mp3' players that dont actually play mp3's but only DRM'd formats they should have to make it damn clear on the front of the box.

God of Gates?

[Anonymous Coward]

Janus is the Roman god of doorways, gates, passages, preventing people from copying music, etc.

I always wondered who Bill worshiped.

Sorry, but no.

[EaterOfDog]

Recompression of any media file damages it to some extent, photos, video or audio. I suggest you check your facts, compressing something throws away data, decompressing and recompressing something throws away MORE DATA. The data does not magically reappear. This does not apply to switching uncompressed formats however.

Re:Sorry, but no.

[0111 1110]

I think the AC may really have intended his comment as funny or sarcastic. I mean, c'mon, could someone really be that stupid? Anyway, you are obviously quite correct. I like your explanation. Well stated for the clueless non-techies out there.

Re:Sorry, but no.

[saden1]

Yes, someone can be that stupid! Never underestimate human stupidity.

but people don't expect to own radio broadcasts...

[rbird76]

...or TV, or cable - but they do expect to own their magazines and newspapers which they expect to be able to keep. Subscriptions models (or at least popular ones) tend to give individuals ownership, not just use, of content - not to distribute, but to use as they see fit. In addition, music has been sold for nearly a hundred years - no one expects to subscribe to music. Rental and subscription models work with movies, but only because bandwidth limits the copying of movies between computers. DivX failed because it cost like owning movies, required new hardware, and restricted the users' ability to do what they wanted with their movies in the timeframe for which they had use. Janus has all of the same disadvantages as DivX, plus the potential for higher prices (so the music companies can make more money on subscriptions while screwing the artists further because of the decreased revenue per song).

People are already used to purchasing their music - if one hundred years of doing so wasn't enough, other download services provide it already. Of course, we also have copyright infringement as well - via Kazaa, eMule, etc. - which has accustomed many to the idea of getting their music for free while being able to do what they want with it. All of these things argue against the success of subscription plans for music.

Of course, there is the bonus that many of the people who would think of this are dissatisfied with MS, and that as others have already brought up on this thread, all this copy protection requires to be circumvented is an analog-to-analog cable. Given the success of Kazaa, and the frustration of many with the music industry (and their desire for free music and their unwillingness to pay for crippled versions of such), this should take less than a year to be utterly pillaged, or to die a fiery death as P-O'd users pelt MS with tomatoes for selling them yet another crippled product.

you are joking, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

>You can always play the song and record it in real time on an analog source.

mod me -1, flaimbait but there are people here who complains how iPod only supports AAC and not OGG - when OGG is clearly a "superior" format.

in light of that, i can't imagine the volume of potential complaints levied against the notion that analog recording is an acceptable copy of the original.

far more appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't that read:

Janus is the Roman god of doorways, Gate's passages, preventing people from copying music, etc

I'd like to quote...

[banzai51]

...a record company exec: "Pay per play is comming. Get used to it." That was 1996. And the MP3 played on...

This is great

[snakecoder]

The concept is great. I would subscribe if it worked and I hate microsoft.

If for $X dollars a month, I had access to just about any song I want to listen at work (old and new), I would completely do it.

Given $X is reasonable of course.

original project name was changed...

[JBG667]

...and "J" was added, after marketing determined that it would divert the focus from the real purpose of the project...which is railing consumers up the rear end...

Re:original project name was changed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wicked mate! I laughed out loud. Thanks!

M$ hypocrites

[Doc Ruby]

Janus: two-faced god. Micro$oft: monopoly perpetuated by piracy, charges $hundreds for legitimate copies.

Re:M$ hypocrites

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate you people /so/ much.

Re:M$ hypocrites

[Doc Ruby]

Sorry Anonymous lonely Coward, your regexp /so/ has failed to match a "significant other", due to 1> your insignificance, and 2> your extreme otherness. Don't hate the playa, *hate the game*.

if i can hear it, i can copy it

[circletimessquare]

if, at some point in the chain of complicated anti-theft schemes, i have to decode the signal into something a human being can actually hear, then at that same point, i can copy the music, right?

does this mean there is a vast army of phbs out there that "just don't get it"?

or am i the one who doesn't get it?

(scratches head)

Re:if i can hear it, i can copy it

[barfy]

You don't get it.

The primary goal is to not allow perfect digital copies. IE the copy is exactly the same as the original. DAD (Digital-Analog-Digital), will always happen with some form of comprimise of the material.

This provides value for the original, and that value has been why even though I can make VHS copies of things I rent etc, there is enough value in the original, that people are willing to pay for that value.

What worries the distributors, is when the value they provide, and what people are paying for, is no longer value enough that people buy their product.

Napster, and Kazaa dramatically changed the value proposition. Now there is a reasonable argument, that they have in fact not changed the value proposition enough. That poorly created MP3 files are not good enough for people that buy CD's. And that in fact, exposure to music through these services actually increase the need for high quality distribution.

However, it is also equally reasonable to state, that this is mearly an interim state. That bandwidth and storage and software solutions will get to the point that pristine digital copies will be easy to make, easy to distribute, and easy to get, moving the tipping point that the distributor is in fact completely devalued.

Currently, it is believed that the current economics of IP distribution, are critical to the creation of IP. That if IP distirbution is completely devalued than, the quality of IP creation will go down, because the economic incentives to create high quality IP will not be there.

Whether this is true or not I think remains to be seen.

My personal belief, is that there is benefit for keeping a viable commercial market place based on control of distribution. Because it allows the continuance of the market that has provided us everything from the Beatles to Blink 182.

But, I also believe that there are equally valid alternate economic models that allow distribution of music, and some will be very successful. The Grateful Dead probably being the epitome if that kind of altenate model.

I believe that the consumer is best served, not by destroying the controlled distribution model, but competing against it. Linux is better because windows exists. Windows is better because Linux exists. The same is true of the GIMP and Photoshop, Open Office and Word.

There is no reason to believe that this isn't true of music. There is no reason to believe that thisn't also true of all sorts of IP.

The constricted model is by it's nature exclusive and means that certain IP will never get into the hands of the consumer. And occasionally this will mean something worthwhile and important will not see the time of day... This is bad. But as a consumer, I get on average a better product. It has better editorial control, production value, marketing of the product etc...

The unconstricted model is like the raw diamond mind. A few gems amongst the coal. Lack of editorial control leads to the expansion of crap. However, there is talent that exists there that would be unexposed in the constricted model. And that talent will shine and be presented to the consumer. Meaning the consumer is better served by having that option.

However, there has historically always been practical impediments to "IP piracy." The technology to duplicate has been expensive, but more importantly, the physical distribution (movement) of the product from the IP duplicator to the IP consumer. Enough so that markets for the IPCreator/Distributor remains unharmed, and that indeed below a certain point that it is cost effective form of marketing. If it is worth stealing, it is worth buying...)

Removing the A from DAD, and removing physical (both in human interaction, distance, and presentation) costs from the process, and we have really for the first time, historically, the ability to do so, and to remove the economic incentives to IP Distribution, and therefor to IP Creation...

Th

Re:if i can hear it, i can copy it

[evilviper]

I think you are the one who doesn't get it, actually.

If they were releasing something, and depending completely on DRM to protect it, they would be complete idiots, but that's not the case here. With most services, they just want enough DRM to make sure it's a big hassle to get an unprotected copy.

iTunes for instance, you could burn all your DRM'd songs to CD, then rip them all to an unprotected format. To most people, it's just not worth the hassle... They'd rather live with the restrictions, rather than do all the work required.

That also seems to be the case here. Sure, you could plug in to your soundcard's output, and record, but you'd have to do so in realtime, you'd have to manually set where one song ends and the other begins, and you'd loose quality by going through this process.

So, is an hour worth of work to get an album of lossy music files worth it? I think most people would rather spend the $15 to buy the CD, or just download it off the internet.

I have the same situation with TV programming. I use a computer as a custom-made Tivo, if you will, and often record movies from TV. If I watch it and like it, should I spend the time editing out the commercials, just to get a censored movie, that's pretty low quality because of signal noise? I could just buy it for about $8-15, or I could rent the thing, and copy it.

Much higher quality, widescreen, and no need to edit out commercials that way. The question, as always... Is it worth it?

Re:if i can hear it, i can copy it

[circletimessquare]

well said, thanks ;-)

Re:but people don't expect to own radio broadcasts

[prgrmr]

or TV, or cable - but they do expect to own their magazines and newspapers which they expect to be able to keep. Subscriptions models (or at least popular ones) tend to give individuals ownership, not just use, of content - not to distribute, but to use as they see fit.

I have a few newspapers, magazines and a lot of books from the 1800's and older. How much of "music by subscription" is going to be around in 10 years? What happens 10-20 years from now when there is only electronically distributed music, and distributed tangible media becomes a thing of the past? We have the music of Motzart and Brahams today because it was recorded in a tangible, people-readable media that was able to be passed from generation to generations. Not that all (or even much) of today's music will stand that sort of test of time, but it ought to be given the opportunity to do so.

Absolutely Uncrackable DRM: Here's How

[Didion Sprague]

I'm surprised no one is mentioned that 100% uncrackable DRM: refusal to release.

If more record companies would simply *NOT RELEASE* music, there would be nothing to crack. In fact, I'd urge record companies to examine this carefully. Take Janet Jackson, for example. If they *refused to release* 'Damita Jo' -- or, better yet, refused to record it -- there would be nothing to crack, nothing to leak, and no filesharing problem.

The fact that record companies have recorded Damita Jo and actually released it indicates (to me, at least) that the record companies are as complicit in the problem as anyone else.

My two cents.

Re:Absolutely Uncrackable DRM: Here's How

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not funny, it's just retarded.

Not so primitive.

[Anonymous Coward]

They weren't nearly as likely to confuse religion for faith.

Christianity forsakes icons, perhaps rightly, as they distract one from one's relationship with one's God, and their spiritual emotional connection. Yet how many Christians are walking around with WWJD, crusifixes, stupid little alpha fishes (because they are so persecuted today), and now crusifix nails. Instead of a story about a man who, though he did not completely understand, chose to save the world at the cost of his own life, who questioned God, but never doubted, it's a story about some dude who was like wickedly beatdown and totally killed by ass-hats and what's worse he would have totally given us presents.

And as an Atheist, can I just say how fucked up that is? One's a story of generosity and hope, like an adult version of a "Secret Wars" comic, and the other is a lament that one was two millenia late to a party.

Re:Not so primitive.

[Begossi]

Completelly offtopic, and yet so very well put.

They don't realize: in order to be successful...

[DroopyStonx]

...people have to actually WANT to use these services. You can't just release something and expect people to use it and make it the next standard.

Most won't use this.. and I'd be surprised at those who do. Who in their right mind wants to be restricted like this?

Point of irony...

[starX]

Janus was also the god of beginnings and endings. Convenient.

No way to prevent it...

[srosebush]

It started with recording songs off the radio with a tapedeck...

Now all you need to do is just play the song and record the output of your sound card to a file using the "What U Hear" function of modern sound cards and re-encode that to a file and you got a non-copy protected file.

There's no way around copy protecting sound, it's like trying to copy-protect spoken word, you can't do it!

The hackers' end goal is probably not theft

[dcavanaugh]

You raise an interesting point. DRM is always going to be hackable, so let's look at the incentives.

"Unlimited burns + no expiration + multiple devices + multiple computers = Not worth the trouble"

As you say, not much incentive to hack if you can do what you want with the downloads. Notice that this supports the theory that hacking DRM has nothing to do with "stealing" music; the real motivation is to defeat the crippling restrictions on usage.

Microsoft + expiration date + music drm = another hacker victory

you are right

[SethJohnson]

Considering that thousands of people download digital video files that were sourced by someone sitting in a movie theater with a camera, it looks like there is a strong segment of the population that is satisfied with imperfect reproductions of copyrighted materials.

Re:you are right

[drinkypoo]

Telesyncs are usually used by people to see a movie they are interested in, not for permanent archival purposes. Generally speaking one waits for a DVD release, and gets it from netflix, then rips that. (Or waits for someone else to do one, and torrents it.)

Janus Project?

[aztektum]

When will Sly Stallone save us from this insanity!?

Do you think anyone but them gets the money?

[melted]

Artists? Screw the artists. CDs cost $1 in Russia. Software is $2. Artists or software makers don't get A DIME. It's a nice business model, but not very sustainable.

Are they kidding? Yes...

[vwjeff]

Come on people. Look at your calendar. Today is April...2nd? I guess this is real.

Janus? The two-faced god?

[TigerNut]

That would be appropriate for just about any of Microsoft's recent ventures into the standards arena.

Ah, that Janus fellow...

[OmniGeek]

Janus is the Roman god of doorways, gates, passages, preventing people from copying music, etc.

So, with a clearer view of history we can now see that the grandeur of Imperial Rome was brought low by... a bunch of file-swapping Goths and some Vandals pirating MP3s! SPQR conquered by P2P. No wonder the RIAA are quaking in their togas and lace-up sandals.

Re:I could be wrong, and if I am I'll eat a bug, b

[khendron]

I am of two minds on this. I agree, but then it occurred to be that many people fork out $50 or more per month just to watch 100+ TV channels.

So why not fork out money to access 100K+ music files?

Maybe it is a perception thing. We are used to owning music (vinyl, tape, CD), but we are not really used to owning what's on TV. Just a hypothsis. Stomp on me if you don't agree.

minus J

[j1r3]

thats all I have to say

dumbshits

[Anonymous Coward]

i have like 50k songs on my computer, what will janus do to me, bahahah.

Just putting fingers in the dyke

[Jtheletter]

Nevertheless, some music services are eager to drive more consumers to subscription plans, since per-song download stores have tiny or even nonexistent profit margins.

Just another work-around that ignores the underlying problem! The reason why these stores have nonexistent profit margins is because the Music Labels are taking 99% - 100% of the song price. And, as we all know, it's not because most of it is going to the artist.

The issues of song pricing and profit margin on a pay-per-download scheme is never going to be resolved in a way that benefits consumer and provider (i.e. music download service) until the greedy middleman of the RIAA is taken out of the picture.

Even if you agree with the "plight" of the music industry and the fact that they do make upfront expenditures on artists and need to reclaim those funds plus return on investment (hey this is still America, no one is investing money with no expectation of something in return) - there comes a point when enough is enough. Just because they took a chance and invested $2M in Britney Spears to start her career hardly justifies taking in 75% of her music profits until the end of time. (note: figures are made up, but you get the picture, I'm just too lazy to find the real numbers)

Even the problem of recovering upfront investments (much of which is lost on artists who do not take off) would be moot if the music industry would stop the practice of paying these fledgling artists millions upfront and just provide them the tools to get their careers started, laying the burden of success on the would-be artists, and then if they fail the company is out a couple dozen thousand instead of half a million.

Forcing end-users into subscription service plans creates waste and bloated pricing (just look at the cable industry's package plans) and is a finger-in-the-dyke solution, when really the problem is miles upstream.

Re:Just putting fingers in the dyke

[Anonymous Coward]

...a finger-in-the-dyke solution...

Ooooh!!!

Kinda like a radio with priority request line

[Locutus]

We'll see how the public goes for this( if they have a choice on Windows ) but it sounds like an on-demand Radio or wireless jukebox( http://freshmeat.net/projects/musicstorm/ ).

Why go with MSFT stuff when the current players let you play your music AND have it too? Another thing to look for is if Micrsoft will put up roadblocks for the current MP3 players regarding licensing WMA playback.... Will HP be forced to backoff of their iPod plans?

Time will tell what kind of club MSFT will start swinging to get OEM's to use it's latest 'invention'.

LoB

Stop the bashing; this is a great idea!

[fname]

I'm reading the responses here, and I'm a bit apalled (sp?) at the number of people complaining that this won't work/is evil/ shouldn't be used.

Are you kidding me? You're going to give me anytime, anywhere access to over 400,000 songs for $10/month, and you complain? Man, I wish Apple would do this, because I would certainly pay for the service to use with my iPod. These subscriptions are marginally useful to a small group of people in their current form (work on CPU only). Give me a $10 subscription that I can use on my iPod, and I'll sign up tomorrow.

Who cares if it's DRM. It's a great value, and the type of service we've all been anticipating for many years. I hope Apple beats 'em to the punch!

Re:Stop the bashing; this is a great idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

woo woo! Here comes the p2p train, hop aboard!

Something called a hell of a lot more than 400,000 songs, at the cost of your bandwidth.

sure, if you stick to analog.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think you will get a high quality recording from a Microsoft DRM'd lossy format? Unless your compression scheme exactly matches theirs, what you get from that RCA chord is not going to be as good as the original and that will already suck because it's Microsoft. So, unless you are content to record things to a audio cassette, what M$ lets you have is what you got. I'll stick to buying things from artists playing in local bars and others who use honest formats, thank you.

Been there, done that

[Archibald Buttle]

Microsoft built a time limited playback feature into an earlier version of the Windows Media format. I remember getting a small software program a few weeks after it was announced that created an unrestricted version of the same file. I expect the same will happen again - they are just hoping the big music guys won't remember how quickly they got hacked last time.

There will always be ways around this kind of thing anyway. As I'm sure many people have mentioned there's good old fashioned analogue recording, which when you have fairly decent equipment gives you results close to the original digital source.

Another alternative is a virtual sound card driver that outputs sound to disc or routes it through to another application.

Re:but people don't expect to own radio broadcasts

[richieb]

We have the music of Motzart and Brahams today because it was recorded in a tangible, people-readable media that was able to be passed from generation to generations.

Music still will be written on paper and passed on. There was pop-music in time of Mozart and think how many then written songs were lost, because there was only one hand-written copy of the music.

I expect that significant music will survive. Which is significant only time will tell, but I would guess that 100 years from now you will still be able to hear Duke Ellington. I'm not so sure about Britney.

meh, doesn't bother me...

[jshaft]

I'm Canadian eh.

Project 'Janus' reminds me...

[Bros]

Anybody remembers the (infamous) movie "Judge Dredd"??
No - it's just plain wrong - Ballmer as Street Judge... "Law Breaker, Law Breaker, Law Breaker ... I love this city!"

This is wrong. This is bad. This is evil.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is wrong. This is bad. This is evil. This is why:

Control

This requires is trusted clock and this is a form of client-side security. That doesn't work, this has been known for many years. Unfortunately, these companies will and have used the legal system to try and make it work.

Of course, content providers can only give music to trusted hardware - hardware that they trust to expire music. This means that the number of companies that can manufacture such hardware is very limited. It also means that since you have to go online to "renew" your music that they can disable any hardware at any time by new letting it renew.

If you read the license agreement this will be one of their legal rights.

No hardware manufacturer is going piss these people off on pain of a whole lot of angry customers or the loss of a manufacturing license. So they can invent any rights for themselves that they wish and it's protected by law (DMCA/EUCA).

What rights? Well, at the moment they have invented the right to stop you fast-forwarding the legal warning/trailers on some DVDs (with compliant players). They lost control of the DVD player market so this isn't enforced. You can bet they're not going to make that mistake again.

Public Domain

Remember that after a certain number of years the government granted monopoly on a given work expires? Remember that last time you put on a Shakespeare play that you didn't have to pay his family/estate anything?

Fine and dandy because when the copyright on these works expires you won't be able to play them anymore.

Their control of this is enforced by hardware and never expires.

History

Go down to your local library. You can probably lookup editions of the local paper going back decades. This is our history.

So when your TV news is subscription. And your paper is the digital edition. And your downloaded magazines are rented. Where's your history?

This is wrong. This is bad. This is evil.

Janus

[wtrmute]

Janus is the Roman god of doorways, gates, passages, preventing people from copying music, etc.

Let's not forget that Janus is also well-known as the only Roman god with two faces. However, wherever one's looking, the other's always looking the other way...

MS just keeps getting all the good names for their technology X-D

First-hand Coding/Gaming with "DTR" Laptop

[cookiej]

I recently bought an AMD 3400+ based laptop from a company called Hypersonic PC. So far, it's a fantastic machine. Hypersonic was cheaper than Alienware and offered the higher-end 64-bit processor at a great price.

I travel a lot and actually was given $1000 from my partner toward replacing my old HP Omnibook so I would be more effective when working from the road (he was tired of my bitching about capacity, connectivity, etc..)

When I am on the road, I really appreciate a system that is powerful enough to game (I really don't socialize much from the hotel rooms) as well as work. I game pretty regularly. The term I've found used across the industry is a "Desktop Replacement" laptop.

I got this thing called the "Oyster" docking station and hooked up the VGA port to the 20" monitor I used to use with my desktop.

Given the large video memory and fast video processor (ATI 9800 128Mb) I now run dual monitors at full speed, so I actually improved the capabilities of my workstation beyond speed and memory. I paid about $2900 including bells & whistles: 802.11 a/b/g card, 1G Memory, extra high-cap battery, the AMD 3400+ (as opposed to the 3000+ all the other US manufacturers were promoting.)

So far, I am happy as a clam (oyster?) and this thing screams with UT2004 (all settings at max.) My old desktop gets relegated to become my wife's media station / family backup server.

Also -- they claim the AX6 is upgradeable to the 3700+ but I won't be holding my breath. You can get it in a variety of beautiful colors,too.

Re:First-hand Coding/Gaming with "DTR" Laptop

[cookiej]

I'm an idiot. No idea how I stuck this to THIS subject.

My apologies to all who wasted bandwidth and memory displaying this and the previous message.

iPod owners don't rent from the iTMS.

[Luscious868]

As the sidebar in the article says "If fans of iPod-like devices can be convinced to drop the idea of owning song files, they could shift to paying a subscription fee for ongoing access ..."

iPod owners don't rent their music. Once you purchase a song from the iTMS you own that track and can listen to it forever on up to three PC's and an unlimited number of iPods. If Microsoft is looking to the success of iTunes and the iTMS as justification for their DRM rental scheme they are going to be sorely dissapointed with the ultimate results. Most users want to own their music, not rent it. iTunes and the iTMS is ownership with restictions which is a very different model then rental.

damn blockbuster

[Anonymous Coward]

So do you hate blockbuster and netfix as well? Rental models work *if* they are priced appropriately. DIVX did not work because it was to expensive, and not very convenient. There are many people who are willing to rent what they want if it is a lot cheaper than buying it.

iTunes doesn't make it easy

[Nitar]

... 2 years ago before iPod/iTunes made legitimate music buying easy...

Are you kidding?

I'll agree that IF you have an iPod, then iTunes solves the problem. However, for everyone else out there with any other kind of an MP3 player, there aren't many options.

It isn't easy if you actually want to listen to your music ANYWHERE besides your computer. I'm through with the days of lugging around CDs, which is why I have a portable MP3 player. I also refuse to pay for Apple's overpriced hardware.

So, if you don't want to listen to your music exclusively on your computer through iTunes, if you don't want to burn your downloaded music to a CD, or if you don't have an iPod... there is plenty of room for improvement.

There are still no easy legitimate (non Apple) options for purchasing music online, that you can then bring wherever you want. The best way is to buy and rip a cd, and put it on your player.

-Nitar

Re:There's Irony in there naming...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is BDSM some new Linux distro or something?

Guaranteed

[Ogerman]

..copy-protection software this summer that will for the first time give portable digital music players access to rented tunes from all-you-can-eat subscription services

Right.. this will definitely fly.. because you know, it's not like the market is already saturated with 100's of millions of DRM-free home, car, and portable mp3 players.

Video

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably going to be launched with the portable media centre and support video...

Microsoft's self-assessment

[aminorex]

"J'anus". How refreshingly frank. And Frankish!

It is a lot like DiVX, though...

[SethJohnson]

I agree with everything you've said here. We're both just speculating on consumer whims, though, so nothing is certain.

I do think you're right about consumers rejecting the rented use of a physical object they posess. But I think there are other levels where DiVX is an accurate analogy.

DIVX sucked because it didn't really give consumers a value-add that they cared about. It was a DVD player that benefitted movie studios, but the argument for benefitting consumers was weak. In the case of Janus, I also think people are going to look at it as "Sounds good for the RIAA, but what about me?"

DIVX also sucked because you had to have your DVD player connected to a phone line. This isn't convenient in a lot of people's homes. This portable WMP implementation is also going to require some kind of periodic tethering so the player will know if the subscription to the music is still valid. Not only that, you better maintain an ongoing internet account, because that's gonna be neccessary for validation, as well.

And finally, although production costs were greater for this retarded beast, DIVX players were sold at a loss because they still had to match prices with regular DVD players. The retailers and the manufacturers were in alliance on a gamble that they'd share the proceeds from the content rentals. In this Janus model, there is no incentive for the portable hardware vendors to incurr the additional production costs of adding Janus support. I suspect Microsoft is trying to convince them that this is the future of digital music and they better get with the program or their products will wither on store shelves. Fortunately, I think the hardware vendors will look to the consumer to see what they want in their portable players.

Janus is the Roman god of doorways, gates,

[Anonymous Coward]

Janus is the Roman god of doorways, gates,

I thought that was Anus.

Oops, no Anus is the Greek god of doorways. Maybe that would be a better name since is probably where the consumer will get it from you-know-who.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...

[handmedowns]

http://www.allofmp3.com

No DRM
Supports Ogg, Mp3, Wma, MPC, etc..
is 1cent a megabyte

If you're rusty on your russian click on the 'english' link in the upper left hand corner..
You can pay via paypal or CC
They have gift certificates..

Other than being a loyal user, I am not affiliated with this company.

Repeat After Me:

[Gryphon]

People want to buy music, not rent it.

Goldeneye

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe "Janus" was the name of the (evil) organization headed up by 006 (Alec Treveylan, played by Sean Bean) in James Bond: Goldeneye.

Re:I could be wrong, and if I am I'll eat a bug, b

[js3]

I fork over money in perpertuity for my cable, phone, internet, nntp, webserver and lots of other things. A subscription model is something that has been proven to work over time. I don't see why "it just won't fly"

Janus is a petty god. Bow down to Swiatowid !!!

[gomel]

Janus has only two faces. That is nothing compared to Swiatowid (The Worldwatcher) who has Four of them!

Your two directional Roman god can only pale in envy when he thinks about The Slavic Zuanthevit who can see everything in FOUR directions!

Bow down before the Ancient One! All hail Swiatowid!

pics:
http://www.geocities.com/gnievko/swietowi t/
http://www.ma.krakow.pl/pradzieje/swiatowid
h ttp://www.ma.krakow.pl/muzeum/zbiory/swiatowid

Janus...

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't Janus also have a son named 'Hugh'?

How about solutions?

[MyFourthAccount]

I'm going to open up a whole can of worms here, but bear with me.

What I see here all the time is how we can work around x, y or z. That's truly interesting, although not terribly brilliant. Anyone will realize that as long as our ears can hear something, we can record that and voila, DRM is hacked.

Now, I'm not going to enter into a penis measuring contest here, but it will suffice to say that some of us realized this WELL before spam arrived in our inbox.

Yes, the recording industry has had their heads in the sand for years now, so be it.

Here's the question: how about true solutions?

Let's give you a challenge: none of the more obvious answers is correct.

'artists should make their money doing live gigs': sure that may work for your favorite musician, but it doesn't for mine. I actually spoke to quite a few moderately famous musicians, and a lot of them don't like performing live. At the very minimum, they see their effort of recording a song very seperated from live performances.

In fact, I'll go as far as saying that the concept of musicians having to make their money through live gigs is very similar to the Open Source concept of software manufacturers having to make their money through support (vs. charging for the software).

The only difference being that musicians will have to do the live performance themselves, whereas the programmers potentially have the luxury of having someone else take care of the support.

I'm not trying to slide to far off topic here, but can you see the problem with saying that software should be funded by support (like lots of Open Source advocates say)?

The first problem is that there is an incentive to make software such that it requires support. Whereas in an ideal world software wouldn't need support at all.

The second problem is that support != development. Someone has to pay for the development. Someone has to come up with the $$$ to get programmers to come in and write the code. However, they are expected to recoup their investment through a relatively unrelated service (support). That's a big risk, and quite frankly history has shown that it doesn't always work that well. Traditionally it has proven less risky to make money on the core competency that you have (writing code, supposedly).

There's a reason that car manufacturers don't give away cars and charge only for your 10K service. (well, maybe a bad analogy, but what shitty /. post can survive without a car analogy?)

Back to music, the core competency is musicians creating this really wonderful music. But there's a fair amount of them that either don't want to perform live, or are simply not very good at doing it. Are we willing to cut off that group? If not, how exactly are these musicians going to have to go about making a living?

I've been thinking about this for about 10 years or more, and I _still_ can't really give you an answer.

I'd like to think that they could become independent and sell their stuff on the Internet and people would be generous enough to donate a bit of cash because they really like it. But seeing how people really just behave like giant black holes, I'm wondering if this really will happen.

Time will tell, I suppose, and it will be very interesting for us programmers. Because what we do really isn't that different from musicians.

[jebus, that's a rant if there ever was one...]

Re:How about solutions?

[melikamp]

'artists should make their money doing live gigs': sure that may work for your favorite musician, but it doesn't for mine. I actually spoke to quite a few moderately famous musicians, and a lot of them don't like performing live. At the very minimum, they see their effort of recording a song very seperated from live performances.

They will be supported by donations from people like you.

In fact, I'll go as far as saying that the concept of musicians having to make their money through live gigs is very similar to the Open Source concept of software manufacturers having to make their money through support (vs. charging for the software).

Here I agree completely - people are paying for the service. No one feels ripped off.

The only difference being that musicians will have to do the live performance themselves, whereas the programmers potentially have the luxury of having someone else take care of the support.

What is the problem with selling the right to perform publicly? Alice writes the music, and Bob performs it on a stadium. He can't hide it, and so has to pay the fee. Artists have been collaborating in this way for decades. Sharing and p2p do not affect this scheme.

I'm not trying to slide to far off topic here, but can you see the problem with saying that software should be funded by support (like lots of Open Source advocates say)?

As a Linux user and a geek, I'm certainly biased, but... no.

The first problem is that there is an incentive to make software such that it requires support. Whereas in an ideal world software wouldn't need support at all.

That would indeed be an ideal world. Are we now to demand a car that requires no support? Even Zippo offers a life-time warranty - and we are talking about a mechanism with 6 or so parts. OTOH, if you look at Legato Networker (I use this obscure example because I know people who work there) you'll see that there is but a handful of people in the company who know what is happening under the hood.

The second problem is that support != development. Someone has to pay for the development.

But I, consumer, don't want to pay for the development. Nothing will be produced, they say? We need incentives for the common good, they say? I disagree. Linux proves that FOSS has a chance of catching up with the commercial software. If placed in a robust free market economy (not the MS economy we have today) and backed up by service companies, it will serve us just fine. (Here, of course, I make reservations. It looks like we are getting there, but only the time will tell.) And with music I have an even stronger case: the pre-recording era.

Conclusion: there's no good reason to restrict the non-commercial distribution of any information. None except that guys in RIAA and MS won't be able to get paid for telling us where we want to go today.

minidisc

[Anonymous Coward]

i haven't payed attention for a long time because i don't care about md, but has anybody cracked openmg yet?

Downloaded file not much less "physical".

[SuperKendall]

If you go to the time and trouble of picking out a file and spending the bandwith downloading it, it does take on a feeling somewhat like a physical object. I suppose you could be saying "download random songs from this category", and then it would feel less like something owned and more like a service. But every act of interaction with a digtal object makes it more "real" since it took real time to reach that form (like a photograph you've spent an hour modifying in Photoshop. That feels very real indeed!). So perhaps the degree to wich the users are made to feel the music is less "real" might be the key to success. But no-one has really figured it out yet.

I should have been more specific about saying "rentals for music" since obviosuly people quite like movie rentals - I'm a Netflix subscriber myself! Music has a different use pattern though that I don't think works well with rentals.

Coolest thing ever!

[bmarklein]

I've been eagerly anticipating this for a while. Think about this - $10 a month for access to approximately all music ever recorded, as much as you want, wherever you want. Download every new release as it comes out - why not, it's free!

The rent vs. buy stuff seems like BS to me. It's like saying that HBO is worthless because you don't get access forever. Or people won't be willing to watch movies in a theater, because they don't actually end up owning anything. How many of you who are scoffing at this idea are Netflix subscribers?

I'll bet that the majority of CDs are listed to for a short time, and then filed away. So why clutter up your life with CDs that you won't listen to? And of course buying and renting music are not mutually exclusive, just as you can (gasp) rent DVDs and also buy them. Subscribing to a rental service doesn't prohibit you from also buying anything you want to listen to long-term.

OK Slashdotters, bring it on :-)

Re:I could be wrong, and if I am I'll eat a bug, b

[glpierce]

"After all, that's the equivalent of buying one CD every 1-2 months, which is a lot less than many people buy."

How many people do you know who continuously throw out month-old CDs? Buying a CD gives you access to the music for as long as you have a functioning CD player (assuming you don't destroy the disc).

MS, DMCA and Time Travel

[Minute]

Great, next we'll see Microsoft use the DMCA to sue text book publishers for publishing Albert Einstein's theories on time travel which could circumvent Janus' secure clock!

RIAA sells convenience NOT music

[falltime]

But they dont recongnize this - which is why they are in so much trouble. There was plenty of music before the "record industry" - just not that much "business" - because you only could get music if you played it yourself. So 1st they had sheet music, to make playing it more convenient, then radio, etc.. Each step was fought by the "powers that be" because of fear of copying, and each time despite rampant copying, coffering convenience was the most profitable business model.

Math makes iTunes/iPod Cheaper

[NaugaHunter]

Whoa. I'm specifically comparing the iTunes/iPod solution to this new Rental system from MS. About the only real reason you gave to not choose this route is that you feel it's overpriced.

Well, that's an opinion, but lets look at it. I would suggest that unless you like all songs on every CD you buy (not impossible with Greatest Hit CDs, but limiting), then you're losing money. If all you care about is the cheapest way to legally acquire music and get it to MP3 player X is to buy each individual track you want on iTunes and burn and rip them back. Yeah it's an extra step, but can save you money on each CD.

And if you say that's too hard, let's try the math. $15 a CD. Let's say you average 5 songs a CD. Compared to iTunes, after 10 CDs you've wasted $100. No wonder an iPod seems expensive.

Yes, I know, you like more than 5 songs each CD. Well, it's simple algebra to estimate your actual waste*. Let i be how many songs total you've bought on CD. Let j be the total amount you've spent on those CDs. Now let k be the number of songs you wouldn't have bought if you'd have gone on a per-song basis. The amount of money you've wasted = (j/i)*k

While you may be ultra selective on what CDs you've bought over the years, I'm sure there are quite a few people that would be surprised to learn just how much money they've thrown away over the years, and how much the iPod/iTunes would save going forward.

* Yes, this math ignores the fact that many songs can't be bought individually, but it also ignores the fact that most CDs on iTunes with less than ten songs are less than 9.99 unlike real CDs which would still be 10 or more, and many over ten songs are only 9.99 where again the retail price would be higher.

Oh there's WAY more irony than that

[hey!]

The Roman god Janus is depicted has having two faces.

Of course this wasn't meant to imply the same thing as the modern phrase "two-faced" (i.e. hypocritical, deceitful), but the coincidence does give one pause.

Not at all strange considering the source

[Bitseeker]

Remember, this is a Microsoft "innovation".

Already Hacked

[Anonymous Coward]

Done, and done.

Open music !

[pH7.0]

The music industry can make more than enough money from Live performance! Recorded music should be "free". (they can change for the media, but you can make copy). CD and internet P2P music swap should works like Radio, MTV etc as free publicity , advertisement for their real product, Live Performance!

This isn't really new idea. Open source software is free and programmer can still make money because business need programmer to customize software for their special need.

Netflix

[filmsmith]

I rent from Netflix because there's a shitload of movies (142 in my queue) that I want to see. I believe most will be great and will buy the ones that I absolutely love, but I also want to just watch a whole hell of a lot of movies.

Incidentally, I've got about 130 movies in my personal collection and I intend on adding more as more movies I want to own come out (or I discover them).

I suppose my point is that you're right in that there are two sides to every coin. There's a reason both models (rental/own) have survived. And sometimes, one person can be an advocate of both for a number of reasons. Ours is not a black and white world.

Side note: I can't (yet) fathom any reason I would want to rent music.

fs

Janus

[jafac]

Janus was the god of Two Faces.
VERY Appropos for Microsoft.

You mean that little blue haired boy?

[Zoshnell]

I thought he grew up to be a scythe weailding, cape wearing, uber badass in 600 AD. Obviously the Romans are going forward in time to steal our ideas. Bastards.

Really?

[tjwhaynes]

Are you kidding me? You're going to give me anytime, anywhere access to over 400,000 songs for $10/month, and you complain?

Sorry. I already have access to umpteen SHOUTcast radio stations playing pretty much what I want to listen to. Having 400,000 songs available per month is pretty much the status quo already with Internet Radio - so why should I

• a) pay a forced monthly fee and
• b) have to put up with some DRM scheme which isn't going to work on any of my linux boxes if MS does its usual platform lockout.

Oh yes, I'm excited by the new DRM stuff. I'm excited to see just how fast it goes out of business.

Have a nice weekend,
Toby Haynes

Re:Really?

[fname]

Well, here's the deal. You can make up any playlist you want, and listen to it anywhere. This is practically the celestial jukebox in the sky. And it doesn't have a thing to do with running/ not running on Linux; the existing services answer that question well enough.

Honestly, I just don't get it. Microsoft is working on a new plan will let MS Windows users who buy a supported MP3 player have anytime/ anywhere access to all the music in their library. Want to listen to the new Britney Spears album, but don't want to spend the $10? Load it up on your WinPod, give it a listen & chuck it. If you commute by train 40 minutes a day, you could listen to 45 new albums each month for $10! This is a phenomenal value.

Ya, DRM sucks. SO what? DOn't think there's DRM on your beloved ShoutCast stations-- get a clue. 'course, they can all be circumvented in one way or another.

Shoutcast I'm sure is really cool, there's probably lots of good stuff. But my friend has Rhapsody, and while at his CPU, it's as close to the old Napster experience you can find. Listen to any song you want. In any order. $10/month. If I could put it on my iPod, I'd pay it in a minute.

And I still don't get the reaction. It isn't for everyone, but to see an announcement like this be universally derided is a sad reflection on the Slashdot community- it represents group-think at it's worse. MS comes out with an unambiguous improvement on an existing product, and 95% of the comments talk about how much this sucks. If Apple or MP3.com or Google or TiVo announced this service, the comments here would gloat about how MS will never be able to match it.

If there's ever been a better example of Slashdot groupthink (particularly of the anti-MS type), I'd like to see it (links please).

Re:Really?

[KingJoshi]

I agree. It's sad how often people (of course myself at times) just follow the group without realizing it.

I don't have much money so I listen to shoutcast. But I'll assume I'll eventually have money, so let's weigh the options (and actually think about it rather than be easily swayed by the group). I actually am not sure what all the pros and cons are.

First, let's assume I only spend $10 a month. Now, that means I could buy only one album a month or listen to whatever song I wanted for that month. Since I dont have any collection, I like the idea of the latter. But, if I continually do this for a while, then I will have a collection and won't be restricted. Assuming I spend $10 a month for a year, and assuming I buy albums occasionally, that's about 150 songs or about 9 hours of music. After a few years, I will be able to listen to a wider collection AND will not have to worry about losing rights to listen to the music. That protection and the idea of ownership has value but how much it means to be, I'm not sure yet.

For $120, I could also listen to any song they offered for the entire year. That collection is well over 9 hours. I definitely like that idea. But if I can't buy or listen to it on linux, that's a no-go. If I know I can afford $120 a year, (which is three months of broadband in most places) then why wouldn't I want to do this? I mean, in some places, $10 gets you one movie which you watch for 2 hours and can't keep. I can't imagine the price point is $10/month. Maybe $20. At which point, you wonder how much it's worth to continue to pay to rent the catalog of music.

But at $10 per month, I don't see why it's not a sure thing. I mean, who the hell says it's exclusive? I mean, how the heck am I supposed to know which artists I like? After grad school and assuming I make some decent money, then surely $10/month seems reasonable to just to be able to listen to any of their songs (assuming a very large catalog) whenever I wanted and then after listening, use that information to decide which songs to buy to keep. I mean, they're offering more choices (not exclusive subscription or pay-to-own license to song) and how can be considered a bad thing?

I just don't get the high number of negative posts moderated highly. I wonder if others that disagree don't feel like making their thoughts heard because it wouldn't be worth it?

To a degree, I hate the subscription model and not owning but just renting things. But if they can make a pricepoint that works, then I'm all for it. I mean, people say that Apple knew that DRM would be broken so they made the rules lax enough that incentive was low to break it. I think a pricepoint at which people will continue to use the service does the same thing. There will always be hackers and crackers, but if you're going to keep paying $10/month, then why bother?

At the right pricepoint, I think many people will approve of this. However, we'll see how wise the record companies will be about this. Apple pricing the iPod-mini at $250 was a brilliant business decision because of prices relative to their competitors, relative to their other iPod offerings and it being their cheapest but high enough to maximize profits. And even better, it makes some people say, well, if that's $250, I might as well spend ANOTHER $50 and get their iPod.

Here, if the companies don't set the right prices, then people will just prefer iTunes or continue to file-share music. So I guess the success depends upon which method makes the RIAA more money by how they set their license agreements with those companies that offer the services. Worst thing about that is that RIAA will continue their cartel and make money. And I don't have a problem with companies making money, but that cartel and price-fixing and all that other stuff does get to me so I guess when they make music cheap and maybe change their ways, then I'll support them. I'm not holding my breath though...

Re:Really?

[jmorris42]

> DOn't think there's DRM on your beloved ShoutCast stations-- get a clue.

Actually I know for a fact that Shoutcast has no DRM. Because with a little command line hackery I can use mpg123 to tune them in. Shoutcast is a good idea, it just will never scale to serious numbers of listeners.

> It isn't for everyone, but to see an announcement like this be
> universally derided is a sad reflection on the Slashdot community-

We laugh because we understand what is wrong with the idea instantly:

1. It will be cracked within a week. If the files only played back on Janus equiped hardware players it would be much harder to crack, but if Windows can access the content, perfect rips to unencumbered WMA will be trivial.

2. Who wants to encourage Microsoft to gain another monopoly, tied to the existing Windows monopoly?

3. What people WANT is unencumbered MP3 that will playback on those $40 CD/MP3 players on the pegs at Walmart and the indash CD player in their new pickup truck, not some new & improved half assed scheme that will require all new hardware.

Fine, let me beat you over the head with it....

[sTalking_Goat]

from dictionary.com

irony

2. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.

let me spell it out for you AC.

MS is promoting Janus as a program that allows you to download music for a monthly fee. The intended meaning is that they are giving you the freedom to have whatever music you want without "violating the intelectual property rights" (Neasea ensues...) of their clients, namely the RIAA.

The Society of Janus is a BDSM organisation. BDSM in case you didn't know stand for Bondage & Discipline. Sado-Masochism (I think).

The key words there being Bondage. As in you being in Bondage to MS. The apparent meaning is that if you sign up for this thing you may be giving consent for MS to tie you down, beat you with a leather paddle and call you a dirty, stupid little whore.

Is that irony enough for you?

It Won't Work

[dmarx]

If fans of iPod-like devices can be convinced to drop the idea of owning song files

The types of people who own iPod like devices tend to be tech-savvy, the same kinds of people who are resistant to music rental schems.
Oh, and there's no such thing as a "hacker-resistant" anything.

JANUS, eh?

[MoFoQ]

for a second there, I thought it was that independent songwriter/singer who supports MP3 downloading.

Eh?

[Zonekeeper]

I thought Janus was a mutual fund...

What a perfect name

[wafflemonger]

Janus was a god with two faces. What a great mascot for a two faced company.

Janus?

[Chaos1]

Janus is the Roman god of doorways, gates, passages, preventing people from copying music, etc.
And I thought Janus was cosak traitor from goldeneye...

Movies vs Music

[DrCode]

There's a big difference between them. I might listen to the same album dozens of times, but there are few movies I'd want to see more than once or twice.

overdue music

[ansak]

Sounds like a great opportunity to apply the new RFC from yesterday, #3751:

you are a smart man

[circletimessquare]

thank you for that

Inapropriate :

[anonymous leprechaun]

"Janus is the Roman god of doorways, gates, passages, preventing people from copying music, etc." haha, i think "Kerberos" would have been somuch more accurate. "three-headed dog that guarded the gates of Hell"

Re:I could be wrong, and if I am I'll eat a bug, b

[Alsee]

isn't this similar to the Tivo business model

Not really. The Tivo works just fine without the subscription. Tivo subscription is like a subscription to TV Guide magazine.

-

BDRM!

[Coulson]

Society of Janus is a San Francisco based BDSM education/support group...

No no no, it's BDRM: bondage/dominance/rights-masochism.

Only buy this if you enjoy watching your rights suffer!

You're missing the point

[DJScrib]

The idea of this is a move towards universal music ownership. Now most of you say you won't rent music, you want to buy it. But, if there were a way where you could pay $10 a month, and you could listen to any song ever made on your PC, car stereo, iPod, home stereo, DVD Player etc, would that be a compelling service to have? That's the step this is trying to move towards as a number of new devices are trying to adopt this as a standard. As far as DRM's go iTunes DRM pretty much has the same rules as the Microsoft DRM. It's just that they've made the user experience nicer, and transfer of content to their 1 player (iPod) very seamless. As far as the true DRM restrictions go, it's the same thing. As far as hacking. These people aren't totally retarded. Yes you can use a line-out, or sound card capture to copy this content. But if you're willing to do that odds are you would have skipped the trouble and just gotten the damn thing off Kazaa or a friend's CD. DRM isn't supposed to make things hack proof. What it's supposed to be is a deterrent for the normal user (if you're on slashdot odds are you aren't the typical user). Somewhere there's a magical pricepoint and featureset where the majority of the population feels its' in their better interest to just pay and accept the rules, than jump through hoops to get it for free. (Why do people buy books instead of getting them from the library). Microsoft and Apple aren't developing technology for those of you who spend 4 hours a day tweaking your self-built, self-modifying Linux system, they're developing systems for the person out there who picks their computers because they like the color of the mouse.

No, you don't realise!

[NoMaster]

As someone already posted above :
"We believe this is it. This is what consumers are going to want. We want to be big participant in changing consumers' attitude towards what music really is." - Zack Zalon, president of Virgin Digital.

Read that again.

What he's actually saying is :
"This is what people want, and we're going to change them until they do."

It doesn't work with Republicans, it doesn't work with Democrats, it doesn't work with Communists, it doesn't work with heterosexuals, and it doesn't work with homosexuals. Funnily enough, it does work with children, where it's called education...

Re: Hugh .....

[Zooka]

Hugh .....?

What? Janus? ... I don't get it...
There's something funny about "Hugh Ja...." *grin*

...Ooooh!!!

[O-T] k6-2 450s

[Anonymous Coward]

i had serious stability problems on a k6-2 450 running linux i had (it was a while ago). the only thing i could do to get the thing stable was to underclock the thing to 400. apperently AMD was a bit too agressive with marking some of the k6-2s

Oninoshiko

"You're wasting your time."

[Rob Simpson]

"Alfador only likes me."

Ideal platform for disposable music.

[OgGreeb]

An all-you-can-eat subscription plan for $10/month is perfect for the mass-marketed bland tripe that passes for most major record label product. Only music meant to be listened to a few times and then discarded by kids with unsophisticated tastes would be a rental bargain. The music you want to keep for a lifetime gets bought.

I purchase a lot of ITMS music tracks, and yes I play them on my iPod. But I also play them on my Squeezebox, my linux PCs, my PowerBook and my Empeg car stereo by immediately burning CDs after purchase, re-encoding to MP3 and filing the CD-R for my permanent library. Rentals don't fit into that picture at all.

Apple's i$Product vs. MS's j$Product

[Anonymous Coward]

*Sigh*
Microsoft can't stay away from copying Apple, can they? And they try to one up Apple too. Apple came up with i$Product for consumer product names, Microsoft comes up with (i+1)$Product = j$Product. However, it is funny what MS choose for $Product in this case.

Because of Silent J, It is Anus

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of Silent J, It is pronounced Anus.
Signed,
Hugh Janus

Hugh Janus!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Haywood Jahblomie,
Ida pheltersnatch...

Wait, let me get this straight...

[Feztaa]

They want to... prevent the copying of music? Why on earth would you do that? It's perfectly legal.

Janus?

[soccerisgod]

Wasn't he also that double faced guy?

Check this

Don't you understand how the time limiting works?

[SuperKendall]

For a subscription, the music would have EXACTLY the same kind of problem. To keep you from downloading a million songs and canceling the subscription after one month, the music "times out" after some fairly small period of time - probably two weeks (or you could jump a month at a time). After that point you must RE-AQUIRE a license from the master server - sound familiar?

Music you buy is different (sometimes), but is not what is being talked about here. Though in many cases if you need to move computers or what have you, you need to update the licence and that means another trip to the server. Hope it's still there!

That's a really good point...

[Anonymous Coward]

...especially when you think about this: If the artists _don't_ get the money, isn't it analogous to recieving stolen property in the same way that downloading from Kazaa or whatnot is analogous to stealing? In other words, isn't it still illegal?

On the other hand, what exatly are the penalties for unknowingly recieving stolen property? Does it just require giving the property back to it's rightful owner? If that's the case, then since it would have been copyright infringement instead of stealing, the rightful [copyright] owner never "lost" their property, and there's no penalty!

So, depending on the difference between copyright infringement and theft, there's nothing illegal about using this Russian service, even if the company running the service obtained their music illegally.

So, then the question is whether it's immoral or not. That's really a personal opinion, but mine is that as long as the artist is compensated it's OK, so you could just spend $.02 on the file, and then send the artist $1 (i.e., something eqivalent or greater than they would have made the "legal" way) directly.

*yawn*

[Anonymous Coward]

So hypothetically... what's to stop me piping the output to a virtual soundcard and recording that output digitally ?
Sorry, but if I want to mp3 it I'm going to.
No DRM is going to stop me.

On another note, I bought a can of non-pepsi cola and the ringpull had a winning code on it.
I downloaded all the junk I needed to be able to play it, registered, and at the start of my free
track download internet explorer crashed and I lost my credits. Good one od2 :P

Variable cost

[0x0d0a]

TV subscriptions are one thing because most shows are transient, and you can record forever the ones you like. But a music subscription offers no similar benefits, only an ongoing cost and limitations on use (can you burn real CD's with a subscription service?)

It's a reasonable bet that Microsoft is not providing any guarantees that their rates will stay the same. In the past, they have *consistently* followed the forumula of doing whatever it takes to get into and dominating a market, then leveraging that market for all it's worth. If they get 80% of the US population using Janus, as people do TV, then they need only raise rates, as the ISPs did. Sure, you could cancel -- but then they have all the money you've given them up to that point, and you have nothing to show for your money.

The J is silent

[Anonymous Coward]

The J is silent.

Moo. No, really.

[LaBlueCow]

How does it feel to be a penny, tossed into a self servicing system? Noone asked M$ to redefine music. For that matter, I doubt many intelligent folk will appreciate it. But then, this is a country made up of 39.5 billion cows, sheep, and chickens, give or take a few foxes and wolves. On the one hand, slashdotters have it down pat. This new service is BS. They're making up the figures to boost their confidence into releasing the product. Just like the typical top 100 radio countdowns. It's #1 because it's the most played, and it's the most played beause it's #1. Who actually stops to realize this when they listen to the local pop station? On the other hand, the conglom's have it. Feed the complacent populace used-kitty-litter on a bun, tell them it's McDonald's newest dollar menu item, and they'll eat it up. It's a war not to be won, but to be ignored.

Re:They don't realize: in order to be successful..

[bmarklein]

This is practically Orwellian. How am I being "restricted" by a service that gives me access to practically all music ever recorded, whereever and whenever I want? Load up your 60GB portable player with a couple thousand albums? Why not, it's all you can eat! How is that "restrictive"? Compare that model to, say Netflix, which lets you have 3 DVDs at a time. Which service is more restrictive?

Re:Moo. No, really.

[bmarklein]

Not sure what you mean about McDonalds. I'm a vegetarian. And I'm not servicing anyone or anyting, just stating an opinion.

No one asked Netflix to redefine the video rental business, but they did, and they've pretty much toppled Blockbuster. What Microsoft is doing is to enable the "celestial jukebox," which has been talked about for many years - so in that sense, people have asked for it. Sure, I wish it wasn't Microsoft, and I'm sure others will provide the technology as well. But separate out your hate of Microsoft from the value of the product itself. Access to basically all the music in the world, anytime, anywhere, for a flat $10 per month. As a huge music fan, that's about the greatest thing I've ever heard of. To pretend otherwise is, well, Slashdot groupthink, exactly what you're accusing me of. Pot, kettle, black.

Oh, and by the way, the use of "M$" look really doesn't help your cause.

The reason not to like DRM software is...

[Anonymous Coward]

... I don't want to be told what music/movies/media I should partake in. Notice the complaints of our favorite *AA organizations center on failed new products, not existing products being shorted by p2p apps. For example... Pick a random Beatle's album, now how many people who currently own this album would like to listen to newly released stuff instead, since there is no way they'll ever be able to archive ALL music ever released. Now think about how "easy" it would be to find music by your favorite underground band/artist on these newer subscription services.

Yeah, the subscription services don't have anything I want. And that pre-empts the whole DRM and payment arguments.

Did you say that Janus was the God of Gates?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you say that Janus was the God of Gates.....
as in Avaricious Bill....

Umm hello...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to break this to you but if you stream something throught the browser its on your system. heck, you can even use get right to "stream" it and it will save the file the music is being streamed from. I learned this from getting the high bandwidth "non-downloadable" songs from mp3.com.

Re:They don't realize: in order to be successful..

[Anonymous Coward]

"baa baa", says the sheep!

Janus foot note...

[LifesABeach]

janus was also the god of beginings, and endings. and i just don't see m$ as the begining of anything.

just a thought...