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Super MP3 Will Feature User Tracking
An anonymous reader writes "Next generation super MP3 files will support four-channel audio tracks and contain what's dubbed Light Weight Digital Rights Management (LWDRM) code to track it's owner via p2p programs." We've mentioned these multi-channel, DRM-ified MP3s before.
...nobody will use it.
...but this seems like a perverted 1984-vision. Whats next, death penalty for P2P sharing ?
Are there more of our privacies the corp execs want to relieve us of ?!
Really, who's going to use these things if they have DRM? The average person doesn't care a whole lot about quality (see how fast wma, vorbis, and AAC have caught on?). Throw DRM of any kind into the mix, and it just won't catch. .MP3 is here to stay for awhile.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
What use is 5.1 if CDs (most anyway) only have 2 channels?
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Somebody please write conversion software so I can batch-convert all my MP3s to this new and exciting format which will offer me as a consumer many exciting new capabilities!
Man, I'd better start saving up for a new Super MP3 player...
Allthough i won't go into a discussion on quality of certain files, remember mp3-pro, suppose to be better quality at 64kbits audio compression. It failed complety, based on the fact that most hardware devices now support mp3's (car stereo's, portable devices) and at 192~+kbits it sounds like cd quality, i don't think people are willing to change.
This one will not be widely used by consumers if it has a light-weight tracking mechanism embedded in it. We'll simply use one of the others. Not to mention, there will always be players (and converters) that disable the tracking and convert to a more well-accepted format.
But maybe it's a step in the right direction. We'll see what becomes of it. My guess...absolutely nothing.
Wow, four whole tracks. That's about two hundred and fifty one fewer than Ogg Vorbis, if I recall correctly.
Let's see Super-MP3's will incorporate a lightweight DRM?
How long is it going to take to have a converter that transforms Super-MP3s into normal MP3s, with the DRM stripped?
How long until someone incorporates this into, say, xmms or lame, so that the conversion is actually totally transparent to the user?
Gentlemen... start your compilers!
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
So another good reason to use OGGs. I never trust any non-open-licenced formats (it's all an illuminati plot).
www.gaian-mind.org - eco-punk/crust coop and collective | www.anarchistfederation.org - so cal anarchist federation
I hope this will be as sucessful as MP3PRo.
Photos.
What's to stop the community from making some sort of DRMless multi-channel MP3/Ogg format? Let the RIAA push their own formatfor their own files, it doesn't force us to use it for our own data. If users demand support for the non-restricted format, media player authors will be forced to either support it or lose customers.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
They release it, two days later someone cracks it, writes a nice program to strip the DRM. Seems we've traveled down this road before. If it didn't work the first couple of times, why try again?
IIRC OGG Vorbis can support upto 255 channels. Shame its not more mainstream.
As for the p2p tracking, people may not use it because of this or it may just get cracked.
Don't bitch and moan. This is wonderful for independant artists and those listeners that want to make sure where an mp3 came from. Personally i will encourage those recording friends of mine to use this...it's not to keep you from copying/sharing, rather to guarantee quality and authenticity.
I cannot see a single legitimate reason why people would dump MP3 for this when they can simply switch to the much better LC-AAC in the mp4 container such as Apple and Nero are using now. 4 channels, optional DRM, standardized tagging (id3 is NOT a part of the mp3 spec people!) and lower bitrates, plus better handling of problematic samples.
Jeremy
And just how are they planning on getting these to replace the old MP3s?
As long as there is a way to encode them in the old way, people will do it. Duh!
This seems more like an attempy by Fraunhofer to pacify the corporates and "make up" for their follies.
If the owner who originally purchased the rights to that MP3 file publishes it online in a shared environment, the file will display the original owners digital signature, thus allowing the individuals to be immediately identified.
And what if the user purchased the rights to an Audio CD containing that track and converted it into a good old MP3?
This new trackable, un-sharable "Super MP3" may be an attempt by the Fraunhofer Institute to make amends with the disgruntled music industry.
Are they going to sue all the existing MP3 players if they don't change into the new format? Now *that* would be funny.
Bite me.
The can of worms is open, you are not going to be able to contain piracy this way. Change the way music (and media in general) is being sold - think up a new business model, the old one has been proven time and again not to work.
And guess what? Tracking users or preventive DRM is not the solution.
What are they going to do if I changed the ID of my MP3 to reflect that of someone else? How long is it going to take to crack this thing? A week? A month?
Sheesh. Won't these people ever learn? What beats me is that smart research institutes like FI are coming up with crap like this.
They are adding some bits to the file to track the original owner! Think of how serial numbers, product activation, and dongles are so uncrackable!
Oh wait...
serial numbers (think: photocopy machine, IRC .nfo files)
product activation (see: Windows XP and NAV 2004)
dongles (think: AutoCAD and the # of BBS's that had cracks the next day a version came out back when dongles were used)
Yawn. It will be cracked. And Cat, meet Bag, the brown paper one you just came out of. 12 year old kids look for cracks for games and know how to rip cd's. They will know how to find and get whatever program will be develloped to strip the ID out of the song and replace it with something generic so it will be safe to trade. Next...
That said, I would LOVE multi-track audio files. I would love to be able to press a button to disable the vocal track, or turn down the volume on the guitar track, or turn up the base track, or whatever. Basically like the tracks you see in Frequency or Amplitude on the PS2. There are many times I would love to be able to turn off the vocals, or turn UP the vocals to hear them over the rest of the music.
I would love this for TV too. I would love to be able to turn up the dialog track, or turn down the sound effects. Or my idea: turn OFF THE DAMN LAUGH TRACK.
THIS is the feature I want. Give music like this and files to store it in, and I'll be happier. Don't give me something I can't use. If you want me to swallow DRM (even LIGHT DRM) give me something that I want in exchange, not something useless.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
All things being equal, I would agree. This format has no actually value in the community. However, this format has one huge advantage; name recognition. Look at the new Napster: absolutely no advantage over any other existing service, but it did a great deal of business because people recognized the name. There's a very good posibility that soon, people will want to be able to say they have a "super mp3 player" because they think it makes them sound cool, and people just know the 'mp3' name.
I hope you're right, but I'm not sure you are.
That's all fine with me. It's simple. I just wont use them. :)
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
Anything you play over speakers can be recorded. If you really need to share those files go ahead and rerecord them. Time consuming? Yes. But infinitely better than a lawsuit.
Of course, just about everyone reading this comment already knows that.
eMule, eMulePlus, BitTorrent, iMesh, Soulseek, etc, etc... now featuring auto Super MP3 DRM stripping.
Sure looks like it... so tell me:
1) Won't they be trivial to remove?
2) What will happen when the next Internet worm shares your watermarked files?
This is about as realistic as going after people whose registration keys show up at serialz sites. "Why your company was issued the 'Devil's Own' key, please pay us X kazillion billion dollars for pirated copies of Windows using your serial".
Do you see it happen? No. But you can bet that this racketering will happen. It's like some lawsuits I've been hearing about, US companies sue companies overseas for hacking their network, even though they both know "they" didn't do it, only their trojaned machines.
It'll be the same thing with RIAA vs individuals. Even if you didn't to anything, the cost to settle is cheaper than hiring a lawyer. I would never get any of these simply for the legal liability they could get me in.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I think they needed a way to say "This song is copyrighted. The RIAA is coming to get you" without corrupting the quality of the MP3 music itself (artists would get upset).
That way all RIAA approved players that support the limited DRM only plays the last two tracks while WinAmp plays them all.
Just think, RIAA in my rear channels with Metallica in the front. Woo hoo!
I didn't read the article (surprise!) but this sounds fairly reasonable. Attach a unique ID to an MP3 file that says "John Doe" purchased it. As long as John Doe uses it responsibly, he can take advantage of all kinds of fair use, record it to other media, etc. that he could with an unprotected MP3 file.
This is like arguing against certain types of guns because the FBI can do ballistics analysis on the spent casing and wear patterns of the round in order to match the bullet lodged in the dead victim with the one that came from your gun. Shouldn't people be arguing for guns which don't leave any traceable patterns? Or do people realize that as long as they use their guns responsibly, who cares if the bullet and casing have certain patterns which can identify the particular gun?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
What use is 5.1 if CDs (most anyway) only have 2 channels?
... are a few uses I can think of off the top of my head. DVD-A and SACD are both hi-fidelity audio formats, and just because it's an MP3 doesn't mean that it has to be used for music. It could be used for an audio track for a movie file.
Or, they'll set all DRM info to indicate that the original ripper and "pirate" of each track was Jack Valenti!!! :)
You are not the customer.
Mp3Pro?
And its not an issue.
If at some point we cant use old style mp3 for some unforseen reason, then we us something else entirely.
Sharing is a moving target, and all this nonsence to try to control it just causes the target to move even faster.
Be it right or wrong, its going to persist... 'The man' best get over it and move on..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Bytes 16-512 contain the http address of the source file.
Now I'm going to be sued by the RIAA for breaking the DMCA
Too true. If everyone was so concerned about DRM, why did iTunes Music store get so big. Truth is the only people who really get their panties in a twist over DRM are Slashdotters, pirates, and tin-foil hat fuckos.
Please note, I am not saying that DRM is a good thing, I am just pointing out that the average consumer/computer user doesn't care. When and if the RIAA gets their wish and ends all file trading the average joe will shrug it off and go back to buying Good Charlotte cds like a reall American.
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
every content provider is looking to incorporate more and more DRM as the quality, cost, and ease of creation of copies improves.
the music industry doesn't care about people copying songs off the radio. it didn't even really get its panties in a bunch when CD-Rs first hit the market. or when mp3s hit the ftp servers. It went ballistic when anyone could download a single application and instantly find a never ending stream of perceptibility loss-less perfect digital copies.
likewise with the MPAA and DVD encryption, likewise with the new Cable Set-top standard.
They want to cut out MythTV, Tivo, splitters, H-cards, and cable descramblers. It's becoming too easy to get at the current data, so they want a change.
with the analog system working (fairly) well as is, why else would they create a new 'standard' for the digital system? It certainly isn't in the interest of the consumer.
Why doesn't Sony support the Blu-Ray with its stock rewritable feature?
Why did Disney/Circuit City/et al try to push (the bad) Divx onto the market in the first place?
It isn't because consumers are clamoring for less control or cheaper movies.
The time is coming when content producers are going to have to realize that their profits will no longer come from format-updates (repurchasing 8-tracks as CDs, VHS classics as DVDs, etc), and will -not- come from service-style access to data. Classic TV advertising may even have to give way to pure product-placement campaigns.
Cable will realize that a move to pay-per-channel is the way to support content without advertising in our new time-shifted digital reality. Some people -will- pay $1/mo for TLC. Home Depot will still pay for product placements in Trading Spaces. Maybe the Super-station will go away - but the cable companies, and popular channels, need not.
the film industry has already shown that the theatre experience is not losing out to cheap cam copies. they've learned that feature-rich dvds or dirt-cheap dvds are preferred to the customer over hacked-together recompressed copies on filesharing networks.
The record companies will need to realize that to win with digital music requires providing the best quality, with the least hassle. They will need to realize that they must beat file-sharing on features. People will give up hunting around for a good (not mislabeled)256kbps rip of Britney's newest song - if they know they can just hit iTunes or its ilk and cough up $1.
Fair Use needs to win out. These purported 'losses' from file-sharing need to be revealed to be grossly overestimated fabrications. (A PSA from a supposed union set painter claiming that file sharing is killing the movie industry, and threatening his job - airing during it's highest grossing year of all time is particularly tactless)
DRM is the tool of the content dinosaur. If they concentrated on actual content piracy rings - where big money is being made off black-market copies, and abandoned their fruitless DRM research - their profits could be higher than ever.
But such is not the reaction of anti-competitive cabals. Being forced to -compete- is not what they do. Suing, threatening, bullying, bribing - these are the blunt instruments they wield instead of the precise tools of innovation, imagination and competition.
So in the meantime - expect every advance to carry DRM in the fine print.
No way, all those people with four-ear headphones will love this stuff.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
...so one album can be spliced into one MP3 with 10, 12, or however many tracks, allowing navigation through an album without those annoying pauses between tracks -- especially on MP3 CDs.
#1 Learn how the Super MP3 file format works.
#2 Collect information on your enemies.
#3 Insert that information into various Super MP3 files and strip out your information.
#4 Share files on web sites or P2P file sharing networks using an alias on a system that is not yours. Like upload files from a library, college, rental system (Kinko's, CyberCafe, etc using an fake ID to get access to the system, wear a disguise too).
#5 Sit back and watch the RIAA punish your enemies for you.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
My favorite musician is retired. I bought and ripped to MP3 all of his existing albums already.
But hey, at least we'll be able to find out who has been distributing Jessica Simpson and Backdoor Boys MP3s and beat the hell out of them.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"Hi I'm Troy McLure and this is LightWeight DRM: Content delivered your way. You may remember me from such brand resuscitation films as How Asbestos saves YOUR CHILDREN from burning to death or Firestone Tires: Now with 33% less explosive power"
Isn't this the same format for which we are to pay, while .ogg files eclipse them? Let me get this straight- we're PAYING to give out personal information?
Put another notch in the bedpost for the Microsoft mindset.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Why don't we just stick with Ogg Vorbis audio compression for our file trading needs?
Join Tor today!
10 DRM coders working 9-5 vs 10 million "pirates" working nights and weekends.
They want to be encoding standard on HD-DVDs. Well, the DVD consortium will not consider any format that isn't open and controlled by the appropriate standards body. So MS submitted WM-9 to SMPTE, and it has now been accepted and standardised. It is available to everyone under standard licensing terms.
Now notice I said open, not free. It is like MPEG-4, MPEG-2, AAC, MP3 and so on. Anyone many implement the standard for a fixed licensing fee ($0.10 per decoder, $0.20 per encoder) but it isn't free of charge. As a pracitcal matter they'd probably ignore not-for-profit, source-only implementations like the MPEG consoritum ignores Xvid.
But yes, it's open and controlled by SMPTE now. Your money goes to MS if you license it, but the fees are fixed, and any changes to the standard must be approved by SMPTE and will be given to all licensees as part of the license. It now is a viable alternative to MPEG-4, and it is one of the three finalists for the HD-DVD format.
I am sure it will take less than a week, err make that hour, to figure out how to spoof it. Another 2 days for some GUI guid spoofer tool to be published. Probably 5 days to figure out the guid of some famous person who uses this stuff. 10 days before everyone is just hacking the guid flag to make it look like it came from said famous person. 3 weeks for slashdot to pic up the story :P
Ok, you have a typical 5MB mp3 song.
For a song to become a super mp3, tracking P2P users and multi channel sound.... wouldn't this be naturally much bigger than 5MB? If so wouldn't it be easy for the P2P user to just recognize that and avoid downloading it right away.
Not to mention this is probably going to create a new P2P feature to flag an mp3 as "super" or "regular" before downloading.
I'm not exactly up to date on the latest music that's being released, but last I checked CD's were still being released in stereo, and seeing as how standard players are only capable of decoding 2-channel, 16 bit, 44.1kHz PCM streams that's the way it's going to be for a long time, if not forever.
DVD's are another story. I'm sure the \AUDIO_TS directory could hold some 5.1 music, but I've yet to see it being used. There'd be a small market if so. Would people really buy the super whizbang 5.1 version of their favorite music that will only run on their DVD player, given that they listen to CD's in their cars, discmans, etc?
And now to the crux of the problem. Since there is no 5.1 music out unless you are ripping it straight from a movie, why does SuperMP3 matter to p2p, or anything for that matter? IMHO, it doesn't - for straight music files.
Possibly, however, it might make a difference with DVR's. In the distant future, when all TV is HD and all audio is 5.1, DVR's will perhaps encode to SuperMP3 to save space and keep the 5.1 channels. Will this matter to p2p? Only if you rip the movie out of the box and place it on the 'Net.
Regardless, SuperMP3 will probably end up being yet another case study on why DRM doesn't work.
-R
The parent poster has got the thinking right. I run a record/CD store so I have lots of opportunity to talk with customers about their digital music needs. The basic trends are:
1. People want vinyl records. They see it as a format from simpler times. They hate CDs for any number of reasons and vinyl lets them just listen to music.
2. People buy CDs, copy them and sell them back. For those that rip they use MP3 and they don't care about quality. They hate any compressed format other than MP3 because it's one extra choice they don't want to think about.
3. The only people that are happy with digital music are the ones that have an iPod because they see it has being their whole collection in a little box. People who listen to music on their computer jukebox, or any of the competing portable players complain about the experience for any number of reasons.
4. The people who do know about DRM or any new formats have sworn to never use them.
Overall from what I see, the trend is to actively resist any kind of format that requires too much decision making, too much restriction, or which makes too much extra work. This negative wave has extended back against CDs and no one wants the majority of them because they have no physical character. I think from here on out, all new consumer audio and video formats are going to have a huge problem with adoption. The effort to adopt them is well past the acceptable limit of consumers. Need we mention DVD-A or SACD?
There's no reason to lose cross-platform support if your code is a bytecode that all licensees' platforms can interpret.
Well, I own more than 25,000 of 'em and I love the sleeve artwork, too. One of these days I'll frame a few of my favorites.
It pains me to admit that you're right on with your comment about LPs not being for just listening to the music. Yes, they still tend to sound better than CDs, but if the highest of fidelity was the only thing guiding my choice of music formats, I'd use reel-to-reel. I still have several hundred of those. No, I find that as I get older I have little tolerance for the rituals necessary to clean microscopic cat dander out of the grooves. It wasn't so long ago that I saw a calculation that given the cost of an extremely high-end phono cartridge and the frighteningly fast rate at which they wear out, you could literally hire classical musicians, in small groups and as soloists, to come to your house and play more hours of music than you could get from the damn cartridge. The only good reason to use LPs is for the superior sound but the maintenance and expense to maintain that superiority is just too much of a pain in the ass for me to continue to use them.
I've been a lot happier with my music since I gave up on trying to outrace the audiophile treadmill. CDs are pretty good. MP3s and streaming formats are good enough when I'm not listening carefully. And tickets to the symphony are cheap; as an added benefit, they get me out of the house.
I love my listening room. I've got wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling custom shelving on all four walls stuffed solid with more LPs than most people have ever seen in one place at one time. But it's time to take it apart and turn it back into the master bedroom the architect of the house envisioned. Yes, I sleep in a secondary bedroom because I converted the master suite into a dedicated listening room many years ago.
So it's time to let go. I know I should. But I just can't bring myself to start pulling those beautiful discs off the shelves. Is there a support group for people like me?
Being that the US is a Constintutional Republic and not a Constintutional Democracy, the rights of big business far outweigh the rights of the individual.
;)
Now if you really wanted to "mix" things up... Imagine if everyone in North America where to register themselves as a corporation, you'd pay less tax AND have more rights (the ones that the big corporations have, that you the citizen dont have). You would be able to deduct all living expenses and only pay tax on any profit at the end of the year. Of course this requires lots of paperwork, but the government loves paperwork & red tape. So why not indulge them
Another simple idea is to just stop living by their terms. Get OFF the grid, stop using their services, listening to their propaganda and most of all stop believing the president. He is only there to serve big business and make sure you pay their salaries.
Another thing to note is that while the current system of government has worked in the past, it has become quite antiquiated. The levels of corruption, influence and ass kissing run so deep that unless something is done SOON, there is no other route for it to go but to a future similar to that of 1984.
Cut away the cancer, a bloody revolution IS the answer.
Between the facts and your ignorant claim, there are lightyears of difference. And that you actually got moded "interesting" for this... The moderators are still clueless, I guess.
It's possible to be interesting and wrong, just as it's possible to be boring and right!
Yours Sincerely, Michael.