DVD-Audio's CPPM Circumvented

Bodysurf writes "After DVD-Video's CSS encryption was broken in 1999, the music industry chose a much more secure copy-protection method for DVD-Audio called Copy Protection for PreRecorded Media (CPPM). This protection scheme has remained publicly uncracked, but it was circumvented recently, providing the ability to save the unencrypted digital audio data. CDFreaks has the details."

Comments

And no one is shocked

[Approaching.sanity]

We deserve our free use.

And we will take it by any and all means.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

That is right! Even if it means we have to kill every single one of you mother....

Oh, wait, all we did was hack their encryption. Nevermind....

Re:And no one is shocked

[garcia]

We deserve our free use. And we will take it by any and all means.

That should read: We deserve our fair use and we will take it back by any and all means.

Re:And no one is shocked

[jdray]

I'm starting to wonder why anyone even bothers anymore. I'm not sure I agree that "we" (the world?) deserves free use of media content, but I think fair use would be ... fair.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Kierthos]

And the response from the RIAA:

"FUCK!"

Kierthos

Re:And no one is shocked

[redheaded_stepchild]

I think I'd rather wait for them to figure it out. It's not like I can't find plenty of other *gasp* decent artists to listen to without RIAA's hands in it.

I know it gets thrown around in here a lot, but if you really wanted to piss them off and make them think about what they are doing, STOP BUYING THEIR CRAP. But more than that, don't download it either. Embargo them on all fronts. Watch them adapt or die. Too bad I'll never see this happen, what with the majority of my country (and apparently the world) being led around by the short and danglies by the RIAA. Like bands don't exist unless they have massive media hype, a video on MTV, and a shamelessly promoted 'world tour'.

Makes me want to start my own music distribution just to show it can be done without the RIAA.

Re:And no one is shocked

[dynamo]

Dude, don't give away phase II!

Re:And no one is shocked

[garcia]

Like bands don't exist unless they have massive media hype, a video on MTV, and a shamelessly promoted 'world tour'.

Most bands don't exist w/o that -- at least they don't in the eyes of most people. Most people sit at home glued to their major media shows, force fed conglomorate TV, and listening to their conglomorate owned/sponsored radio.

God forbid you have to search around for some different stuff to listen to! God forbid they might have to leave their comfort of their own homes to see a show and support an artist that might not be 100% favorable in the eyes of the conglomorates!

Makes me want to start my own music distribution just to show it can be done without the RIAA.

It's called the Internet. Ever been there? I have and it's *FULL* of new and interesting bands right next to old and interesting bands! There they are for the world to listen to. Try it some time. etree and dimeadozen should get you started.

Re:And no one is shocked

[connorbd]

My question is, who really needs DVD-A and SACD in the first place? Only a super ear can hear the difference, and surround sound is pretty useless for basic music. It's far more useful for movies, concerts, and theatrical productions.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

short and danglies

Come on, man, are we talking about pubes or balls? Don't mix euphemisms!

Re:And no one is shocked

[redheaded_stepchild]

So, you missed the implied sarcasm in BOTH of those sentences??

Re:And no one is shocked

[Alex P Keaton in da]

Whichever side of the "digital rights" argument you are looking at this from, we have to grudgingly admit that this drives innovation.... Adversity seems to drive innovation, whether in nature, or our society, be it in housing or farming etc.
So the adversity is Copy protection to the user, so users break the copy protection.
The adversity for the copyright holder is the "hacker" for lack of a better word, trying to circumvent the protection, so this leads to more encryption innovation.
If it weren't for Napster, would Itunes have ever come to be so soon? Which leads to another lesson- give the people what they want- or they will take/create it themselves.
When the recording/movie industry realizes that most music/video is "infringed/stolen" for convenience, not $$$, they may give us what we want. I like itunes because, hey, its 3am, my lady friend is getting frisky (Because I inflated her with salin instead of air like usual... more realistic that way) and I want to listen to some Barry White, but the stores are closed.... I can download it. Or if I don't want to go out and buy it because, yes, even though I am 27 my grandmother grounded me, or my acne or psoriasis is acting up I dont want to be seen in public, I want to download that CD/DVD.
Admission- if a song/group isn;t available on Itunes, I might (not admitting guilt here) download it somewhere else where it is 0 cents per song, not 99 cents per song.... even though I was willing to pay if available....
Give the consumer what we want, or we will get it our own way!!!!!!

Re:And no one is shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you missed the implied sarcasm in BOTH of those sentences??

Obviously you missed mine. Moron.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Arcane_Rhino]

Good point. Thank-you.

Since this is being tried in both the courts of law and of public opinion it is important to keep the argument sane, salient and factual. We are only wanting to keep that to which we are already entitled by law.

Those who fight against fair use are behaving unethically.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you weren't expecting to be modded Funny.

Re:And no one is shocked

[aminorex]

Fair use would be fair, yes, but free use is free. Which would you rather be paying for?
Or do you hate our freedoms?

Re:And no one is shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

Prick.

Re:And no one is shocked

[TechnoGrl]

>Makes me want to start my own music
>distribution just to show it can be done
>without the RIAA.

It's called http://cdbaby.com/

Enjoy !

Re:And no one is shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a super ear can hear the difference

negative. that is incorrect.

Re:And no one is shocked

[shmlco]

Or do you hate our freedoms?

As the old saw goes, your freedom ends the second your fist touches my nose. Fair use is one thing, stealing from the people who create and make the things you would enjoy is something else entirely...

Re:And no one is shocked

[Rei]

stealing from the people who create and make the things you would enjoy is something else entirely...

And as you know, as soon as you copy a song, somebody else's copy, far far away, suddenly dissapears, depriving them of their property and thus meeting the definition of "stealing". As opposed to, say, "pirating", which involves the loss of (theoretical, and in most situations very unlikely) income without the actual loss of an asset that was formerly possessed.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Reverberant]

Whether or not the increased bandwidth and dynamic range of DVD-A and SACD will improve the sound quality of recordings is debatable (having heard both, I know that it can, but only if the recording engineers know what they're doing).

However, the comment "surround sound is pretty useless for basic music" is dead wrong. If you play a two channel recording through one of the faux surround modes in many receivers, I'll admit that it doesn't sound all that great. But have you ever listened to a recording that was specifically mixed for 5.1, or even Dolby Pro Logic (e.g. some of Telarc's releases)?

If the mixing engineer knows what she's doing, the result produces an increased sense of envelopment and makes you feel more connected to the performance, even in pop recordings. Yeah, if the surround mixing is done using gimmicks like the original Fantasia, it just becomes distracting

(I say this having just spent an evening at a colleagues home listening to several 5.1 DVD musical performances. Trust me, done properly it makes a difference)

Re:And no one is shocked

[Skye16]

Yes, it is, but removing fair use from me because I could copy your creations is another thing entirely. It's like telling me I can use my arms, but only if I wear a special suit that ensures that I can't punch you in the face.

Of course, I can also tell you "fuck you" and find someone who isn't a fascist prick. I'm not required to deal with the RIAA or the artists they "represent". They can encrypt all they want - it just pushes me farther and farther away from giving them my money.

</trite oversimplification>

Re:And no one is shocked

[dgatwood]

Yeah. It should read "Not even a super ear can hear the difference."

:-D

Re:And no one is shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Garcia is just an asshat who likes to karma whore. He doesn't need anything interesting to write, or even care about what he's writing about. Just as long as he has something to link to.

He's also the anonymous moron who called you a Prick.

Re:And no one is shocked

[JPortal]

I don't necessarily agree, but only because I haven't thought about the issue.
I'll just say that no matter what crazy protection schemes they come up with, somewill WILL break it.

Re:And no one is shocked

[shmlco]

I'm not required to deal with the RIAA or the artists they "represent".

That's actually the best response anyone can make. As long as corporations perceive that people are stealing from them, they're going to defend their property with everything they have.

Let people turn away to legal alternatives and new models, however, and they have no alternatives. Then they either change or die.

Otherwise, the arms race will continue...

Re:And no one is shocked

[Rick.C]

Makes me want to start my own music distribution just to show it can be done without the RIAA.

The RIAA would be at your door within hours:

"Say, dat's a nice group you got dere. It'd be a shame if somethin' happened to it...

"We got dis RIAA contract we'd like you to sign... umm, sign right here. Yeah, it's a real luxury havin' a drummer with two good arms, you know... real luxury..."

Re:And no one is shocked

[Armchair Dissident]

Like bands don't exist unless they have massive media hype, a video on MTV, and a shamelessly promoted 'world tour'.

'The Buggles' said it best:

"Video killed the radio star."

It's hard to find good music these days by listening to the radio, because they're just playing the tracks that look good on television. Flashy women or six-packed men appeal to the audience that the MTV or HMV bosses can make money from; but they can't play well, and they can't sing well. Hell, even Robbie Williams is a second rate singer, both as part of "Take That" and as a solo singer.

"You can't see tits on the radio", but that won't stop people buying Kylie Minogue, or whoever is the latest fashion in pop, because that's what it is: Music is fashion. Gucci, Niki, et al make a fortune selling tat, but they make money because they're "fashionable".

French Connection get away with selling - in the UK - t-shirts saying "FCUK - you" to 10 year old kids, because it's fashionable.

No one cares about music, no one even cares what ten year old kids have plastered to their chests, so long as it's fashionable.

How do you stop it being fashionable? That is the question. A few thousand people not buying the 'Crazy Frog' single won't make one iota of difference so long as it remains fashionable. Stop the RIAA, and the BPA's records, and their stars being fashionable, and perhaps you have a chance.

But how do you do that?

Re:And no one is shocked

[argStyopa]

The problem with that is that any such action would be 'imagineered' by the RIAA as "proof" that filesharing is destroying their business, and their tools in congress would have that much more ammunition to pass ridiculous legislation.

Let's be honest: most of the stuff on MTV is crap, no? So is most of the indie stuff that's NOT pimped by the RIAA. So I listen to the radio, and when I hear something I like, I tape it (legally accepted fair use). Then I turn THAT tape into an mp3. I can go in with an editor, clip it, clean out the hiss or anything I don't like.

Screw the RIAA and their cronies. But the simple (simplistic?) view that economic pressure is going to correct their behavior only works if the market is actually free, which it is far from being.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes me want to start my own music distribution just to show it can be done without the RIAA.

There's already fuckloads of great non-RIAA labels out there. Even some relatively huge ones like SubPop. You don't need to show it's been done because there are literally thousands of labels out there doing it already.

Re:And no one is shocked

[shmlco]

Just to deal with the "theoretical" statement, I find it extremely difficult to believe that people would no lnger buy music if they had no other alternative (e.g. stealing). When I was a teenager we almost always managed to the find money for that which we valued.

Today, however, teens can steal music without the hassle of getting caught by a security guard. As such, they choose to do so, and spend their money on more clothes and better cell phones (BBC article).

Re:And no one is shocked

[timster]

My (great-*n)uncle was a pirate, you insensi... er, you dirty scalawag! Arrr!

Re:And no one is shocked

[Rei]

So, your average HS/college teenager with 50,000 mp3s is going to buy them all (at 1$ a pop, 50,000$?). Be serious. Would they buy a tenth? Not a chance. A hundredth? Doubtful. A thousandth? Perhaps. Of course, that's not factoring in the number that they *do* buy, including the number that they bought because they decided that they liked the music.

Re:And no one is shocked

[afidel]

The problem is every time they see a blip in sales they blame it on the "IP Pirates" rather than on an antiquated business model or crap product. I mean the homogonization of radio and the reduction in mainstream musical breadth couldn't possibly turn off a LOT of listeners, could it? Nah, we'll consume whatever their "safe" market tests tell them we will so that they can minimize risk.

Re:And no one is shocked

[sweetwayne]

It's not stealing though. The term for what's going on is copyright infringement. AND IT IS NOT THE SAME THING AS THEFT!! How many times must it be said? Copyright violation != theft. They're two different crimes. The RIAA wants people to believe that pirates are directly stealing from them and the artists they supposedly represent. This is a false analogy, and frankly, one that the suits at the record labels would love for people like you to keep propagating.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Romeozulu]

Dear god, those two sites you linked to are shit. Shit I say. It makes me long for iTunes.

The independent bands are going to get nowhere until they figure out how to market and distribute.

That's what the RIAA companies are good at, and it's why bands want/need a label. They do a lot more then slap a CD out.

What we need to a label willing to *pay* artists, *pay* for marketing and *pay* for distribution and shun DRM. Until someone comes along willing to do that, and is successful, nothing will change.

But you don't see anyone willing to do that do you? I wonder why? There are tons of rich tech people that scream about DRM, why don't any of them start a music label and show the world.

Re:And no one is shocked

[__aatgod8309]

As long as corporations perceive that people are stealing from them, they're going to defend their property with everything they have.

The impression i get from their actions is that they equate 'people are stealing, which means they're not giving us their money' with 'people are not giving us their money, which means they're stealing'.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Em Adespoton]

And as you know, as soon as you copy a song, somebody else's copy, far far away, suddenly dissapears, depriving them of their property and thus meeting the definition of "stealing". As opposed to, say, "pirating", which involves the loss of (theoretical, and in most situations very unlikely) income without the actual loss of an asset that was formerly possessed.

If you're going to be anal about it, "pirating" involves the boarding of another person's ocean going vessel, and "stealing" something from it and/or "stealing" said vessel. Even Pirate Radio was about "stealing" bandwidth used by someone else in order to broadcast without restrictions/fees.

Why don't we all just call it what it is? Copying! Copying can be good (I copied his fabulous dance move) or it can be bad (I copied his paper on plagiarism). It's all still copying.

Re:And no one is shocked

[criquet]

most of the indie stuff is crap

That may be the case but it's also easy and fun to find good indie music. I don't listen to radio and I only buy good indie that I've listened to online. I spend $100+/mo on new music and the RIAA never gets there grubby little paws on any of it.

Re:And no one is shocked

[PHP Addict]

Scenario 1) Someone steals a record from a record store. Result: Artist doesn't get the royalty.

Scenario 2) Someone downloads a new record, instead of buying it. Result: Artist doesn't get the royalty.

Call it whatever the hell you want, the result is the same. Not everyone is as honorable as those who go out and buy records they downloaded and liked.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Evangelion]

Umm, if someone stole it from the record store, the artist still gets his cut. The album has been sold by the label to the distributor, and by the distributor to the store.

The only one who loses in shoplifting is the store itself.

(Which is why the MPAA doesn't really care about it).

Re:And no one is shocked

[Jugalator]

Depends on your point of view. ;-)

The former isn't an incorrect statement for a pirate.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

For the same I always ask why would anyone want to use Linux in the first place? Windows is fine; it has always worked great and is quite stable in my experience, not to mention much easier to use. I really can't tell the difference. Everyone notices different details...

If you're listening on some cheap speakers or headphones you probably won't notice what these formats are capable of. But on decent speakers both formats are very easily better than cd quality. Unfortunately a lot of DVD-A/SACD discs have been poorly mastered, or were taken from a digital source that was only cd quality to begin with; no amount of technology can help that situation.

Re:And no one is shocked

[shmlco]

So, your average HS/college teenager with 50,000 mp3s...

So the "average" HS/college teenager has 50,000 mp3s?

Right.

So either you're exaggerating just a bit... or the problem is worse that anyone ever realized. ;)

Re:And no one is shocked

[Alan Partridge]

I have a DVD-A. If I could access the high quality audio on the disc I might be able to enjoy the music better. Who knows? I might buy MORE DISCS if I can use the audio data as I desire.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Rei]

The average HS/college teenager doesn't do that much with their computer. But the average "mp3 collector" - the ones responsible for the majority of piracy - have tens of thousands. Assuming 1 meg/minute and 3 minutes song average length, that's 150GB - and you better believe me, I've met a quite a few people who've filled up a lot more than a 150GB drive.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude. I'm willing to bet that the average person has more like 5 gigs of tunes, not >150 gigs.

Re:And no one is shocked

[russotto]

Scenario 3) Someone neither buys nor downloads a new record. Result: Artist doesn't get the royalty.

Scenario 4) Someone buys the record. Record company engages in creative accounting. Result: Artist doesn't get the royalty.

Seems no matter what the scenario, the result is the same. So either the result mustn't be all that's important, or every action is equally bad.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Skye16]

I salute you, sir, and I agree with your word choice.

Re:And no one is shocked

[doubledoh]

This is a false analogy. Notice how you injected "instead of buying it" into your second scenario. You are making the assumption that someone that downloads a record does so in place of buying it. I've downloaded lots of albums that I NEVER would have bought because I just wanted to see if I liked them. Most albums I download end up in my recyle bin because they suck. Personally, I would never buy an actual album unless I knew it was great by hearing the whole thing at a friend's house, on the radio, or otherwise. I won't buy 1 dollar lottery tickets because I don't like to gamble, but you expect me to buy $15 records that I may or may not like? Dream on buddy.

When you steal a physical piece of property (ie, a CD from Best Buy), it costs REAL money to produce that particular CD, distribute and ship it to Best Buy, make room for it on a shelf, and pay some teenager to man the registers to sell it to you. Stealing real CD's actually costs money.

When you download a digital copy of somethign from the internet (ex: 1's and 0's that string together to make musical sounds), it doesn't cost anyone anything (except what we pay for bandwidth and electricity). Unless you specifically planned on purchasing an album, but decided not to because you got it for free off the internet, you are not depriving the artists of any revenue. Am I a "thief" because I decide to read books instead of buying albums? After all, by buying books instead of buying albums, I am depriving the musician of his/her royalty...

The point is, stealing is different from copyright infringement. If you photocopy a book from the library so you can use it as a source in an essay, are you a thief? Nope, just a copyright violator.

This has nothing to do with honor by the way. It has to do with market forces attempting to find an equilibrium. Until music prices are drastically torn down from their artificially high (and absurd) levels, alot people are going to say "screw you record companies, I'll download it instead until you get your act togehter." It's sort of a form of civil disobedience. Hell, now that I'm old enough to be able to afford all the music I want, I still say "screw you record companies" because I refuse to be overcharged. I just don't think today's music is worth the money. I wouldn't be buying music today whether the internet existed or not, because it mostly sucks, and even the "good" stuff just doesn't seem worth 15 bucks compared to other means of entertainment (like video games, books, terrorism, the great outdoors, etc).

So, you say "dishonorable," I say "market adjustment."

Re:And no one is shocked

[shmlco]

Okay, so now we've backed down from the "average" HS/C teen to the "average" mp3 collector. Fine.

But now I'll have to take exception with the other "fact" you tried to slip in there, that they're "the ones responsible for the majority of piracy".

Because unless you have some hard evidence to backup your assertions, I tend to believe that the "majority" of the problem lies with the "tens (hundreds) of thousands" of teens who individually download and trade dozens of this week's most popular songs.

But I will grant you that the "collector" who wastes gigabytes downloading music he'll never even hear probably (all you can download subscription service?) wouldn't pay anyway.

But since that individual isn't the real problem, he isn't relevant to the discussion. Makes a nice straw man though...

Re:And no one is shocked

[Rei]

backed down from the "average" HS/C teen

Seing as the "average" HS/C teen isn't file sharing, they're not contributing to piracy, so I figured that they don't really matter.

unless you have some hard evidence to backup your assertions ... But since that individual isn't the real problem ... nice straw man though

Naturally, according to you, I must produce hard evidence on a study that has never been done, but to back up your side, you provide nothing. All both of us can go on is anecdotal evidence. My anecdotal evidence says that collectors download a lot more as a whole, and that they're not rare in the least bit among those who do file sharing. Where are these "only swap a few cds that I would otherwise be buying in a store" people that you're describing?

Re:And no one is shocked

[yuriismaster]

Dude, don't give away phase II!

You must mean Order 66?

Re:And no one is shocked

[Alioth]

The thing is...these copy protection schemes frustrate fair use badly, but don't really affect piracy. Consider this: most people pirating music online are quite happy with 128kbit MP3 files. They will also likely be happy with an analogue recording from the line-out of a DVD-A encoded at 128kbit/s. People who want to pirate music will go to the effort of re-recording the music.

However, someone who just wants to have the convenience of hearing their music regardless of what computer they are using, or perhaps be able to listen to it on the hi-fi upstairs, and when they are working, in the computer room upstairs without having to fish out the disc are frustrated. They aren't stealing, they aren't doing anything morally wrong. The pirates will still pirate regardless of what measures are put in place, but people just wanting to hear their music anywhere will just find it annoying (and probably won't buy DVD-A discs, I certainly won't be buying any).

The day all music is DRMed such that it can't be trivially cracked is the day I stop buying music. I'm not interested in pirating it, after all I've bought three albums of Magnatune this week and it's trivial to listen to the entire albums for free at Magnatune if you are a cheapskate. Part of the reason I'm willing to buy from them is that they do NOT drm the music, so I can put it on my PowerBook, or put it on my Linux workstation, or on my NFS server and just pick it up from anywhere in the house. Part of the reason I'm willing to buy music from iTunes is that JHymn exists and it's trivial to strip off the DRM so I can put the music on my server and listen to it anywhere.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Alioth]

It's already been done.

http://www.magnatune.com/

The music they sell is not DRMed. It is good quality. You can download the music as lossless FLAC if you so wish, or VBR mp3, or ogg...

Re:And no one is shocked

[StikyPad]

What if it's just a copy of your nose?

Re:And no one is shocked

[ElitistWhiner]

>How do you stop it being fashionable?
>

Eliminate the inter-medium. Point in Fact:
Live replaced by vinyl
Vinyl replaced by mag tape
Mag tape replaced by Compact Disc
CD replaced by Digital?...

MTV is the odd technology that overwhelms the senses. Live Performance is the analog equivalent which is superior to TV but doesn't scale.

Bands are bulk taping Live Performances for fans- that's cool! Scale that into the digital sphere like HDTV: FREE as in free beer. That would be the ultimate guy download and chick click.

Re:And no one is shocked

[zonker]

No, he means Plan 9.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

Raise your hands if you've ever bought a DVD-A?

I thought so.

People rip CDs, not DVD-A.

Re:And no one is shocked

[glitch23]

As far as your tshirt comment goes, what makes things like that "fashionable" by some people's standards is the fact that it attracts attention especially with all the 10 year old's friends who will want one too when the first person in their clique gets one. They will each tell their parents "Bobby has one so why can't I have one?" and of course if his parents are real parents they will say "because we're your parents and we say no". "Fashionable" sometimes equals "popular", "attention-grabbing", or "rebellious" to teenagers, hence the tshirt and for those parents who buy it for their children they don't complain about the sale of the shirt because they are liberal enough to think it is okay for their child. For those parents who don't buy it they wouldn't go into the store to begin with and therefore probably never end up knowing what the store is up to to even complain about the situation.

Re:And no one is shocked

[azbrdhntr]

YES.....death to them ALL....
nothing for you to see here,please move along. why dont slash tags work?

Re:And no one is shocked

[RichardX]

Scenario 1) Someone steals a record from a record store. Result: Artist doesn't get the royalty.

Scenario 2) Someone downloads a new record, instead of buying it. Result: Artist doesn't get the royalty.

Call it whatever the hell you want, the result is the same. Not everyone is as honorable as those who go out and buy records they downloaded and liked.

Scenario 3) Someone buys the CD second hand at a record shop/car boot sale/yard sale. Result: Artist doesn't get the royalty.

Scenario 4) Someone buys the CD from a highstreet record store. Artist is a small-to-medium name on a big label. Result: Artist gets a very small slice which, statistically speaking, they will probably end up paying back to the record company anyway. Record company gets a nice large slice.

Scenario 5) Someone downloads all the artist's songs from P2P networks, but also goes to see them play live at various gigs, and buys merchandise direct from them/their website. Result: Artist gets a pretty damn good cut of the profits.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Halvy]

Fair use is one thing, stealing from the people who create and make the things you would enjoy is something else entirely...

Yea, but we're only stealling alittle..

I mean, you scumbags at the riaas have the time to put young kids in jail for downloading and listening to their favorite artists..sooo, we can't be doing tooo good a job of interfereing with your illegal businesses.

But I'll tell you what, arswhole, .. we'll try better from now on!! :)

Re:And no one is shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

Naw, it'd be more like:

"We got dis RIAA contract we'd like you to sign... umm, sign right here. Yeah, it's a real luxury havin' a good drummer... it'd be a shame if he were to, say, leave your band for better pay..."

Re:And no one is shocked

[evilviper]

So, your average HS/college teenager with 50,000 mp3s is going to buy them all (at 1$ a pop, 50,000$?). Be serious.

So the average teenager has 50,000 mp3s? Be serious. Just try and provide some evidence to back that up, or stop making noise.

Besides, since when does each song, regardless of length, cost $1? I've bought plenty of CDs with about 2 dozen songs, for $10. Not to mention that it isn't so much money when spread out over a couple decades of collecting... Hell, your insane $50,000 mark is only $200/month over 20 years.

Would they buy a tenth? Not a chance.

I anxiously await your sources for these assertions. Studies, surveys, anything you like that you didn't just make-up on the spot.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

And the hyprocrisy continues. It's all right to liberate copyrighted works by _corporations_ but we must defend things protected by the GPL.

Re:And no one is shocked

[connorbd]

Welllllll...

48KHz is about as good a sampling rate as you're going to get for most mastering projects, and for what it's worth is probably overkill unless you're recording to digital to begin with (analog just doesn't have the dynamic range), and usually it's going to be 44.1KHz because that's what CDs use. The 96KHz stuff is there, but that puts the dynamic range of the sample well into ultrasonic territory, which I'd suspect you'd more feel than hear. (I honestly believe a lot of audiophile chatter is placebo effect.) Maybe you can percieve the high harmonics in some way, but it might be akin to "seeing" x-rays -- not so much percieving the sound itself but its effects on your body.

As for surround sound, I can make a good case for surround for live music -- done properly it can do a good job of taking the acoustics of the venue into account, so there's that. And one could certainly do music designed specifically for surround, but that would probably be more experimental than anything else -- honestly, the nature of the music would be lost on someone not using surround. Stereo is pretty much all most people have, and affordable surround (i.e. home theatre in a box systems) are almost exclusively targeted at the movie-watching public.

What it generally comes down to is that while DVD-A and SACD have objective, quantifiable advantages on paper, they don't offer anything to the general music-buying public. I'll be a believer when the underground starts playing with surround in a big way -- I suspect that surround would make for some interesting dance music for example. Until then I don't think a killer app exists for the advanced audio discs. They solve a problem limited to a very small part of the record-buying public. No, I still think the technology is best applied to video applications, where surround audio can complement the visuals.

Re:And no one is shocked

[eremitic]

I always thought phase two was: 2. ??? Followed shortly by: 3. Profit!

Re:And no one is shocked

[r_jensen11]

And the hyprocrisy continues. It's all right to liberate copyrighted works by _corporations_ but we must defend things protected by the GPL.

But to us, there is a difference. For finding a hack for the encryption, we are able to use what we PURCHASE. Merely cracking the encryption isn't immoral. What's questionably immoral is copying thus mentioned disks when not owned by self, or selling disks copied from said disk for profit (aka Piracy). If I purchase a DVD-A, why should I not be able to:
A) Create a backup, so I don't have to use the original copy in the car, or so I can lose it (should the said car become stolen)
B) Be able to play it on any system that I want and that is physically capable. Why should *NIX/*BSD users have to purchase a copy of OSX or XP in order to listen to music? C) Convert disk to another format, such as ogg or flac, so that we can bring the music with us on our portable music players (iRiver is my choice, been spotting them before BestBuy began trying to make them popular....)

Re:And no one is shocked

[DeadChobi]

Actually, if you copy a page out of a book for use as a source in an essay, technically it's fair use, as you have no intention of profiting materially for the use of that page. You just needed something with a better memory. What you're suggesting with that analogy is that me quoting someone somehow violates their copyright.

Re:And no one is shocked

[NarrMaster]

Scenario 1) Someone steals a record from a record store. Result: Artist doesn't get the royalty.
Scenario 2) Someone downloads a new record, instead of buying it. Result: Artist doesn't get the royalty.

In scenario 1, there was a material loss in that the store lost 1 record which results in them not being able to sell it (to the person who stole it or anyone else). No such loss of material occurs in scenario 2.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Stochio]

5.1 for live sound? Doubtful. Instead of a pan knob on each channel, you'd have a joystick? Me thinks not. The pan pot on channels serves a nice dual purpose of L/R for stereo mixes and odd sub / even sub for sub master assignment. Most live mixes are in mono anyways - what do they need 5.1 for? The most useful purpose for a stereo mix in a live setting is for feedback avoidance. If a performer steps in front of a stack to interact with the crowd, the engineer can pan his instrument to the opposite stack to avoid feedback. And that's about it. The vast majority of the audience isn't in a position to listen to a stereo mix. In conclusion, I disagree. 5.1 will not be a killer app for live sound applications.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Qrlx]

But how do you do that?

Have kids, and teach them what you know.

It's never been the majority that rules, at least not in the past few thousand years of European civilization.

"Maybe we have a chance" -- NSF terrorist (Deus Ex)

Re:And no one is shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

NFS, you should be ashamed of yourself, Are you serious? Do you have any idea how dumb that is unless you 100% trust every machine and every piece of software on your entire network.

Unless your using ro and store nothing sensitive on NFS, then you can forget everything I just wrote.

To reiterate, Vanilla-NFS trusts blindly any packet claiming to be from a given IP address, no authentication.

Re:And no one is shocked

[TheoMurpse]

Actually, just so you know, that isn't fair use in the United States.

OK, that is what I was going to post until I went out and did some research. According to Matt Oppenhaim (RIAA representative),

Way back in 1992, Congress drew a distinction between analog recording (on that tape recorder) and digital recording (the computer). In legislation enacted that year, they said that infringement actions cannot be filed against consumers who engage in copying using analog devices and certain types of digital devices on which royalties have been paid and which protect against serial copying of the copy.

This was in response to the question

Why is it legal to record a song from the radio while recording a song from the Internet is considered theft and criminal?

Shamelessly lifted from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/june03/copyright 9a.html

Re:And no one is shocked

[Bobsledboy]

Actually they do get the royalty for the copy stolen from the store... because the store has already bought it from the record label.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Goodl]

many of the truths we cling to depend greatly upon our own point of view

Re:And no one is shocked

[ccandreva]

When I was a teenager we almost always managed to the find money for that which we valued.

When I was a teenager, we would borrow friend's albums and make tapes. We would also make tapes off the radio.

Copying music is nothing new.

Re:And no one is shocked

[andrew_0812]

The problem is that if the RIAA ever found your mp3s, even though they were obtained legally, and not via P2P file sharing, or even CD ripping, or anything like that, you would be hard pressed to prove your case in court. And you would have to spend a fortune on court fees to do it. You would probably be advised to settle out of court and pay the RIAA. If you were ripping CD's, you could get by with it by proving that you had the originals. But there is no way to prove that you taped the mp3s off of the radio. Even though they are radio quality. I know this isn't likely to happen, especially if you aren't using P2P. There is little to no chance the RIAA would know about you or target you if they did, but the problem still exists. They have way too much free reign with regards to our fair use rights.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and then by their profits going down, you give them more ammo for their DRM fire and more legislative muscle to keep out competition. Actually, the safest thing to do is to keep buying their stuff at the same level, but to buy more from their competitors at the same time, ensuring that their competition will eventually become at least as big and keep legislators from interfering in the market.

Re:And no one is shocked

[Ilgaz]

Fair use my ass, I wonder how much $$$ he got to guarantee Sony SACD is the future format for high definition audio.

Also I bet SACD license prices will go higher now, say bye to DVD Audio capability without extra price unless you buy Philips or Sony decks.

Re:And no one is shocked

[ross axe]

Pillock. Given that he's NFSing music around his home network, I'd say every single one of your conditions could quite easily be satisfied.

Re:And no one is shocked

[torstenvl]

False. Wrong wrong wrong.

Scenario 1) Someone steals a record from the record store. Result: The store owner is out the wholesale price. The artist still gets his royalty. The RIAA still gets their fees.

Scenario 2) Someone downloads a new record, instead of buying it. This scenario cannot be proven to exist, because of the "instead of buying it" clause. You don't have the ability to see what would have been. Nobody does. Moving on, who do you think put the music up? You have two options: someone who got the music from the artist or someone who - alone or as part of a group - totally independently created the music and performed it. If it was independent, then it in no way violates copyright. If that someone got it from the artist, chances are the artist got royalties.

I'd also like to take issue with your use of the word "download" as though it were illegal. Even if current copyright law were valid, there are numerous download services (Napster, iTunes, Rhapsody) which are fully compliant with said law.

On something of a tangent I'd like to ask if you feel you've been misled about this. Ask yourself this question: is it right for a party X (RIAA) to claim that a group of people Y (us) owes X money to use a lossy downsampling (MP3) of accoustical data (album) produced by a certain interpretation (performance) of a piece of intellectual work (sheet music) based on the collective creation of Y (generational culture) and methods now largely in the public domain and/or available freely academically (music theory)?

The Constitution says that Artists and Scientists are allowed exclusive market rights for a limited time on their creations. It does not say that they can sell these rights. It does not say the limits can be extended indefinitely. It does not say that they own interpretations of their work. It does not say they own data collected about the interpretation of the work. It does not say they own all samples of any such data. It does not say that consumers are restricted from work-/sound-/look-alikes in the privacy of their homes.

MOOOOOOO!

[repruhsent]

Kathleen Fent, that is, Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda's wife, is most definitely not human - she is a cow. If you would like evidence of this fact, look no further than Taco's Own Webpage. Check out the Photos section and have a peek at his wedding pictures. I don't think it takes a genius to deduce from this picture and this picture that Kathleen was most definitely wearing a plus size wedding gown. Look at all the chins! More than likely this is the reason she is not wearing a wedding veil during the ceremony; it would be difficult to pack the hundreds of chins underneath a layer of material that thin and make them look right. This is the same principal used in determining that Kathleen would most likely look revolting in a swimsuit; tiny bits of clothing look just stupid next to massive amounts of flesh. This is the reason why her wedding dress covers the vast majority of her body. Actually, in this photo, something bulges out of her a little below the waist. Maybe it's a penis! Maybe she's a bull!

I think it's safe to say that Rob and Kathleen should be divorced immediately; Shamu^H^H^H^H^HKathleen most definitely should be married to (or at least dating) CowboiKneel, as their weights are complementary. Just think of the fun they could have! The could hang around at Kentucky Fried Chicken and count each other's chins whilst dining on fried chicken skin covered in that brown gravy stuff. Kathleen might even win! But, surely enough, no; everyone knows that no one is as fat as Cowboi.

Moving back to the issue at hand, though - you can find more evidence of her species being that of the bovine type at Kathleen's rather dull website, sarcasta.net. Notice her obsession with "haybles?" These are frequently found in fields with, you guessed it, cows. Coincidence? I don't think so. The nail in the coffin proving her non-human status is the section of her website devoted to drawings of cows. Who, other than a cow, could draw bovine so accurately? No one, that's who.

In closing, I'd like to say that the fact that Kathleen is a cow just can't be argued. There is simply just too much evidence leading to the conclusion that Kathleen is of the bovine persuasion to be ignored. One thing's for certain, though - Taco will never run out of milk for his Wheaties in the morning, will he? Moreover, if Taco's alone with his wife and starving, he could simply take a chunk out of her and fry it up, creating a tasty treat.

Re:MOOOOOOO!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like feeding trolls, but at the end of the day, Taco is married and you probably never will be.

Re:MOOOOOOO!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. What does that have to do with anything? I think the statistic is that over half of all married couples will get divorced. Besides, some people (I am somewhat tempted to do this myself) get married simply for the financial benefits. At least then I wouldn't be pussy-whipped. Most guys probably don't want to ever get married. Have you ever been around married men? They are a disgrace to mankind. They are pratically begging to be put out of their misery. Sooner or later, all married men will be broken.

Re:MOOOOOOO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's not like Taco is so svelt himself.....

Oh god, that is funny

[sstamps]

Sadly, they will never learn.

Re:Oh god, that is funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they just havent resorted yet to the foolproof way to protect the music.

Re:Oh god, that is funny

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not even trying to learn. Their grasping hands keep reaching out to hold tight the old world they once ruled, yet it inevitably grows larger than their limited thoughts and powers can encompass.

Their only short-term hope lies in using force (like the DMCA) to strengthen their grip. Even that will fail as those they seek to subjugate recognize how flimsy the pretext of "legitimate" control is.

Their method is fundamentally flawed if they want our cooperation; their true motives are made clear as they continually trumpet a false entreaty to "defend the creative process" while they implement measures and laws that do everything possible to remove creative power from every human outside their consortium.

slashdotted already

[sithsasquatch]

Anyone got a mirror?

Re:slashdotted already

[Anonymous Coward]

DVD-Audio's CPPM can be got around with a WinDVD patch
Posted by Seán Byrne on 06 July 2005 - 09:50 - Source: Rarewares

When DVD-Video's encryption had been broken about 6 years back, the next generation of the Audio CD, DVD-Audio had been delayed for several months. It was originally to use the CSS2 encryption scheme, but the breaking of CSS meant the music industry no longer wanted anything to do with CSS in the new upcoming DVD-Audio format at the time. As a result, DVD-Audio took on Content Protection for Pre-recorded Media (CPPM), a much more advanced copy-protection system, which includes Key Blocks and watermarking and allows revocation (for compromised devices).

It was not long ago that DVD-Audio playback software came to the PC. For example Creative's SoundBlaster Audigy 2 comes with a DVD-Audio as well as WinDVD's DVD-Audio add-on. So, rather than try to compromise the DVD-Audio's encryption itself, someone has succeeded in making a patch that uses WinDVD to perform the decryption and playback, but instead pipes the decrypted audio output to the hard drive instead of the sound card. The patch which includes several tools requires WinDVD 5, 6 or 7 to work.

Several tools to work with DVD-Audio (read: ripping)
They require WinDVD 5, 6 or 7 installed, as they don't do the decryption themselves, and instead patch WinDVD to output the decrypted stream to disk instead of the sound card.
The tools are:

* DVD-A ripper: Intended to decrypt CPPM protected AOB and VOB files on DVD-Audio discs.
* PPCM ripper: Intended to capture Packed PCM (MLP) stream (stereo or multichannel) to .WAV files.
* DVD-A Explorer: Intended to peep&grab on DVD-Audio tracks (PCM and Packed PCM).

This tool is available at Rarewares here.

While InterVideo is likely to update its software to block the use of this patch, it appears that DVD-Audio's CPPM has been compromised at least in DVD-Audio discs up until this time or until the keys used in the current versions of WinDVD that this tool works on are revoked in upcoming DVD-Audio disc releases. However, this would also mean that WinDVD users would be forced to update their software to play future DVD-Audio discs.

Re:slashdotted already

[wo1verin3]

Since Rareware's hasn't been slashdotted yet, here is the link:

* DVD-A ripper: Intended to decrypt CPPM protected AOB and VOB files on DVD-Audio discs.
* PPCM ripper: Intended to capture Packed PCM (MLP) stream (stereo or multichannel) to .WAV files.
* DVD-A Explorer: Intended to peep&grab on DVD-Audio tracks (PCM and Packed PCM).

This tool is available at Rarewares here.

Yawn...

[nweaver]

So you can hack a software player to store the stream. In other news, Water is Wet.

Re:Yawn...

[un1xl0ser]

Yeah, but now you can have your own, Open Source player.

Re:Yawn...

[Mundocani]

No, it's still a yawn as there's nothing here to make an OpenSource player with. All that's been done is to hack WinDVD to save the stream to disk as it's played back. No breaking of the encryption, nothing to base an OpenSource player on.

Re:Yawn...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but now you can have your own, Open Source player.

Why don't you read the article and then get right on designing one based on it, then?

Hint: They didn't break the encryption itself, and this is of no use to you in building an OSS player.

Re:Yawn...

[misleb]

On a Mac, you wouldn't even need to do this. Audio Hijack can intercept any audio stream before it hits the sound card and save it to disk.

-matthew

Re:Yawn...

[Kazymyr]

...and TotalRecorder does the same on Windows.

Re:Yawn...

[Anonymous Coward]

But is there any software that'll play the full-resolution DVD-Audio content on a DVD-A disc? Most discs have alternate DVD-Video (Dolby Digital sound) tracks so that any DVD player can play them. So of course DVD Player.app can do those. But what about the actual DVD-Audio tracks? That's what we're interested in here!

I haven't looked recently, so I'm geniunely curious. Is there any such software for the Mac? And what about SACD? Can any standard drives even read those things yet? I want my high-resolution audio, dammit!!

dvd jon?

[Anonymous Coward]

where's dvd jon at?

Re:dvd jon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jon's only decent claim to fame was DeCSS. He hasn't done anything worthwhile since.

Re:dvd jon?

[mattspammail]

He is still around; he only focuses on Apple-related hacks AFAIK.

Re:dvd jon?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Oh yeah?

Re:dvd jon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm.. Yeah. He commented out a few lines of Google's open source video viewer so that it wouldn't check the hostname the video came from. That is not exactly worthwhile, and not even close to the same scale of DeCSS.

Re:dvd jon?

[MynockGuano]

That's probably the poorest example you could have come up with =P. I bet half the geeks who took a look at Google's patch did the same thing. We just don't have webpages that are constantly scrutinized by the press looking for something juicy and controversial to blow out of proportion.

I think the Apple iTunes DRM tug-o-war would be a better example of his more recent accomplishments.

Re:dvd jon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even then, Apple just forced it's users to upgrade. Nothing more than an inconvenience to everyone.

Re:dvd jon?

[ManxStef]

Firstly, he's a VLC *developer*, so it's no real surprise that he changed a few lines of (possibly his own) code to remove Google's limitations. Even so, it is admittedly a bit of a rubbish example to choose. Instead, let's try another one: who wrote the Apple/iTunes FairPlay DRM removal code? Here's a hint: it first appeared in VLC and was committed by a "jlj". Personally, I think the FairPlay crack is of a similar standing to DeCSS, though obviously not quite as widespread.

That took a while, eh?

[Eric Lai]

I'm a little surprised--why did it take so long for someone to do this? It seems that lately every freakin' copy protection scheme that comes out is cracked within minutes. Maybe Jon Johansen was asleep for this one? :)

Re:That took a while, eh?

[Jeffrey Baker]

Probably nobody uses DVD-Audio. The effort spent cracking the copy protection will be proportional to the popularity of the medium. When the DVD Audio section at your local record store is as large as the CD section, we may see some more time being spent on such things.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[rokzy]

> I'm a little surprised--why did it take so long for someone to do this?

because it wasn't until last week that someone actually bought a DVD-Audio disk

Re:That took a while, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Jon Johansen was asleep for this one? :)

Maybe everyone who cares about freeing their music hasn't bought into DVD Audio yet, and has instead gotten their music from CD or iTunes or some other place...

Re:That took a while, eh?

[b1t r0t]

I'm a little surprised--why did it take so long for someone to do this?

Because so few people care about DVD Audio? Most people's ears (and rooms) aren't good enough for 24/96 audio. My interest in high-end audio disc formats ends with DTS, which was a real clever hack in how it used a standard CDDA audio data stream.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[shoppa]

> why did it take so long for someone to do this?

There's not all that much interest in DVD-audio. PC sound systems are generally pretty crappy (yeah, right, that little wall-wart powered speaker really puts out 320 watts like it says on the box!).

There are advantages to putting a lot of audio on a single disk (no more "Wagner ring cycle on convenient 45's" for any readers old enough to remember what a 45 was) but I've never seen a publisher take real advantage of it. MP3's burned as regular data files seem to deal with this pretty nicely already.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[un1xl0ser]

I don't think that most of these "copy protection" stickers that everyone "cracks" involve a new layer of encryption.

They just make it harder to play an audio CD on a PC my using autorun.inf and other such nonsense. Those are all cracked in a few minutes because that's how long it takes to rip them on a fast Linux box.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[mpe]

I'm a little surprised--why did it take so long for someone to do this? It seems that lately every freakin' copy protection scheme that comes out is cracked within minutes.

In this context "comes out" means that the format is being bought by a significent amount of people.

Maybe Jon Johansen was asleep for this one?

Maybe they don't sell these kind of DVDs in Norway.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[thrillbert]

Probably nobody uses DVD-Audio. The effort spent cracking the copy protection will be proportional to the popularity of the medium.

You are correct! Perfect example would be SCO Unix.. there hasn't been a bug in that system in years.. maybe because the only people still using it is the SCO Group...

---
Hi Mom!

Re:That took a while, eh?

[slaker]

I must be nobody, then. I have a couple hundred DVD-Audio discs, and I'm very happy to see that someone has taken the effort to ensure that someday I'll be able to copy those discs.

High resolution, multichannel audio is a good thing - much better than lossy compression on crappy downloaded tracks. It's a shame more people haven't realized that.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[Jeffrey Baker]

Don't blame it on the people, blame it on the publishers. Your collection must consist of almost every DVD-A ever released. The DVD-A catalog just isn't that appealing to most people, and then there's the expensive and/or crippled players that lack full-resolution digital outputs. There's also consumer confusion regarding SACD vs. DVD-A. A format war, in other words.

If the situation were sane, people would buy more DVD-Audio.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news:
RIAA reported 1000% increase in DVD-Audio sales. No correlation with previous news is observed.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[cheesy9999]

Nothing was actually "cracked", they just piped the audio output from the WinDVD to the hard drive.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[slaker]

I think I have most Jazz and classical releases. There are more DVD-As (and SACDs - I have a couple hundred of them, too) than you think. It's mostly a matter of the disc being released on boutique labels (e.g. Chesky) that don't have tons of distribution, rather than mainstream (say, EMI).

DVD-A is really the format in the better position, since almost all DVD-A discs include a AC3 track that'll play in a standard DVD player. Sadly, DVD-A also has the far weaker catalog. There's no "Kind of Blue" or "The White Album" on DVD-A.

Anyway, there's a whole bunch of chicken and egg problems associated with high-res audio (you need 5 speakers, you need a decent catalog, you need widespread adoption of players, you need simple cabling), but I have done everything I can to support BOTH of the multichannel formats.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[Jeffrey Baker]

I don't even give a damn about the multichannel stuff. I'd like to see more releases of high-resolution stereo recordings from analog tape masters. Of course, we'll never see anything Sony owns on DVD-A.

I think a real problem for DVD-A is the previous two decades of direct-to-digital production. If a recording was made to 16/44.1 stereo masters, there's absolutely no point in releasing it on high definition multichannel media. The best you can hope for is to sound exactly like the CD, and what's more likely to happen is a corny surround remaster where the drum kit is inexplicably behind the listener. So there's this huge catalog of (mostly pop) music from the 80s and 90s made to low-definition digital formats, and they can never be improved by DVD-A nor SACD.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[timster]

Oh really?

Re:That took a while, eh?

[slaker]

Doesn't pop music always sound like crap anyway?

The studios should have mutliple tracks with which to arrange their music, even stuff from the last 2 years. Even if everything was digital, they still sampled more than 44kHz (I understand recordings have mostly been made at 48kHz or 96kHz for some time) and they still recorded the drums separate from the guitar separate from the vocal. They have something to work with, it just doesn't matter, because in that case the music is about being loud far more than it's about being any kind of nuanced.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[stilwebm]

If a recording was made to 16/44.1 stereo masters, there's absolutely no point in releasing it on high definition multichannel media.

This is true, but I believe most direct to digital (professional) recordings are recorded at 20bit or 24bit and 96KHz or higher and have been for the last few years. When 16bit/48KHz was the most common digital recording format, most artists/recording engineers still used high quality analog tapes for the recording process. Analog tapes are the source of many of the remastered to DVD-A and SACD releases on the market. These tapes provide much better quality than CDs, but without the error correction needed for mass-produced consumer products.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[slaker]

Er, that should be 20, not 2.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[Grishnakh]

You're missing something important: most people simply don't have audio gear of sufficient quality to make higher resolution formats worthwhile. And with consumer electronics all being made in China now as cheaply as possible because people value price over quality, this isn't about to change.

What's more, I really don't think most people could tell the difference anyway, because so many people have poor and/or damaged hearing thanks to all the loud noises we're exposed to constantly, or thanks to age.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[stalky14]

Same is true for the digital satellite services. DirecTV was cracked first because there was the highest demand. Dish Network wasn't cracked wide until DirecTV started to shore up its defenses. Digicipher and PowerVu (the main big-dish encryption schemes) haven't been cracked, not necessarily because they're more sophisticated, but because the same product could already be obtained from another source, so why bother.

In this case the strongest encryption mechanism is to have a competitor with a weaker one transmitting the same data.

Wise man once said...

[Xunker]

What was that saying?

"To view it, we have to decrypt them. If we can decrypt them, we can rip them."

The only "secure" media format is a CD laminated between two plates of steel.

Re:Wise man once said...

[Spy der Mann]

That's the problem with going digital. Is it our fault that media can be stored in computers now?

Re:Wise man once said...

[Professr3]

Unless you used a laser and sliced off the steel and a thin layer of the CD.

+5 Funny, +1 SmartAlec

Re:Wise man once said...

[mpe]

The only "secure" media format is a CD laminated between two plates of steel.

No doubt you could still extract the data from such a CD. AFAIK steel is not completly opaque to X-rays.

Re:Wise man once said...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only "secure" media format is a CD laminated between two plates of steel.

Not sure... I thing good-ol-sledge-hammer can crack it in no time.

Re:Wise man once said...

[pegr]

What was that saying?

"To view it, we have to decrypt them. If we can decrypt them, we can rip them."

That wise man was Bruce Schneier. Check out his book for a very readable yet detailed overview of crypto...

Re:Wise man once said...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I can see it or hear it, I can rip it. I think the greatest irony of all this is that ANALOG is the great equalizer in the fair use battle.

What I can't listen to that Velvet Revolver CD in my MP3 Deck in my car? I'll open it in Windows and agree to your silly EULA, then copy the stream @ 192kbps and then I'll illegally listen to the music that I legally bought, on a car stereo that I legally bought, burnt on a CDR that you even got a kickback from the sale of.

This DVD audio stuff isn't much different. You'll just need better equipment/software to record all the channels at once.

You can't see or hear digital... our eyes and ears are analog folks!

Re:Wise man once said...

[Xunker]

AFAIK steel is not completly opaque to X-rays.

Damn you. Damn you Salizar!

Re:Wise man once said...

[Takara]

Nooooooooooooooooo.

Re:Wise man once said...

[N1KO]

Ship it inside a Y2K bunker?

Re:Wise man once said...

[Anonymous Coward]

OK. I have a spare bunker that I'd be willing to let go of really cheap....

Why wasn't it done earlier?

[internetjunkiegeorge]

Surely they could use similar technologies as (some people) do by say, buying that little $100 thingy at circuit city or radioshack and plugging it into 2 dvd players so you can copy anything you want. Not really that hard... costs $100 plus 2 dvd players

Re:Why wasn't it done earlier?

[connorbd]

Andawhatnow?

Seems to me that's more something you do with video discs. The audio stuff uses a different encryption scheme, so I would tend to doubt you can do it that way -- your best shot would probably be the analog hole. The real issue is doing it digitally, and this is half a solution.

Always remember the hacker's credo

[KennyP]

"For every lock there is a key"

Gotta love fair use!

Visualize Whirled P.'s

Re:Always remember the hacker's credo

[Anonymous Coward]

"For every lock there is a key. But do not think that yours is the only one." --Thief 3 (Deadly Shadows)

Perhaps....

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps interest will grow in DVD-Audio now that consumers can exercise their fair-use rights. I know that I'll now consider it now that I can copy it and use it like a juke box in my living room.

Just wait...

[Sierpinski]

I bet in another 5 years, they'll come out with some ultra-new technology that is REALLY crackproof.

Its like Tide... its new and improved? You mean there are people STILL working on Tide? (Yeah I know, Seinfeld!)

Re:Just wait...

[Bluesy21]

Yeah, more like every few years they will come out with some ultra-new technology that is really crackproof. Then eventually someone will crack it; maybe not quickly, but it will be done.

The cycle will continue for some time. Personally I don't see how one side will ever win. Companies will always want to protect their intrests, and people will always want to be able to copy the material.

Re:Just wait...

[rpozz]

It's pretty much impossible. If one application or device can decode encrypted data into video/audio, then so can any other application or device. It's merely a matter of reverse-enginnering the encryption. Even if that fails, there's always streaming the audio/video straight to another computer. It only needs to happen once, and it's on P2P.

The only way to stop it is by very seriously limiting what computers can do. Even then, there's nothing stopping you plugging the output from the sound card into another device.

Re:Just wait...

[pla]

I bet in another 5 years, they'll come out with some ultra-new technology that is REALLY crackproof.

This particular crack makes a nice example of why that can't happen, ever - The author didn't actually crack CPPM, he just convinced an authorized player to do the dirty work for him.


On the down side, I expect that any DVD-As created after today will include all previous versions of WinDVD in their revocation list. That, however, makes me wonder about the legal implications of such revocation - If I have a legal copy of WinDVD, and I buy a legal DVD-A disc, but through no fault of my own someone has compromised my particular player - Who holds the purse-strings that the resulting lawsuits will dip into?

Re:Just wait...

[davidwr]

"The only way to stop it is by very seriously limiting what computers can do. Even then, there's nothing stopping you plugging the output from the sound card into another device."

This is exactly what industry wants. They want all devices with digital outputs to be "secure" - another word for crippled - to make sure the ONLY way to copy anything is via analog or, with their permission if you ask pretty please, low-quality digital output.

High-fidelity analog is fine for copying streaming single-channel-per-output data like a typical stereo CD, but doesn't work well for copying all but the simplest of video DVDs or for copying audio that has N tracks that are overlaid and send out to <N analog output channels.

Re:Just wait...

[IAmMaxHarris]

It's illegal to tell you how to use WinDVD to copy that disc.

It's just a matter of time before the enforcement comes along to fix the situation.

Re:Just wait...

[pla]

It's illegal to tell you how to use WinDVD to copy that disc.

Nonono, you missed my meaning...

This crack now exists for WinDVD. Nothing can un-do that fact. However, WinDVD's key for DVD can go on the revocation list. That won't just break WinDVD for people who use this patch, it will break it for everyone, on every disc released after the key revokation.

So that means a few thousand geeks now have the power to rip DVD-A for any discs pressed before today, and a few million(?) WinDVD owners need to buy new software just to play DVD-A discs pressed after today.


And therein I see the problem - I don't claim to have a "right" to rip DVD-A (I simply don't give a damn about whether I have that right or not - If I can physically do it, I will). But do the powers-that-DVD have the right to break the players of a much larger group of innocent legitimate users?

Re:Just wait...

[trezor]

But do the powers-that-DVD have the right to break the players of a much larger group of innocent legitimate users?

Ofcourse not. Probably not. Not really. That would be straight out fraud (or maybe even "theft"). But see them care, and see them get away with it.

Remember the revoked DVD-keys anyone?

Re:Just wait...

[Suicyco]

He meant that the DMCA makes it illegal to tell you how to use WinDVD to circumvent the copy protection. You can go to jail for telling somebody how to do this.

Re:Just wait...

[Qrlx]

actually, I don't. I know Xing was somehow "responsible" for making it easy to crack DeCSS, but whatever happened to Xing. I mean, who the *^#@ ever heard of Xing in the first place?

Actually, I heard of Xing, plenty of cheap CD-ROMs came with their software bundle back in the Clinton years... so I guess a better question is: Who the *^%@ ever heard of any real repercussions fron the DeCSS incident making their way back to Xing?

Slashdotted...

[Tod DeBie]

Can all of you please stop clicking on the cdfreaks story link so I can have a chance to read it?

Re:Slashdotted...

[Spad]

You'd think by now people would automatically try the Coral Cache version of the page when a link is Slashdotted.

Re:Slashdotted...

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd think by now that someone would have modified the slashcode to take a submitted url and alter it to USE the coral cache version of the link to keep the parent site from getting slashdotted out of existance.

Let me guess, this will get modded +5 Funny. Ohh! My powers of ./ ESP astound all, let me call Mr. Randy to claim that million of his.

Re:Slashdotted...

[MynockGuano]

You'd think by now that someone would have modified the slashcode to take a submitted url and alter it to USE the coral cache version of the link to keep the parent site from getting slashdotted out of existance.

...and make it inoperative for pretty much anyone viewing it behind a corporate firewall which blocks port 8080. Until there's an equivalent site that serves 'em over port 80, links will never be automatically altered in this manner.

Learn a lesson?

[balster neb]

Region coding on DVDs has caused enough headaches for people. The idea of having DVD audio disks that don't allow ripping to your computer is idiotic.

CSS for DVDs didn't stop ripped DVD movies being downloaded by millions. Why does the recording industry think that some new encryption scheme will stop music pirates? All such encryption does is make the lives of legitimate users hard.

Re:Learn a lesson?

[Grax]

Region coding is really more of a price-fixing scheme than a copy protection scheme. For a single user it is easy to circumvent by just buying a 2nd dvd player but it screws things up for someone wanting to import the Korean version of Star Wars Episode 3.5: A Nude Dope for sale in the US.

It allows the sellers of DVDs to sell high in countries with money but to sell low (still at a profit, of course) in countries with less money.

Re:Learn a lesson?

[thebatlab]

How does this harm regular consumers? Are we talking that price on players will go up? Or price on media?

Or is this new scheme something that requires a whole new player to understand it?

The CDFreaks link is down and I couldn't find anything on a quick google other than the specs. And I don't want to read a spec sheet!

Re:Learn a lesson?

[Anonymous Coward]

All such encryption does is make the lives of legitimate users hard.

Legitimate users? You mean people actually buy this stuff? Lol...

Re:Learn a lesson?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people might say that the pirates are making it hard on legitimate users, not the industry.

After all, they wouldn't be taking measures to protect their stuff better if cocksuckers weren't ripping it off and giving it away, now would they? Bet you didn't even think of that. Or very much else, for that matter. You're just another one of those drooling, froth-mouthed "information wants to be free" morons that doesn't even consider the argument he's making.

Re:Learn a lesson?

[Anonymous Coward]

So is that why Sony said they weren't even trying to stop the pirates cause they knew they couldn't stop them, they were just trying to stop the 'casual' copiers?

Copy Protection Is Dumb

[sigloiv]

Copy protection is just stupid. These companies spend all this money to prevent it from getting cracked, but it always does in the end. If some company was to just say "We're not going to use copy protection because people will get around it anyways" (or something around those lines) I would buy their product immediately.

Re:Copy Protection Is Dumb

[Ingolfke]

I would buy their product immediately.

Cool... would you burn me a copy or throw up a torrent?

Re:Copy Protection Is Dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you meant that if they leave off the copy protection and offered it at a reasonable price...

Re:Copy Protection Is Dumb

[mpe]

Copy protection is just stupid. These companies spend all this money to prevent it from getting cracked, but it always does in the end.

More to the point they have failed to learn the lessons of 20 or so years ago. Where all sorts of exotic copy protection techniques were tried with software.
The real irony is that it is quite possible that some of the users of cracked software have actually bought licences for it.

Re:Copy Protection Is Dumb

[Sandor at the Zoo]

More to the point they have failed to learn the lessons of 20 or so years ago.

Which lessons? A lot of software has copy protection on it. Most of the shareware I buy has a code I have to enter after I buy it. UT2K4 made me enter a code, then keep the DVD in the drive while I played it, at least through the first few versions. Microsoft and others have online activation crap.

All of this stuff can be circumvented, usually with a quick google.

So, it looks like the lesson learned has been "include copy protection, but don't make it too heinous on the customer, and don't bother trying to make it crackproof, because it won't be."

For the same reason you put locks on your doors (ain't gonna stop real burglars!) publishers put locks on their content.

Yes, it can be annoying, but in the days of perfect digital copies and high-bandwidth connections, keeping the honest people honest may be worthwhile. It's the publisher's content; they get to choose whether they want to lock it up or not.

Re:Copy Protection Is Dumb

[JPortal]

I'll sell you the goatse image on a CD - no copyright protection!

Re:Copy Protection Is Dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool... would you burn me a copy or throw up a torrent?

Nope. But you are certainly welcome to smell my socks.

Re:Copy Protection Is Dumb

[happyfrogcow]

i once threw up a torrent after eating some bad chicken wings and too way way way way too much Jolt.

bad chicken... mess you up! *barf*

Re:Copy Protection Is Dumb

[MarkRose]

throw up a torrent?

Please warn me before you do this, so I may stand back a few meters!

Re:Copy Protection Is Dumb

[Alsee]

would you burn me a copy or throw up a torrent?

No, go download the DRM-ripped version that already on P2P.

-

Slashdotted already?

[Chas]

Anyhoo, this is good news.

Now I can rip this stuff off to 64K MP3, then convert it over to Real, and finally through to it's final form as a DRM'ed WMA. ;)

Re:Slashdotted already?

[blyloveranger]

Dude, send me some of those songs so I can put them on my hacked cell.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Sycraft-fu]

That's what always cracked me up about the RIAA's parinoia over DVD-A. They burdened it with protections, set it so you can't get the full signal over a digital connection, etc. Why? Internet copying. Of course it seems the majority of Internet copying is 128k or less MP3s, often reencoded form another compressed format and/or recorded from an analogue line in.

The people who trade that kind of stuff are not going to bother sending DVD Audio around. I mean it is on the order of 50MB per MINUTE compressed.

The kind of people who have the money for a system that you can appreciate the extra detail on aren't going to squabble much about buying the discs.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[m50d]

Call me a philistine but that would be fine for me. The sound coming out of your speakers is only there to remind you, the real tune is inside your head, and it always sounds fine.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Octagon Most]

"... the real tune is inside your head, and it always sounds fine."

Except when the voices talk over it.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't count on it. 1080i HD movies are already prolifically traded on Usenet and P2P file sharing networks. I personally download 8-10 GB movies on a regular basis (and, yes, I DO have a sufficiently highres display to watch them on - a Dell 24 LCD).

Re:Slashdotted already?

[darkmayo]

I dont blame em.. DVDA is something for a season pro not a tight young pop singer.

Tools are at RareWares

[Anonymous Coward]

CDfreaks has nothing to do with this release. The guys from RareWares are the ones taking risks to bring these tools to the community.

http://www.rarewares.org/

Re:Tools are at RareWares

[Anonymous Coward]

CDfreaks has nothing to do with this release.
Informative? No one ever said CDFreaks had anything to do with it. Read the article summary again. It says "CDFreaks has the details." and a link on the CDFreaks site clearly references RareWares. Chill out, no ones thunder was silenced.

Re:Tools are at RareWares

[Anonymous Coward]

And I designed the page too, christ, I was so close to getting my design slashdotted. Bah! That would have been nice.

Ruairi

And no one is shocked-Human Nature.

[Anonymous Coward]

"We deserve our free use.

And we will take it by any and all means."

The constitutional right to be entertained must remain in force.

Re:And no one is shocked-Human Nature.

[Rei]

The constitutional right to be entertained must remain in force

That's what the Right to Arm Bears is all about :)

Re:And no one is shocked-Human Nature.

[ImaLamer]

Wait, I though it was a right to bear-arms....

Alternative discussion here

[doofusclam]

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?show topic=34368&st=0&p=310943&#entry310943/

Re:Alternative discussion here

[Canar]

Because I love recursion, here's a link to the Hydrogenaudio post discussing this comment.

A little early, boys and girls.

[ansible]

Geez, couldn't you at least wait until some good stuff was released on the format before cracking it?

Now the copyright cartel will probably just kill the format, and try again with stronger encryption.

This, of course, is not meant by me to imply that any form of mass-consumer DRM is at all uncrackable. They're all doomed in my view.

So I guess it is more fun this way. Crack it early, and hope they come up with something more interesting. More challenging.

Re:A little early, boys and girls.

[wormuniverse]

and it will be anothe challenge. they have to be surpassing any possible return on their investments.

Re:A little early, boys and girls.

[mpe]

Now the copyright cartel will probably just kill the format, and try again with stronger encryption.

The problem isn't so much the strength of the encryption. It's more that they are trying to use encryption to do something encryption isn't very good at doing.

This, of course, is not meant by me to imply that any form of mass-consumer DRM is at all uncrackable. They're all doomed in my view.

Hence they are often combined with legislation to attempt to outlaw cryptoanalysis.

Re:A little early, boys and girls.

[BillyBlaze]

I doubt it will be perceptible, but I think this will have if anything a positive effect on the market. Who buys DVD-Audio? My guess is mostly audiophiles, and mostly people with tons of their own CDs ripped to their PC. Once you rip stuff to your PC, you will realize how much a format that doesn't let you do that sucks. So to a large portion of the market, DVD-Audio discs just got a bunch more useful.

I'm not saying the effect will be huge, or even noticeable. For one, as mentioned, the industry can revoke the player's keys, which would prevent ripping new releases. (As well as screw anybody who owns WinDVD. Class action lawsuit anyone?) And as you say, they have only to take it off the market slowly, thus killing it while being able to say that piracy killed it (even if said piracy never occurs). But if there ever were a non-monopolized, non-overpowerful market, you would see a noticeable rise in sales.

Re:A little early, boys and girls.

[Anonymous Coward]

do to spending all this money, they can show they are losing money to piracy...

Re:A little early, boys and girls.

[Anonymous Coward]

By "cryptoanalysis", I assume you mean firing up one's warez copy of IDA Pro and finding where to insert NOPs in order to make a pirated copy for distribution on BitTorrent.

Codec?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of my DVD-Audio disks are two channel 24bit 96khz. What codec should I use? I am interested in lossless archiving of my disks. FLAC? Thanks for any input.

Re:Codec?

[Anonymous Coward]

FLAC seems to be one of the better choices. Its what I use.

Re:Codec?

[Alioth]

Ah. So you must be the other person with DVD-A disks after the guy who wrote the pipe-audio-to-disk thing...

Great

[iamjoltman]

That's great, now if only someone could figure out how to circumvent getting Slashdotted.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Start charging for getting slashdotted. It'll be solved in no time.

MIRROR / CACHE

[AyeRoxor!]

Good old coral cache

No Mirrors, use CORAL Link

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.cdfreaks.com.nyud.net:8090/news/12061

they can opt out of this arms race

[milktoastman]

I know this fight against the Man is so very romantic, but the companies can opt out of this arms race in which the hackers have the advantage. The more and more this encryption breaking is done, the industry will spend less and less money on developing new encryption schemes, and instead spend more and more on buying Senators and Representatives to pass draconian measures to prevent you from legally trying (thinking about how) to break the schemes.

Re:they can opt out of this arms race

[pete6677]

I don't doubt they will buy more representatives, but how exactly will they outlaw thoughts? Circumvention is technically illegal already, but that doesn't really change anything.

Re:they can opt out of this arms race

[crabpeople]

But then the future will look even more romantic!

think of it, "hey baby i just pirated you this barry white album. yeah i know it could have meant the chair for me, but baby, i got away...
Id do anything for you babe!"

"oh johnny!" *dramatic relief music*
.. later

sex.

Re:they can opt out of this arms race

[Sloppy]

I know this fight against the Man is so very romantic, but the companies can opt out of this arms race in which the hackers have the advantage.

Well, while the two are in bed, it's important to realize that "the Man" and "the companies" are two different entities. "The Man" in this case, is whoever came up with the goofy format. "The companies" are the media companies who sell (or would sell) music in this format. The reason this is important, is that when you fight against The Man, you are probably doing "the companies" a huge favor by legitimizing their format and making it so that their customers will have a way to play the music -- and therefore have a reason to buy it.

Yes, The Man will bribe more senators. But there's nothing you can do about that anyway. They'll either bribe the senators because someone cracked their protection scheme, or they will bribe more senators because no one cracked the scheme and therefore nobody is buying the disks. It's a lose/lose scenario.

Re:they can opt out of this arms race

[jZnat]

Yeah, we'll just outsource our encryption cracking. ;)

Re:they can opt out of this arms race

[UnknownSoldier]

well at least the first part was realistic. =P

The article

[54v4g3]

Considering the site already seems to be slashdotted...

---

DVD-Audio's CPPM can be got around with a WinDVD patch

Posted by Sean Byrne on 06 July 2005 - 09:50 - Source: Rarewares

When DVD-Video's encryption had been broken about 6 years back, the next generation of the Audio CD, DVD-Audio had been delayed for several months. It was originally to use the CSS2 encryption scheme, but the breaking of CSS meant the music industry no longer wanted anything to do with CSS in the new upcoming DVD-Audio format at the time. As a result, DVD-Audio took on Content Protection for Pre-recorded Media (CPPM), a much more advanced copy-protection system, which includes Key Blocks and watermarking and allows revocation (for compromised devices).

It was not long ago that DVD-Audio playback software came to the PC. For example Creative's SoundBlaster Audigy 2 comes with a DVD-Audio as well as WinDVD's DVD-Audio add-on. So, rather than try to compromise the DVD-Audio's encryption itself, someone has succeeded in making a patch that uses WinDVD to perform the decryption and playback, but instead pipes the decrypted audio output to the hard drive instead of the sound card. The patch which includes several tools requires WinDVD 5, 6 or 7 to work.

Several tools to work with DVD-Audio (read: ripping)
They require WinDVD 5, 6 or 7 installed, as they don't do the decryption themselves, and instead patch WinDVD to output the decrypted stream to disk instead of the sound card.
The tools are:

- DVD-A ripper: Intended to decrypt CPPM protected AOB and VOB files on DVD-Audio discs.
- PPCM ripper: Intended to capture Packed PCM (MLP) stream (stereo or multichannel) to .WAV files.
- DVD-A Explorer: Intended to peep&grab on DVD-Audio tracks (PCM and Packed PCM).

This tool is available at Rarewares here [http://www.rarewares.org/others.html%5D.

While InterVideo is likely to update its software to block the use of this patch, it appears that DVD-Audio's CPPM has been compromised at least in DVD-Audio discs up until this time or until the keys used in the current versions of WinDVD that this tool works on are revoked in upcoming DVD-Audio disc releases. However, this would also mean that WinDVD users would be forced to update their software to play future DVD-Audio discs.

field of dreams

[Anonymous Coward]

If you encrypt it, they will hack.

Software page

[Anonymous Coward]

Link to software

"DVD Audio Tools", second from bottom.

Re:Software page

[bdipert]

Appears to be removed now. Anyone have another link?

It's a start...

[MynockGuano]

So, rather than try to compromise the DVD-Audio's encryption itself, someone has succeeded in making a patch that uses WinDVD to perform the decryption and playback, but instead pipes the decrypted audio output to the hard drive instead of the sound card.

While certainly useful for WinDVD users who aren't able to do this natively (guessing that Windows can't do this redirection natively, hence the news story), this is really "circumvention" at its most basic level. Well, almost...one step up from sticking a tape recorder next to your speakers. Not quite the "fair use" that will "break open" the DVD-Audio market that many posters will no doubt clamor over, and nowhere near a true solution to the problem.

And to those familiar with this patch: Is the output even in a standard format capable of more than two channels?

Re:It's a start...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a perfect digital copy.

Re:It's a start...

[m50d]

Is it that, or is it intercepting the decrypted stream before it's decoded? Like using mplayer -streamdump to rip files from web streaming video servers. If so, it is a big thing. Seems possible, and makes me wonder if someone could disassemble windvd and take the decryption code out.

Re:It's a start...

[CodeBuster]

code obfuscation and assembly mixers/manglers make disassembly of compiled code a tiresome and nearly impossible task. It is like taking a four course meal and throwing it in the blender, it still provides the same nutritional value, but it is not possible to separate the apple pie from the mashed potatoes after the compiled assembly has been obfuscated/mangled by these tools. It would probably be easier to re-write your own DVD Audio player software from scratch as an open source project than it would be to try and disassemble software which was compiled in such a way as to prevent just such an attack.

Re:It's a start...

[AuMatar]

You apparently haven't done any reversing recently. Tools have come a long way- you don't need to manually translate assembly code until the very end. Its really not that hard- the trick is to target the section of code you really want decoded, and to use debugging tools. For something like this- put a breakpoint in the functions that make calls to the OS to play sound. See what buffer is being passed. Put a memory breakpoint on the buffer. See where its being written. Track the data backwards, using more breakpoints. It would take a few days of effort for a decent reverser, but it wouldn't be horrendously difficult.

Re:It's a start...

[slavemowgli]

I've got to agree with this. Reverse engineering an obfuscated binary may seem like a very daunting task at first, but it certainly can be done. Take a look at the Honeynet Project's Scan of the Month 33, for example; reading the answers is quite interesting, even for someone who (like me) otherwise has no practical knowledge regarding reverse engineering. :)

Re:It's a start...

[CodeBuster]

The obfuscator that I use for my .NET assembly DLLs renames all of the non-public variables, methods, and references to names like A, a, b, etc. and overloads each name as many times as it can before it actually compiles the assembly. If the assembly is disassembled then the code will something like the following:

public class A : B
{
public void a(int b, string c)
{
// Do something here
}
}

so yes the code will be decompiled, but it will not be in a form that will be very readable to the average human programmer. The obfuscators are designed to make code look like it did in the old Fortran days when people used letters and other non-obvious names for variables, functions, and files. This has been shown time and again to lead to massive headaches in maintenance, readability, and understandability of the code, although from the standpoint of the computer the program runs the same as its non-obfuscated version. Is obfuscation a silver bullet? No, the determined attacker will still be able to decipher your code given enough time and tenacity, but at the very least obfuscation and instruction mixing ratchet up the difficulty several orders of magnitude. At some point the attack becomes difficult enough that all but the most determined decide its not worth the trouble.

Re:It's a start...

[AuMatar]

Does it make it harder? Sure. Does it make it hard? No. I've done reverse engineering. The first thing I'd do in this case, as I said, is run it in a debugger and put a breakpoint on the Windows API call to feed data to the sound card. There *must* be a function to do so. When that is called, I'd look at the memory address being passed. I'd then use a memory breakpoint- this is a debugger command that stops excution when that memory is accessed, and find out where the buffer is being written. Trace back from there to find out where its being decoded.

The other option is to do the same from where the file is being read. Trap on read file, find out the buffer, trace the memory forward.

Unless you can stop the debugger (difficult, and works only on some debuggers), you will be unable to stop these techniques. They take time, yes. But not really all that much. I once completely decompiled a BIOS flasher from assembly to figuring out the entire program and rewriting it in C. Took me a week, and I was inexperienced. Doing so with modern tools and techniques would be much faster- I didn't even use a commenting decompiler. Obfuscators don't really do that much. More annoying are programs that use modified code requiring you to use only live techniques, but even those are not too bad (run it past the memory modification, dump memory, and then you can dead list as well).

Re:It's a start...

[CodeBuster]

Alright, but would you spend the time to debug trace the binaries for an entire sever product, Oracle xi for example, or would you just use a competing open source product instead? At some point you have to ask yourself the question: is it worth it? how much is my time worth? I agree with you 100 percent that what you say is entirely possible to do, but a week or month worth of developer time is worth more than the price of most retail software packages. If you are doing this out of hobby interest or self education then fine, but wouldn't you rather spend $100 for the average software package or use an open source product then decompile, refactor, and compile your own custom version? BTW...If you develop for a company and you get code through decompilation you should let the management know so they are at least aware of the risk (and get that in writing), that way if you ever get hauled into court they cannot point the finger at you and say that you did it without management knowledge and approval.

Re:It's a start...

[MassacrE]

But you can't have an open-source DVD Audio player, because to make a DVD Audio player you have to agree to enforce (and keep secret) the consumer copy-prevention mechanisms required.

Re:It's a start...

[AuMatar]

In this case, an open source solution doesn't exist. Otherwise I'd agree with you. But when you're looking to bypass copy protection or decode an unknown algorithm, the only thing to do is reverse.

Also, although I don't do this professionally, clean room techniques say 1 person should figure out the algorithm, and another person should code the version for your software. THis helps avoid copyright infringement.

Re:It's a start...

[tricorn]

You don't do decompiling and tracing like that to decompile an entire product. You do it so you can either figure out how it does something unusual, or how it does license management (so you can bypass it), or how a particular format or interface works (including encryption), or how it controls a proprietary device, or how it does something you want to change the behavior of so you can devise a patch.

Example: figure out how a DVD player determines that an inserted disk is a firmware upgrade, and figure out what format it needs to be in; then figure out where the menu functions are and add in a function to change the region and/or disable Macrovision. You don't need to trace the whole program, you're going to allow most of it to run as usual.

recording the stream

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since I started using audio on my computer I have been recording a lot myself. I assume this is still possible, so what's the big deal with cracking this stuff, other than the fact that you don't have to sit through it and do it manually (maybe that IS the big deal).

When I first heard about mp3 I just put a cd in my drive, played it and recorded the stream (using Sound Forge, but might as well have been using windows sound recorder) and then chopped up the wav and encoded to mp3. Is there something stopping people from doing that now, other than laziness?

In other news

[Timesprout]

GPL circumvented. Geeks suddenly dont find circumvented such a nice word anymore.

What was the purpose of DVD-Audio?

[angle_slam]

I was always under the impression that the reason DVD-Audio was developed was *NOT* to repalce CD, but to create a higher quality version marketed towards audiophiles and HT enthusiasts with 5.1.

But the reputation of the format here on /. is that it was created because they (the RIAA) wanted to prevent ripping. So which is it?

The problem with the "prevent ripping" choice is that, AFAIK, there are no releases on DVD-A that isn't also available on CD.

Re:What was the purpose of DVD-Audio?

[jfengel]

So which is it?

Both. It just depends on who you are.

The CD format is hopelessly unprotected, but it's also got a huge installed base. If you want people to change you're going to have to convince them that it's an upgrade: higher bit rate, better sepration, liner notes and titles. Then they can slip in what they really want: copy protection. That's the primary goal; the other features are the spoonful of sugar to make the bitter pill go down.

So both properties (features and copy protection) are the "real" reason. The former are the reason for consumers to upgrade; the latter is why the industry makes the upgrade available.

Re:What was the purpose of DVD-Audio?

[jandrese]

On the other hand, the last few times the industry tried this (DAT, 8-Tracks, SVHS...) have not been that well recieved. The industry would have to cut the prices on the DVD-Audio discs below that of CDs to get people to swich, and there is no way those greedy bastards are going to do that.

Re:What was the purpose of DVD-Audio?

[Reverberant]

On the other hand, the last few times the industry tried this (DAT, 8-Tracks, SVHS...) have not been that well recieved.

Well, 8-track was popular, but it came out right before Phillip's cassette tape format took off, and was supplanted. Consumer DAT was basically killed by the record industry because of piracy concerns, but has proved popular with pros.

I'd be willing to bet that if the recording industry hadn't messed with it, DAT would have replaced cassette tapes - even with it's limited market back in the 90's, Sony Walkman DAT's could be purchased for under $500, and 2-hour DAT tapes could be bought for less than $8. If the market was one or two orders of magnitude larger, prices could have approached the levels of portable CD-players.

Now SVHS? That was a failure. ;)

Re:What was the purpose of DVD-Audio?

[angle_slam]

I don't think I phrased my question properly.

CDs were always intended to replace LPs and cassettes. DVDs were intended to replace VHS. HD-DVD (or Blu-Ray) is intended to replace DVD. Were DVD-A and SACD intended to replace CD? The coverage I've seen of them always discussed them as supplements to CD, for the discriminating listener. And never intended to be the primary music distribution format.

Re:What was the purpose of DVD-Audio?

[nzkbuk]

This could be done 1 of 2 ways
1) CD get phased out. Sorry the next release of [big name artist] is going to be on DVD-A only

2) DVD-A's are priced $1 below their CD equivilent for 3-5 years for people to switch. Once Market has reached a critical mass do 1 for 6 months then start putting the prices back up claiming piracy etc

Re:What was the purpose of DVD-Audio?

[Tim Browse]

Neither, I would guess. The media companies love new formats, because they get to resell all their content again on the new format (cf what happened when CDs were launched). They just like having new formats so they can sell the same stuff again. (Except when the new format can be transferred over a computer network, of course.)

There may have been other considerations, but that was probably the main reason for doing it.

Re:What was the purpose of DVD-Audio?

[FreshnFurter]

Quite naievely, I would say to enhance quality. I own exactly one DVD-Audio disc and play it on a 5.1 Creative Labs soundcard. It is the absolute only reason I boot to Windows. I have the same record in vinyl and on CD (remastered) and I must say the quality is absolutely stunning. Warmth of vimyl combined with crispness of the CD and 5 separate channels help you to feel exactely surrounded by the players. Unfortunately, the DVD-audio catatlogue absolutely sucks there is almost nothing there. I would kill for a good rendition of a Bach Cantate (Phillipe Herreweghe if you are reading this, go for it!). I haven't heared the SACD format yet on something like this, their catalogue is somewhat more extensive. Looks Like Betmax deja vue all over again!

Re:What was the purpose of DVD-Audio?

[Alioth]

The thing is...it won't work. DVD is rapidly replacing VHS because it's just SO MUCH BETTER than VHS. Much more convenient (random access, no rewinding, tougher) and much better quality.

CDs rapidly overtook records because...again, convenience - little 5 inch disk instead of a 12-inch disk, much easier to play (just pop it in the player, no messing around with needles and cleaning the disk slavishly each time) and MUCH better sound quality.

But DVD-A vs CD? I bet 99 out of 100 people can't tell the quality difference and the disk is the same size - absolutely no convenience gains over conventional CDs. And it's actually worse - you can't copy the songs to put on your MP3 player or laptop!

DVD-A will be a flop because when all things are considered it's worse than CD - less convenient because it's difficult to rip for use on your laptop or computer or MP3 player, and the quality gain is so negligable hardly anyone apart from audiophiles will actually notice. Why would anyone buy a less useful product?

Re:What was the purpose of DVD-Audio?

[angle_slam]

1) CD get phased out. Sorry the next release of [big name artist] is going to be on DVD-A only

I don't see this happening. DVD-A is too much of a niche format to risk losing the revenue from a platinum artist. But maybe after:

2) DVD-A's are priced $1 below their CD equivilent for 3-5 years for people to switch. Once Market has reached a critical mass do 1 for 6 months then start putting the prices back up claiming piracy etc

#1 could work if done after #2. For 3-5 years, enough people have bought DVD-A players to make it worthwhile. Then BAM, 50 Cent's new release is DVD-A only.

DVD-What?

[dema]

I imagine the only reason it took so long is because no one gives a damn about DVD-Audio (: The last DVD-Audio disc I actually saw was the test one that came with my previous DVD player.

Re:DVD-What?

[Morinaga]

My Acura TL can play DVD-Audio in surround. It's actually quite impressive when you can find the Audio to purchase.

Re:DVD-What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh man, I was recently wondering if any car stereos could do surround yet. It's almost a perfect environment (except for that nasty thing called road noise) since just about every car already has at least 4 speakers. I'm jealous! That's it, my next one's gonna have to have this.

New Purchases

[bleaknik]

Now that I'm free to do what I want with this (relatively) new format, I think its time I bought a player and some discs...

If only the RIAA and the MPAA understood that...

Why DRM is doomed to fail

[naich]

So, rather than try to compromise the DVD-Audio's encryption itself, someone has succeeded in making a patch that uses WinDVD to perform the decryption and playback, but instead pipes the decrypted audio output to the hard drive instead of the sound card.

It goes back to the old adage; if you can hear it you can copy it. DRM is ultimately doomed to failure. The money spent on trying to implement a doomed technology would be better spent on setting up a syetem were it's not needed.

Re:Why DRM is doomed to fail

[InvalidError]

Which kicks back to the old question: which costs more? Truly lost sales from copyright infringement or fundamentally flawed and ultimately doomed content protection schemes?

The *AAs will probably lobby for mandatory watermark detection shutdown devices on all audio/video recording-capable devices until they somehow get them, against the wishes of most customers, manufacturers and inventors.

Fair use is obviously "-#INF, overrated" in the *AAs' books.

Re:Why DRM is doomed to fail

[Alsee]

I'd like to second that "if you can hear it you can copy it" comment. I bought this special CD with music for my dog and I haven't been able to copy the damn thing.

-

Losing Battle

[Nytewynd]

As long as they provide people with a way to hear the music, there will be a way to store the stream. Not to mention that any possible encryption is hax0red within 12 minutes of it's release.

Instead of companies giving up on protection, I would love to see them give a nod to the hackers by making it something really simple like a key of "12345". How much does your job suck when you design this encryption? You know that the work you did for the last 10 years will last about 2 days.

Re:Losing Battle

[harrkev]

I would love to see them give a nod to the hackers by making it something really simple like a key of "12345".

That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!

Re:Losing Battle

[Anonymous Coward]

oh, spaceballs. you still make me laugh.

Re:Losing Battle

[SpecBear]

I'd love to have that job.

• I know it's impossible to make it completely secure, so it's not too big a blow to my ego when it gets cracked.
• My employer knows it's impossible to make it completely secure, so I'm not going to get fired when it gets cracked.
• The media companies know it's impossible to make it completely secure, so when it does get cracked my employer will just get contracted to create another one.
• My job is secure so long as the media companies don't get a clue.
• I could probably spend half my time doing actual work, and the other half reading Slashdot.

Re:Losing Battle

[JPortal]

Crap... now everyone knows my password :/

Re:Losing Battle

[nzkbuk]

I was thinking almost the same, but what's this "I'm going to spend half my time doing actual work"

You don't want to upset the customers too much by changing the encryption scheme every month.

So is Microsoft Brilliant?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no hack for MS's latest encoded audio or video formats.

The one that's out there is for a 4 year old format and never really worked.

Re:So is Microsoft Brilliant?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no hack for MS's latest encoded audio or video formats.

Maybe that's because nobody uses it, so why bother?

Whoop de do da!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a Creative Soundblaster you already probably have a tool to rip Audio DVD's to a wav file. Unless they've ripped it out of the software in recent years the Soundblaster has always had a setting to record directly from the soundcard processor "What you hear".
Why anyone would purchase an update to WinDVD is beyond me. The only thing they've added to newer versions is increased restrictions on installation via web based serial number checking.
I've four legally acquired versions of WinDVD and they all do the same thing, which is play DVD's.

Protest agasint the format

[WindBourne]

Plain and simple, the format allows the companies to disable your machine. Not only are they trying to control the music that you buy, but now they are wanting to control your machine.

Funny thing is, that kids today can control the industry as they are the main buyers of the music.

Re:Protest agasint the format

[dgos78]

Funny thing is, that kids today can control the industry as they are the main buyers of the music

Yeah, we all know how intelligent they are. All the teens today care about is trying to get pussy (both sexes).

Re:Protest agasint the format

[Anonymous Coward]

as if thats not what kids cared about 100 years ago?

FINALLY!

[halo1982]

As one of the 3 people in the world who actually own DVD-Audio discs I am very excited about this. Thankfully I was able to get the story and programs before the server went up in flames. I'm alredy ripping my Nine Inch Nails With Teeth DualDisc and it seems to be working quite well. I also had to rip the VIDEO_TS folder after using DVDADecrypter to get WinDVD to read the files when I loaded PPCMRipper. Now it's decoding, and I can't seem to get it to get the multichannel audio. Also, its cutting off the first few seconds of the first track on the disc, but if you hit the back button it starts reencoding the first track. Maybe I could just use a normal dvd audio ripper for this part...

Re:FINALLY!

[pin_gween]

Yeah, BUT has the article been translated for the Chinese so you can just buy 'em instead of ripping them yourself?

Re:FINALLY!

[Anonymous Coward]

torrent?

Re:FINALLY!

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad thing is, when I posted this comment, it wasn't ment to be funny...I was actually really excited about it. *sigh* =(

Re:FINALLY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... The NIN album is a SACD, not DVD-A. So, you'll need to try a little harder to amuse us...

Re:FINALLY!

[halo1982]

It comes as a DualDisc you twat. DVD-A on one side (24bit/48khz 5.1 and 24bit/96khz 2 channel in addition to some videos/discography) and CD on the other. The Downward Spiral and (possibly) The Fragile are also available as DualDiscs.
And I wasn't trying to be funny either. It was a pain in the ass but I finally got everything reencoded into 5.1/24bit/48khz lossless WMAs (flac kept crashing my computer). Well worth it though, as now my disc will never need to be opened again!

Full Article

[CodePyro]

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12061 DVD-Audio's CPPM can be got around with a WinDVD patch
Posted by Seán Byrne on 06 July 2005 - 09:50 - Source: Rarewares

When DVD-Video's encryption had been broken about 6 years back, the next generation of the Audio CD, DVD-Audio had been delayed for several months. It was originally to use the CSS2 encryption scheme, but the breaking of CSS meant the music industry no longer wanted anything to do with CSS in the new upcoming DVD-Audio format at the time. As a result, DVD-Audio took on Content Protection for Pre-recorded Media (CPPM), a much more advanced copy-protection system, which includes Key Blocks and watermarking and allows revocation (for compromised devices).

It was not long ago that DVD-Audio playback software came to the PC. For example Creative's SoundBlaster Audigy 2 comes with a DVD-Audio as well as WinDVD's DVD-Audio add-on. So, rather than try to compromise the DVD-Audio's encryption itself, someone has succeeded in making a patch that uses WinDVD to perform the decryption and playback, but instead pipes the decrypted audio output to the hard drive instead of the sound card. The patch which includes several tools requires WinDVD 5, 6 or 7 to work.

Several tools to work with DVD-Audio (read: ripping)
They require WinDVD 5, 6 or 7 installed, as they don't do the decryption themselves, and instead patch WinDVD to output the decrypted stream to disk instead of the sound card.
The tools are:

* DVD-A ripper: Intended to decrypt CPPM protected AOB and VOB files on DVD-Audio discs.
* PPCM ripper: Intended to capture Packed PCM (MLP) stream (stereo or multichannel) to .WAV files.
* DVD-A Explorer: Intended to peep&grab on DVD-Audio tracks (PCM and Packed PCM).


This tool is available at Rarewares here.

While InterVideo is likely to update its software to block the use of this patch, it appears that DVD-Audio's CPPM has been compromised at least in DVD-Audio discs up until this time or until the keys used in the current versions of WinDVD that this tool works on are revoked in upcoming DVD-Audio disc releases. However, this would also mean that WinDVD users would be forced to update their software to play future DVD-Audio discs.

36 titles at risk!

[WoodstockJeff]

A search of Amazon shows only 36 hits for "dvd-audio" in the music section, and several of those are actually SACD, not DVD-Audio. Wow. Think of the losses! It could run in the tens of thousands of Yen!

Re:36 titles at risk!

[halo1982]

Try searching for DualDisc. Those are hybrid DVD-A/CDs and they are becomming quite popular.

Re:36 titles at risk!

[HazE_nMe]

Maybe thats Amazon's fault more than the format's. Check DVDEmpire's DVD-Audio Section here: http://www.dvdempire.com/index.asp?userid=99364257 630070&tab_id=8&site_id=12&site_media_id=0/
Thing is if you do a search for "The Grouch" DVDA on any torrent search engine, you can find an already cracked release of 'Cell Six: My Baddest B*tches' It's 3.06GB and has both MLP/LPCM5.1 and DolbyDigital 5.1 audio and 2 videos.
If I can, I buy DVD-Audio releases because I for one realize that media formats don't just take off by themselves. The quality of sound with DVD-A is astounding, especially at very high volumes.

Re:36 titles at risk!

[Anonymous Coward]

The quality of sound with DVD-A is astounding, especially at very high volumes.

If you habitually listen "at very high volumes" you can't tell what the quality of sound is, because you've buggered your ears.

Re:36 titles at risk!

[HazE_nMe]

Well my last hearing test contradicts your statement. I habitually listen to my music "at very high volumes" and have excellent hearing. That may be because I have very nicer than average audio equipment (both speakers and ears) ;)

Re:36 titles at risk!

[Van Halen]

Amazon's search is seriously messed up with respect to DVD-Audio. If you look at their DVD-Audio section, there are a few more in various genres (146 by my count). You can get there by clicking on Music from the main page, then DVD-Audio. Both in the left sidebar. Obviously the SACD section is much bigger.

It's still not very impressive, and I know of at least one DVD-Audio title (Steve Stevens' Flamenco a go go) that shows up in no listing or search. It's not in the DVD-Audio section of the store, and if you search for the title and/or artist, you only get the audio CD version. I stumbled upon this by happy accident and immediately ordered myself a copy after already having owned the CD version for a few years. The 5.1 mix is incredible, enhancing an already astounding piece of work.

As someone else mentioned, there's also DualDisc stuff which is becoming popular. I've found that you don't always get what you think with those, so beware. The only one I have is not true DVD-Audio on the DVD side - the sound is in some DVD-Video compatible compressed format (Dolby Digital?). Not that anyone could truly tell the difference in quality... And the CD side does not adhere to the Redbook standard (it says this on the outside of the case, so in theory you could see it before buying). My Pioneer DVR-A03 in the Mac refused to read the CD side, but thankfully the cheapass CD-ROM drive in another machine was able to do it, so I still got the tracks into iTunes. Would have been pretty pissed off if I hadn't been able to rip the audio, and certainly wouldn't consider further DualDisc purchases if that were the case.

STOP THIS CRIMINAL ACTIVITY NOW!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

These laws are up because the PEOPLE of the USA want them there. To continue actions like this show you are un-American. If you don't like the laws, LEAVE.

Copy Protection? Yeah, right.

[CypherXero]

It doesn't matter what kind of "copy protection" a disc has, I can always get around it. How? Simple. My sound card supports "What U Hear", so basically, it can record sound streams from your computer (ie, if you're playing a flash movie in your browser, and hit record "What U Hear", the sounds from the flash movie, and any other sounds on your computer will be recorded in the exact quality as you hear it).

So yeah, it's just a waste of money.

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right.

[mrscorpio]

Yes, but does it:

1) Record "wot u heer" in the same format as the original? (in this case, 24-bit 96 khz stereo/multi-channel audio)

2) Resample the audio? (Digital source>analog>digital file) All Creative Sounds cards do this, I'd say 99% of consumer level cards do this.

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right.

[angle_slam]

So yeah, it's just a waste of money.

That's a silly thing to say. You have a program that will let you record sounds as they come out of the sound card. So what? It's not in DVD-A format (which, in case you didn't know, is a high resolution format, much higher than CD.). Plus, your recording is in real-time, which makes it inconvenient for users to do. One reason MP3 encoding has caught on is because it takes 10 minutes to rip and encode a CD. I doubt it would be as popular if everything was recorded in real-time.

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

"What you hear" is the same thing as taking the analog out and feeding it to the analog in and then recording it.

It's not exactly a digital copy ;)

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right.

[Politburo]

One reason MP3 encoding has caught on is because it takes 10 minutes to rip and encode a CD. I doubt it would be as popular if everything was recorded in real-time.

I remember using l3enc to encode back in the day and it was slow as hell compared to today's tools (this was after using CDDA to rip the audio). This was probably more my machine than anything, but if I recall correctly, encoding was about real-time. It didn't stop anyone. All it takes is one person to do it and then it's ready for everyone else.

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right.

[stinerman]

It's not in DVD-A format (which, in case you didn't know, is a high resolution format, much higher than CD.)

Many newer sound cards can record 24bits at a rate of 96KHz, which, if I'm not mistaken, is what many DVD-A discs are. Of course, it would be tedious ripping everything you have in real-time.

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right.

[mrscorpio]

If you can't do a straight digital transfer though, any benefit of the higher word length and sampling rate is lost.

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right.

[Alioth]

And that is why no one will buy DVD-A. It's less useful than a CD (you can't easily rip it to play it on your MP3 player or laptop), and the sound quality gain is negligable - most people won't be able to hear the difference between it and a CD.

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right.

[evilviper]

One reason MP3 encoding has caught on is because it takes 10 minutes to rip and encode a CD. I doubt it would be as popular if everything was recorded in real-time.

Way back when MP3 encoding starting catching-on, encoding really was real-time (or less) on 95% of the computer hardware. That was back when it sounded like crap, by today's standards, too. Try using lame on a 100MHz system, and see how long it takes to rip your CDs.

Your assertion doesn't even stand-up to the laugh-test.

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right.

[angle_slam]

100 MHz systems are 10 years old. MP3s caught on a lot later than that, 98 or so, when 500 MHz+ systems were standard. (The system I bought in 96 was old (and cheap), and it was 400 MHz).

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right.

[Noehre]

I'd love to hear the reasoning behind that statement.

I couldn't think of a good way to say "you're full of shit" without sounding like an ass.

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right.

[evilviper]

MP3s caught on a lot later than that, 98 or so, when 500 MHz+ systems were standard.

I remember the time-period very well. 400MHz systems may have been available around 98, but they weren't common, and I'm sure 500MHz systems weren't around (unless we're talking about Alphas now).

In any event, back then, computers were much more expensive, and the vast installed-base were several years old, so most people were still using 100MHz systems. Back then, a new computer every 4 years was pretty good.

(The system I bought in 96 was old (and cheap), and it was 400 MHz).

I doubt that very much. Your memory is probably fuzzy. The system I got in 1996 was a Pentium Pro 200Mhz system, and it was top-of-the-line and pocket-book shattering at the time. It's still here, routng packets for me...

Here we go, according to Wikipedia:
The Deschutes core Pentium IIs which debuted at 333 MHz in January 1998 [...]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pentium_ II&oldid=17877612

Since 333MHz CPUs didn't debut until 1998, I seriously doubt you bought an old and cheap 400MHz system in 96.

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right.

[angle_slam]

You're right, I did get my dates wrong. My cheap 400 MHz was bough in 1999. My original argument (faster than real-time encoding was present at the Napster era) still stands, though.

MP3s didn't become big until Napster. Napster wasn't even released until Fall 1999. By then, the P3 was up to 650 MHz, a lot faster than 100 MHz. By the end of 2000, the Pentium was over 1 GHz. Napster peaked in February 2001.

Ergo, faster than real-time encoding was common by the Napster era. (I have a 1 GHz Athlon which encodes at 5x. )

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right.

[evilviper]

MP3s didn't become big until Napster.

No, that's certainly not true. MP3s were very popular (on WWW and FTP sites) years before Napster came along.

Napster wouldn't have become popular if it was using a new format nobody had ever heard-of before. It became popular because many people already had large collections of MP3s on their computers they were able to share.

Ralph Wiggums

[RancidMilk]

" scheme has remain publicly uncracked,"
"Me fail English? Thats unpossible" --Ralph Wiggums

Are they fucking kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

The title of TFA:

DVD-Audio's CPPM can be got around with a WinDVD patch

I hate to be a grammar Nazi, but WHAT THE FUCK????

Re:Are they fucking kidding me?

[Kazymyr]

Grammar is passé dude, get with the program. ;)

Have you ever fucked a fat woman?

[CyricZ]

Have you ever actually fucked a fat woman? I can tell you from personal experience (my wife) that fucking a fat woman is amazing. There is vastly increased pressure on the man's penis, and the fat acts as fuck padding. You can ram her harder than you can a skinny woman. Fat women will make you shoot your load within seconds of penetration. So while you can suggest that fat women aren't worthy of a good fuck, I'll always know that you are completely wrong.

Re:Have you ever fucked a fat woman?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think some chub was "attractive" until recently? Men have been deluded by the media insisting that skinny is attractive, when in reality: The wider, the better.

Windows Media

[drstock]

Now if they could crack a format that is actually used, like DRM:ed WMV/WMA.

(Yeah, I know Freeme cracks the old version)

Re:Windows Media

[Zarxrax]

It HAS been cracked. http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=89243

Hillary Clinton please read this

[Captain Poopypants]

I love her.

Scene: (Playing in the background: Aretha Franklin, "Baby I love you")

If you want my lovin
If you really do
Don't be afra-aid bab-ay
Just ask me
Ya know I'm gonna give it to you...

I'm in a dark room somewhere in the holding cells of Guantananmo. It's dark, hot and moist. Both my feet and hands are handcuffed to the floor. I am naked and my ass is pointed towards the door. She enters with a couple of well muscled Secret Service agents. The agents laugh. She takes off her long coat, revealing a leather corset and high heel leather boots. She approves what she sees with a snort and picks up a whip from the nearby table. It looks like my mistress knows what she wants to do with me. The agents tie a strap-on dildo on her hips. It is 8" long, black and thick. It's nothing like any dick I've taken up my ass before. I shiver in fear. She lubes the dildo and gives me the "Ya know I'm gonna give it to you" grin.

She walks closer. I love the way her wide hips move. Jesus that hurt! She just hit me.... but now I know what's in store for me. And I love it.

Clarification of your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source is evil - Steve Jobs
Open source is evil - Bill Gates

Or didn't you know that one of the primary backers of software patents in Europe is Apple?

WinDVD??? What if you don't use Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not _really_ cracked until I can do it all with open source tools.

How can you mod that down?

[SeekerDarksteel]

I realize that the parent is off-topic, but regardless how can you mod that down? It was a perfect counter-troll. Executed to perfection. If I only had mod points I would correct this injustice!

CyricZ, I salute you. You have earned a +5 Counter-Troll modding IMO.

Does This Actually Help? No.

[PipianJ]

Here's why:

As cited in the article, this only compromised WinDVD. CPPM, like CSS, has player keys that are specific to the player hardware/software being used. This did not actually reclaim the player key from WinDVD, and even if it did, the player key can be deactivated in future releases, so that future DVD-Audio DVDs can still play. Hence, for true cracking, all of the player keys need to be discovered.

Furthermore, if only WinDVD is compromised, it will send a signal to content companies to support such formats as SACD, as the format's design naturally prevents playback (and hence any sort of ripping) on computers entirely (as the technology has not been licensed).

Re:Does This Actually Help? No.

[evilviper]

it will send a signal to content companies to support such formats as SACD, as the format's design naturally prevents playback (and hence any sort of ripping) on computers entirely (as the technology has not been licensed).

Haha! You could have used that same argument for Sony's MiniDisc long before SACD came along, and we all know how that has turned out...

Being incompatible and obscure isn't a plus by any accounts.

no but..

[jasonhamilton]

I once fucked a thin woman, and you are so right. I broke her due to the lack of padding.

God doesn't make them like he used to.

More appropriate credo for this situation

[mcc]

"For every lock there is a k... uh.. oh, hey, look, you can just slip this lock right off the doorknob without even having to unlock it. Neat!"

Well, I guess the obvious question would be

[mcc]

Does WinDVD work in Wine?

DVDA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Double Vaginal, Double anal?

fudge me!

CPPM will remain a pain

[willisbueller]

"While InterVideo is likely to update its software to block the use of this patch, it appears that DVD-Audio's CPPM has been compromised at least in DVD-Audio discs up until this time or until the keys used in the current versions of WinDVD that this tool works on are revoked in upcoming DVD-Audio disc releases."

It would seem their copy protection scheme will block this work around by revoking keys as pointed out in the article. So until someone comes out with a real crack, CPPM will remain a pain.

they can opt out of this Judo race

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they in a Tai Ka Wando manouver, utilise the tools that pirates develop, against the pirates. Why should they do all the hard work?

Hrm

[M.C. Hampster]

So where exactly is it stated that fair use means having a perfect digital reproduction of the copyrighted material you own?

It has already been ruled that fair use does mean getting an entire, digital copy of media. Go ahead and record the audio coming out of a DVD-Audio, there's nothing in the encryption that can stop that.

Re:Hrm

[AyeRoxor!]

So where exactly is it stated that fair use means having a perfect digital reproduction of the copyrighted material you own?

Nowhere is it stated what type of copy you are allowed to make. It just states you are allowed to make a copy for backup/archival purposes. Now, unless this is Soviet Uzbekistan, that implies by default an identical copy, regardless of whether there was such thing as binary media when the law itself was invented.

It has already been ruled that fair use does mean getting an entire, digital copy of media.

Making such a statement without a reference is really reaching.

Go ahead and record the audio coming out of a DVD-Audio, there's nothing in the encryption that can stop that.

In the end, you are correct. One bitwise copy of an analog capture can be the parent of perfect bitwise duplication. If that's the worst case, why bother with encryption at all?

Re:Hrm

[M.C. Hampster]

Nowhere is it stated what type of copy you are allowed to make. It just states you are allowed to make a copy for backup/archival purposes. Now, unless this is Soviet Uzbekistan, that implies by default an identical copy, regardless of whether there was such thing as binary media when the law itself was invented.

Quite honestly, I've never seen a citation that states that fair use includes backup/archival purposes, but even supposing it is, it does not imply that it would be a digital perfect copy, even with your pithy reference to Soviet Uzbekistan. You should have just gone straight to Nazi Germany and lost the argument.

Making such a statement without a reference is really reaching.

Fine, I'll do your homework for you: MPAA v. 2600 - Court of Appeals decision. Specifically check out "IV. Constitutional Challenge Based on Claimed Restriction of Fair Use", or just search on the page for "fair use".

If that's the worst case, why bother with encryption at all?

Well, even if you might not agree with it, or understand it, doesn't mean you have a right to ignore the law. If these content companies want to create all sorts of stupid, artificial barriers to copying, thinking it's going to stop copyright abuse, so be it. If you don't like the format, don't buy the content.

Re:Hrm

[AyeRoxor!]

You should have just gone straight to Nazi Germany and lost the argument.

But, there is something you don't know about me... *I* am not left-handed!

Fine, I'll do your homework for you:

When someone reminds you that you forgot to cite your research, just say thank you. Pithy, eh?

Re:Hrm

[M.C. Hampster]

When someone reminds you that you forgot to cite your research, just say thank you. Pithy, eh?

I'm not writing a legal brief or a research paper. I don't feel the need to spend time documenting every assertion I make on Slashdot. However, in retrospect, I do apologize for the homework comment. It was pretty unnecessary.

Oh cool!

[suitepotato]

Now I can finally get a rip of the collected works of the Starland Vocal Band!

This story is illegal, and it should be

[IAmMaxHarris]

It's true that copy protection can always be circumvented, given enough time, equipment, and skilled people willing to crack a given system.

These criteria are not met frequently - there aren't a lot of crackers out there. Crackers can't cause a lot of damage if they aren't allowed to spread their cracks.

So we have laws like the DMCA that help curtail this kind of abuse. Because of the DMCA, they won't try to regulate or outlaw debuggers, compilers, ICEs and soldering irons (it would also be immoral to try to regulate these things).

The only loophole is foreign governments that don't support intellectual property rights and don't have a DMCA-like law enacted. The solution for this is economic sanctions and physical disconnection from the rest of the internet (cut their cable lines, jam/destroy their satellites).

Posts that promote piracy are both immoral and illegal. The government won't ignore Slashdot forever, and you'll eventually have to play by the same rules as everyone else.

Re:This story is illegal, and it should be

[Bullfish]

Flamebait I see, especially on this site. Immoral? Don't make me laugh. The US trying to jam it's laws, which are designed to protect corporate nabobs not artists, down their throats is immoral. Especially when they piss on other countries laws regularly. Illegal, only in the US and a couple of other countries.

Guess what cowboy? Slashdot is not the only place on the net where this info will be found. You believe Slashdot lives in a vacuum?

Further, to the vast majority of the planet, the US is a foreign government of questionable ethics. You are hard of thinking. Economic sanctions against the rest of the world, with your dependence on foreign oil etc. That's smart.

As for attacking other countries communications infrastructure. I believe that is called an act of war.

Also for the record. People here are not saying that artists should do their work for free. Just that when they buy it, they should be able to use the product on the equipment they own in the way they choose.

Re:This story is illegal, and it should be

[IAmMaxHarris]

Piracy is immoral, just as breach of contract and theft of phyiscal property constitute immoral acts.

Slashdot isn't nearly the only place. I'm advocating action on all sites.

What's moral is always smart in the long-term. For example, our country could have prevented Islamic terrorism by stopping the nationalization of American and British-owned oil fields in the 1950s.

War is sometimes necessary. Intellectual property is so important that it's worth fighting for. (But I don't think it'll come to that - other countries would much rather fix our laws that fight us. All we need to do is make them flinch.)

Sure, if someone wants to change formats on their own machine, that won't be really policed in many instances. But telling potentially everyone else how to do it (via a blog, for example) is easy to catch, and can only harm people.

Re:This story is illegal, and it should be

[Kojiro Ganryu Sasaki]

"and can only harm people." I speak as an artist when i say: No.

Re:This story is illegal, and it should be

[SpecBear]

The post doesn't promote piracy. While it's easy to see how this tool could be used for piracy, and it's likely it will be used for piracy, all it does is allow the user to make an electronic copy of media that's already in his physical possession. Remember, if you don't already own a CPPM-protected disk, then this utility is useless.

The purpose of CPPM (and just about every other DRM system) isn't to control piracy. As far as the pirates are concerned, most DRM systems are rendered irrelevant before the first protected media is ever produced. I can go online right now and download a DRM-free version of "Revenge of the Sith," but I couldn't acquire a protected version even if I wanted to. So when the DVD is released and it's "protected" by CSS, who are the studios trying to protect it from?

CPPM is similar. Connect to a P2P network and search for "DVDAudio." This stuff is already out there. If I want to get it without paying for it, I can download it right now, and this WinDVD patch is of no use to me whatsoever. If I'm a pirate, I don't give a shit. But if I'm an honest consumer and pay for my music in DVD-Audio format, then I have audio content that I can't play on my iPod. This is what this tool is useful for.

DRM doesn't control the pirate, it controls the honest consumer.

I feel like I make the same post every time there's a /. story on DRM. But I'll keep repeating it as long as there are people wiling to parrot the industry crap about DRM being used to prevent piracy. Either that, or the mods start flagging me as "Redundant."

Re:This story is illegal, and it should be

[Bullfish]

As I said, no one is advocating piracy except for the odd kook. What they want is the right to use their media on their iPods, car cd players and computers without having to buy a special version for each. Will some use the tool for piracy. Yes. On the other hand, people are stabbed to death with steak knives and we don't ban their manufacture. Now those things really do hurt people.

Make countries flinch? Now that's lunacy. No one wants a war over something so dumb, but attacking their infrastructure will leave them no choice. And they are not all Iraqs and Afghanistans. Escalation is never a good thing unless you truly mean to follow through and that would be truly stupid. Pressuring them economically is just as foolish when you are running such high deficits. I won't even answer the goofiness that war is justified over something so dumb as IP. Necessary, at times yes, but over true injustice or defence of the realm. IP comes and goes. The free exchange of idea is what got us out of the caves. Get a clue, the EU rejected a constitution and a software patent law that pushed them towards American style capitalism. Get a clue. Most of the world tries to balance between people and business. How many Slashdot links do you want that show the US administration is getting loopy about how it treat business versus people.

Stopping nationalization of middle eastern countries oil supplies in the 50's would have stopped Islamic terrorism? Now that is loopy. Read Leon Uris. The Haj specifically. He actually describes the birth of terrorism in the camps of Palestine just after it was handed over to Israel. Stopping nationalization by force would have galvanized the movement sooner. Terrorism in the middle east started well before the 50's. And that Suez canal thing didn't turn out so hot either.

I could go on, but you need to get off the computer and see a therapist.

Re:This story is illegal, and it should be

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand your comment... please explain the following to me:

Define "Piracy". Does the word actually appear in any law that you know of?
Define "Immoral". Get a book on sociology if you don't know.
Define "Breach of Contract", "Specific Performance", "Equity", "Just Price", "Extortion" and "Monopoly" for me please.

I don't know much about history I'm afraid. Tell me more about this 1950's thingy, and how it promoted terrorism. I'm afraid I don't understand...

How are you going to make other countries flinch? Are you telling me people don't download music illegally in Iraq? If that's true I agree with you. As a matter of fact I have an idea!!! Let's bomb the shit out of the US and Europe, so internet stops working and people can't download music. Like that we'll stop piracy.

Another question: How are people going to illegally "change formats", as you very professionally call it in your comment, without being told how to do it? I personally make legal backups of all my music and DVD's so I can hear/view them on my HTPC. Without internet sites telling me how to do it I wouldn't be able to. As an audiophile I was waiting for dvd-a to be hacked. This is a great advancement in technology to me!

I'd like to thank you in advance for clearing these doubts up for me.

Re:This story is illegal, and it should be

[trezor]

Dude. You're on crack. Please tell me you didn't write that insane rambling sober and clean.

And for morals... How moral is it to steal the public domain. The reason copyright law was founded. You know, to enrich a public domain of arts and science. How moral is it to remain in possession of copyright when you kill of the public domain?

That's right. There is no longer no balance, and thus no reason of right for copyright protection. Unless the law is balanced back to something sane.

DRM is the ultimate theft of the public domain, and should be fought vigeriously.

Re:This story is illegal, and it should be

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, you can do a search on P2P networks and find "DVDAudio" files. But guess what? They're not really. They're all files from the normal DD audio that movies use. If they actually are the high resolution layer, then it's that layer... but it has been captured analogly (or digitally at a lower resolution). This is far from ideal, and involves quality loss.

These new tools, however, allows a complete and perfect rip of the high resolution layer, which was before *completely impossible*. And yes, there are ways of playing it on your computer, quite a few soundcards support 24/192 nowadays, and if you encode these things with, say, FLAC you can tag them and play them in such players as Foobar.

More importantly for many audiophiles, is that now you are also able to output the pure, unrestricted digital stream to an external DAC, something that was previously impossible (digital outs on DVD-A players automatically downconvert the audio to a lower resolution, a similar thing is done when playing protected discs on WinDVD/other). Or, for those of us a little less fancy, and maybe DVDA-player-lacking, play the Real Deal on our computers.

Nobody who is buying DVDA discs is wanting to use them on his iPod, don't be ridiculous. In order to play this stuff on your iPod you'd have to downconvert the audio to normal CD standards, which would completely remove any point in purchasing DVDA in the first place!

If you can listen to it...

[Anonymous Coward]

then you can copy it. Period. The quality might not be perfect, but in the case of digital recordings on PC's, it usually is.

New Purchases-Old Ethics.

[Anonymous Coward]

"If only the RIAA and the MPAA understood that..."

Why should they give you what you want, when you all aren't ready to give them what they want?*

*Compensation, for all you smart-alecs.

Good for the sellers

[Sloppy]

The idea of buying DVDs was a pretty stupid investment .. until it was cracked. Then, once we had a way to play them, the idea was finally on the table.

This is just the same thing. Right now, DVD audio is an obscure thing that few people have heard of or seen around, and even if you know it exists, you gotta be crazy to buy one. Now it should become less crazy, and publishers will start to have a reason to use the format.

You just can't seriously be in the market until your format is usable. It's just common sense.

yet another angle on the pointlessness of it all

[famebait]

For audio I guess you could theoretically allow only analog output, although I seriously doubt DVD-Audio players will have no digital out. But for movies, I really don't see why they even bother trying to stop ripping at all, as long as there's such a thing as the DVI out port.

High Resolution Audio

[TimeZone]

I'm assuming this is for the High Resolution stream (or whatever they call it)? Most DVD-As also have a DD5.1 track, which is playable in DVD-V players and therefore rippable via DeCSS. This is what I've been doing to the DVD-A (and concert DVDs) that I purchase to rip them to CD for listening in the car. So anyways, what do you do with the High Resolution stream once you've captured it? I believe it's higher resolution than PC sound cards support anyways, so you'd have to downconvert it to play it on your PC, so you may as well have ripped the DD5.1 or 2.0 PCM track in the first place.

TZ

Re:High Resolution Audio

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been using Mac The Ripper to rip the DVD-A disks to 2-channel PCM, and then AIFF from PCM to convert them to AIFF, and then iTunes to convert them to Apple Lossless. They show up as 48KHz in iTunes, and sound great on the iPod.

Would this breach DMCA?

[wombat_of_doom]

It seems to me that this method of "cracking" a DVD-Audio disk wouldn't even be subject to prosecution under the DMCA. Just as there is no circumvention of encryption going on when your ears hear the outputted audio, no circumvention is happening here when the raw data is saved instead of played.

Re:Would this breach DMCA?

[rincebrain]

They'd still call it a breach of DMCA because you reverse-engineered the closed-source software in order to patch it.

Yes, I know that's full of shit, but that's something like what they'd claim.

Re:Would this breach DMCA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as there is no circumvention of encryption going on when your ears hear the outputted audio...

That's what you think. The scu^H^H^Hstakeholders at the RIAA just aren't that desperate yet...

Yes, and CPPM prevents it

[Sycraft-fu]

I have a couple of Audio DVDs. When I play them, they only play through my SoundBlaster Audigy 2. I have a professional card that has far superior DACs and opamps, and thus far superior sound, but it won't play through it. Why? Well the pro card plays by my rules, it will route any input to any output, allow logging to disk, allow full resolution digital output, etc. Thus, the driver isn't certified. The Audigy 2 will accept encrypted input from the program, shut off digital outs, deny recording capability, etc.

So a program like this IS a restration of fair use. It has nothing to do with free music, I mean shit, DVD-A is 50MB/minute COMPRESSED, I don't really think there'll be a lot of intrest in trading that online. What it's about is the ability to listen to music the way I want, on teh hardware I want.

Re:Yes, and CPPM prevents it

[DaHat]

don't really think there'll be a lot of intrest in trading that online.

Many said the same thing with regards to the motion picture association many years ago during the good ole days of Napster. "Downloading movies online? Are you insane? It would take hours to download and no one has enough storage for more than a couple movies"... then technology improved as it always does. More people had larger hard drives, DVD burners and even faster internet connections.

Give it enough time and plenty will be trading such high quality music, in fact, I bet some already do. Take HDTV for example, an full bitrate ATSC stream OTA comes in at 19.392658 megabits per second... with a little mat we find that that is roughly 8.7 gigs an hour for this pristine digital content, content that the newsgroups are full of at such high bitrates.

Re:Yes, and CPPM prevents it

[Medevo]

The SoundBlaster Audigy 2/2ZS has not, was not, and never will be targeted to audiophiles and people who want control over what they do with their music.

It is fundamentally a GAMERS card because it offers excellent sound acceleration; "pretty good" sound quality (Don't compare it with pro cards, its not one, even if it has a similar price point), as well as EAX 4 and a bunch of other things that gamers salivate about.

That said, I would never do recording or long periods of listening on my SB 2, but if I want to play games the SB 2 is where it is.

Medevo

DVD-Audio's CPPM Circumvented

[LowEndTheory]

well, duh... I say this all the time, (pissing many colleagues off, since I'm part of the "Music Industry") - Get over copy protection, that genie's been out of the bottle for a long time, and it ain't going back in. Try making better music instead. EOF.

Audio security will never work

[bohemian_observer]

There is and will always be an option to create software wave-out device instead of "SBLive" for example and dump waves out. Another easy solution is wave-out captioning, and that is well possible to do in EVERY Windows based PC I know (I use it ordinarily). Player hack is an option too as player also is a software. There is no way of protecting audio now unless hardware and OS changes fundamentally.

Not been cracked

[Reality Master 101]

Neither CSS nor DVD Audio has been CRACKED, meaning the audio is decoded. CSS was decoded because some idiot DVD player manufacturer let out an unencrypted key. This is being done by re-encoding an output stream. You could do the same thing by sticking a microphone next to your speakers.

As usual, too many people lose sight of the goal of encryption. It's not to be "foolproof" where no one can make copies, it's to make it hard enough that the casual music fan decides it's easier just to buy the music than go through the hassle of installing software.

Re:Not been cracked

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry mate, this crack is hardly the same as dumping the audio in analog from line out, this simply redirects the decypted audio to the hd instead of the soundcard. Perfect 1:1 copy minus the encyption.

Re:Not been cracked

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't I able to do that tools like TotalRecorder or such?

Re:Not been cracked

[evilviper]

CSS was decoded because some idiot DVD player manufacturer let out an unencrypted key.

That's how DeCSS originally worked. However, it was shortly after that CSS was really cracked, so you're really quite wrong.

This is being done by re-encoding an output stream. You could do the same thing by sticking a microphone next to your speakers.

This is stupid. There is a huge difference between grabing a decrypted audio stream on your PC, and grabbing the output of your soundcard. If you get the audio before it goes to your card, you have ZERO LOSS.

It's not to be "foolproof" where no one can make copies, it's to make it hard enough that the casual music fan decides it's easier just to buy the music than go through the hassle of installing software.

Also idiotic. We are talking about the encryption ON THE MUSIC THAT YOU ALREADY BOUGHT. If you bought it, you may need to install extra software. If you didn't buy it, you are saved that hassle.

The idea that encryption makes it easier on legal buyers is patently ridiculous, and directly opposite to reality. The fact that your comment got modded up is really quite sad.

??? Score 5 and Informative?

[Anonymous Coward]

I fail to see how parent is insightful or informative or how this is a good post. Doesn't add anything useful.

Am I missing something?

Re:??? Score 5 and Informative?

[garcia]

You're obviously trolling but I'll answer anyway...

"free use" is not the same as "fair use" thus my suggested change...

"And we will take it by any and all means" is hostile and makes it sound like we started this mess. The way I suggested it be rewritten shows that the media conglomorates are using their power (via their deep pockets) to steal it from us and we are going to take it back.

I fail to see how you couldn't understand that in the first place.

Re:??? Score 5 and Informative?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are clearly the expert on useless posts so who could argue against your point?

Really...

[sjs132]

Audio on DVD only? What a novel concept... What do they stick into the other 4GB of space on the DVD after the music runs out?

Ohh... I bet it's used for "better" audio data.. Hmm... ok, I guess I could go for clearer notes of the Flogging Molly... What, not on DVD Audio?

Then why do we even care about this story?

Where the remote... /. is getting boring...

Re:Really...

[Ilgaz]

DVD Audio is 96 khz 24 bit multi channel. No, Dolby digital or DTS (home versions) doesn't have such specs yet.

Don't comment about stuff you don't plan to purchase.

I bet "Flogging Molly" doesn't love their 24 bit (least!) recordings downgrade to 16bit to fit in plastic 1980's format.

Our new DeCSS hero just guaranteed CD Audio is here to stay.

Hooray!

[Josuah]

Now I'm half-way there to not having to put my DVD-Audio discs into my DVD player. I am half-way closer to being able to place them on my music server instead.

I haven't been listening to them as much or buying them so much either, because of this requirement. So this will actually encourage me to purchase more of them.

Unfortunately, the other halves to this problem are to get playback from my media server, and to somehow get the DVD-Audio data to my receiver. The last half is probably going to be the hardest, since there's no multi-channel output from my iBook, and no firewire input on my receiver.

ALWAYS good to see something that..

[Halvy]

will *hurt* the riaa's and gates of the world!!

Thanx for making my day!! ;)

I'm sure some will do it now that they can

[Sycraft-fu]

But most don't care. I mean on most sound systems, you hust can't hear the difference. You have to have some pretty high quality gear to be able to get the benefit of 24-bit over 16. Also, seems most peopel these days are interested in listening on things like iPods, which means the multi-channel sound isn't useful to them.

Given how many people really believe 128k to be "CD quality" I think the bigass files will prove a hard sell. They'll be content to download the compressed files very quickly and call it good.

Re:I'm sure some will do it now that they can

[Woody77]

It's the sample rate, moreso to me than the bits per sample. 44.1KHz's nyqust freq (22.05Khz) is close enough into the range of human hearing that artifacting can easily occur. You need VERY good filtering on A/D inputs to have sounds above say 18KHz still present, and the filter level be inaudible at 22Khz (greather than 60dB of attenuation in about a 1/4 octave, so 240dB of attentuation per octave. That's not a simple filter).

By upping the sample rate to 96Khz, the nyquist frequency is so high (48Khz), that the filter requirements aren't nearly so high, and that any artificats that do creep in do so at frequencies well beyond our hearing.

Even on modest gear, it makes a difference.

And by modest, I'm putting the system price at say $2000 (receiver, dvd player, speakers).

Granted, the D/A stage doesn't need these expensive filters that the recording stage does, but it gives the recorders a lot more lattitude to make GOOD recordings. But mass-market CDs sound like crap. The compress (dynamic compression) the hell out of the audio. A well done recording with a bit of dynamic range sounds so much better than most pop recordings do.

16 bits gets you about 96dB of dynamic range possible. 24 bits gets you 145dB of range. Again, the 16 bit version is on the edge of hearable. The 24 bit version isn't. But 96dB is definitely not bad for most systems.

But that's where the dynamic compression comes in, as most CDs I hear have very little dynamic range, and they push it out far enough close to the max volume that the disc can record to cover up any noise in the playback system at low signal levels.

CD-Audio is adequate, but not capable of really replacing high quality analog. DVD-Audio's rates are (the audiophiles mostly agree that the data-rate is higher than they can distingusih, although they'll probably complain about warmth/veiled highs, etc, their perogative, I guess).

Most modern recordings are aimed at playback on low-grade consumer hardware, both home/mobile. The noise floor in mobile audio is enough that very dynamic recordings tend to become half unintelligible, and half earsplitting. When the same CD, in a quiet room in a house, is wonderful (drums have massive impact, but quite passages are, well, quiet). Unfortunately, this is performed at the recording studio, instead of being performed in the car stereo (compressors can be cheaply implemented in the DSP that's dealing with all the rest of the sound-shaping that low-end gear does).

So, unless the recordings really try to take advantage of the format, we'll have the audio equivalent of ball-park hotdogs served on china with silver and crystal.

Re:I'm sure some will do it now that they can

[thedustbustr]

(the audiophiles mostly agree that the data-rate is higher than they can distingusih

By this, you mean yourself :)

Re:I'm sure some will do it now that they can

[Woody77]

I try not to call myself that, but I know I fall into the category.

But if you ask someone who claims to have a "golden ear" (I don't) if they can listen to something that has a 140+dB dynamic range, and actually be able to hear both the quietest and the loudest passages (without pain), I doubt they'd say yes.

If you set the upper limit at 130dB (threshold of pain), the lower limit would be -14dB or so, roughly 20x quieter than a barely audible whisper in a dead quiet anechoic chamber (threshold of hearing). Dogs? yes, they can probably hear it They have larger ears to catch the sound.

And I've heard of audiophiles claiming to hear into the low 20Khz range, but never of one claiming to hear above 30Khz or so. Dogs? Yes, I know that they can.

Re:I'm sure some will do it now that they can

[Woody77]

Audiophile dogs: The new terror/moneymaker of audio shops everywehre...

Re:I'm sure some will do it now that they can

[Lost Race]

The competition to have the loudest disc in the changer will continue. We've run out of room with CDs, having compressed everything into the top 5 db or so out of the 96 db range. Eventually we'll only be using the top 5 db of the DVDA's 145, but that's a few years away yet.

I broke all audio copyrights years ago.

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

I discovered this amazing technology that no copy protection can protect against!

I figured I better announce it here since no one seems to have a clue about it!

THE LINE OUT JACKS ON MY SOUND CARD!

dumbasses.

Re:I broke all audio copyrights years ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is so low-tech... not at all geek solution

Re:I broke all audio copyrights years ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually. Arent there, like, USB "speakers" with built-in ADCs? Should be "easy" to rip the digital data from the USB connection...

Re:I broke all audio copyrights years ago.

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

WOW!

by pointing out the blatantly obvious, and showing how hundreds of geeks have wasted their lives trying to break audio protections when they really didnt need to bother, i'm rewarded with a flamebait mod!

I guess the truth really really hurt someone bad huh!

A very simple hack..

[Rac3r5]

Just play ur DVD audio the normal way. Take a cable from your sound card output port and connect it to ur input port and run your favourite sound recording program. Ba bang.. your in business..

Re:yet another angle on the pointlessness of it al

[Halvy]

I really don't see why they even bother trying to stop ripping at all, as long as there's such a thing as the DVI out port.

Because they're psychos, mahhhn.

ObDefLeppard

[tjwhaynes]

"We got dis RIAA contract we'd like you to sign... umm, sign right here. Yeah, it's a real luxury havin' a drummer with two good arms, you know... real luxury..."

ObDefLeppard: Now we know the truth!

Infringe?

[shmlco]

And I'll continue to do so, as the end result is no different. You have something you were supposed to pay for... and didn't.

The value of a CD isn't in the bit of plastic, but in the music it contained and in the freedom it granted for you to listen to it whenever you wanted.

And yes, there's a more specific legal term for the act. There's also a perfectly good generic term for it as well. And people who do steal would prefer to hide the fact under a mask of doublespeak and a cloak of rationalization.

But I can see why others would prefer "infringement", as it sounds SO much better than stealing. Infringe? Why that's barely stepping a tippy-toe over the line... hardly worth even mentioning.

Re:Infringe?

[CustomDesigned]

The value of a CD isn't in the bit of plastic, but in the music it contained and in the freedom it granted for you to listen to it whenever you wanted.

And since copy-protected media don't provide you the freedom to listen to it whenever you want, there is no point in buying them.

Case in point. I only started buying DVDs 6 months ago - when I finally got around to getting libdvdcss installed and player software working. I sure won't be buying any DVD Audio until its copy protection is equally as pointless.

The copy protection does nothing to stop pirates. In fact, large scale pirates can just copy the bits - no decryption needed! All it does is stop paying customers like me from buying your stuff until there is a simple and painless work-around so I can use it.

Re:Infringe?

[Pofy]

>And I'll continue to do so, as the end result is
>no different. You have something you were
>supposed to pay for... and didn't.

So, what are you trying to proof, or tell? That copyright infringement is against the law? We already know that, no need to find any analogies or anything. So what is your point in trying to compare it to theft? You only confuse things and up with the wrong conclusions.

You seem to look at theft and take the results from theft and situations when something is theft, then you seem to claim that any such situation is also theft and since theft is the same a copyright infringement, any such situation or result of an action must also be copyright infringement, or at least illegal. That is both completely bogus logic and ends up with the wrong conclusion. There are many situations were analogies with theft fails because copyright does not work the same way as ownership for physical property, otherwise there would be no point with copyright.

Specifically, there is a difference between ownership of the copyright to a work, and ownership of copies of the work. Two different things and one does not imply the other. Theft would apply to the copies of the work (just as with any other property), copyright (and copyright infringement) applies to the work itself.

Even though there can many times be illegal to possess stolen property, there is for example no copyright infringement for possession of a copy of a work, even if it was produced through an infringing way. Hence what you ay above is completely irrelevant and wrong. It does not matter if you paid for something or not if it is copyright infringement. You can be in possession of something, not having paid for it, use it and still, there being no copyright infringement. I can for example borrow a book from someone, read it and even own it (if it is given to me), without having paid for it nor is there any reason why I should have paid for it. Note that the ownership of the physical copy of the book (or CD and so on) is with individual people, typically with the one initially making it and later whoever it is given and/or sold to. The copyright of the copyright owner only applies to the work and only to certain actions, like copying it, distributing it, making public performances and so on. That is the only thing that can be infringement. Possession is not for example.

So, just as there is differences between ownership of the copyright to a work and ownership to copies of a work, there is a difference between copyright infringement (which applies to the work, and when you copy, perform it and so on) and theft, which applies to individual copies of a work like when you take a CD from my home without permission (not that is stealing from ME, not the copyright holder). One have nothing to do with the other.

So why not use the proper word for things? What is the point in using erroneous words? Especially since you do it and from that draws completely wrong and false conclusions.

Re:Infringe?

[shmlco]

First, you used an amazing number of words to illustrate a fair use situation, since the single copy of the book was lended. (I assume you didn't steal it?)

Second, it's common vernacular to say I was "robbed" when your house was broken into, even though, technically, you were probably burgularized. The generic term covers the concept, even though a more specific word exists.

So, as someone whose work is often "stolen", I have little sympathy for rationalizations, and I refuse to play the flip side of the propaganda game. As said, many on the "other" side would greatly prefer that people use words or euphemisms that hide or trivialize the offense.

Re:Infringe?

[Pofy]

>First, you used an amazing number of words to
>illustrate a fair use situation, since the single
>copy of the book was lended. (I assume you didn't
>steal it?)

Huh? Borrowing the book was one of the examples I mentioned, it could have been given to me. Actually, I could even have STOLEN (the real sence of stealing, from my friend for example). In no case would I either commit copyright infringement nor would fair use be an issue since that applies to situations that would normally be infringement, it is a defence for an action that is infringement but turns it non infringing.

>Second, it's common vernacular to say I was
>"robbed" when your house was broken into, even
>though, technically, you were probably
>burgularized. The generic term covers the
>concept, even though a more specific word exists.

Again, what is your point then? You are arguing for using a not so appropriate word why? Because you felt "infringement" doesn't sound severe enough? As I and others have shown, stealing is WAY of (not even close to your house example). You end up in so many wrong conclusions and erroneous similarities it is silly.

>So, as someone whose work is often "stolen",

You mean as in someone actually stealing in the sence I mentioned above? Like stealing a book you have written, or a painting? You must be making an awefully lot of them and not have many left if that is the case.

>and I refuse to play the flip side of the
>propaganda game.

What propaganda? Calling it stealing is the propaganda. You want to call it something else because you feel that sounds better and more severe. The main problem is not that though, you then try to argue about infringement and what is and is not, not based on what copyright law clearly says is infringement, but rather on what stealing typically result in. To bad you end up wrong all the time.

>As said, many on the "other" side would greatly
>prefer that people use words or euphemisms that
>hide or trivialize the offense.

What is trivializing about infringement? It is illegal. As for deciding what type of illegal activity is most "trivial", that is another issue.

No, you are not *MaxHarris*, you are..

[Halvy]

an AssHat!!

Plus you sound like a lier.. I mean lawyer. LOL!!

And don't forget BUSTER, there are 6.5 billion citizens on the earth, and only a hand full of people *like you* and your big-bad-governments who are over-reacting more and more everday, because they know that *we* are comming for them. :]

Ob. Nelson reference:

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha *HA*!

Revoking Keys, Corporate Warfare, Mischief Aboundi

[Nom du Keyboard]

If this format allows revocation of keys for compromised hardware the next time you play an updated disc after your player, than mischief can certain abound.

1: Company A cracks Company B's more successful player and distributes said crack over Usenet.
2: Company B's keys are revoked, rendering their players useless.
3: PROFIT!

A 3-steps to Profit is a short pipeline indeed.

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right., Good 'enuf

[anubi]

Hell, I'm gonna convert it to the MP3 format anyway.

Its gonna go in any of the little MP3 players I have laying all over the place, and most likely be listened to on commodity headsets...

For this, resampled is fine by me.

As far as I am concerned, I have no problem honoring the exact bit patterns the Music Industry has Copyrighted. I won't use those bits... I will use other bits which do almost the same thing.

Same with the Video. Yes, the purchased disk has pure pristine factory perfect bits - and if thats what you want, please honor their copyright and buy their disk.

I don't really need all that resolution to watch on my (much) less than perfect system... a resampled XviD fascimile is fine by me, as it requires much less storage space.

If you read into this that I am justifying theft of content by creating derivatives of other's work, its nothing the entertainment industry hasn't already done anyhow. The latest glaring example in my mind was the story of Kimba, which became Simba in the Lion King.

Lawyers for the Industry have already looked into this, and decided it was OK, because it was not an EXACT copy. They did change the K to an S, and the color of the lion, so its NOT the same lion. I'll do better than that. I seriously doubt the file I make has *any* numerical correlation to the source file.

The Cracker Constant

[Nom du Keyboard]

The Cracker Constant: (Days to design a DRM system + Days to convince RIAA to use it + Days to get discs using it pressed in the hands of consumers) / Days first successful crack is posted.

Higher is better!

Sounds familiar

[UnknowingFool]

The method sounds all too familiar. Didn't MS try to do that with Secure Digitial Music Initiative? They totally locked it down so that only media player could play it and you couldn't copy the files. Somebody cracked it by hijacking the audio signal from to the speakers and redirecting it to a file.

It's like when someone has had problems with break-ins and people picking the lock to the front door. Well, the first solution is to replace the front door with a steel door and a super fancy lock. Then they're suprised that people went through the window.

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right. -- or Wrong!

[Nom du Keyboard]

My sound card supports "What U Hear"

And all the DRM system has to do is refuse to support your sound card.

End of discussion.

Get a Mac...

[Anonymous Coward]

and use Wiretap, or Audio Hijack Pro. No patches, no mussing, anythin' you can play, you can record to disk. I'm just waiting for the video version...

Quick! Quick!

[Rogerborg]

Shoot the messenger!

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right., Good 'enuf

[mrscorpio]

You specifically stated "recorded in the exact quality as you hear it". That's not true. Despite what you think is the same sound, some people have good enough ears and good enough stereo systems to discern between lossy and lossless audio. It's fine if your ears and system aren't good enough, but don't then go and claim that it's "recorded in the exact quality as you hear it" :)

You say "most basic level" like it's a bad thing

[Rogerborg]

You go ahead and wait a couple of years for a more clever solution to come along. I'm quite happy with this one.

Amen!

[trezor]

I can also tell you "fuck you" and find someone who isn't a fascist prick. I'm not required to deal with the RIAA

For the last few years I haven't bought one CD, as a direct response to this crap. They say we are "stealing" when the correct term is copyright infridgement.

I somehow supsect that is to divert our attention away from the fact that they have actually, in the true sense of the word stolen the public domain.

They violated the intent of copyright law first. See me care if I infridge now.

Re:Amen!

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's cold infridge. Brr.

Get out of fridge!

Fast $2 circumvention kit...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, you could always use a cable.... a $2 cable, to play the DVD into your recording VCR. Encode the video signal back into your computer. Sure it isn't as pretty a picture, but with a bit of effort, you can share with all your friends, and the only folks who say 'its a bit fuzzy' are the HDTV mavens who expect all the world to be pristine. It's a simple enough way that even Grandma/Pa could do it. Sorry if this fair-use example blows away the DMCA and the legal eagles at the RIAA/MPAA. You were expecting a super-duper high tech method of breaking the system involving million dollar computers and long periods of research by the highly skilled few. Nope!

The DMCA is a law

[Rogerborg]

You are being somewhat selective in your civic values.

Re:The DMCA is a law

[Arcane_Rhino]

You are being somewhat selective in your civic values.

I do not think so. As someone who worked as a Customs Inspector for almost a decade and seized many many hardware and software components under the DMCA, I have a keen understanding of the intention and use of the DMCA. It was implemented with the intention of curbing the flow of violative software and the hardware that enabled use of illegal software. It also enabled businesses to better control their marketing districts.

Preventing consumers from fair use activities was never part of the stated reason for the legislation nor were we ever instructed during our briefings to look for articles that would prevent consumers from manipulating legitimate (legally obtained and distributed) software and hardware.

My background stated, I will also assert that I have no problem putting copyright violators in jail or with the seizure of illegally produced and distributed works. I am not advocating any type of free-for-all. I believe people should be fairly compensated for their efforts.

However,
since my time as an Inspector, I have observe many businesses try to warp the usage of the DMCA to their own ends. And not just the usual targets of /. dislike: My favorite was the court decision that third-party garage door openers are NOT a violation of the DMCA because Congress never intended the DMCA to limit consumer options. Good ruling but this is why I have become cynical about the current usage of the DMCA. It is no longer being applied to the "bad guys" but instead is being increasingly used by corporations to lock consumers out of their rights and choices.

The manipulation of the DMCA in effort to extort more money out of the consumer or monopolistically control the consumer is unacceptable and unethical.

I stand by my previous statement.

Re:The DMCA is a law

[tricorn]

Why should businesses be allowed to "better control their marketing districts"? This seems very anti-competitive and non-free-market, why should we pass laws to encourage it? After all, if companies are free to outsource to places where prices are cheap, thus lowering wages here, why shouldn't consumers be allowed to do the same thing by buying items someplace where they have to price it cheaply? Why should they be able to have their cake and eat it too?

Re:The DMCA is a law

[Arcane_Rhino]

You misunderstand the intent of my post. I was defending my point against being accused of being selective in my civic values, not supporting the DMCA. Point of fact, I do not approve of the DMCA - Customs could seize violative stuff before; even greymarket merchandise (relevant to the international marketing district issue) if certain conditions were met. I included the marketing district comment because, although it is promoted as only being anti-piracy, the DMCA has additional language that directly affects consumers who purchase legitimate product outside of the US market. To be clear, you can import that Japanese play station, but you cannot (legally) import a connector that would enable it to play games designated for the US market.

Pretty slick, huh?

I know

[Sycraft-fu]

And you just can't go wrong for gaming on it, hence why I own one. And I don't use it for recording, I have an Echo Layla 3G that I use for pro work. However, I'd like the Layla to play back DVD-A, since it's much higher quality. No dice, WinDVD won't talk to it, only to the Audigy 2. Hence my point about CPPM taking away rights and this software restoring them (at least somewhat).

OhhhKAY..I'll feed this troll today..

[Halvy]

first, the amerikan people do NOT want these laws because they are:

illegal,

immoral,

unenforcable (unless you call ruining kids lives by putting them in jail 'enforcing)

and the best way to fight these laws, is to stick our middle finger up at anyone, ESPECIALLY the Supreme Court Of Arswholes.

second: people *like you* need to leave.

three: i'm leaving, just incase you decide to stay :)

Re:OhhhKAY..I'll feed this troll today..

[Anonymous Coward]

ILLEGAL ??? C'mon, this is America ...

Why so app specific

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't use windows OS at home, nor any product locked with it, so this wont work for me. But why not just make a fake audio driver that would write a file ? seems more robust solution to me the only drawback is the 1x speed of reaping.

Re:Why so app specific

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but the idea of this hack is to dump the stream after it is decrypted but before it is converted to analog.

Some sort of ripping IS possible

[Anonymous Coward]

On the plus side, though, many SACDs (the hybrid ones) at least have a plain old Red Book CD audio layer, which you can rip to your heart's content.

Granted, this doesn't really solve the burning desire to rip the high-res or surround version to a home media server, but it at least makes the DRM worlds less irritating. (Since you can still listen to the music on your MP3 player -- legally, even.)

Did you say the ripped media is fingerprinted?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what crypto CPPM is using, but it is quite feasible to embed some damning information about the ripping computer (IP, MAC, timestamp, etc.) into the audio stream, and do so in a way that is resistant to analog resampling and other tortures. If the player really wants to be nasty, it can embed stuff like the user's password or credit card number (perhaps PK encrypted with the RIAA's public key). So basically think before you share.

The article in which this was suggested:
http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~naor/PAPERS/fc20 00_abs.html

Re:Did you say the ripped media is fingerprinted?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the player (WinDVD) is hacked to dump the stream to disk after decryption but before analog conversion, it is quite possible to make it so the player doesn't embed personal information.

Re:Copy Protection? Yeah, right., Good 'enuf

[anubi]

I won't contest your observations. They are true.

Your observation that my ears and system aren't good enough is also true.

And I think it was my parent's parent who made the claim that it's "recorded in the exact quality as you hear it", not me. ( With me, very few things are exact. )

My less-than-perfect fascimile is good enough for me. And I don't feel too bad because as I noted, even the big guys do it, and their own Lawyers and the Courts said it was OK.

Just don't make an EXACT copy. (IANAL).

Right to Arm Bears

[Z00L00K]

Correction here: Right to Arm Bears (Severely off-topic, but whatever... :-) )

Here's one

[trezor]

How does this harm regular consumers?

Have you tried to backup up your original DVDs without using a DeCSSed ripper lately? Ahhhhhh.

Re:Here's one

[thebatlab]

How many regular consumers back up their media? I wouldn't think it's a large amount.

Fuck no

[trezor]

Microsoft and others have online activation crap ... So, it looks like the lesson learned has been "include copy protection, but don't make it too heinous on the customer

Which doesn't always work. Which sometimes doesn't even give you an installation ID you can phone in. When you got a legal, working setup and an activation pops out of fucking nowwhere. And then there's just no way of fixing it. Genius.

When I had to do a reinstall... Guess what? I used a pirated edition without activation to not ever see that crap happen again.

Fuck copy protection. All it does is piss off or annoy legit customers. The pirated goods always has it removed, so why should they care?

They should look at their movies more often!

[alexandreracine]

If they would have look at this movie, they would have seen that even alien stardestroyer protection technology can be crack with a simple MAC C++ trojan and a wireless access.

Been there, done that

[Trixter]

This technique is not new; people have been doing this for over a decade with RealAudio streams. Until people require decryption hardware in the speakers themselves, there will always be a way to divert the stream.

Mod parent up!

[mikefe]

Well, while the two are in bed, it's important to realize that "the Man" and "the companies" are two different entities. "The Man" in this case, is whoever came up with the goofy format. "The companies" are the media companies who sell (or would sell) music in this format. The reason this is important, is that when you fight against The Man, you are probably doing "the companies" a huge favor by legitimizing their format and making it so that their customers will have a way to play the music -- and therefore have a reason to buy it.

Very true, but there's one thing you didn't mention. By cracking the encryption we don't allow free market forces report back to the companies that their shit isn't selling. People just buy it to crack and then do what they want with it.

Side note on TFA

[LionMage]

I found it interesting that the descriptions of the tools that are listed in the article speak of Packed PCM, and only briefly mention the other name that this technology is known by (MLP, which I understand to stand for "Meridian Lossless Packing"). A while back, I'd submitted some commentary to the Macintouch web site regarding DVD Audio, and apparently I ruffled some feathers because I referred to this technology as Packed PCM (or PPCM to be super-brief).

One respondent reamed me for using that term, and said the "proper" term was Meridian Lossless Packing, or MLP. Of course, it turns out that this guy was somehow associated with or affiliated with the company that owns the trademark on the name and presumably any patents relevant to the technique.

It warms the cockles of my heart to see that I'm not the only person who hates being browbeat into using someone else's trademark. (Then again, there may be a licensing fee associated with the trademark, which may explain why my Technics DVD-A player's manual doesn't even mention MLP, preferring the term "P.PCM." This is probably similar to how Apple charges for the use of the trademarked term Firewire, so Sony calls it i.Link, and everyone else calls it IEEE 1394.)

The hack heard around the world.

[Anonymous Coward]

""And we will take it by any and all means" is hostile and makes it sound like we started this mess. The way I suggested it be rewritten shows that the media conglomorates are using their power (via their deep pockets) to steal it from us and we are going to take it back."

And once again I ask, and once again no one answers. Going to the beginning, who started this mess? The pirates, or the content providers? Does anyone even remember?

Re:The hack heard around the world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the day, the content providers WERE the pirates. Especially Disney, which is interesting because now they are lobbying hard against the very activities which brought them their power. For more information regarding the history of this issue, Lawrence Lessig has an excellent book called "Free Culture" which addresses this usurping of our rights.

Re:The hack heard around the world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Link - http://www.free-culture.cc/

Creative Commons Licensed: BY-NC-SA

I'll continue to not notice DRM & copy protect

[Anonymous Coward]

...until it survives the conversion to analog and back to digital.

Anybody with a half-decent sound card (in my case, M-Audio's Delta 1010, ~$350US), can loopback multi-channel audio from the digital domain, to the analog domain, back to the digital domain without any quality degradation, at 24bit or higher, quite conveniently.

Sure, "if I can afford a sound card like that..." you might suggest that I won't mind paying for the crap the RIAA represents. While I would never even download this crap for myself; hypothetically, I might do this for a friend, and they can then share this media unprotected, and so on and so on, and the entire concept is undermined.

In all my capacity, I cannot imagine a copy protection scheme ever surviving the leeps between digital and analog. Unless it effects the accuracy of the sound it is representing, the frequency and phase inconsistencies of the hardware involved (D/A and A/D circuits, a mixer, cabling, ...) of any loopback setup will scramble any coherant protection data, not to mention the fact that most people would be recording it back into a format that either ignores or does not support DRM or copy protection.

Before I get carried away with explaining all of the necessary steps the industry would have to go through to squeeze this out, and how every single one could easily be circumvented at some obvious place, I'll just say two things:

- As long as the audio can be heard without being transmitted directly into the nervious system, it can be copied -- and given such technology, the ability to extract it from the memory coherently shouldn't be a far leap; and of course the obligatory notion that...

- Perhaps the industry should see the ridiculous cost of all of these measures, and instead channel them into discovering and promoting REAL music. Quality music. ...and I'm not talking about the bit depth, sample rate, or quantity of channels the audio is reproduced in.

-@

Ot: is the human detector too easy or too hard?

[fastfinge]

Your entry closed before I got to it. As someone who is completely blind, I'm going with way too hard. Are you the person responsible for this code? Can I come over and stab you in the face? No, seriously, I've gotten this all resolved through bugging pater about it, but still. If you're going to allow acceptions to your system, every robotic spammer and troll in the universe can claim blindness. Wouldn't it be smarter to create a text based system and stop creating accounts for any person or thing who claims not to be able to see the image?

See slashdotters, if people just added public email addresses in their profiles, I wouldn't be tossing off topic garbage in this thread. Go do it now if you haven't already. You can even protect it with a sane captcha solution. No, hold on...this is slashdot. Nothing that happens around here is ever sane.

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you ca'n't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

Re:Ot: is the human detector too easy or too hard?

[Qrlx]

hello there blind friend, I just thought I should let you know that the word you are looking for is exceptions, not acceptions.

that's e-x-ceptions, not a-c-ceptions.

They sound a lot alike, but for whatever reason they are two different words.

Apologies if you meant "ex" and you ended up with "ac" due to the technological hurdles in your path.

cheerio!

Re:Ot: is the human detector too easy or too hard?

[fastfinge]

No, that was my error. Thanks for the correction. When everything is read to you you tend not to notice the difference between similar words; I am so used to the robotic computer voice that I speed it up to over 450 words per minute, and unless the error is staggeringly awful a proofread at that speed isn't going to find it. Don't even talk to me about there/their/they're, here/hear, and even affect/effect. I'm perfectly aware what to use when, but if I slip while writing I'll never catch it on the proofread. No, grammar checkers don't help. They're all worthless.

Shhhhhhhh!

[ArchAngel21x]

Idiots! The first rule of DRM circumvention is don't talk about DRM.... ahh nevermind.

And no one is shocked-Being ARMed.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Otherwise, the arms race will continue..."

But the arms race is fun. The short ones can really move, even though the long ones make fun of them.

Ever saw one?

[X.25]

Where I live, and where I used to go frequently (Asia), I've never seen "DVD-Audio". Not that I looked for it, but I usually browse shops ("both" types of shops ;) anytime I can.

I've heard about it before, but really never saw one. Did you? Does it work in standalone DVD player (I guess not)?

But how do you do that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously we need to change education practices so that people grow into smart teenagers with a health scepticism of trends and authority. Might have some good effects on the adult population too.

Still impossible to make DVD-A - DVD-+R backup

[SigNick]

Unfortunately this hack doesn't remove the watermarking, so you can't make a copy to a DVD-+R disc. Is there any possibility to make a player that doesn't adhere to all the draconian measures included just to restrict how the content is used like watermarking, like there are DVD-video players that don't care about regions, Macrovision and prohibited user options (skipping commercials..)?

Quote from Ars Technica:

"The only caveat is that DVD-Audio's Verance digital watermarking, embedded in the audio signal itself, cannot be removed. The Verance watermark contains seventy-two bits of data comprising four CCI (copy control information) bits and eight usage identifier bits every fifteen seconds plus sixty content identifier bits every thirty seconds - if a DVD-Audio player detects that an embedded watermark does not match that of a specific disc (in other words if ripped DVD-Audio content is burnt to a blank DVD-R disc using an authoring program such as DiscWelder BRONZE), the machine will halt playback after thirty seconds."

Re:Still impossible to make DVD-A - DVD-+R backup

[Anonymous Coward]

It is possible to make DVD-Audio DVD+-R backup because a lot of DVD-Audios use encryption, but they don't use Verance digital watermarking.

don't do that

[The Creator]

I've downloaded lots of albums that I NEVER would have bought because I just wanted to see if I liked them.

Now that's something i wish people whouldn't do. You are fueling the campaign for more ridicculus laws, as well as giving someone free advertizing. And for no reason to boot: You are not going to miss a song you have never heard.

In other words, you're pro-selective enforcement

[Rogerborg]

I stand by my previous statement.

And the inevitable has apparently occurred.

[Bodysurf]

It's reported that the RIAA's lawyers have taken action.

...and it's gone

I got a phone call from a big local lawyer office (no fake, I checked the caller ID and the phone number really belongs to a lawyer office). They have been hired to make me stop distributing the DVD-A tools. It was a reasonably big talk, but I can summarize it with

They: we are giving you two choices, either you remove all references to those tools from your site now, or we'll have to take you to court.

Me: I'm already removing!

They: Thank-you for your cooperation.

Oh, well. It's been fun. I'm amazed at how well it spread in these two days (!), and I'm sure from now on you'll be able to find those tools in countless mirrors, p2p and the like.

Shine on!

R.

My rights online

[Ilgaz]

Yes, thanks to whoever managed to crack it. You are a hero!

I will have to buy more 16bit PCM plastics as there is no option to buy anything legit online in my country. (Turkey)

Also you just killed the future of DVD Audio.

Don't forget to get your check from Sony. SACD team must be partying now.

Thanks for breaking my rights to purchase 24 bit in 2005.

Funny you should ask...

[shmlco]

Harris Poll