Slashdot Mirror
DVD Hack Delays DVD Audio
An anonymous reader noted an article that is running over on CNN that is discussing the news that
DVD Audio will be delayed while manufacturers attempt to implement strong encryption to prevent the same thing from happening to DVD Audio that happened to DVD Video. They are still operating under a fundamentally flawed assumption: if we can decrypt it to watch it, someone will figure out a way to decrypt it to rip it. The delays hurt their profits as well as irritate their customers that want new products. Its quite frusterating.
-jwb
Rob,
I think using the phrase "rip it" was probably a poor choice. My take on the whole DVD deal was that I just want to watch them under linux and not have to run a proprietary OS to do it. I don't want to have to buy 2 dvd players (one for the living room and one for the bedroom). Using phrases like "rip it" make you think of copyright violation via copying.
just a thought. not a flame.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
From the DVD FAQ:
[1.12] What about DVD-Audio or Music DVD?
When DVD was released in 1996 there was no DVD-Audio format, although the audio capabilities of DVD-Video far surpassed CD. The DVD Forum sought additional input from the music industry before defining the DVD-Audio format. A draft standard was released by the DVD Forum's Working Group 4 (WG4) in January 1998, and version 0.9 was released in July. The final DVD-Audio 1.0 specification was approved in February 1999 and released in March. DVD-Audio products will show up in late 1999 at the earliest (Panasonic has announced DVD-Audio/DVD-Video players for October 1999). The delay is being caused by the slow process of selecting copy protection features (encryption and watermarking). A watermarking technology was supposed to have been chosen from the top two contenders: Aris Technologies and Blue Spike. (Aris press releases in late June touted itself as the winner but there has been no official announcement.) Proposals from Cognicity, IBM, and Solana were eliminated during testing, although Solana later merged with Aris.) The evaluation process is being done by major music companies in conjunction with the 4C Entity, comprising IBM, Intel, Matsushita, and Toshiba. It's possible that the RIAA's Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) could push the introduction of DVD-Audio into 2000.
DVD-Audio is a separate format from DVD-Video. DVD-Audio discs can be designed to work in DVD-Video players, but its possible to make a DVD-Audio disc that won't play at all in a DVD-Video player, since the DVD-Audio specification includes new formats and features, with content stored in a separate "DVD-Audio zone" on the disc (the AUDIO_TS directory) that DVD-Video players never look at. New DVD-Audio players are needed, or new "universal players" that can play both DVD-Video and DVD-Audio discs.
Plea to producers: Universal players won't be available for some time, but you can make "universal discs" today. With a small amount of effort, all DVD-Audio discs can be made to work on all DVD players by including a Dolby Digital version of the audio in the DVD-Video zone.
Plea to DVD-Audio authoring system developers: Make your software do this by default or strongly recommend this option during authoring.
DVD-Audio (and universal) players will work with existing receivers. They output PCM and Dolby Digital, and some will support the optional DTS and DSD formats. However, most current receivers can't decode the high-definition PCM audio (see 3.6.1 for details), and even if they could it can't be carried on standard digital audio connections. DVD-Audio players with high-end digital-to-analog converters (DACs) can be hooked up to receivers with two-channel or 6-channel analog inputs, but some quality will be lost if the receiver converts back to digital for processing. Future receivers with improved digital connections such as IEEE 1394 (FireWire) will be required to use the full digital resolution of DVD-Audio.
The music industry has requested an "embedding signalling" or "digital watermark" copy protection feature. This uses signal processing technology to apply a digital signature and optional encryption keys to the audio in the form of supposedly inaudible noise so that new equipment will recognize copied audio and refuse to play it. Audiophiles claim this degrades the audio.
In the meantime, the DVD-Video standard includes surround sound audio and better-than-CD audio (see 3.6.2).
Sony and Philips have developed a competing Super Audio CD format. (See 3.6.1 for details.) SACD provides "legacy" discs that have two layers, one that plays in existing CD players, plus a high-density layer for DVD-Audio players. Ironically, initial price for these dual-layer discs will be higher than for a standard CD plus a standard DVD. Sony released version 0.9 of the SACD spec in April 1998, the final version is expected in April 1999. SACD technology will be available to existing Sony/Philips CD licensees at no additional cost.
-- jar
More of a question than a comment:
Is there a danger that companies will pull out of the video DVD market now they are frightened of ripping? Although the DVD market is strong here in America, I know that in Britain it is still taking off, and I could imagine big companies panicking and cutting out of the British Video DVD market until another 'secure' video scheme comes along.
Even though millions of dollars have been invested in DVD, I wouldn't be too surprised at seeing companies cutting their losses...
Any thoughts on this, or am I being too paranoid?
DVD Audio is doomed. Sure, the quality rules. I'd like it. But people have a HUGE investment of money into the CD technology. People want their music to work on their car stero, their boom box and their computer. The high-end technoweenie consumer also dislikes DVD audio because it is not as portable as a handheld digital audio device (mp3man, rio, etc.). Can you imagine how much a DVDAudioMan would cost? And it would be very bulkly. You need decryption on the player.
This isn't meant to start a flame war, but I think, despite the technical merits of it, DVD Audio is not a comercially viable technology. Perhaps the future of commercial audio recordings is in some encrypted mp3 standard.
The recording industry would like us to believe (falsely) that any form of copying is illegal. Their entire encryption efforts are based around this false assumption. Rob is entirely right to say that ripping should be technologically allowed. Please don't perpetuate the myth that copying without permission is automatically illegal.
In many ways, I think there is a shift of view here so new that while I see it among us geeks, it has yet to proliferate into the general public. With the PC, and with the coming of age of open, free operating systems, we have reached a point where we dare ask for control over our machines, or more specifically, that they serve us, and no one else.
If you think back ten years, technology was about companies. A new system or format would come out, and we would all praise the creators for giving us new technology (ok, not everyone, but people who like new technology). We didn't ask for input into the design, and didn't complain very vocally when they were designed for the good of the companies rather than the consumer. The people creating these formats are still stuck in that age where they, a small number of large companies, controlled the means by which we also used them.
But those days are over. I simply will not invite a machine into my house unless it serves my agenda, and my agenda alone. I don't want a black box that keeps secrets from me, spies on me, controls my freedom, or generally tells me what I can and can't do. I believe that this attitude is the only way we can keep the integrity over our machines in the techno future, and I believe it will spread.
Regarding the specifics of making these disks hard to crack, they really only have a few options. They could put more keys on each disk, so that they can quickly stop printing one key once it is known to be cracked (damage control, but it means people will have to keep updating their players). And they can use stronger crypto (if they can get by the regulations which seems very difficult), but that only means makes the known plaintext attack that the CSS crackers used to attain all the other keys when they had one implausible, they would still have get first one.
I'm interested in hearing for people with better insight then myself into this sort of programming, if it is plausible to write a program where the key cannot be retrieved from the memory when the encryption is going on? After all, GPG complains about insecure memory everytime I run it, but that is from other users: this is worse, since it will be me trying to scan the memory for the key. Can it really decrypt things right under my nose without showing what transformations are being applied when analyzed carefully?
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
When a CD is recorded today, the recording process has to ensure that no frequency above 22.05kHz is recorded, else there will be nasty alising problems. This is acheived using a "brick wall" filter, which is a very high order low-pass filter whose -3dB point is at 22.05 kHz. Therefore all information above 22.05kHz is lost, and this is the information that helps the listener locate the sound. With a 96kHz sampling rate, this filter could be moved all the way up to 45.5kHz, well out of any useful range. Better still, it could be moved to 30kHz with a lower order, thereby introducing les noise into the audible range.
I do tend to agree with your point about getting good speakers. But once you get all the good equipment, you start to really hate the CD audio format.
-jwb
You are allowed by law to make copies of your personal music and software for personal use and backup purposes.
:)
You might want to listen to the music on a Rio or some other device, or you might want to make a backup copy in case your physical media becomes damaged. You might also want to keep a few copies in different places so you don't have to lug your music collection around with you. It's also fun to manipulate your music on a PC to see what it sounds like backwards and stuff like that.
There's nothing inherently wrong with "ripping" a CD, and the music industry shouldn't be so caught up in trying to control distribution to the point where their efforts are at odds with technological progress.
Copying music and then distributing it without permission is against the law, except in very limited circumstances where you can claim fair use (a la Negativland). But there is no reason that simply copying it, without distributing it, is wrong.
Don't let coporations control more of your life than they already do.
-OT (who is not a lawyer and knows these statements are not 100% accurate
The RIAA does not like the concept of a customer making copies of legal material for their own personal use. The ability to buy a CD then make a tape (or now, burn a copy or burn your own CD mix) for your car irks them. This has gone to court and "fair use" was upheld. Since then, RIAA representatives have made comments that imply their dislike of "fair use" is strong today.
Enter technology.
Take a good look at SDMI. Embeded within the specifications is the groundwork to eliminate that pesky "fair use" copying. Technology will enable the industry to eliminate what the courts would not.
I would expect a simular thought process to rear its ugly head within the DVD arena.
I'm trying to understand encryption in the audio world. They encrypt this disk, I can't play it except on autherised players. What is to prevent me, owner of two autherized players and the equipment to burn a DVD (This doesn't exits AFAIK, but it will soon) from making a copy of it? Oh sure, I can't play it in linux (if it is good encryption), but I can now make a couple digital copies of the encrypted disk.
Now you'd more likely hear,
With ethics, "there is no try", but with copy protection it's a simple matter of "do or do not". So the idea that I can't do it because it's wrong is replaced by I can't do it because it's hard, and when the inevitable crack shows up and makes it easy, the can't part disappears, and no one remembers to ask the question that kept most of us from stealing beforehand.
A naive analysis, perhaps. But I can't help but wonder.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade