One question for Mr Browne. Can he name a single major technology invented in the last 100 years that hasn't been a direct result of government funding in science?
And who knows how much further ahead we'd be now if government hadn't gotten involved.
I can't imagine any technology moving ahead more quickly when government has it's hands in it. It just doesn't work that way.
Any artifact that they unnecessarily add which is audible is, to me, INtolerable. Maybe it's OK for 95% of the consumers. I'm in the 5%.
I'm a music lover. I listen to music for the joy of it. All kinds of music. I always seek out the best possible sound reproduction that is within my budget. That starts with the source material and ends with the re-production equipment.
If the industry intentionally dimishes sound quality for the purpose of tracking "pirated" music, then I will fight that tooth and nail. Unfortunatly, those of us who care about music sound quality are not the ones they're going after with this scheme, yet we are the ones that will be most adversely effected by it. Those who don't give a crap about sound quality will easily be able to get around the watermarking.
Right, the ATTACKED sound sample "still sounds better than 64 kbps MP3". If I take that literally, it means that:
1) The watermarked files sound at least as good as 64 kbps MP3; and,
2) The attacked sound file STILL sounds at least as good as 64 kbps MP3.
It doesn't say anything about how they sounded before the watermark was applied, but the implication is that after the watermark was applied (and after it was removed) the file had to sound at least as good as 64 kbps MP3.
An mp3 is fine for casual use but if I like something enough to hear it over and over again I'll buy a cd
And there in lies the problem. If this succeds, the CD you buy will be SDMI watermarked. This ISN'T just for downloadable music. They want to apply this ACROSS THE BOARD to all purchasable and listenable music.
If this happens, get ready for MP3 sound quality to be new standard for high quality audio. That level of sound quality will be deemed acceptable for post-watermarking of high quality audio.
Yes, but what they're saying here is that the ORIGINAL released music (be it on CD, DVD-A, downloadable, whatever) has to sound at least as good as 64 kbps (or 128 kbps, depending on your inturpretation) MP3 files once they've been watermarked. I don't see any other way to inturpret what their source meant when they said "still sounded better than a 64 kbps MP3 file."
They claim that the SDMI watermarking process is "inaudible", but they've set the bar so low that it's trivial to achieve. Of course it'll be "inaudible" by their standards. Play it for anyone with halfway decent hearing on a high quality stereo system, and they WILL be able to pick up audible degredation in the sound quality.
subjected to preliminary listening tests performed by "golden ears" listeners to ensure that each attacked sample still sounded better than a 64 kbps MP3 file.
They've GOT to be kidding! That's a VERY low standard. "Still sounded better"??? Is that to imply that once the watermark is applied, the acceptible level of sound quality is equal to a 64 kbps MP3 file?
As an audiophile, I find that statement to be absolutely revolting. It's impossible to get natural sounding music out of a file of such low bitrate. 128 kbps is tough. 192 is getting close to being acceptable. Having listened to the difference between 44khz/16bit and 96khz/24bit, I can tell you with certainty that even pure 44/16 PCM is limited. If 64 kpbs mp3 encoding is the standard for sound quality, then we are about to take a huge step backwards in audio reproduction. Neverind the privacy and fair use aspects of this (which are VERY important), just from a sound quality perspective, this technology seems doomed to fail.
I'll repeat what's been said here before...
It is impossible to add a non-audible watermark to music that can survive a well done perceptual encoding (ie, MP3 encoding, etc). The idea of perceptual encoding is to remove everything that is non-audible to save space. These two technologies are at odds with each other. The only way to preserve that watermark is for it to be audible from the start.
Sigh.... I know he didn't create the internet. You know it. And Al Gore knows it too. We all know that the quote was taken somewhat out of context.
The problem is that he'll say anything that sounds good at the time with no regard to the real truth. It happens over and over and over again with him. The James Lee Witt story. The cost of arthritis medication. There are dozens of other examples.
No, he knows that he didn't create the internet. But it sounded good at that moment, so he blurts it out as such.
How to get private information out into the public
on
SDMI *NOT* Cracked!?
·
· Score: 1
How do you get private information into the public record? By lawsuits!
If some number of hackers believe they've been wronged, then they should take the SDMI group to court. SDMI will need to pay up the $10K or demonstrate in a public forum (the courts) that the hackers did not in fact break the watermarking. To do so, I think, would likely expose enough about how their watermarking works to make the information useful.
Care to send a pointer to the "law" that states that? I don't think you can, because I don't believe there is such a law (at least none that I could find).
Paltry doesn't even begin to describe it. According to their website, http://www.sdmi.org, as of 31-Aug-00 there were 175 participants. It also says that there's a participation fee of $20,000 per year (although there's some other levels of participation depending on when you join for as low as $10,000). Either way, if you do the math, the $10,000 prize is a drop in their proverbial bucket.
At least they should try to do a good job at copy protecting, and do it in a way that doesn't damage product
That didn't seem to bother the MPAA / macrovision folks, now did it? Macrovision is clearly visible on MANY TVs. It manifests itself as a slight flickering at the top of the screen, or it makes the screen get gradually brighter towards the top.
There's absolutely no way the RIAA would give up copy protection to protect sound quality. How it sounds is a second order requirement to them.
I firmly believe that most schools ban Napster not because of piracy or copyright concerns, but because of the rediculous amount of bandwidth that such a service takes up. So Harvard has said "We've got the bandwidth to handle it, so big whoop."
And besides, what percentage of Harvard students are regularly using Napster, as opposed to say, any huge state school where the admissions standards might be significatly lower.
Hey Mods... how's about changing the logo to the more appropriate COMPAQ logo. Digital doesn't exist any more, and this is a COMPAQ product that we're talking about.
Courtney has a bunch of.mp3 stuff up on her site at Hole.com. Mostly live tracks, b-sides, and non-previously-released songs. Download it now before her (former) record company pitches a fit.
Other bands that are going this route include Primus, who post tons of live shows on their site (mostly from tapes that fans send in). Prince is getting into the act. They Might Be Giants has songs at their site, as well as plenty of downloads at Emusic.com. They must be doing well with it since they keep releasing new stuff there (and their the number one act on the site... I guess the technology and their fanbase is a good mix).
Yes, record companies are just starting to feel the hurt. And it isn't because of anything illegal going on.
The RIAA and member lablels aren't worried about priacy.
They aren't worried about losing sales.
They aren't worried about copyright infringement.
They ARE worried about their gravytrain, i.e. the artists that they make such a bundle off of, leaving town and going solo to promote themselves.
The mp3.com lawsuit was a convenient excuse to punish mp3.com for attempting to re-write the rules of artist promotion.
With the technology before us, artists like Courtney Love can give the record industry the big old "FUCK YOU!" and still distribute thier music.
Smashing Pumpkins just released their final album as a vinyl only release w/o record company involvement. They encouraged those few that got copies to record them, compress them into.mp3's, and spread them around. More and more artists are doing similar.
The real risk to the RIAA isn't the copying of copyrighted material, Napster, mp3.com, and the like. It's that the artists can promote themselves, distrubute their own music, and collect the profits without a record label being involved. The game's over.
Slashdot Mirror
Some people have more money than brains.
-S
And who knows how much further ahead we'd be now if government hadn't gotten involved.
I can't imagine any technology moving ahead more quickly when government has it's hands in it. It just doesn't work that way.
-S
If you're not a registered Hackologist with the Federal Unit of Computer Knowledge, then you could land yourself in jail for illegal hacking!
Sheesh! Don't you know you can't talk about such things? You're gonna get us all in trouble!
-S
2) If they're still working on their standard, then how can there be "SDMI compliant" devices SHIPPING NOW!?!?! Devices such as... Sony VAIO Music Clip, and Sanyo SSP-PD7 and SSP-HP7
-S
My money's on The Q Continuum.
"Don't confuse audible with tolerable."
Any artifact that they unnecessarily add which is audible is, to me, INtolerable. Maybe it's OK for 95% of the consumers. I'm in the 5%.
I'm a music lover. I listen to music for the joy of it. All kinds of music. I always seek out the best possible sound reproduction that is within my budget. That starts with the source material and ends with the re-production equipment.
If the industry intentionally dimishes sound quality for the purpose of tracking "pirated" music, then I will fight that tooth and nail. Unfortunatly, those of us who care about music sound quality are not the ones they're going after with this scheme, yet we are the ones that will be most adversely effected by it. Those who don't give a crap about sound quality will easily be able to get around the watermarking.
-S
Right, the ATTACKED sound sample "still sounds better than 64 kbps MP3". If I take that literally, it means that:
1) The watermarked files sound at least as good as 64 kbps MP3; and,
2) The attacked sound file STILL sounds at least as good as 64 kbps MP3.
It doesn't say anything about how they sounded before the watermark was applied, but the implication is that after the watermark was applied (and after it was removed) the file had to sound at least as good as 64 kbps MP3.
-S
And there in lies the problem. If this succeds, the CD you buy will be SDMI watermarked. This ISN'T just for downloadable music. They want to apply this ACROSS THE BOARD to all purchasable and listenable music.
Radio? Yes. Downloadable? Yes. DVD-A? Yes. SACD? Yes. CD? Yes.
If this happens, get ready for MP3 sound quality to be new standard for high quality audio. That level of sound quality will be deemed acceptable for post-watermarking of high quality audio.
-S
Yes, but what they're saying here is that the ORIGINAL released music (be it on CD, DVD-A, downloadable, whatever) has to sound at least as good as 64 kbps (or 128 kbps, depending on your inturpretation) MP3 files once they've been watermarked. I don't see any other way to inturpret what their source meant when they said "still sounded better than a 64 kbps MP3 file."
They claim that the SDMI watermarking process is "inaudible", but they've set the bar so low that it's trivial to achieve. Of course it'll be "inaudible" by their standards. Play it for anyone with halfway decent hearing on a high quality stereo system, and they WILL be able to pick up audible degredation in the sound quality.
-S
Perhaps, but even so that's still an unacceptable criteria for sound quality.
-S
They've GOT to be kidding! That's a VERY low standard. "Still sounded better"??? Is that to imply that once the watermark is applied, the acceptible level of sound quality is equal to a 64 kbps MP3 file?
As an audiophile, I find that statement to be absolutely revolting. It's impossible to get natural sounding music out of a file of such low bitrate. 128 kbps is tough. 192 is getting close to being acceptable. Having listened to the difference between 44khz/16bit and 96khz/24bit, I can tell you with certainty that even pure 44/16 PCM is limited. If 64 kpbs mp3 encoding is the standard for sound quality, then we are about to take a huge step backwards in audio reproduction. Neverind the privacy and fair use aspects of this (which are VERY important), just from a sound quality perspective, this technology seems doomed to fail.
I'll repeat what's been said here before...
It is impossible to add a non-audible watermark to music that can survive a well done perceptual encoding (ie, MP3 encoding, etc). The idea of perceptual encoding is to remove everything that is non-audible to save space. These two technologies are at odds with each other. The only way to preserve that watermark is for it to be audible from the start.
-S
Sigh.... I know he didn't create the internet. You know it. And Al Gore knows it too. We all know that the quote was taken somewhat out of context.
The problem is that he'll say anything that sounds good at the time with no regard to the real truth. It happens over and over and over again with him. The James Lee Witt story. The cost of arthritis medication. There are dozens of other examples.
No, he knows that he didn't create the internet. But it sounded good at that moment, so he blurts it out as such.
-S
I'd hide it in SDMI compliant watermarking.
How do you get private information into the public record? By lawsuits!
If some number of hackers believe they've been wronged, then they should take the SDMI group to court. SDMI will need to pay up the $10K or demonstrate in a public forum (the courts) that the hackers did not in fact break the watermarking. To do so, I think, would likely expose enough about how their watermarking works to make the information useful.
An expensive way to get there though...
-S
Care to send a pointer to the "law" that states that? I don't think you can, because I don't believe there is such a law (at least none that I could find).
-S
All that high-tech gagetry and we still get crummy looking pictures for the website. Hmph.
Paltry doesn't even begin to describe it. According to their website, http://www.sdmi.org, as of 31-Aug-00 there were 175 participants. It also says that there's a participation fee of $20,000 per year (although there's some other levels of participation depending on when you join for as low as $10,000). Either way, if you do the math, the $10,000 prize is a drop in their proverbial bucket.
-S
That didn't seem to bother the MPAA / macrovision folks, now did it? Macrovision is clearly visible on MANY TVs. It manifests itself as a slight flickering at the top of the screen, or it makes the screen get gradually brighter towards the top.
There's absolutely no way the RIAA would give up copy protection to protect sound quality. How it sounds is a second order requirement to them.
-S
Once you go through lossy compression (i.e., MP3 compression), you start losing quality, and they sure as heck seem to care about that!
-S
I firmly believe that most schools ban Napster not because of piracy or copyright concerns, but because of the rediculous amount of bandwidth that such a service takes up. So Harvard has said "We've got the bandwidth to handle it, so big whoop."
And besides, what percentage of Harvard students are regularly using Napster, as opposed to say, any huge state school where the admissions standards might be significatly lower.
Hey Mods... how's about changing the logo to the more appropriate COMPAQ logo. Digital doesn't exist any more, and this is a COMPAQ product that we're talking about.
-S
Well then maybe they should have called it Moore's Approximation or maybe Moore's Pretty Good Guess.
If you're right, I think it'll have to be repealed.
-S
Oh great... one more thing for Al Gore to claim ownership of.
Other bands that are going this route include Primus, who post tons of live shows on their site (mostly from tapes that fans send in). Prince is getting into the act. They Might Be Giants has songs at their site, as well as plenty of downloads at Emusic.com. They must be doing well with it since they keep releasing new stuff there (and their the number one act on the site... I guess the technology and their fanbase is a good mix).
Yes, record companies are just starting to feel the hurt. And it isn't because of anything illegal going on.
-S
The RIAA and member lablels aren't worried about priacy.
.mp3's, and spread them around. More and more artists are doing similar.
They aren't worried about losing sales.
They aren't worried about copyright infringement.
They ARE worried about their gravytrain, i.e. the artists that they make such a bundle off of, leaving town and going solo to promote themselves.
The mp3.com lawsuit was a convenient excuse to punish mp3.com for attempting to re-write the rules of artist promotion.
With the technology before us, artists like Courtney Love can give the record industry the big old "FUCK YOU!" and still distribute thier music.
Smashing Pumpkins just released their final album as a vinyl only release w/o record company involvement. They encouraged those few that got copies to record them, compress them into
The real risk to the RIAA isn't the copying of copyrighted material, Napster, mp3.com, and the like. It's that the artists can promote themselves, distrubute their own music, and collect the profits without a record label being involved. The game's over.
-S