I agree that we could do all the things you said. But think of this: Somebody who wants to make a copy of a protected song will have two choices: 1, Use a cracking program 2, Record it from line-out. If I were a common user, I would prefer the easy method of 1, rather than option 2. Ofcourse the die-hard pirate will most probably choose option 2 for security schemes which have not been broken yet, while the common user will not.
The content companies realise this fact. That is precisely why their security schemes are not 100% fool proof, because they dont want to make it extremely difficult for people to copy. It is "just enough" difficult to copy.
Maybe you havenot compared the sound when you hear the original vs the analog-rerecorded sound. You will hear quite a lot of difference. To get anywhere close to the original, you would need almost a studio setup..
That doesnot mean that you can do everything. What if M$ protects everything in the data path, and says, "My media player will give the decrypted data only to a signed and verified and trusted sound card driver"? Infact M$ already has its "Secure Audio Path ", a scheme which is protected from the kernel to the output drivers. Yes. No leak inbetween. What do you do then?
The problem is, as long as the software has the property to revoke the "rebellious" keys, any attack doesnot harm the scheme permanently. So we cannot claim that we have won the war.
On the other hand, the important thing to realise from this is, no business model can successfully thrive on encryption schemes susceptible to hacking, because the moment it is hacked, the original content is on the clear, and it becomes one among the many ripped, unprotected songs on the internet. Content owners, who pay heavily for these so called protection schemes, will not like that. It will be interesting to see the content companies reaction to this attack!
Actually, if everything is done in software, there is not much difference in the previous version of the watch which had black and white frames, and this one which can take colour images. The same processor will run another piece of code. The only difference would be the IAMGE sensors.
But it is no small achievement to do all this, in such a small form factor. Remember the Sony Vaio music clip (pen size, with USB connectivity)? Japanese must have it in their blood to create small things!
It is not uncommon anywhere, not to talk about IBM. Except for the pure research establishments, which do research in basic sciences/technologies, I think that most of the space available for patents in this world are just derivatives of works done before, and more applications of previously invented technologies. There is little space for patenting absolutely "wow" stuff. Hence in companies which are in the "applications" side of technology, it is common to find any derivative work as being patentable.
But this is exactly what people said when MP3 was introduced. Even IEEE papers around that time mention that "there is no DSP capable of 60 MHz". All that changed with the MMX, and 200+ MHz DSPs, and optimised algorithms. Right now, TI has low cost (~5$) floating point processors, and with enough of optimisation, I think it should be certainly a possibility to implement Vorbis on an embedded platform. Infact I remember the Vorbis developers claiming that it had been implemented on an Iomega device. A weblink is also here. Remember that first implementations need not have all the original features as well.
AAC is just a compression format. Only when you add a secure encryption layer around this format, you have security. What this means is that, most probably the songs stored by the Audio Manager, cannot be played back on any other phone, other than the one which has been registered with the audio manager software..
Add to the fact that transcoding of formats always reduces the quality, and I think that the player by default plays both AAC and MP3. And note that AAC by itself is not a secure format, but MPEG2 provides a security layer around the encoding. But I doubt whether Nokia would have used the MPEG2 security. If I had been the designer, I would have used my own security protocol.
I think the protection comes in only when the song is stored onto the internal memory. This will prevent the encrypted song from getting copied to another medium. This will also explain the statement that the player plays "secure" MP3 and AAC files.
Instead of suing themselves to death, its time that record labels changed their "primitive" way of doing business. Still these companies treat the role of the internet as a replacement the traditional media like CD. On the other hand, if we look at the internet as a means of connecting to the user directly, then a bigger picture evolves. In this article on copyright laws in the digital world, the The National Academic Press has made some interesting comments. Some of the comments made to change the business models are:
1. Make the Content Easier and Cheaper to Buy Than to Steal
2. Use Digital Content to Promote the Traditional Product
3. Give Away (Some) Digital Content and Focus on Auxiliary Markets..
At some point of time, all these encryption based technologies are bound to be broken, either because somebody finds out how to break the algorithm, increase in computational performance..
The real problem comes in when we have a watermarked CD/music content. Watermarked content is much more copy protected than pure encrypted content, as it cannot be removed that easily.
Cisco, Netrix, Nortel and other VoIP companies have been providing VoIP phones (for quite a long time now) for the corporate customer, who can choose these phones for long distance communications like conference calls.
Actually, everybody knows that MPEG4 doesnt stand a chance in the PC market, with stiff competition from both M$ and RN. On the other hand, they stand a chance in the wireless market. I would bet that, this is where their eyes are on at the moment. For one thing, it is a nascent market, everybody wants to try new things, access speeds are still growing etc etc. I would like to see more standardised components coming out, rather than some proprietary stuff....
Actually TI and HP demonstrated this in last year's CES itself. I wonder whats new in this report. While the majority of the industry is moving over to other wireless technologies, I'd really love to know the reasons behind HP's movement here. Probably they just want to try out their old wares...
This thing reminds me of a rather sick use of a webcam for porn. Without mentioning the site, which was listed as a "sponsor" in one of the MP3 download sites, this site allows users to use its downloadable software for peeping into toilets. These kind of sick applications should not be allowed to exist. But then, enforcing such a thing is just going to be difficult...Talk about technology advancements and humanity!
CE companies dilemma !
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ACM vs. RIAA
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· Score: 2
Though the content companies would love to put a DRM in each and every device they sell, the Consumer Electronic companies have to make the right mix of ease-of-use and protecting the content. But under the guise of the DMCA, the content/record companies are trying to prevent reverse-engineering of the encryption schemes, simply because the present schemes are so flimsy, that the only protection is through keeping the scheme itself as secret. The DVD is a case in point.
The ACM has done a right thing in espousing the cause of research in understanding content encryption technologies.
Something can be interesting if it is really new, newsbreaking stuff. On the other hand, anything is interesting, if we go deep into it as well, instead of looking at it from the distance and saying, "Hey, I have seen that one before", like the 15 yr old who is claimed to have said, in one of these comments. People have been on the internet for all this time, creating content (porn or otherwise:)), delivering it, and making money out of it. People have been working on making it faster and more endearing. And people have been working on making it singular, like microsoft or aol or ***, simply because they understand its worth to the world.
The internet will never become another TV box, for most people, unless they are god, and hence know everything. There is a vast ocean of information out there, and it wont become dry anytime sooner......
Good job from these guys! I have the following questions though..
What happens if and when the server crashes? Does the unit remember its past configuration? Or does it make us to all of it again? Also, I think there could be security issues in having an "open" device connecting to the server without any authentication...
MP3 wont get outdated anytime soon. The crackdown on illegal MP3's are only to turn those swappers around to legal "pay-and-use" mode, and not to eliminate MP3 itself. The investment of the consumer electronics market in MP3 is too much to ignore, and suddenly move over to another format.
Vorbis is an alternative, but not everybody can stand the lawsuits which are certain to fall upon them when they start using vorbis...
Is this the one by Toyota? Toyota claims to have tested a highway system in SanDiego, which helps vehicles automatically maintain a safe distance from each other.
Available here
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that we could do all the things you said. But think of this: Somebody who wants to make a copy of a protected song will have two choices: 1, Use a cracking program 2, Record it from line-out. If I were a common user, I would prefer the easy method of 1, rather than option 2. Ofcourse the die-hard pirate will most probably choose option 2 for security schemes which have not been broken yet, while the common user will not.
The content companies realise this fact. That is precisely why their security schemes are not 100% fool proof, because they dont want to make it extremely difficult for people to copy. It is "just enough" difficult to copy.
On the other hand, the important thing to realise from this is, no business model can successfully thrive on encryption schemes susceptible to hacking, because the moment it is hacked, the original content is on the clear, and it becomes one among the many ripped, unprotected songs on the internet. Content owners, who pay heavily for these so called protection schemes, will not like that. It will be interesting to see the content companies reaction to this attack!
Actually, if everything is done in software, there is not much difference in the previous version of the watch which had black and white frames, and this one which can take colour images. The same processor will run another piece of code. The only difference would be the IAMGE sensors.
But it is no small achievement to do all this, in such a small form factor. Remember the Sony Vaio music clip (pen size, with USB connectivity)? Japanese must have it in their blood to create small things!
AAC is just a compression format. Only when you add a secure encryption layer around this format, you have security. What this means is that, most probably the songs stored by the Audio Manager, cannot be played back on any other phone, other than the one which has been registered with the audio manager software..
Add to the fact that transcoding of formats always reduces the quality, and I think that the player by default plays both AAC and MP3. And note that AAC by itself is not a secure format, but MPEG2 provides a security layer around the encoding. But I doubt whether Nokia would have used the MPEG2 security. If I had been the designer, I would have used my own security protocol.
I think the protection comes in only when the song is stored onto the internal memory. This will prevent the encrypted song from getting copied to another medium. This will also explain the statement that the player plays "secure" MP3 and AAC files.
1. Make the Content Easier and Cheaper to Buy Than to Steal
2. Use Digital Content to Promote the Traditional Product
3. Give Away (Some) Digital Content and Focus on Auxiliary Markets..
The real problem comes in when we have a watermarked CD/music content. Watermarked content is much more copy protected than pure encrypted content, as it cannot be removed that easily.
Cisco, Netrix, Nortel and other VoIP companies have been providing VoIP phones (for quite a long time now) for the corporate customer, who can choose these phones for long distance communications like conference calls.
You could always use protocols which support encryption above IP.
Actually, everybody knows that MPEG4 doesnt stand a chance in the PC market, with stiff competition from both M$ and RN. On the other hand, they stand a chance in the wireless market. I would bet that, this is where their eyes are on at the moment. For one thing, it is a nascent market, everybody wants to try new things, access speeds are still growing etc etc. I would like to see more standardised components coming out, rather than some proprietary stuff....
Actually TI and HP demonstrated this in last year's CES itself. I wonder whats new in this report. While the majority of the industry is moving over to other wireless technologies, I'd really love to know the reasons behind HP's movement here. Probably they just want to try out their old wares...
This thing reminds me of a rather sick use of a webcam for porn. Without mentioning the site, which was listed as a "sponsor" in one of the MP3 download sites, this site allows users to use its downloadable software for peeping into toilets. These kind of sick applications should not be allowed to exist. But then, enforcing such a thing is just going to be difficult...Talk about technology advancements and humanity!
Though the content companies would love to put a DRM in each and every device they sell, the Consumer Electronic companies have to make the right mix of ease-of-use and protecting the content. But under the guise of the DMCA, the content/record companies are trying to prevent reverse-engineering of the encryption schemes, simply because the present schemes are so flimsy, that the only protection is through keeping the scheme itself as secret. The DVD is a case in point.
The ACM has done a right thing in espousing the cause of research in understanding content encryption technologies.
Something can be interesting if it is really new, newsbreaking stuff. On the other hand, anything is interesting, if we go deep into it as well, instead of looking at it from the distance and saying, "Hey, I have seen that one before", like the 15 yr old who is claimed to have said, in one of these comments. People have been on the internet for all this time, creating content (porn or otherwise :)), delivering it, and making money out of it. People have been working on making it faster and more endearing. And people have been working on making it singular, like microsoft or aol or ***, simply because they understand its worth to the world.
The internet will never become another TV box, for most people, unless they are god, and hence know everything. There is a vast ocean of information out there, and it wont become dry anytime sooner......
Good job from these guys! I have the following questions though..
What happens if and when the server crashes? Does the unit remember its past configuration? Or does it make us to all of it again? Also, I think there could be security issues in having an "open" device connecting to the server without any authentication...
MP3 wont get outdated anytime soon. The crackdown on illegal MP3's are only to turn those swappers around to legal "pay-and-use" mode, and not to eliminate MP3 itself. The investment of the consumer electronics market in MP3 is too much to ignore, and suddenly move over to another format.
Vorbis is an alternative, but not everybody can stand the lawsuits which are certain to fall upon them when they start using vorbis...