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Music Media

The Madison Project: Inconvenience Vs. MP3s 189

Posted by timothy from the watch-for-the-slick-marketing dept.
twistedemotions points to this article in Sound & Vision magazine. The article reveals that "[t]he Madison Project is the code name for IBM's Electronic Music Management System (EMMS), a stealth initiative to deliver piracy-proof CD-quality music to consumers via the Internet." From the sound of it, Madison is pretty far from prime time -- beta testers interviewed were able to easily convert the nusic to listenable, no-longer-read-protected MP3s, and the prices as formulated so far are nothing to write home about unless you think $20 for a CD is a fair deal.
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The Madison Project: Inconvenience Vs. MP3s

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  • [Slightly OT] When did consumers become the enemy? (Score:5)

    by hiryuu ( 125210 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @08:41AM (#755777)

    Apologies in advance for the preponderance of overly-claused sentences in the following.

    When, exactly, did the content industry (by which I mean, of course, the typical entertainment media conglomerates, as well as other businesses/artists/providers who are happy to receive money for what may or may not be quality stuff) start treating their consumers as "the other side," waging a continuous and pointless war? When did every consumer become a potential lawbreaker - to the point where those who respect copyright laws and artists' rights (definitely not the same thing) are subject to restrictions, limitations, and other such rot as to keep them from becoming the "pirates" the industry is convinced they will be (or have the potential to be)?

    An equity feminist would already tell you just what kind of damage the more shrill and less-sensible element of said cause has done to gender relations when it was extolled that all men were rapists or potential rapists. The content industry doesn't seem to have learned by example what happens when you blanket all members of a group (in this case, movie-goers and music fans) with a negative label. The cynic in me can't decide why they'd miss this - is it ignorance, or dismissal? Do they just not realize, or do they think that people will just keep buying what they have and not say a word to the contrary? (Looking at the Top 40 charts makes me think the latter.)

    Making media harder to use and appreciate doesn't deter the small criminal element among consumers - hell, the article in question demonstrates that, as security goes, this ain't gonna do it, and common sense alone says that if you can burn it to an audio CD, you can rip it - and it just pisses off the mainstream listener/viewer. Make it harder to use, and those with a clue (however few that might be) will either make it easier to use, or find an alternative. The only thing the industry can hope to achieve is to kill promising technology and markets. (Consumer-use DAT, of course, being the perfect example.)

    Madison, SDMI, CSS, et al are just plain bad ideas - at best, they frustrate and add to the cost (and price) without adding value, and at worst they drive away consumers.

  • This again? (Score:3)

    by SlashGeek ( 192010 ) <petebibbyjr@@@gmail...com> on Monday September 25, 2000 @08:42AM (#755778)
    If audio can be converted into an analog stream (i.e. sound) that we can hear, it can be caputured, and converted into any form of media the listener desires. All the encryption, secret formats, or whatever they want to do will not matter, because they won't be able to sell them unless it can be decoded into audio at some point in time. This is a loosing battle for the RIAA, I wish they would just give it up already, and find a way to work with digital online music, instead of taking a Music Nazi stance against it. Online music is here to stay, one way or the other, legal or not. And no amount of encryption or copy protection will stop that. And as long as they are still selling CD's, every song in creation will be on MP3 anyway, just like they are now.

    Encryption, copy protection, whatever are only good if both parties involved are concerned with security.

  • I think that these capitalist Orwellians have a serious case of HDFB (head detached from body).

    Otherwise known as HUTA -> head up their ass!
    --
    You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
  • Being a native speaker of German, I have some trouble understanding your .sig - it looks like an online translation of something like "I'd like to have sex with my own army of Llama whatever". Could you share this precious piece of information with the rest of us?
  • One word: Distribution!

    You try to have 10million cd's shipped around the world, stored and then sold to customers. Now tell me that this isn't going to cost a considerable amount of money. Material costs are fairly small, less than 10% of the purchase price. Probably about 1$ including everything(cd, cover, case, leaflets) but it is still something.

    Now take this all away and the record company is probably making about 8-10$/cd(of course you still have advertisement, design and all that crap that cuts their profit down a lot but just the change of medium involved).

    Now if I was offered a chance to download cd's for 8$ and had the proper connection I'd probably go for it. 10$ or more and I would just driver to the record store and pay a little extra to get the whole enchilada..

    This thing is best used for hard to find cd's. Especially the ones not being made anymore. Those you could easily charge a premium for and you'd probably get the customers too. In addition to this offer reasonably priced (8usd) regular cd's and you have a business.

  • Heh - your comment about building "a mic and speakers from raw components" brought back a memory from when I was a kid:

    I wanted some speakers (actually, a complete stereo, but I wasn't going to push it) for my bedroom, and everything I had (scrounged radio speakers, other crap speakers) never sounded too good. I wanted some 12's - but my parents wouldn't by them for me - so I went on a quest to get "big sound".

    I ended up trying a variety of things - I built a bass tube using a carpet paper tube and a four inch mid-range/tweeter I had (I took off the tweeter, and pasted a piece of paper over the hole where the coil was). I used some info I gleaned from an old pop-sci issue I had discussing the Bose Acoustimass system (3:1 ratio on the tube). That sounded pretty nice, actually.

    I even tried to build my own speaker from some construction paper, a box, some magnet wire (from an old motor), a toilet paper tube (for the coil form), and a piece of an old speaker magnet. I never got good sound from this - but I did get some sound - enough to listen to, at least.

    Speakers aren't hard to build - microphones aren't either (and I have a copy of The Boy Electrician, so I can give it to MY son).

    Maybe they can take my soldering iron away - big deal: a dowel, a nail, and a gas stove are all I need then.

    I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?
  • All the posts ive read so far have been to the tune of "ha, see NOTHING is hack-proof" and "DeCSS lives" or whatever. People are so concerned with the digital security (or lack thereof) of each of these coding schemes that people rarely stop to think: "What im doing is wrong." Im not an RIAA advocate. I dont think that people's right to make backups should be violated? i dont think many big label musicians are starving, but hey, downloading this stuff, copying these movies, etc etc... thats wrong. Petty theft, not a shred better. If this decryption scheme was really just the work of professors interested in data security, thats fine... if it was some law abiding citizen who stumbled across the way to copy these items and reported it to the developer, thats great...however i have a feeling that it was just somebody who wanted to take what isnt theirs.

    Now, im no better than you, i have my music, and where i got it i wont say, but hey.. no one stops to think that the whole "digital music revolution" is based largely on a concept nothing more glorious than very fast shoplifting. im not saying that these measures shouldnt be developed, but its kinda sad when something that is wrong is so mainstream. Just a bit of philosophy for thought.

    As for the technology, we all know its a cat and mouse game. It just looks like IBM is the mouse this time. Thats what enginners get paid to think about...

    --jay

  • Or what about Mozart? Do you really think he was thinking, "hell, if I created a great piece of musical work I could up the price on the guests, and increase my profit by 20% and buy that fancy boat I saw down by the oceanside" when he was writing Missa?

    Actually, Mozart did write almost all of his pieces on commission... Still, your point is well taken

  • From what I understand, the decoding of the music is done in software.

    That means, some piece of software that runs on some operating system, whatever it may be, takes files and plays them back using the operating system's built-in multimedia sound playback facility.

    All it takes is a couple of hackers (à la DeCSS) out there to write a sound card driver that samples the data it receives to disk, just like the "print-to-disk" option in most printer drivers for most operating system that enables anyone to convert proprietary, non-copiable documents to PostScript.

    Then, one would have a raw, 100% digital dump of the audio data, which one could then happily encode to whatever format one likes.

    I realize that this is so obvious that there must be some way the industry has thought of this. The only way to avoid it would be to do decryption in hardware. This would mean, however, that you'd need a special piece of hardware on your computer to play the music back with (like a special set of speakers), another special piece of hardware to hook between your computer and your HiFi equipment in order to be able to play back music from the internet on your home HiFi, a special type of chip inside your mobile playback equipment etc. Which sums up to enormous amounts of hardware and the whole thing being so user unfriendly and so expensive that I fail to see how this is to generate a lot of market share in a tech environment. (After all, you can still just download the crap.)

    And against the hardware solution there is the fact that I could still take a digital sample using S/P-DIF digital audio from the HiFi and record that on the computer, possibly putting a $20 copybit inverter in between. So in the end, this would still be copiable without much hassle.

    Am I missing anything?

  • Can someone answer this question for me?
    To create sound on a PC requires that data is sent to the sound card. This data can be read and recorded by some sort of "shim" between the decoder application and the sound interface. This shim will grab pure data (i.e., not a conversion from the analog). How can an application prevent something like this from occurring? Is it even possible?

  • I know the guys working on bluematter [bluematter.com]. This groundbreaking project cost over $20 million, and can claim a total of 200 downloads. The opposite of user-friendly, it can take up to 47 steps to download and play blue matter tracks.

    Of course they know the project cannot succeed. The recording industry will not allow a usable solution. LA is full of politics and cursory thinking. Its also full of money and consultants happy to grab it.

    A solution will only come from outside LA's musical clique. Maybe its time for their self-destruction. The internet is destroying the demand for old media - TVs are flying out of our windows, musical tastes are becoming more diverse, theaters are declaring bankruptcy, and movie ticket sales are dropping. Let the new replace the old.

  • Actually, the sound is still encrypted AS IT COMES OUT OF THE SPEAKER! You will need a aural implant to grok it. Furthermore, each copy of the music is encoded with a particular code unique to each individual implant to protect against unauthorized listening. You will have to give your code when you order the music. Once you receive the music, you will have 24 hours to listen to it. After that period, you will have to pay an additional $5 per listening session, to have them enable the thingy in your brain via remote radio signal.....
  • It's an application of IBM's Java-based Cryptolope

    Hmm, that old thing? IBM's been hawking it since 1995 or so...

    Your Working Boy,
  • They're being sillier than you think...

    I was out at IBM recently and watched one of their techs talk about the research that went into the Madison project, from the watermarking to the delivery mechanism. The technological problems they are dealing with are pretty well covered by other posts, so I'll leave those along for now.

    The really retarded part was that in their design for madison, they still have specific functionality for EVERY player in the current music distribution system, from the labels to the record stores. The record store functionality was the most bizarre extra step because it required an extra key exchange in their system. They had a new role for the Columbia House CD club types as well... it was insane.

    We asked them why all that complexity (the labels should be able to go straight to the consumers in the perfect system), and they said that their (IBM) mandate was to preserve the existing system...

    Well, at least we know what their primary goal is....

    Sujal

  • is to take the speaker wire, disconnect it from the speaker and into the mic input. It's great making it so that the user can't decode the file, and save it as another file with a program, but if they provide the program to decode it, then it's serving as its own copier. Of course, you could pay to simply have a file on your computer, and they won't provide you with the decoder. With these guidelines, everything I say is encrypted, no one can copy it before I say it, but sure as hell, when I say it, someone can record it.

  • I live in Canada. That's normal.

    Then again, our dollar is worth about 60 cents US.

    gg
  • It's just a new way of selling cds. What this system gives you is the album + liner notes in a way you can download it onto your computer. Whoopie. Instead of buying it at a store, and having it in my hands, i buy it online, and then burn/print it, and have it in my hands. A negligable difference from buying it from cdnow or something like that.
    In essense, this is a half-assed effort. Rather than meeting the new "digital age" or whatever, they're trying to come up with a newer, cooler way of selling cds. Instead of selling albums say song by song, with micropayments for each song downloaded, they're trying to make a fool-proof/pirate proof album; they're pouring money into a system that won't work, and will just piss everyone off more. The people that will buy cd's anyway will buy them in this new way, and the people that pirate will still pirate, as this method offers no NEW alternatives. The music is still expensive. Until that changes, we'll just have music in different propriatary formats that will be hacked within days of release. Record labels need to look at themselves, and say, why do people pirate our music. And then tackle it from that angle, instead of saying, we'll just do what we want, and make it pirate-proof; it's inane.

  • For anyone who felt like pointing it out - yes, I'm aware I'm preaching to the choir. Just felt like bitchin'.:)

  • As long as there are people trying to protect music/code/games/porn whatever with code there will be people who will defeat them. Laws in the US mean nothing in Canada or Russia.

    What world do you live in? Canada has, at best, a modicum of independance... If the US of A wanted things to go a particular way, we'd be hard pressed to stop them... it's hard to "stand on guard for thee" when your opponent thinks that might equals right...

    As for your other contention, it's never a matter of whether SOME person out there is going to try to circumvent protection, it's a matter of trying to disuade as many people as possible from doing it. Frankly, I miss the days when only the 3lit3 hax0rs traded mp3s. Now Susie GradeEight can trade her Britney Spears with abandon...

    (yes, I'm going to off-topic hell now...)
  • The first post I read in these replies hit it right on the nail: "If I can play it, I can rip it..."

    The truth is, with a multi-tasking environment, one can run a recorder and a player at the same time, and still manage to get a close-to-perfect copy of the audio (of course this depends on the quality of the player and the recorder). The same technique has been used for years to create .WAV files from countless different sources. Hell, I used to do a line-out to line-in from my tape players.

    The only logical ways I could see to prevent this method would be to either have a stand-alone unit, or to totally tie up the shell so one can't do anything but use that player until it is closed.

    Stand Alone hardware? You can just as easily reverse-compile hardware (TiVO hacks, iOpener hacks, etc). Tying up the shell? Not feasable -- as it removes any convenience behind it. Besides, that would probably get reverse-compiled also.

    This all reminds me of the VHS copy protection that came out a few years ago where if you tried to copy the tape, it displayed big black bars across the screen. Apparently, someone figured out a way around it, because I don't see that anymore.

    Some will figure a way around this, and offer it up on the next version of Napster.

  • This is exactly what happens when corps decide that the consumer can't be trusted. It's funny that our money got them all to where they are today and it's our money that is attempting to make a consumer proof consumer product. It really surprises me how the enemy went from the college student (with their dorm and net access) to Joe Average User with his cable/dsl connect. Bandwidth is what escalated this bottle. Forget putting the genie back in the bottle, their trying to keep everyone from getting their wishes.

    I try to keep rants out of my posts but what really pisses me off isn't the RIAA's arrogance that drives them to sue 2600 and confiscate napster clients. What really makes me mad is that they are succeeding.

  • They should license the music only to be listened to by the person who purchased the license.
    Why should my kid brother get to listen to music that I paid for!
  • IBM? That sounds strange to me. I mean, IBM has pretty much embraced the open source and open standards world. Their alphaWorks pumps out some really cool, free stuff. I'm sort of surprised they'd embark on YetAnotherSecureDigitalMusicFormat. Short of a noir futuristic scenario [osopinion.com] of pervasive thought policing I can't imagine there is any way to get around the plain physics of media distribution.
  • AP - New York - In a response to many outside consultation firms that have said, "If I can play it, I can rip it...", major recording companies have said that they will stop delivering content.

    "We have finally got the message, says Mr. Suit, of Ynos Music Inc, "That's why we've quit delivering anything on our cd's. Some customers have started to complain, but we've given them $50 gift certificates towards any of our new 'No Content' line of merchandise." Fans can now go to their favorite music store and purchace these new cd's for the same price as the old 'content-full' cd's.

    When we asked people to comment, the most popular response was a dumb look on their face followed by extreme confusion.

    Emanuel Goldstein of 2600 fame was not available for comment (actually he said "WTF." but we didn't know what that meant.)

    Chalk this up as another success for the record companies.

  • Signal 11 postulate: Anything that can be interpreted by human ears must obviously be free. Obviously.

    The fact that it runs contrary to actual reality is apparently irrelevent. I've always struggled with this "basic human rights" concept. Here's my postuate: "If they have bigger guns, they can charge us for anything they want."

    Anyway, if we have the divinely granted right to life, liberty, and property, we may as well have the divinely granted right to define property as we see fit. We may as well define sonic vibrations as non-taxable. Hell, we may as well have the divinely granted right to scantily-clad women. Works for me.

    "Information wants to be free!" "That's quite insightful - where did you hear that?" "I'm reading it off the bumper sticker I ripped off of Signal 11's car!" (Superosity, paraphrased)
  • You missed the point... sure the effort to create a CD is negligable and, hell, CD are dirt cheap. I dont mind making a cd for myself (how else am I going to listen to my music in the car?) but there is no way in hell I'm going to pay the man 20 bucks for the privledge of making my own CD's when I can go buy the originals for less and make my own CDs out of them.

  • Re:If i can play it, i can rip it (Score:3)

    by jmv ( 93421 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @10:32AM (#755803) Homepage
    it's been said over and over again, but if the music is able to get to the listener's ear, the user is able to copy it.

    You've just found it... the next generation for secure digital music will get around this by preventing the user from hearing the music. Also, an RIAA representative has been quoted: "We are taking legal action against speaker manufacturers because there product it used for the sole purpous of allowing the consumers to hear music, which circumvents ou secure digital format, hence speakers are illegal under the DMCA."
  • Crap.

    Toast.

    sulli

  • If you use Macromedia Flash to deliver mp3s, it's just as great as any upcoming/new form of encryption that there's going to be.

  • > Will we all need to get the mark of the beast tatooed on our foreheads in order to get authority to buy and sell?

    Worse. The Direct Marketing Association will require that a privacy-invasive :CueCat will be required to scan it ;-)

  • Looks like companies STILL haven't learned how to make decent protection schemes--for much of anything--even after all these years!
  • Surpisingly perceptive man, 20 or so years before the whole flap. I wonder what he'd have thought of MP3's.

    Considering what he thought of mandatory "self-censorship" parental advisory labels, I don't wonder at all.


    ---
    Zardoz has spoken!
  • They've always regarded the customer as little more than a sheep to be sheared, a fool to be parted with our money. Ditto the bands who actually produce the content they resell.

    This reminds me of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", where one planet's culture realized that middlemen are useless, and shipped them into space.

    I say we should do the same thing to our middlemen. And to avoid the eventual fate of that planet, we should make sure that out telephones are always kept sanitary.


    ---
    Zardoz has spoken!
  • Hmm, well, I hope they make the CDs outta titanium, otherwise I'll be able to slice them up good with my dagger!

    Anyway, that aside, when the hell are people going to realize that the nature of audio is to be interpreted by human ears, and as such can't be "protected" ? Best of luck if you guys succeed though, I understand the Christian Coalition has been trying the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil bit for awhile, without success. Maybe technology will answer their prayers (pun intended).

    --

  • Imagine a world with different technology, where record companies, through some magic, are able to charge listeners each time they hear a song. Not a big charge, of course, and maybe "listens" are also sold in bulk units of 100 or more. But for aeons, the record companies have a tight fist and nobody is able to listen to a recording without paying.

    Then...some geek somewhere comes up with a way to PERMANENTLY purchase listens, for a particular song. Using his program, a consumer can purchase a song for the price of a single listen, and magically save it so that future listens don't cost anything.

    The record companies freak. Their pricing scheme is completely wrong for this technology. A single listen costs less than a penny, and now consumers can purchase a LIFETIME of listens for that price.

    ...

    back to reality:

    Of course, that "new technology" is what we have today: CDs. Purchase once, listen forever. The problem the record companies have isn't the fundamental technology, it's that their pricing scheme can't cover it. Now, one person buys the song, and EVERYONE hears it for that price.

    Well, the record companies currently have a way to charge us a "fair" price for an unlimited number of listens to a particular song or album. So, they're just going to have to come up with a way to sell a recording for an unlimited number of copies. Same idea, just an extension.

    How? Well, basically, the record company (or artist) has to be paid before the song is recorded. In other words, the record company says, "we have a new Backstreet Boys albumn, but until 1 million people pay $50, we're not releasing it." So, the PUBLIC is buying the recording, and has the right to distribute it however they like.

    Don't think it will work? Well, neither do I, really. See my other comment.

    chris
  • the RIAA would be killing itself because it would have no way to listen to demo tapes of up and coming artists.

    Ummm... yeah. Without demo tapes, how would anyone have heard N'Sync or The Spice Girls before they got signed?
  • In that case people will still pay artists for good stuff. Good artists will survive.

    People won't pay artists for crap anymore. Crap will die. Like those silly boy bands that are all the rage right now, etc.

    People that really appreciate music will pay - but these people have no interest in mass market crap.

    Music quantity will go down, but the quality will skyrocket.

  • If audio can be converted into an analog stream (i.e. sound) that we can hear, it can be caputured...

    Although one form of protection being considered is encryption to the presentation device (with audio meaning the speakers, with video the actual monitor). For example: the secure stream is sent directly across the USB bus to the speaker.

    A few thoughts come to mind:
    • would I own the hardware, or just have it as a temporary license
    • will tampering with the hardware violate livensing agreements?
    • will tampering with the hardware violate DMCA?
    • will linux drivers be available?
    etc...
  • Down on the corner,
    Out in the street,
    Billy and the Poor Boys are playin',
    Ringin' nickels at their feet.

  • If i can play it, i can rip it (Score:4)

    by Mike Schiraldi ( 18296 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @08:27AM (#755817) Homepage Journal
    It's been said over and over again, but if the music is able to get to the listener's ear, the user is able to copy it. I don't see how this could ever be gotten around.
    --
  • So these companies are dumping millions of dollars into R&D to develop a "pirate proof" system (note: pirate proof is about as possible as anti-gravity, tele-portation, and Robert Downey Jr staying clean).

    If they were to take ALL the money spent on wasted R&D, stoopid court cases, and other bullshit propagnda, and instead use that money to offset the cost of CD's, we wouldn't have a _reason_ to bother with pirating.

    I mean, who would rather spend time downloading a dozen MP3's of inferior quality (and some might not even be a complete song), then burning the MP3's to a CD to listen to when you could just buy the whole damn disc for $4.00?

    Then, MP3 players would be 1/2 the cost they are now, because the companies that build them wouldn't have to add in $$$ to offset eventual court cases accusing them of promoting the pirating of music.

    Personally, I'd gladly go to the local Record Store and spend $50.oo to get a dozen complete CD's, however, when my $50.oo only gets me about 3 discs, then it seems like a waste of money and I tend to buy LESS.

  • Price (Score:2)

    by rkent ( 73434 )
    ...and the prices as formulated so far are nothing to write home about unless you think $20 for a CD is a fair deal.

    Why should this part surprise anyone? This is kind of the point, after all. Encrypted media isn't meant as a discount alternative to non "protected" media, regardless of what they say to get you to adopt it.

    The real point is to garauntee that you have to go through them to get your music. Then they can ramp up the preice however they want. New technologies that make media distribution cheaper and more efficient have never corresponded to cheaper media for consumers! At least not if you follow the rules.

  • Fair use.. (Score:3)

    by PopeAlien ( 164869 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @08:49AM (#755821) Homepage Journal
    Ah! but what if we have another law that prevents you from finding out how to make 'fair use' of the work that you have paid for (reverse engineering).. Catch 22 - It is legal for you to make 'fair use' of something, but not to discover the mechanism to do so?

    when the record industry jumped on 'digital technology' in the form of CD's, and pumped their profits up, it of course did not guarantee that they would have access to said gravy train eternally.

  • Old News (Score:5)

    by davidu ( 18 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @08:50AM (#755822) Homepage Journal

    Madison Project has been long over for some time. It ran in San Diego and some other areas. It wasn't a secret -- nor was it a success. It happened over a year ago.

    Wow this is old.

    I wanna know when we will see a madison project dedicated to DivX or some other MPEG-4 based codec.
    -Davidu
  • Yeah, as if tech companies enter into this sort of thing off their own back (er...except for this GPL fingerprinting technology I see going around).

    I bet they get paid big money by the record companies to develop this shit. The fact that it fails in the marketplace is probably mostly irrelevant to them (unless the companies put clawbacks into their contracts, but only an idiot would sign such a contract).

    --
    It's a .88 magnum -- it goes through schools.

  • If i had my mod points right now I would mod down all the other posts above this one so the first thing people would see is that this story probably shouldn't have been posted.

    I've noticed that slashdot tends to post similar stories around the same time. so this is riding off the tailcoats of the SDMI Contest. Just don't be so Freakin eggar to post a story that is not fit!

    -Jon

  • (with apologies to Kliban...)

    Love to eat them mousies,

    mousies what I love to eat.
    Bite they little heads off,
    nibble on they little feet.
  • Can anyone imagine a musician who wants to make music as an end in itself? I mean, suppose that N Sync and the Back Street Boys had decided that there was no money in music and had become lawyers or accountants instead. The world would be a damn sight better place. Name one musician whose music has actually got better after they became a millionaire, and if half of the morons in the top ten at the moment could actually play an instrument or sing they could make money from live performances.

  • It's also going to be illegal to broadcast analog TV signals after ... 2008, I think. Yes, that regulation has already been made. At the behest of the media conglomerates.

    Oh yes. You all remember that the digital TV standard is now being retooled to allow for "content protection"? (at the behest of same congolomerates -- this was on /., even, as you may recall)

    Well, so obviously the only reason anyone would have analog equipment after 2015 or so would be for "piracy", right? Certainly isn't any good for viewing "legitimate" media.

    Legacy is very easy to deal with indeed. Just make it illegal.

    The only way we're going to be able to deal with this is to start producing significant amounts of our own media, which must be at least as unencumbered as GPLed software.

    Otherwise, what argument can we make to the public for free OSes and uncrippled equipment that can only (easily) view "unprotected" content?

  • i do understand your point but look at it this way for THOUSANDS of years art existed without Sony or time warner, or any other music/media conglomerate, and i would have to say that some mighty damn fine art, be it music, paintings, sculptures, etc, have been produced without the help of a corporation like sony music. Oh and your statement about free art being crappy art is total bullshit, i can from experience because i happen to be one of those people that produces free art, I create sketches, and occassionally paintings and sculptures, and everyone that sees what I produces compliments me on it, so don't tell me that free art is crappy art because it most certainly isn't. and think about it if artists weren't reimbursed for their music only the people that truly enjoyed it would do it, and we would weed out the Backstreet boys and britney spears and company, which most people, in this forum at least, probably agree with. so its a win-win situation for us.

    A Bugg

  • Bennihana? (Score:5)

    by StoryMan ( 130421 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @08:57AM (#755840)
    Actually, this is a pretty funny article -- especially toward the end where the author describes the way to cobble together your CD: download the music, buy the glossy liner paper, print it out, then burn the CD.

    Yeah, a real riot. Let me at those albums. There's nothing I'd like better than to (a) spend more for an electronic download than the "physical" counterpart and (b) get to spend my time (which these days -- for most of all us, I'm sure -- is more valuable than these bozos at AlbumDirect realize) to put together the whole kit-and-kaboodle.

    Lessee. First, I gotta download the songs.

    I got a DSL modem -- 1.05/1.05M -- so, no, not too bad, but, ya know, 15 minutes is still 15 minutes.

    Then I gotta print the liners on special paper? (No, you can use normal paper -- but, yeah, you gotta print the liner notes.) And, um, I get to burn the CD myself? The whole CD? No kidding? Lessee, I got a burner about a year old. Still takes around 15 minutes to burn the CD. (And if I get a coaster? Well, hell, just burn it again! CDs are cheap. My time is not cheap -- but CDs -- yeah 79 cents each, no prob.)

    And then, when it's all done, I have, er, a custom CD that I burned and printed out the labels for and that, um, looks like I cobbled together myself. Yeah! That's sooooooo cool.

    But wait! It wasn't really cheap because it cost more than the "physical" CD!

    Oh yeah. Great idea.

    Come on you dumbass suit-wearing, cellphone talking, consult-the-business-model, Viper driving, 30-something, "Hey, Bob, look at us: we're executives!" weenies: no one is gonna buy your idea! No one is going to buy your idea!

    It's like going to a restaurant -- Benihana, whatever those places are called that force you to stand in line with a bunch of dirty-fingernailed, snivelling little shits who touch the glass and then cough all over the green peppers and water chestnuts -- and pay *them* for the privilage of making your own food. What a great idea! (Executive-speak: "Well, friend, you have to understand. We're not selling the product as much we're selling the experience. We feel that customers appreciate the fact that they're in charge of their own product, er, dinner and that they've been given the ability to tinker and tailor with the food to create a singularly satisfying, one of a kind dining experience. If you'd like, I can give you a prospectus describing Benihana's philosophy and perhaps you'll appreciate why we are able to set ourselves apart from the competition.)

  • Exactly.
    But that's the point.
    Fair use was never a specific law. It was merely an exemption from action under copyright laws.

    It IS legal for you to reverse engineer and play with your DVD player. It is NOT legal, by DMCA, to publish that information.

    Yes.. I hate teh DMCA, I think it's wrong.

    But blanket statements like 'it keeps us from making fair use' is not good enough.
  • They expect the system to work this way:

    a) People purchase music online, paying more per song than for a CD.

    b) Music is watermarked for that user (s device?), who has filled out name and address details correctly for music company.

    As you can see, there's no way it can fail!
  • It will tell you how artists in the past made their money. And while you're reading your history text, why don't you study the other subjects too so you can finally finish high school and come back here when you're a grown adult who's not living with mommy anymore?

  • IBM?s (Score:2)

    by mattdm ( 1931 )
    Argh! MS-HTML in slashdot, even!

    IBM?s != IBM's


    --

  • Your scenario is pretty scary, and I would agree that it is technologically possible. But I don't think it will actually happen.

    You see, it would take at least 5 years before there's enough of the new audio equipment out there that the CD manufacturers could actually stop selling regular CDs. During those 5 years, customers will become more and more accustomed to easy to use, cheap or free downloadable music. So there will be real resistance from people who don't want to replace their speakers, amplifiers, etc. They just won't do it.

    In the meantime, do you really think the recording, production, distribution, and sales organization for CD's can survive for another 5 years, making enough money to push something like that through? Not a chance. They're as dead as the dinosaurs, they just haven't really realized it yet. However, they may thrash around alot and make a big mess as they die, so just stand back and wait for it to be over.

    The only way the RIAA could make this work is to give everyone in North America a free SDMI-compatible music system, right now, backward compatible with everyone's existing CD collections. Then they could simply stop making regular CD's, and only sell the encrypted ones.

    They can't afford to do that though, and people won't buy the stuff fast enough. They're doomed.


    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
  • Too bad your pants aren't butt-piracy proof.
  • Either this article is ancient or that's a typo.

    W
    -------------------
  • Wiring a feedback loop isn't something your average AOL'er is likely to do...

    No doubt that is how the RIAA and SDMI members see things. Unfortunantly, I don't think that's what it does.

    Sure, the average AOLer is not going to be able to figure out how to wire the feedback loop. But, I've got news for you. The current average AOLer whose hard drive is full of MP3s of Korn and Adam Sandler can't even figure out how to rip a normal CD that they currently own.

    The fact is that Napster and cousins are *easier* than buying the CD and ripping it. For $50, you can buy a discman, and burn your MP3s to a CD-A format and have twice the number of songs as a several hundred dollar Rio clone. Why do people get the MP3 players? Because, again, they are *easier* than burning CDs. (Or because they are geeks who like the shiny aspect of a MP3 player, but we're discussing the AOLers).

    They'd rather pay the record company to let them d/l the music than mess about with wires and "tech stuff".

    Yes, but they'd rather borrow a program from a friend that will let them d/l the music for free. Some are completely unaware that Napster is *sending* their files. I've seen people *selling* Napster disks. But everybody has MP3s.

    --
    Evan (Who got reaquanted with the quality of sound from his 500 disk CD changer when he gave his SO his sound card) E.

  • 24-bit ADCs versus the RIAA (Score:3)

    by Morgaine ( 4316 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @09:29AM (#755861)
    Analogue to digital conversion is inherently a simple process which doesn't require extreme device linearity, and producing an ADC with a precision much greater than that used in CD and DVD recording is no problem at all. Comparatively speaking, high precision DACs are much more difficult to manufacture, yet despite that, 20-bit stereo DACs now cost just a couple of dollars.

    What this adds up to is no light at the end of the tunnel for the RIAA and the MPAA at all, because even if they succeed in making their digital media uncrackable, people will still be able to redigitize it, and without appreciable loss of quality. The march of technology is utterly against them. Sorry.
  • They could make it very tough though. Just because my ear can successfully hear the music does not mean that it can be digitised as easy. Our ears work difeerently.

    The thing is, in order to play a sound file on a computer, it must be decoded to a form the sound card can output, namely .wav data. Even if they can manage to prevent me getting my hands on the unencrypted bitstream until it gets to the sound card, I can just write a cute little piece of code that masquerades as a sound card, and dumps all the data sent to it to disk. Watermarked or not, weird data or not, I can then take whatever data the sound card will output and compress to .mp3, and it will come out the same regardless of where it's decoded...
  • I live in Canada. That's normal. Then again, our dollar is worth about 60 cents US.

    I live in the UK. We pay around $22 - $24 for a CD (that's US dollars), or up to $40 or more for imports.

  • All right, lets do a little search and replace and reread this:

    We justify piracy these days when it only hurts Microsoft or Electronic Arts, but what's going to happen when those companies disappear, and the programmers deal directly with the public? Are we suddenly going to give up our WE DESERVE FREE INFORMATION and I'D RATHER GET IT FROM GNU selfishness?

    Sure--today, software companies are the ones getting the profits, and I say, screw 'em. But imagine an ideal world, where a programmer gets every penny of profit from their work. Why would they bother to write a program, if as soon as they release a single copy it's immediately pirated and distributed worldwide for free, in a form absolutely indistinguishable from the original? How is that programmer going to be able to make any money? Rely on the charity of those who feel like donating a few cents because they liked their software?

    Sure, I don't like the current financial scheme of the software companies. But the technology we're talking about here prevents ANYONE from making money from programming. Famous quote and hacker philosophy: INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE. Hey, folks, SOFTWARE IS INFORMATION. And FREE SOFTWARE is crappy software, because there's no profit motive in it, and the worthwhile would-be programmers are off doing something which allows them to put food on the table.

    We'd better come up with SOME way of rewarding and reimbursing programmers, or we're going to pirate software right out of our society.

    ----

    You might have some good points... Programming and music aren't exactly the same, in that a programmer can work for free on his own time, and still get a good job as a programmer. If you're a musician, it's probably harder to make a living. Still, the above should make my point clear...

  • The style of resturant you are actually thinking of is called, "Mongolian Barbeque;" where I am from anyway.

    There used to be a real good one just outside of the U of MN campus in Dinkytown. I think it is closed...that's too bad.

    -AP
  • Well, there you have it. Two probably typical reactions of customers to the RIAA. There are very few organizations that can absolutely antagonize their customers and get away with it. I admit, I still buy lots of CD's because I really like music and am willing, however begrudgingly, to pay the price they are asking.
    However, it seems that they want to charge me even more for the abaility to not use my music the way I want (and by that I don't mean give it away).

    I've noticed a lot of smaller record companies are starting to allow the artists to maintain the rights to their music, we should try to support these companies whenever possible. This is one good way to help break the stranglehold the bigger record companies have over artists and customers.

  • Re:[Slightly OT] When did consumers become the ene (Score:4)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @11:57AM (#755878)
    > The content industry doesn't seem to have learned by example what happens when you blanket all members of a group

    I like ConceptJunkie's reponse: "Evil. Stupid".

    But in answer to your question about when they started seeing the consumer as the enemy - 'twas always thus. Taxes on the sale of blank "music" CD-R media extended to blank "data" CD-R media are nothing more than extensions of the taxes on blank cassette tapes. Ditto the hamstrings on DAT that prevented it from being a commercial medium.

    They've always regarded the customer as little more than a sheep to be sheared, a fool to be parted with our money. Ditto the bands who actually produce the content they resell.

    Make no mistake - the consumer has always been a dupe in their eyes. Only recently, now that we have the power to force a change their business model, have we gone from "harmless dupe" to "enemy".

    But they've never had anything more than contempt for us. The only thing that's changed recently is that the veil's been ripped away, and we can see them for what they really are.

  • The biggest section of the CD buying public is teenage girls, who don't have credit cards, so you cannot limit purchasers to those who have credit cards. Are you sure about that, or are you just guessing?

    The top selling albums of 1999: BACKSTREET BOYS Millenium,BRITNEY SPEARS, ...Baby One More Time, RICKY MARTIN, Ricky Martin. Not albums which the 40+ crowd are going to be buying.

  • Re:Nothing is piracy proof! (Score:3)

    by pointym5 ( 128908 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @09:07AM (#755883)
    Fast-forward a few years. SDMI has evolved into a massive sweeping new initiative, complete with some trendy name. A fabulous new way to listen to music, using a fabulous new generation of Hi-Fi equipment. No more bulky, unsightly speaker wires! Your Media Control Center communicates to your speakers using a 2GHz digital protocol. Absolutely pure digital sound materializes from the built-in amplifier/decoder in each speaker. Think of the possibilities! Your control center can route different media streams to separate digital devices all around the house! The control center is directly connected to the Internet, so you can pull in digital samples of the latest hits!

    Of course, the thing is that all those digitized media streams are encrypted until the last possible instant. The only place an analog signal exists is on the short epoxy-bound length of wire inside each loudspeaker cabinet. (For video, it's all digital until you get to the LCD electronics or the amplifiers on the tube.) Well that's no problem, you say, because you can always just hack into the cabinets. Just watch out for the DMCA enforcement squad.

    For your protection, of course, your Media Control Center will automatically reject any media that's not digitally certified as being Genuine Digital Stuff. Sure, this means you won't be able to make your own recordings without paying to become an Official Genuine Digital Stuff producer (which obligates you to sign this very reasonable contractual agreement), but it's worth it to make sure we don't have to worry about pirates, terrorists, and drug pushers.

    Will there be resistance to throwing away all that investment in old CD's and expensive stereo systems? Sure, but over the span of twenty years the vast bulk of the consumer population will replace equipment anyway. And the new Genuine Digital Stuff is so cool!

    While everybody's strutting around talking about how awful it is that the RIAA or MPAA "just doesn't get it", what we really should be worrying about is the day that they DO get it: they'll realize that their wildest dreams are finally possible. They'll realize that through the combination of new technology and new laws, the content industry can have complete control over how its content is consumed. No more "piracy". No more skipping-over-commercials. Want to make a party tape? Sure, but by the way we're going to sell space on your tape to some advertisers. It's a sure bet that lots of smart people in the industry have figured all this out already. They just need a way to get the ball rolling.

    I'll stop now because I'm depressing myself.

  • Neural Implant Decoders (NID)... Encrypted music is played through your speakers. Only the people who have the NID implanted on the nerve from the eardrum to the brain will be able to understand the music.

    And don't even think of trying to break the super-secret encryption (XOR) that I have patented.

  • Lame Slashdot article (Score:3)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @09:39AM (#755889) Homepage
    This is old news. Nor is it a big secret; IBM has a page on Madison. [ibm.com] It's an application of IBM's Java-based Cryptolope [ibm.com] technology; the content is delivered as a JAR file. The main technical paper on Cryptolopes [dlib.org] describes the technology, and you can even download [ibm.com] IBM's free player for Cryptolopes.

    We've been seeing too many under-researched articles on Slashdot recently. Sloppy work at the Geek Compound. Go read some Journalism 101 books, guys. Linking to someone else's article is not journalism.

  • IBM has worked on similar projects in the past. There was the cryptolope [ibm.com] project, which was supposed to be a secure way of delivering content over the Internet

  • In the words of Frank Zappa (Score:3)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @09:49AM (#755899) Homepage Journal
    You will obey me while I lead you,
    And eat the garbage that I feed you,
    Until the day that we don't need you,
    Don't call for help, no one will heed you.

    Your mind is totally controlled,
    It has been stuffed into our mold,
    And you Will Do As You Are Told,
    Until the rights to you are sold.

    Surpisingly perceptive man, 20 or so years before the whole flap. I wonder what he'd have thought of MP3's.

  • Ah.. Goodie! (Score:5)

    by PopeAlien ( 164869 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @08:28AM (#755900) Homepage Journal
    Hey now.. Lets give this thing a chance.. I mean really, who wouldn't pay even a little more per CD if it meant they were also having all their rights to fair use simply and painlessly removed? Come on guys.. the record industry is really suffering these days because of digital technology.. Its getting hard for a record company executive to put food on the table and a roof over their families heads..

  • I grew up in India. A country of a billion people. India has won ONE medal (a bronze) in the last three Olympics. Sports is not a big deal in India - athletes are guaranteed no money from their achievements. The most an athlete can hope for is some large company hires them at a regular job and allows them to take a little time off to practice.

    Yes, there are still some independently wealthy athletes who do well but on the whole it's very easy to argue that there would be many more people willing to dedicate a lot more time, effort and money to athletic excellence if there was money to be made from it.

  • Re:Remember DIVX. (Score:4)

    by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @12:06PM (#755906)
    Music is watermarked for that user (s device?), who has filled out name and address details correctly for music company.

    If I had moderator access, I'd be torn whether to mark your comment as funny or insightful, since your sarcasm ("there's no way it can fail!") is both.


    Please provide the RIAA with your name, physical address and email address below:

    Mr. U. Suck
    1234 Fuck The Recording Industry Drive
    Suite B-1TE-ME
    Chicago, IL 60619
    email: throw-away-account@someip.com


    I'm sure you and others have thougth up equally, if not more, create responses to expeditions fishing for personal invitation, but if not, I cordially invite you to make use of the above on any RIAA/MPAA questionaire or registration form. I certainly plan to.
  • another lame attempt to put the genie back into the bottle.

    As long as there are people trying to protect music/code/games/porn whatever with code there will be people who will defeat them. Laws in the US mean nothing in Canada or Russia. IMHO I believe it is time to see more indie labels rise up and take the reins from these so called Music professionals. Look at what sound scan did to the industry! If it wasn't for the industry installing sound scan at the retail level they would have never noticed that Nirvana was selling and the Hooters weren't.

  • That's the number of albums they bought, not the size of the segment.

    The music industry's customers are like there are 3 teenagers, and 1 adult. Each teenager buys 1 album a month, but the adult buys 4. There are therefore more sales to adults, but the largest segment size is the teenagers. The most profitable market is when you can sell 9 million copies of the same CD, so the teenagers are the ones who the record companies are targetting.

  • They're just being silly. (Score:5)

    by Fist Prost ( 198535 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @08:31AM (#755913) Homepage
    All these companies are only wasting time and money trying to prevent the inevitable. I'm not going to argue ethics here, because frankly it doesn't make a difference whether people think they're in the right or not, copying music. The fact is that the music only has to be converted once, and then copied as many times as neccesary to destroy any such "inconvenience" scheme the Corps come up with. Even if it involves a padded box containing a speaker and a microphone, once 1 decent copy is made, it's over.

    The only way they will win is by providing a superior product, that has value added for purchasing the physical medium. And as copying becomes easier and easier, their job of keeping us entertained and making money will neccesarily get more and more competitive. Either way, it's still the only win-win situation in the foreseable future.

    Fist Prost

    "We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
  • Ah, yes - but they do have a speaker coil...

    [/me reaches for Dremel to cut grill on "tamper proof" speakers]

    I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?
  • I still want to know how watermarked formats are expected to work.

    I walk into a record store, plonk down $20 in green folding stuff, and get a shiny new CD. I can then convert that to MP3 and no-one can tell who did it. They can tell it came from disc #1485175. They might be able to tell the store that disc was sold from, but they can't tell who bought it.

    I used to wonder this, too. I believe the idea is that a watermark-aware device (like a future version of the Diamond Rio) simply won't make a copy of a watermarked source. The watermark is simply a way of embedding a few bits of information into the music itself. All the information that's needed is "don't copy me!" Watermark-compliant units will comply. It's not much of a stretch from there to see that slightly more elaborate watermark schemes could be used for regional coding (like DVDs), limited replays for demo material (given a player smart enough to remember what it has played) or time-restricted play (don't play this stream after Dec 31st 2000, etc), and who knows what other unpleasantness.

    Of course, the big challenge for the RIAA is to get SDMI enabled devices to be the accepted norm - to displace MP3s as the format of choice. That's going to be a toughie, eh?

    Incidentially, I'm told that the way CDs are made now, there's no way to serialize them - they are stamped out like so many cookies, all the same - so there's no way to put unique serial numbers on each one. So they couldn't track a serialized disc to a particular store, either.

    The biggest section of the CD buying public is teenage girls, who don't have credit cards, so you cannot limit purchasers to those who have credit cards.

    Are you sure about that, or are you just guessing? I seem to recall seeing RIAA demographic figures, and adults - older adults, the 40+ crowd - were actually the biggest music buyers today, odd though it seems. There was a big flap about that stuff about a year ago, when the RIAA was claiming that profits were down because of MP3s (which was patently false according to their own figures, by the way). I don't have a link to that stuff anymore - anyone else?

    I agree that the RIAA can't require buyer registration - for a number of reasons, not least because big chunks of the market are under-age.
  • I still want to know how watermarked formats are expected to work.

    I walk into a record store, plonk down $20 in green folding stuff, and get a shiny new CD. I can then convert that to MP3 and no-one can tell who did it. They can tell it came from disc #1485175. They might be able to tell the store that disc was sold from, but they can't tell who bought it.

    The biggest section of the CD buying public is teenage girls, who don't have credit cards, so you cannot limit purchasers to those who have credit cards.

  • They could make it very tough though. Just because my ear can successfully hear the music does not mean that it can be digitised as easy. Our ears work difeerently.

    Example, My eyes have no prolem viewing one of those amazing certificates Microsoft ships with it's Windows disks. Or the back of one of my checks. But all but the best color scanners will choke. They'll come up with all sorts of interfierence.

    What's stoping the record companies from doing something like this? Modifying the sound so that once it's 'decoded' they interfere wirh digitising?
    Would it be possible to do this without making it sound diferent. OR at least with no more artifacts then MP3 creates?
  • If I can see it I can rip it.

    It took about all of two seconds to "figure out" how to copy these tapes.

    The scheme only protected from VCR direct to VCR recording.

    Since to be usable at all, as has oft been mentioned here, the signal must be decoded at some point. The solution was as simple as using a monitor TV and Video Out to the second VCR after the decoding had already taken place.

    The whole idea was pretty pointless, as is every encryption scheme.

    Why do you think the DMCA has the specific provisions that it does? The music people, and the people at IBM, are NOT total idiots, no matter how it can appear from the outside.

    Now they don't HAVE to go to great lengths to protect content anymore since ANY provision for encryption makes it a de facto crime to unencrypt.

    The ripping itself has become the crime, even if no other tenet of copyright law has been violated.

    How long will it be before I'm not legally allowed to read a book in German because I'm an English speaking American?

    "I'm sorry sir, but you arn't licenced for that information tranformation schemea. You'll have to buy another copy."

    Sounds farfetched, but that IS what the current legal rulings are essentially saying.
  • Who owns the rights to "Happy Birthday?"

    From http://www.thebirthdaycd.com/LearnHis tory.htm [thebirthdaycd.com]:

    One final interesting tidbit: The "Happy Birthday to You" song (lyrics and melody together) are still under copyright protection, so every time you hear them sung on TV or radio, for example, royalties are being paid to the publisher (Warner Chapel, in the US).

  • All these companies are only wasting time and money trying to prevent the inevitable.

    agreed. but don't you understand, they're forced to try to at least show 'due dilligence' to the music theives^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hexecutives.

    music exec: "we need to secure our profits!"

    tech on the payroll: "we're still trying; we wont give up. we're THIS close..."

    music exec: "ok - great. keep at it."

    tech on the payroll [to himself]: "ha! - he thinks we're going to solve their profits problem with anti-technology. as long as they keep paying us, we'll keep burning their research money."

    and so it goes...

    --

  • The plan is to implant a reciever in your audio cortex. Data will be encoded until that. There is also the necessity of disconnecting portions of your brain so that you are unable to hum or otherwise describe the music to another person.
  • You gotta remember, they're still a big corporation. Their first loyalty is to their shareholders and ultimately the bottom line is what drives them. The could stand to make a lot of money from this distribution format if it pans out (Especially with the hardware sales it'd no doubt drive) so it should be no surprise that they'd be working on something like this.

  • Remember DIVX. (Score:4)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @08:34AM (#755939)
    No, not the video compression scheme, the goofy pay-per-view DVD mode.

    We don't want your DRM-hobbled music in the presence of unprotected alternatives.

    We won't buy your DRM-hobbled crap in the presence of unprotected alternatives.

    OK, says RIAA, we'll take away all the unprotected alternatives, releasing music only in watermarked, protected formats, and we'll badger the hardware companies to self-destruct any device that doesn't comply. (What, you mean you didn't want to throw out your entire CD collection and buy it all over again?)

    Fuck 'em.

    When consumers are presented with the choice between SDMI and rolling around in a pool of freshly spat-up cat vomit, the choice is remarkably easy. Not only is the pool of half-digested Friskies and mouse-heads less offensive, it is also delightfully warm.

  • Nothing is piracy proof! (Score:5)

    by AFCArchvile ( 221494 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @08:36AM (#755941)
    I believe that there is one rule about multimedia files: If you can see/hear it, you can capture it in a format devoid of security measures, and save it for prosperity.

    This has been proven for WMA (unf*ck.exe) and ASF (ASFRecorder), and it is soon to be proven for SDMI. Remember that WMA was hacked only one day after it was announced. Its popularity fell off due to its lackluster spectrum response level. ASF wasn't bad (of course, that's because it was secured MPEG-4 and not one of Microsoft's own proprietary formats), but we have yet to see SDMI cracked for free.

    Hackers have proven that even "licensed hardware" is not free from their wrath (CueCat!). I think that these capitalist Orwellians have a serious case of HDFB (head detached from body).

  • If the record companies had been a bit more on the ball, MP3 would never have gotten the mindshare it has now. If a reasonably secure method of audio file distribution could be had, and was pushed by all the record companies, we wouldn't be seeing the legal action we are now.
    Yes, you _can_ rip any audio - it's just the difficulty in doing so which determines it's ease of use. Ripping an MP3 is a doddle, anyone can do it.
    Wiring a feedback loop isn't something your average AOL'er is likely to do... They'd rather pay the record company to let them d/l the music than mess about with wires and "tech stuff". Which means that the amount of illegal music out there is driven underground and the impact on revenue is lessened.
    The record companies _really_ screwed up when they failed to halt the MP3 boat, and now it's too late - hence the litigation frenzy that is currently going on. They should have put together something that was reasonably secure, and used their muscle with manufacturers to only support their format, not MP3.
    Kinda like what MS did to get IE a mindshare. I'm not agreeing with this course of action, just saying what I would have expected them to do if they had their eyes open instead of their heads in the sand...

    Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.

  • I've been watching this debate about artists getting paid for music and etc... for a while now and I'm finally to a point that I can't stand it any more.

    The fact that there is a software industry proves that electronic piracy will NOT destroy the music industry (even if we wish it would)

    Let me take you back a decade or so. Software used to be small. You could fit DOS and Windows on a handful of diskettes. You could put almost any other software in the world on one diskette. You could also either download or trade for any software title in existance. I don't know of a game I ever wanted for that wasn't cracked (that's what breaking piracy protection used to be called). Professional or ameture, game or office app, everything was free for the taking if you didn't mind the legal issues involved. Downloads were at 2400 baud, true, but software was small. I remember the first game I ever saw that was actually a whole megabyte! Even it didn't take more than an hour or so to download from my favorite BBS. My point is this: Even in a niche industry (software was at the time) where almost everyone has the knowlege and ability to pirate everything, several fortunes were made. True, a lot of that was business software, but a lot of it wasn't. People know how the system works, and they will pay for good stuff. Look at the share ware model. For a long time it was NOT crippleware, people sent out full working versions and merely asked for people to send them $10. It worked. Fortunes were made off of that too. My point is that the richest people in the world made their money from something that could be perfectly copied and redistributed - in an industry where EVERYBODY, not just a fringe percentage, knew how.

  • No, this will balance out. As more people pirate, the quality will go down. Only crap will be out there (look at the free stuff on say, mp3.com). Then, eventually, people will be willing to go for a pay-per-play service once all that's available is pirated, free garbage. Supply and demand. It'll take care of itself. If, in 5 years, all I can d/l on Napster is free crap, I'll gladly pay-per-play good new stuff.
  • But imagine an ideal world, where an artist gets every penny of profit from their work. Why would they bother to record a song, if as soon as they release a single copy it's immediately pirated and distributed worldwide for free, in a form absolutely indistinguishable from the original?

    Damn right! Beethoven would never have composed and performed some of the greatest music known to man if he wasn't guaranteed a small percentage of the record companies profits... hey, wait a minute, most "classic" music was written before record companies, or the fiction of intellectual properties rights was even invented!

    ...FREE ART is crappy art, because there's no profit motive in it, and the worthwhile would-be artists are off doing something which allows them to put food on the table.

    Thank you for sharing your hallucination with us; I've got a different one: art created for art's sake is the best art (e.g. Grateful Dead). Art created just to make a buck is crappy art (e.g. Britney Spears) And by the way, the Grateful Dead, even while allowing people to freely record concerts and freely distribute those recording, were the most profitable band in America for at least a few years...

    Guess that blows all your crackpot theories out of the water, doesn't it?

  • Re:I Have the Solution! (Score:3)

    by cr0sh ( 43134 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @12:33PM (#755949) Homepage
    Scarily (is this a word?), this is possible, in some respect:

    http://www.raven1.net/index.html

    Admittedly, this site seems like one big rant and raving of a loon - but look into "voice to skull" technology - dig deep enough, and you WILL find proposals for such experimentation, at .mil and .gov sites (whether or not such proposals have been followed through is up in the air).

    Many of these devices rely on technology similar to the "personal dance floor" stuff that was posted here on /. several weeks back. That of non-linearity of air, and other interfaces (such as using an ultrasound/microwave carrier frequency for the audio, then the carrier is filtered from the signal via normal acoustic means for ultrasonic, and via neural activity for microwave). The patents are all out there, just look.

    Crazy shit, I know - but it seems real enough...

    I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?
  • It's easy in Linux. Rip, go away do something else. You even keep using your computer. On the other end, snag the files you want and burn them to CD. Write, do something else. Linux won't mind. I can start a CD burn and then fire up netscape and emacs and the buffer still won't drop beneath 98% full, and that's on an ATAPI CD ROM. Of course I wouldn't tend to muck about with the covers -- the only reason I'd burn a CD with CD Audio would be as a mix album for the car. Otherwise, MP3 is pretty compelling from the standpoint of being able to fit 13 hours of them on a single CD. Good for about a day and a half of uninterrupted music at work.

    All told I probably end up putting about $4 worth of effort into it, which is well worth accumulating those one or two tracks from each CD that are really good putting them all on one CD for the car.

  • Re: Analog signal = crap!

    Goddamm, I'm going to stop listening to all those people using crap analog instruments. And don't even get me started on the crap sound that vocalists produce!

  • We justify piracy these days when it only hurts Sony Records or Warner Brothers, but what's going to happen when those companies disappear, and the artists deal directly with the public? Are we suddenly going to give up our WE DESERVE FREE INFORMATION and I'D RATHER GET IT FROM NAPSTER selfishness?

    Sure--today, record companies are the ones getting the profits, and I say, screw 'em. But imagine an ideal world, where an artist gets every penny of profit from their work. Why would they bother to record a song, if as soon as they release a single copy it's immediately pirated and distributed worldwide for free, in a form absolutely indistinguishable from the original? How is that artist going to be able to make any money? Rely on the charity of those who feel like donating a few cents because they liked their album?

    Sure, I don't like the current financial scheme of the record labels. But the technology we're talking about here prevents ANYONE from making money from art. Famous quote and hacker philosophy: INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE. Hey, folks, ART IS INFORMATION. And FREE ART is crappy art, because there's no profit motive in it, and the worthwhile would-be artists are off doing something which allows them to put food on the table.

    We'd better come up with SOME way of rewarding and reimbursing artists, or we're going to pirate art right out of our society.
  • Look, secure digital music will never be an alternative as long as people can buy CDs. If people can buy CDs, they can make MP3s. That's all there is to it. And MP3s (with all of their inherit problems) have been and will be continue to be extremely popular.

    If the RIAA wants to stop online digital music piracy, they have to get rid of CDs. And since that is where all of their money comes from right now, I have a feeling that they aren't about to do that.
  • Ahh! The infamous 'right to fair use'.

    That meant, of course, that you could not be charged for making 'fair use' of the copyrighted work, as defined by law.

    It did not mean they had to guarantee you access to make such uses.

  • Is this article an old retread? (Score:3)

    by Zigurd ( 3528 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @08:39AM (#755962) Homepage
    It says: "The Madison experiment will continue at least until December 31, 1999"

    I thought I had heard of this stuff before. Based on non viable economics and the ease with which the resulting CDs can be ripped (no surprise there), I suspect this project is already dead. And 5:1 compression? It is to laugh.

    A cautionary tale for technology companies: entering into content protection projects has proven to this point to be a total waste of time, money, and opportunity. Not to mention what is does for your karma.

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