The History of Hacking DRM

phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica writer Nate Anderson has penned an in-depth look into past DRM-crackings and what the future looks like for people who are vehemently anti-DRM: 'Like a creeping fog, DRM smothers more and more media in its clammy embrace, but the sun still shines down on isolated patches of the landscape. This isn't always due to the decisions of corporate executives; often it's the work of hackers who devote considerable skill to cracking the digital locks that guard everything from DVDs to e-books. Their reasons are complicated and range from the philosophical to the criminal, but their goals are the same: no more DRM.'"

Anti-DRM?

[rwven]

I don't know anyone who's NOT Anti-DRM. All DRM does is make buying music miserable for the people who are doing it legally. People who don't care about the legality of it will just torrent the CD or get it off some other file sharing network. They avoid the headache of DRM as well as the "cost" of being legal...

The only way DRM will ever be plausable will be if they produce a DRM'd codec that plays on anything. People are sick of buying CD's on itunes and not being able to play them on their other players...as well as other music services trying to play on itunes.

Economics

[asudhir]

Another case of supply and demand in action. There is a huge market for DRM on the producer side where deployment in or on all future mass-media is desired, while at the same time consumers will do anything to fight its implementation. It will be curious to see whether the producers or consumers will have something equivalent to "market power" in this scenario.

DRM is not evil

[dada21]

I'm a vocal pro-market advocate, and I don't see any problems with DRM. If you have something you want to keep out of prying eyes, you should be free to protect it in any way possible -- including making it ultra-proprietary.

The big issue I have with the entire DRM debate is that EVERY side forgets where the evil comes into play with DRM: the State. I have many "trade" secrets in the businesses I own and run. In order to keep others from learning the secrets, I perform the actions in private -- away from prying eyes. I'll often mask the output in order to make it not time-effective for my customers to learn the secrest -- and they do continue to hire me so it means they're generally happy with my prices. If they weren't happy, they wouldn't hire me again.

The State, though, removes the market of competition from DRM. If one of my customers took the time to disassemble my services or products, they should be free to use their hands and their tools to mimic the same product or service. The same is true of any DRM -- once you have an item you bought, you should be free to learn to reproduce it at will, regardless of what that item or service is. But the State has created laws preventing us from using our labor in the way we deem best for our needs.

DRM is perfect for many markets -- business can use just the right amount of DRM to deter reverse engineering or disassembly, just long enough until they release their next product to their market. Some industries just need 6 months in order to bring the newer product to market -- if the competition or the customer base wants to waste their time taking something apart rather than buy the original, they should be free to.

Let us look at the real evil in the DRM market -- the one group that wants to prevent us from using our hands and tools in the way we want to. Companies should be free to use any tools (including DRM) to protect their trade secrets; consumers and competition should be free to use their tools to discover how to reproduce a product or service themselves. The State has no right to regulate, require or subsidize either party.

DRM that plays on anything?

[MarkByers]

"The only way DRM will ever be plausable will be if they produce a DRM'd codec that plays on anything."

Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of DRM though? If you did that, people could buy songs from one place but a player from another. The whole point of DRM is to stop that happening.

Re:DRM is not evil

[mrsbrisby]

I'm a vocal pro-market advocate, and I don't see any problems with DRM. If you have something you want to keep out of prying eyes, you should be free to protect it in any way possible -- including making it ultra-proprietary.

You're confused. DRM is about you keeping customers away from their data, not you keeping customers away from your data.

If I buy an accounting and compliance package, and it timebombs six months into full use, I should be able to buy another one, and transfer my data. I should be able to pay someone else to transfer that data because I feel the first vendor was untrustworthy.

DRM means I must pay the first vendor, or go out of business (compliance laws). Never mind what happens if they go out of business- I have no options anymore.

Now, you might think the government has no business protecting people from incompetent companies, what if the vendor did this on purpose? What if that company deliberately set up their accounting package to explode so that they could underbid the competition and recoup the costs later? Isn't that tantamount to extortion?

Re:Anti-DRM?

[Darundal]

I know several people who are pro-drm. They are also the least technically literate people I know, have next to no experiance with any digital music players or services, and they generally assume that because someone is accused of something by a company or the government, they are automatically guilty.

In other words, they are joe consumer incarnate. They don't follow the issues, they are unaware that their is even any type of debate over this subject, and and they are unlikely to ever encounter any issues with DRM because they all use Windows and are the type to be highly loyal to a brand, so probably wouldn't ever buy a music player from another company.

While I myself am vehemently anti-DRM, your post assumes two things;

A: Everyone is aware that there is even an issue, and will become frustrated by DRM

B: Even if someone becomes aware and frustrated, they would attempt to use other channels unconcerned with industry FUD and would know what those other options are or where to find out about them

Carefully disguised pro hollywood puff piece.

[plasmacutter]

There seem to be no substantive points.. I see nothing after reading this whole article which can't be found on about.com or from the mouth of anyone between the age of 16 and 26.

I did however find carefully slipped in hollywood propaganda, like this little nugget:

"The force of law (and the risk of lawsuits) combined with the obscurity of most cracking tools means that even DRM solutions which are easily cracked can be effective at preventing casual piracy"

This devious little term, causal piracy, actually refers to what should be our legally protected rights to fair use, and our rights under the AHRA for reproduction on recording devices.

Then there's self serving drek:

DRM's not going away anytime soon, and newer techniques such as BD+ promise to make future technologies even more difficult to hack for long periods of time.

hollywood to hackers..."naa naa-na-naa naa".

  Not to mention it goes against every point made in the "if you can't use the door, find an open window" argument that cracking the cypher is not necessarily necessary.

DRM circumvents copyright limits

[GodWasAnAlien]

Yes, I am Anti-DRM. It attempts to circumvent any publishing control limits allowed by the government.
Copyright law is already about 100 years longer than what most people would consider a reasonable "limited time". DRM attempts to remove the monopoly limit entirely.

Re:DRM is not evil

[dada21]

You're confused. DRM is about you keeping customers away from their data, not you keeping customers away from your data.

We offer all our customers non-proprietary services as well, but for significantly more money (150% costlier, actually). Our rates on our proprietary services are about 40% cheaper than the competition and we've proven our reliability by being in business for 16 years without a loss in that time frame.

If I buy an accounting and compliance package, and it timebombs six months into full use, I should be able to buy another one, and transfer my data. I should be able to pay someone else to transfer that data because I feel the first vendor was untrustworthy.

If you buy an accounting package that time-bombs, you go into that purchase realizing that risk. What if the reward for using that package was a 40% savings, or more? If you're a new company, you might be willing to take that risk -- depending on what YOU decide you want and need and are willing to pay for. My own contract with my customers stipulates that if my company goes out of business, we will relinquish the proprietary services to them for their purpose. I did NOT put this stipulation in the contract -- I had customers demand it. In order to close the sale, I had to add this line. Do you read every contract that you sign? You should.

DRM means I must pay the first vendor, or go out of business (compliance laws). Never mind what happens if they go out of business- I have no options anymore.

How ridiculous can you get? You must have absolutely ZERO experience with running a business. No one who wants to stick around for a long time signs an agreement that hampers their ability to self protect. Even with my recent T-Mobile re-contracting, I made sure to make changes to their contract, which I had their customer retention and sales department approve. Only someone lacking in business sense signs an agreement without understanding what the repercussions might be.

Now, you might think the government has no business protecting people from incompetent companies, what if the vendor did this on purpose? What if that company deliberately set up their accounting package to explode so that they could underbid the competition and recoup the costs later? Isn't that tantamount to extortion?

Depends on what both parties agreed to. When I buy services from someone, I'll set up my expectations within the contract. My work agreement with my subcontractors contains over 4 paragraphs of assumptions like "You will not attempt to defraud [Company] or its customers." and "You will not attempt to harm, destroy, erase or reduce in functionality..." If you're buying services or items without a contract, I would consider that an "as-is" sale, and you better get a really good deal on it.

The market is providing for every consideration you threw at me here, keep them coming so I can find one that really requires the State to regulate.

Complicated reasons?? Not really.

[necro2607]

"Their reasons are complicated and range from the philosophical to the criminal"...

I don't know about the people specifically referred to in this article but most reasoning behind dislike of DRM is quite simple in nature. For example, being able to listen to a song on more than one brand of audio-playing device, or being able to watch a movie on more than one brand of device. There are also the cases where it's simply a matter of being able to burn a copy of a piece of software, or a movie.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[IamTheRealMike]

No, the point of DRM is to prevent supply from being infinite, because a market in which there is infinite supply is a failed market.

The fact that Apple and Microsoft can't resist abusing it to promote sales of iPods/Windows is unrelated and not inherant to DRM.

No.. DMCA means you must pay first vendor

[plasmacutter]

DRM means I must pay the first vendor

No.. without the presence of the DMCA there would be a huge sector of our economy right now devoted to producing DRM cracks, one of which would be for your program.

OP is right, it is state regulation.. the technology mandate known as usc section 1201 (DMCA anticircumvention provision), which is keeping you locked in, not the DRM itself.

I'm all for regulations which make sense, but the solution here is not the further regulation of the market by preventing sellers from selling products the way they want to sell them.

It is the repeal of the regulation which prevents buyers from using the products the way they want to use them, and preventing other sellers from selling tools to help buyers in their quest to use the products the way they want.

Re:DRM is not evil

[Magus2501]

As hard as it is for me to say, I have to agree. If the markets demand DRM, it's a right of the people to make it to meet demand, and it's the distributor's right to use it. That's how a free-market economy is supposed to work.

There are laws against piracy, but they are weak in practice due to Fair Use and similar conventions. The state can't easily punish piracy because it's difficult to catch and difficult to prove.

DRM because is a market-oriented solution to piracy. Instead of relying on laws to threaten people, the market is trying to protect itself. However, the protection methods (those listed in the article, at least) are common and breakable. Breaking the DRM once is all it takes for all of the content under that scheme to be made freely available for piracy.

The DMCA is a move back toward a state-level solution, but it still relies on the presence of some rudimentary DRM. It is now illegal to break a DRM scheme. The difference between this legal solution and the previous is that this one can be proven more readily.

Hypothetically, if I used a software program to undo the encryption on one of my legally-purchased DVDs (I'm not implying anything, I swear!), it would be near-impossible to catch me by the first level of antipiracy I mentioned, and it would be similarly impossible to prove that I was doing anything illegal if I actually got caught (I could be making a backup copy or storing the contents on my laptop to watch on while travelling). The second obviously hasn't stopped me, as the software took care of that. The third, DMCA, takes care of that burden of proof in the first level. By using the software to undo the encryption, I am guilty and all they have to do is catch me.

Piracy networks are getting more and more advanced, so catching someone in the act is very difficult. What usually leads to an arrest is carelessness on the part of the pirate, which can be neither designed nor legislated. Even if the content is geting pirated, the DRM is undone, and the encryption's removal is illegal, nothing can be done if no one gets caught.


And did anyone else think that a spoofed BD+ update disc can be used to undo DRM in Blu-ray players? Seems like the door's open...

Re:DRM is not evil

[RSquaredW]

You make a reasonable point about being forced to include escape clauses in your contracts with your clients. However, I get the impression that you aren't selling shrink-wrapped products, and you aren't including a EULA that claims to be enforceable upon the opening and use of the product already purchased. The concern about many forms of DRM is that there is no opportunity to renegotiate the contract - how do I tell Sony-BMG or Apple that I don't accept the terms of their 'licensing agreement'?

Apple's EULA for iTunes [apple.com]. What happens if Apple bites it? I'm going to guess that such an event falls under the "We're not responsible for damage to your stuff" clause near the bottom.

Finally, I have to ask. Does your licensing contract state that you can change the terms of the agreement without prior notice, whenever you want, unilaterally?

Re:DRM is not evil

[plasmacutter]

The DMCA is a move back toward a state-level solution, but it still relies on the presence of some rudimentary DRM. It is now illegal to break a DRM scheme. The difference between this legal solution and the previous is that this one can be proven more readily.

there are more differences than that grasshoppah.

this one is also completely unaccountable. It has no judicial oversight, oversight which has always been necessary to check the unreasonable assertions of copyright cartels on the producer side, and in so doing establish new and explicit fair uses.

by passing the DMCA they have removed that accountability, which is wrong on many levels, and gives legislative authority to a private institution in violation of the US constitution, although our lovely corporatist judges will never ever make a decision against their briber.. i mean the "free market".

Re:Anti-DRM?

[kimvette]

You're being sarcastic now, but what happens if/when you dump (OS X|Windows) for Linux or BSD? Or, when the day arrives when you come to realize (much like Philip J. Fry did) that the Dave Matthews Band doesn't rock, and decide to exercise your right of first sale and sell (as in transfer ownership) your property (the music you bought) to another person? Oops, guess what? You don't actually own anything to transfer now.

Or, what happens if/when Apple goes belly-up or is forced by the music mafia (RIAA) to shut down iTunes and quit the music business? Good-bye music collection, so sad, too bad. You'll be pissing and moaning over DRM then.

Granted those are hypothetical scenarios, but much like Divx, it can definitely happen, only this time around everyone with a clue will be continually saying "told ya so" like a bunch of nine-year-olds.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

You're both right.

The content production companies, such as the music and movie companies, want DRM to prevent the unlimited distribution of entertainment or information.

The content distribution companies, like Apple, want DRM to lock people into their other products, like the iPod.

Re:Carefully disguised pro hollywood puff piece.

[Angst Badger]

Actually, I thought the point on preventing casual piracy -- which I took to mean not legitimate backups but making copies for your buddies -- was really crucial. Professional pirates, the folks who are selling counterfeit DVDs out of Hong Kong and other points east, are not in any way going to be deterred by DRM. They have the resources to route around it at the hardware level and the incentives to do so. But stopping professional piracy is a job for bilateral trade agreements and customs inspections, not DRM.

In between are the people uploading movies and music to the alt.binaries.* hierarchy and p2p systems like BitTorrent. Frankly, as much as I'm sure the big publishing firms would like for this to stop, the (admittedly modest) technical knowledge needed to take advantage of this kind of mid-range amateur piracy are beyond the average user, and the effort involved is sufficiently great that most people would rather just buy the damn movie at the store. The publishers may or may not understand this, hence the occasional wave of egregious lawsuits, but I suspect they do, if only because crushing Usenet binaries and p2p networks would neither legally nor technically all that challenging.

The goal of big media is to make most people afraid to pirate their products. The huffing and puffing over the technical fringe is just a publicity stunt.

The only really disturbing aspect of DRM is the legislative component, which tramples all over fair use and other elements of free expression. That is something to worry about for sure.

As for BD+, I don't think it will stick around long after the first time some discs are distributed with buggy flash code that cripples the players they are inserted into.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re-phrase please: Technically-Inclined people are sick of DRM.

The fact of the matter is that iTunes is very popular and continues to be so. Just because the techies don't like it doesn't mean people everywhere are sick of it. Not true - if people were sick of DRM on iTunes that business would simply fold - it hasn't yet nor does it look like it's going to anytime soon so your apparently incorrect in your assessment.

Re:DRM is not evil

[hyfe]

You're confused. DRM is about you keeping customers away from their data, not you keeping customers away from your data.

Well, it may be, but you're still missing Grand Parents point.

If you believe in the free market, then DRM doesn't matter. Just as companies should be allowed to do whatever they want to stuff before you sell it, you should be able to do whatever you want with it after you bought it.

What's making DRM so potentially crippling now, is possibly patents, certainly copyrights and trade-secret laws aswell as anti-reverse-engineering laws. The common factor for all of these, is that they are artificial constructs imposed on the free market by the goverment. They're unbalancing the market and creating de-facto monopolies, which in the end, hurts us all.

I have never, ever understood why the majority of right'ish people believe in freedom, individuality and the power of the marketplace will give everything they believe in the boat as soon as the rich people want something. Discuss healthcare, benefits, disability-support and other life-threatening issues and people will throw marketplace-argumentation in your face. Discuss patents, copyrights and trade-secret laws which primarily serves to let big companies strangehold the previously well-functioning market and people will preach pragmatism, because surely the status-quo is worth sacrificing a little for?

If I buy an accounting and compliance package, and it timebombs six months into full use, I should be able to buy another one, and transfer my data.

No, you shouldn't. If the company lied to you, they commited fraud. That's already covered by other laws. If they didn't, its your own bloody fault for buying their software, and it's certainly not the goverments place to enact laws protecting you against your own stupidity.

Isn't that tantamount to extortion?

They did defraud you? Did they lie? What does your contract say? What did they advertise their product with?

If they didn't in any way make any statements about how long your software would live, it's still your fault. If you bought a mission-critical piece of software from a non-reputable vendor, without checking messageboards or previous customers at all, I think you pretty much deserve what you got anyways.

side note - interesting logic question

[magnamous]

From the article:

Such technologies end up controlling only the behavior of legitimate users; those who want free copies of Dude, Where's My Car? from BitTorrent won't be deterred.

I wonder how many people who agree with this statement also support gun control.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[CastrTroy]

DRM doesn't make anything any cheaper. iTunes still cost as much as a regular CD. Sure you can just buy one song, but for the entire album, the price is pretty much the same (sometimes more on iTunes). Plus you get a lower quality version, no physical CD, no Case, no Liner notes that are already printed on a commercial quality printing press (not some crappy liner notes you have to printe out on your crappy inkjet), and they pay pretty much 0 production cost. Oh, and the music is locked down a lot more than it is on a regular CD. For iTunes to be worth it, it would have to be down around 25 cents a song.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:DRM is not evil

[wall0159]

"Only someone lacking in business sense signs an agreement without understanding what the repercussions might be."

So, according to you, it's absolutely fine to take advantage of people who lack business sense, are distracted (eg. single parent), or are just stupid? Is that your general attitude to life?

And really.. would you truely read an entire agreement everytime you purchase a song (remember, the contract could be changed between purchases)? Would you be in a position to negotiate with Apple, if you didn't agree? I mean, c'mon.. this is crazy!

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[contrapunctus]

Potable water is not infinite.

Why nobody has said this..

[Dryanta]

TFA and most of the replies fail to miss the point. "DRM SUCKS DRM SUCKS" DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!

Don't buy music or software that is copywritten in this way. There are open alternatives. Show the entertainment industry what you think with your dollar. Why spend money on recordings of movies or music anymore when you cannot even utilize them the way you would like without becoming a criminal?

Hollywood and Washington are taking a big fat dump on the entire point of copyright and anti-trust laws - protecting the interests of business and the interests of consumers EQUALLY. I hear stories every day of the RIAA or MPAA sueing Joe Blow for downloading X - that's just as assinine as sueing twenty years ago him for copying the same crappy ass rock from the radio to tape.

The solution - Just vote with your dollar! Ever since that whole Sony DRM scandal - I have boycotted their products even though I do not utilize Windows. This is no longer just a privacy or copyright issue, it is one of personal civil liberties being trampled by big business.

what

[tetromino]

Carefully disguised pro hollywood puff piece.

If you had been reading Ars Technica for any length of time, you would be aware of its incessant and strident criticism of DRM and **AA stupidity. This article is no exception, although perhaps it's not anti-hollywood enough for your tastes.

"The force of law (and the risk of lawsuits) combined with the obscurity of most cracking tools means that even DRM solutions which are easily cracked can be effective at preventing casual piracy"
This devious little term, causal piracy, actually refers to what should be our legally protected rights to fair use, and our rights under the AHRA for reproduction on recording devices.

No, "casual piracy" refers to "widespread small-scale copyright infringement by average users", like making half a dozen copies of a copyrighted audio cassette (remember those?) for your friends. Lawsuits and DMCA-protected ass-broken encryption are indeed effective enough to deter casual copyright infringement. Hence the fact that itunes is more popular than allofmp3.

DRM's not going away anytime soon, and newer techniques such as BD+ promise to make future technologies even more difficult to hack for long periods of time.
hollywood to hackers..."naa naa-na-naa naa".

Unless you've been living in a cave for the past 10 years, you know that DRM is not going away any time soon. Bluray, HDDVD, this- and next-gen console games, Valve's Steam, itunes, etc. are all covered with DRM. In fact, US is using its economic power to push **AA-designed pro-DRM laws onto the rest of the planet. DRM is wrong and evil, but it's here to stay, at least until we can out-bribe music executives.

Not to mention it goes against every point made in the "if you can't use the door, find an open window" argument that cracking the cypher is not necessarily necessary.

As the article says, even broken DRM still discourages the average luser from pirating, and the average luser is all the studios care about.

Re:I don't understand

[Eivind]

Yes you do. It's amazing that someone can manage to read slashdot without understanding something so mindbogglingly simple.

If you buy a copy of a copyrigthed work, you own that single copy. Plain and simple. You also own the physical media that it is stored on.

Even though it is your property, there are certain things you may not do with it, these things are listed in copyrigth-law and elsewhere. For example, you may not make and distribute copies of a book you own, nor may you use a book you own to whack a policeman over the head.

But you may do anything with your property not specifically prohibited by law. You require no "permission" or "licence" from the copyrigth-holder for this. You can read a book. You can listen to a piece of music. You can give away, or sell, a book you're tired of. You can microwave a CD. You can use Ann Coulter writings to wipe your ass. You can do all of these things, regardless of what the copyrigth-holder thinks about them. Copyrigth is (DUH!) mainly about the rigth to make copies. (what a concept!) and a few other things (public performance is covered for example).

In no way shape or form does copyrigth prevent you from owning books, cds or other copyrigthed works that you have legally aquired.

There's a difference between owning the copyrigth to a work (which you don't, unless you created the work or you bugth the copyrigth from the person who did) and owning a single copy of a work. (which you do if you legally bougth a copy of the work.)

Re:Anti-DRM?

[ultranova]

I don't blame the companies. I have a well known name in the type of software I put out and I've generally put out my works at lower than the 'professional' packages -- without protection. Who's work do I find on eBay? Mine or the big guy? I'm more likely to get ripped than the big guy because I only charged $30 for my stuff where the other guy is selling theirs for $130 -- I've heard pirates tell me that its not like its that big of a deal because its not 'professional' software (and the only difference is the price).

Are you related to the troll who always posts here complaining how his CD store is doing so badly because of piracy ? Is that why you don't reveal your "well known name" ?

If it weren't for the whole crowd screaming Software Piracy Is Not Theft,

It isn't. It's copyright infringement. They have nothing common, aside from being both illegal.

but until a maturity comes over software users, I'm totally pro-DRM.

Contrary to what you may think, "maturity" does not mean conforming to your or copyright cartels viewpoint.

Re:DRM circumvents copyright limits

[ultranova]

Copyright law is already about 100 years longer than what most people would consider a reasonable "limited time". DRM attempts to remove the monopoly limit entirely.

Copyright lasts as long as Disney does. Not 10 years, not 100 years, not 1000 years. It gets extended each time Mickey Mouse comes close to falling to public domain. Face it: copyright term is infinite.

DRM is a ghost in the machine ?

[freaker_TuC]

which duty ? to tolerate or to smite DRM ? Because I still think as long there are people freeloading from other(s) resources because it "just can be done freely"; the market will always keep looking for better options to make one sale equal to be getting one product.

Still, too bad when you bought the product it's sometimes haunting you like a ghost; like the Beastie Boys cd crippled my PC into tiny lil shreds of void rendering it useless for +1 week for invoicing/serious use because the CD drive and the network card was affected by their DRM.

It's a tradeoff which the publishers -need to understand-. Don't bother your valued customers with it and for sure don't piss them off with it; because the result is ; like I did ; that I won't ever buy CD's anymore (because I'm really scared of them; now-a-days I need to check a on-line list before its SAFE to even PLAY a cd on your computer).

I used to buy 1-2 cd's / week ; from now on it'll be only vinyl records because there is no shitty DRM; just the needle on the record and instant music ; like it should be. No fuzz, not being scared, no problems afterwards.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

Technology often causes markets to fail. The buggy whip manufacturers, the candlemakers, the oil lamp companies, the musket and sword makers.

Sure, you can still buy buggy whips, candles, oil lamps, and swords (probably muskets too) but the markets are but a tiny fraction of what they were.

The same will come with movies and music. The DMCA is as if the candlemakers and oil lamp manufacturers had persuaded Congress to outlaw light bulbs.

As to "infinite supply" and the zero price point, what about water? It's free, it falls from the sky, but I still pay to have it piped into my house. I've occasionally bought a bottle at a higher price than gasoline!

People will pay for convienience and they'll pay for quality, even if the product can be had for free. Folks will still go see live shows and buy CDs. Just because some folks don't want a shelf full of CDs and their cover art and liner notes doesn't mean the market is dead.

I'd download an unencumbered MP3 at the right price point - but that price point is ten times less what the producers are charging. It's incredibly STUPID to download a CD's worth of low quality DRM encumbered, virus prone WMAs for a higher price than you would pay for a CD.

The market won't go away, but most of its present players probably will.