Microsoft Introduces Its Own CD Copy-Inhibition Scheme 342
M.C. Hampster writes "MSNBC is carrying a Reuters story about Microsoft's new CD protection technology. At the heart of the technology is the laying of songs "onto a copy-controlled CD in multiple layers, one that would permit normal playback on a stereo and a PC.""
Woefully short on details... (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's all it is, it's not going to stop anyone from ripping it on pre-Palladium systems, nor from CD players with digital I/O (although that'll only work at single speed).
And what does the article mean by "layered"? Surely not an actual multilayered disk like a DVD? Is that backwards compatible?
More details anyone?
Jon
I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can someone explain this further? What does multiple layers have to do with protecting the CD if it can be played regardless?
When will they learn? (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh-huh. That's nice dear. Well done. I'm sure we'll all be using it in 3 years time.
Morons.
how is this even possible ? (Score:2, Insightful)
And products like totalrecorder [totalrecorder.com]will take them in.
Harder to copy ? yes
Copy protection doesn't work (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can play a CD, you can get the raw sound data off of it. From that raw data, you can make an MP3. If the CD is playable anywhere, you can copy it. What's to say someone won't modify their PC CD-ROM drive so it reads the "normal" data that isn't copy-protected. Someone would figure it out sooner or later, and probably sooner rather than later. And if copy-protection is implemented in Pallidiam, then it probably won't be long before someone finds a way around it, knowing Microsoft's record on security.
Dumb move by Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
You can run a Word Processor on a PII with Windows 95 without any problems. Ripping and burning CDs are a different story.
So why on earth would they cave-in to DRM pressure? They shouldn't give a darn what the music industry thinks. Technology is the lifeblood of our economy, both directly and indirectly. The Music industry is a bunch of annoying, overpayed execs and stars. In a PR battle technology would win hands down, especially if the battle was over taking rights away from the consumers.
My guess is Microsoft wants to monopolize the music and movie industry. They want the next CD you buy to only be playable in a Microsoft OS. Sure they may release some half-hearted buggy specs (for a price).
Brian Ellenberger
they don't seem to get it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well-balanced reporting at it's... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa there! How about the fact that people are sick of proprietary software vendors and their expensive update/release cycles? Or in the case of audio media, prices have doubled in 15 years of being on the market, and being forced to lower prices by the justice department (having been shown guilty of essentially collusion and price-fixing).
Until these companies start listening to the consumers, they'll continue to write their own stories explaining the industries problems that allow them to justify witch-hunts (remember the RIAA seeking authority to hack computers suspected of carrying illegal media?).
Something tells me that history will repeat itself here...
Re:Copy protection doesn't work (Score:5, Insightful)
And of course, it just won't work.
They can never close the CD format, ever... (Score:5, Insightful)
Kjella
ailing, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can someone explain to me how an industry that reports record profits, year and year, can be called ailing?? That's like calling Microsoft an "ailing software company" because they have the minor inconvenience of the Justice Department. It's just not relevent.
Oh wait, I'm not a pirate, because I've never illegally sold someone elses art, and in fact, I am not bound by any agreement with the recording industry with regard to music that I've downloaded off the Internet, any more than I would be for music I taped off the radio!
Grrr.
Forgetting something? (Score:2, Insightful)
The ultimate solution to revive the recording industry is NOT copy-protection. Ultimately, the industry must figure out how to serve the consumer's desires (this is the basis of all business and economics practices, something that the RIAA among others must have forgotten). What other industry can produce a product that is 90% crap and 10% okay, and expect the consumer to willingly pay for all 100% of it? If this were the standard business model, our Dell computers would be running P4-2.5 GHz processors with 64K RAM and 50 MB hard drives, and we would pay $3000 for them! The recording industry must acknowledge that if consumers are not willing to pay for its product, there is something wrong with (a) the product or (b) the distribution strategy (the 90%/10% ratio). I would have no problems shelling out $20 for a CD if it had more than one or two good songs on it.
By the way, the recording industry in Canada has managed to lobby a 20% levy [cb-cda.gc.ca] on each blank CD-R that is sold (21 cents on a $1 CD). That eliminated the last moral reservations I had with copying music (now that the artists get my money anyway), and I bet one could mount a substantive legal defense if one were ever charged with copyright infringement based on that fee.
Hmmm i bet they forgot to add something (Score:2, Insightful)
s/PC/PC running Windoze/
XBOX (Score:5, Insightful)
No... kinda like X-Box.
Re:Woefully short on details... (Score:3, Insightful)
uh (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't forget that if you're a Linux (or whatever) user, you're in the vast minority, and you really can't expect the mass media to pay you any mind. For the media's purposes (and 95% of computer users' purposes), PC == Windows PC.
Well, except this only will affect honest people.. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, exactly how is this expensive MS technology going to affect that content stream? It won't. All it will do is complicate matters for people who actually are honest and purchase the CD.
Also, as someone else mentioned, if the playback device has 2 RCA jacks or a pair of cannon connectors, anyone can get a great copy via analog. Hey, there are already "Analog Rip" options in many major media applications, so what's the point here?
Rule 1: the audio degradation caused by analog copying is LESS than that caused by MP3 compression. So...I don't care what fancy DRM they bring out, if you can hear it, you can copy and distribute it.
Great... (Score:2, Insightful)
And will there be a logo on my CD that says "Designed for MusicXP"?
Re:They can never close the CD format, ever... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it will fly. I hope it won't fly.
Re:Is there such a thing as audio copy protection? (Score:4, Insightful)
>another, the people who want unauthorized copies
>of multimedia won't be able to make it?
By controlling everything from the bit to the out. It is the only way possible. You have a CD that is digitally encrypted, which plays through a special device that knows you have the license to play it, which encrypts it again and sends it through special wiring to your speakers which also know you have a license for it and allows the sound to pass through. All of your input devices would listen for a watermark that would be embedded in the system and stop recording if they heard it.
Now, is any of that possible? Sure. But how long will it take for all of that to come to pass? Pretty much never.
deja vu. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm glad to see they're trying something that's supposed to play on everything ...I'm glad Microsoft is in on it because of their "amazing" security track record.
Worse, you make the very rash assumption that this will work. M$ and friends could care less about your anoyances, after all they consider you some kind of criminal for wanting to make backups of the things you own. We've been here before.
This reminds me of M$'s entry into backup programs for floppy disk storage. They bought out everything that worked, such as Fith Generation Systems's Fast Back program, and shut it down. What they offered instead was M$ backup, which was slow and never worked. Needless to say, CDs came along and largely replaced the need for such things and you can now get free software that will break up work larger than a CD into volumes. No rampant "piracy" ever surfaced and no real pirate was ever discouraged. It's the whole thing all over again with CDs. It did not work for floppies and it won't work here.
Another $500,000,000 down the drain, nice work M$! Is that what you spent the last 15 years of dividens on?
Amazing (Score:4, Insightful)
Weird protection (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess we all need more technical information for this not to sound like a real dumbass copy protection.
Re:Copy protection doesn't work (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the proverbial cat is out of the bag with CDs and DVDs, but this could be enacted for the next generation of (incompatible) DVD players, and any other drives that come in the future.
Re:The real question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, it's ailing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, I'm not in the music industry, but I used to work at the National Opinion Research Center [uchicago.edu], and we were doing some statistical analysis which was related to this topic. So, I'll give my 2 cents, and attempt to answer your question.
Anyhow, as I understand it, fewer and fewer CD/albums are generating positive returns on investment. At the same time, more and more CD/albums are being produced. The fact which seems to be keeping the industry alive is that when a CD/album does generate a return on investment, the return can be extremely large. In fact, the return on investment is increasing for those albums which do generate a positive return. (Mostly due to an increasing world-wide population, an increase in potential consumers, world-wide communication networks, and peer-to-peer network phenomenas. )
For example, consider Eminem. Selling more CDs than anybody else around. Who has ever heard of a CD selling over 1M copies, in its first week?! But he did it. Now then, I know my estimations are inexact, but figure that 1M x $20 = $20M in one week, from one product. That number (or a similar one) is what the industry reports as a record profit.
Behind that number (and similar numbers reported, which include record-label and industry-wide sums of sales/product) are tens of thousands of titles which are lucky to sell 1,000 copies per year. Over time, those tens of thousands of titles become part of the hundreds of thousands of titles which are lucky to sell 100 copies per year. Which then become part of the millions of titles which are lucky to sell 10 copies a year.
Now then, as to your question: The music recording industry actually is ailing (as an industry), because they've lost what economists call a 'moat'. That is, they don't have any protection from other competitors getting into the business. As an industry, they don't have something which protects them from Microsoft, Apple, or Linux competing with them (read: Independent Labels.)
Now, if the recording industry were not ailing, and were healthy, here would be the situation:
Every CD produced sold exactly N copies +/- 10% of N. For example, every CD would sell 90,000 to 110,000 copies. No more, no less. There would be approximately M titles produced per year. If a new employee was hired by the company, they would produce 'M + 10' or 'M + x' titles to offset the wages and cost of the new employee. In addition, the industry would use proprietary technology, which nobody had access to, and nobody else could produce compact disks. Those people in the CD industry would be the CD producers, and nobody else got to participate in the game. That is how the industry would be structured if it were healthy.
But, that's not the way it is, now is it?
All things considered, Microsoft getting into this business is very bad news for the recording industry. For the record labels, it just means another major player who wants a cut of the pie, which is already spread too thin as it is. It also means that anybody who buys a Microsoft Small Business Server license can start up not just an 'Independent Label' but, rather, a medium sized recording label. Put another way, the small fish have just gotten bigger.
Re:Except for one thing: (Score:2, Insightful)
lol @ Microsoft and the music industry (Score:3, Insightful)
1. If you can listen and see you can copy.
2. The quality isnt as important as the content.
3. Restrictions in use applies mostly to legit buyers since the not so legit users tends to use nonrestricted copies.
4. Pissing of legit customers tend to make them not pay for the goods.
5. If there are two versions of the same goods and one of them is unusable what do people choose?
They can never ever succeed in making a hackproof music or video format. All they can do is push their legit buyers over to pirating. I think that is a very stupid thing to do if you have a music business. Then again, not using the net to distribute music back in 1997 was a pretty stupid move too.
Re:deja vu. (Score:3, Insightful)
What is the best CD-R backup freeware that works with Windows? Almost everything I care about on my compuer (i.e. everything I'll want on my next computer that I can't grab off of the web) is in c:\data\ - around 10 gig in all, and it would be cool to have some archives of that...
Re:Well-balanced reporting at it's... (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't think of a better reason to explain why companies don't listen to customers. Very recently a corporation (too tired to remember who) tried to defend their false earnings reports as being legal. Who or how doesn't matter, the outcome is the same: Many companies attempt to create hype in order to invent demand and justification for inflating prices to the consumers.
Restricting consumer options must (to their perception) be working else it wouldn't be worth for them to continue this trend. Those board members CEOs and VPs getting big fat bonuses every year probably don't want to risk the unknown.
Why oh why don't they get it? (Score:2, Insightful)
All these copyright protection schemes do is prevent me, the consumer, using the copyrighted work in a way which is legally supported (at least here in Australia, where the DMCA isn't used as a catch-all...).
It's been said before, and'll be said again: if someone truly wants to violate copyright, there'll be a way to do it - so in the end, the only losers are Mum and Dad users.
Sigh.
Re:Is there such a thing as audio copy protection? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why this scheme will probably fail (Score:2, Insightful)
1. The first is whether or not your PC, running the OS of you choice (Linux, MacOS, Windows, Lindows, etc), will be able to read the disc in existing CD-ROM drives. I believe that the likely answer to that question is yes, because the music industry and Micro$oft have seen the results of violating the Redbook Standard and rendering CDs unreadable. This approach leads to widespread incompatibilities, confusion, and frustration on the part of consumers about which CDs will or will not work in which devices. Thus people refuse to buy them.
2. The second question is whether or not it is possible using multiple layers on the CD to render the CD-ROM drive capable of reading only the WMA digitally encoded tracks and not the standard audio tracks. I am not an expert in CD-ROM drive hardware and drivers so perhaps one of you other slashdot people know the answer to that for sure. Let us assume for the moment that CD-ROM drives can only read the WMA encoded data tracks and move on to point number three.
3. WMA is a proprietary file format which is readable only by Windows Media Player (as far as I understand it). Thus this constitutes a "security by obscurity" type system scheme because presumably Micro$oft will keep the file format secret and somebody will have to write a program which parses the file and extracts the audio. History has shown these types of "encryption" schemes to be vulnerable. It is only a matter of time before some information about the WMA format leaks or somebody cracks the format encoding (case in point the CSS scheme employed on DVDs).
In closing, the only other alternative for additional protection beyond proprietary files is to use a real cryptographic scheme. However, it is difficult in practice to operate a public key encryption scheme under these circumstances. Basically, the more people who have access to a decryption key, even though it may be buried or hidden in the Windows Media Software, the less secure the system becomes. This was a problem faced by DVD manufacturers in the early DeCSS days (As I understand it, the original program used a key which was leaked from a manufacturer, Xing technologies I think, to decode the mpeg streams). The problem became even worse when some enterprising hackers discovered that it was possible crack CSS and decode the DVD without a key. I will bet that even the hardware player manufacturers don't bother with the keys anymore because it is cheaper to put a DeCSS based decoder chip in the box instead. Thanks for reading.
Afterthought:
The only truley secure solution would be a single all in one device (speakers and everything) with end to end encryption. I dont believe anybody would accept that draconian of a solution and even if it were somehow forced onto people they could still record the sound coming out of the speakers. The music industry will only be happy when it becomes possible to pipe the music directly into your brain so that nobody else can hear it and you cannot copy it. Oh wait! what if I remember the song and it sticks in my head? did I violate the DMCA? lol friggen hillarious.
Re:SQL Server vs. MySQL (offtopic) (Score:3, Insightful)
droolling AOLers are the target me thinks (Score:3, Insightful)
Media people want a reasonble barrier to copying.
Photocopying a whole book is too time consuming
The fact that one can rip it via analogue is an unescapable fact so spending millions on developing a foolproof anti-digital copying mechanism is generally a waste of time.
Rememebr the VHS-VHS anti-copying machanism where some sort of modulation is inserted so that the sounds & colour fades in and out when the modulated signal is introduced as aliasing?
hmm (Score:2, Insightful)