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.""
Go right ahead (Score:2, Interesting)
..will it be better than their last attempt? (Score:2, Interesting)
windows xp anti-piracy was cracked.
so was most of the other anti-piracy software.
I think these companies need to wake up and realise that the reason noone is buying their products is because they are trash.
not because of piracy....
piracy is a scapegoat they use with the shareholders to avoid the 'your products are trash, fix them!' response from shareholders.
I found it interesting that when M$ said it may pay a dividend, and that it beat the streets expectations, the stock price dropped.
looks like consumers are watching.
This doesn't need breaking (Score:5, Interesting)
They should rip just fine in any machine that doesn't support Palladium. You don't need to circumvent the DRM, just don't use it at all.
With whatever the next format of DVDs uses, we may lose the ability to play on untrusted devices, since they don't care about backward compatibility. With audio CDs, however, not making something backward compatible guarrantees it as DOA (look at DVD audio or SACDs... Or more to the point, try to find one to actually purchase).
People don't care about quality, above a certain point. People don't care about physical form, as long as they can carry one in their pocket. People care about *convenience*. Want to know why *I* first switched from tapes to CDs? One reason, and one reason only - The ability to (nearly) instantly seek any track. And I *do* care about the improvement in quality, very much so, but in the reverse situation (if tapes could seek tracks and CDs only played in-order), I would never have switched.
So, any attempt to copy protect an audio CD will fail, as long as they try to maintaining backward compatibility. And if they abandon backward compatibility, plain ol' market pressures will doom such an effort to a rapid demise.
Oh, as an aside, I just checked MS's site, and they don't seem to have any better info than what the article mentioned. Guess we'll just have to wait on this one, or hope another Slashdotter digs up and links to something juicy...
Re:No it wasn't (Score:1, Interesting)
There's a keygen out.
It works.
It's been cracked.
A theory as to what they are trying to say (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, as I mentioned such a scheme doesn't do anything for newer CD player playback, Car CD playback, or Linux playback, or Mac playback, and (of course) still doesn't allow you to consolidate your music collection onto one computer or bring it with you on a Rio (solid state music being essential for certain activities, such as jogging or mountain biking).
So, in essence, Microsoft has offered a solution that would increase the reliance upon Microsoft products, and would increase the cost of transitioning away from them. TBNT.
(Hmmm... now where did that old single-speed CD ROM without error checking go?)
- C
Re:Woefully short on details... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:They can never close the CD format, ever... (Score:2, Interesting)
For how long is an interesting question. Let's talk hypotheticals for a moment.
Lets say that stage 1 is to get draconian anti-circumvention laws passed around the world. While making sure that the actual wording of the laws are so nebulous and easily manipulated that you can basically make hand-decoding ROT13ed data a criminal offense.
Now stage 2 is to introduce a series of brain-dead copy protection schemes that could be broken by someone who had been repeatedly dropped on their head as a baby could crack. Make a lot of noise about how worldwide networks of hardened criminals are destroying the economy by ripping, sharing and burning.
Stage 3 is to throw people off the scent. You know the industry, as in Microsoft (the Software arm of the US Government) and major hardware companies, is working on the DRM to end all DRM schemes but you don't want the governments to get any ieas about regulating what you can inflict on the public. Make a great play about how you don't need legislation covering DRM as you value the rights of the customer, etc, etc. Make sure one of your cronies is noticably absent from the list of good guys though.
Stage 4 brings in the next stage - the media that you know will be childs play to crack on any system other than the one that your industry buddies are hammering out. Make sure that Windows users using the new DRM system are restricted but other OSes aren't.
Stage 5. Wait.
Stage 6 is the trick - these other operating systems are allowing people to get around the copy protection schemes, reducing the effectiveness of crippling Windows users and burning a big hole in the various cartel's pockets. Guess what happens at this stage? Attempts to pass worldwide legislation to outlaw hardware and software that does not implement the DRM features "Good" machines should implement. Claassify anything else as a tool of criminals and terrorists (basically ressurect the SSSCA on a worldwide basis, probably via WIPO).
Do not get overconfident. This is a war, even the rediculous could prove to be devestating down the line.
"Unauthorized Copying" (Score:3, Interesting)
Do I own the cd? the content? both? If the RIAA has its way, I don't own anything I buy. Ridiculous.
Re:Woefully short on details... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dumb move by Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)
No - they want to produce one before one gets mandated on them by the government. If they can point to actions _they_ are taking to prevent what they (Microsoft/RIAA) consider piracy or theft (never mind arguments over the definitions of these terms) they may persuade the governemnt that no action is necessary.
This probably explains the statements they were making earlier vis a vis mandated DRM.
feasability of copy protected a/v ever? (Score:2, Interesting)
That was a big sentence, so i think i'm going to repeat it:
i simply do not see how copy protection on audio and video could ever work
My argument goes something like this - for playback of an audio file to happen, a digital signal (typical for CDs is 2 16b channels per song) is read by the device, and transformed into an analog signal, which is then piped to speakers. Similarly, an identical digital-to-analog conversion takes place when an image is displayed on your monitor or your tv or whatever.
there is nothing that prevents the interruption and recording of that analog signal before it hits the speakers - or even removing the speakers and replacing them with a recording device.
of course, my argument may be flawed, and i'm no electrical engineer... comments, corrections are welcome.
Re:They can never close the CD format, ever... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Copy protection doesn't work (Score:2, Interesting)
Then I'm fucking moving to Russia. If I can't have my computer and control it in-depth I don't want any part of it. The fun will be gone. No more linux, no more irc on networks other than aol or msn, no more email without outlook. Just fucking Microsoft.
It seriously might be a good idea to start buying up parts to black market later. The net will no longer be what it is today, we will probably have to log in to small private networks to get the latest news on what MS is fucking up and see some uncensored material.
2010 and our choices will be AOL, MSN or Phr34kY'5 Min-Net....
BLAH - I think my Karma is smoldering
Re:They can never close the CD format, ever... (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of the Audio CD drives nowadays (e.g. in DVD Players) use a Data "grade" pickup, as such they would only see the WMP files and couldn't play it back....
Unless Microsoft convinces all the car manufacturers and DVD producers to enable WMP playback.
Re:The real question is... (Score:2, Interesting)
So when someone tells me that that they like Macs better than PCs, I usually ask them if they mean they like Macs better than Windows because to me, a "PC" is a computer with an x86 cpu. It could be running Winows, Linux, BSD, Solaris x86, Menuet OS, DOS, Unix, or whatever OS runs on an x86.
Don't take this the wrong way, but a little bit of your own lack of knowledge is on display here.
First of all, every post-68k Mac, beginning with the 6100 back in 1995, uses a PowerPC chip. The PowerPC chip does not use 68k instructions, which is why early power Macs included an emulation layer. G3 is the the thrid-generation version of PowerPC, which is what was used in the first iMac (in 1998), but is not currently used in any new Macintosh other than the iBook. So, no. Mac does not mean 68k, and power mac does not mean G3.
Also, a Macintosh can also run several flavors of Linux and BSD, as well as two very different incarnations of the MacOS, sust as an x86 machine can. (This point has become somewhat less relevant now that OS X 10.2 is out, along with kick-ass X11 integration.)
Anyway, now for my main rant, conserning your point that, "to you", PC means x86:
The term "PC", as it is commonly used today, began its life as a marketing idea from Microsoft.
You see, back in the day when there were only a few knock-offs of the IBM computer (Compaq, Olivetti, etc.), and there were a lot of other PC's running other operating systems (from Commodore, Apple, etc.), People tended to use the terms "IBM Compatible" or "IBM Clone" when speaking of systems that ran the same software as an IBM PC.
The folks at Microsoft understood that their future depended on divorcing themselves, and companies like Compaq, from this association with IBM (especially since IBM wanted to move towards OS/2, while Microsoft was writing Windows for all their other customers).
Therefore MS, Compaq, and everybody else in the clone market (which was quickly getting bigger than IBM) insisted to anybody listeneing that "IBM Compatable" was an incorrect term. The correct term for an Intel-based computer running DOS or Windows was "PC".
In spite of a few cantankerous Amiga and Apple users out there insisting that "PC" was a term that already had a meaning, it caught on.
A Macintosh is a personal computer, but in this age of Microsoft, a Macintosh is not a Personal Computer.
Downright Orwellian, when you think about it.
Oh, and by the way, "PC" never meant "x86 computer". There are plenty systems, servers and other devices with x86 CPU's which are not called PC's. If it can't run Windows, it's not a PC. If it was built for use as a server, even if it can run Windows, it's not a PC.
For a while, people were starting to get away from this asinine use of "PC" by saying "Wintel"... but then AMD started to gain signifigant market share, and Linux began to catch on, so that term was ruined.
I think it's about time we change the term PC to mean "personal computers which can run some form of UNIX or Linux."
Windows can only run on x86-based machines (so far), and Mac OS X can only run on PowerPC-based machines with the Apple ROMs installed (yes, it will run on a pre-G3 CPU, as long as you use a "blessed" video card and do a little hacking.) However both architectures can run Linux (and OS X is arguably every bit as UNIXy as Linux), therefore both architectures are *nix-capable PC platforms. Let's call them PC's, shall we?
Re:LOTR Joke (Score:3, Interesting)
"Worldwide scalability. Logically there should be only one system..."
"New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated."
That gives us Microsoft's next generation OS for a new Millennium: a worldwide distributed network OS automatically assimilating machines.
Now reread the EULA for Windows XP Service Pack 1. You know, the part where Microsoft can install anything it wants to on your machine. Remember what Brilliant pulled with its sneaky distributed network.
The "One OS to rule them all" isn't Windows XP. But it could be Longhorn.
Shinoda: "The age of Millennium."
Io: "What does that mean?"
Shinoda: "A thousand year kingdom. It wants to create a home for itself. There is one flaw in its plan: Godzilla."
"Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
Question... (Score:3, Interesting)
Whats to stop peopel from creating a cheap PCI device, much akin to a PS2 mod chip (without the licensing shit), where it will intercept the CD-DA signal from the CD-ROM drive's Digital Audio cable, and create a WAV from it just as if it were captured from the Analog inputs, but without the DAC->ADC loss? Hell, all you really need is to reprogram a cheap soundcard and it'll do the trick.
Even better if you had a board that intercepts via the IDE cable.