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Music Media

Yet More SDMI fallout 125

Posted by Hemos from the yes-no-yes-no dept.
Andrew Leonard writes: "SDMI's Leonardo Chiariglione said Salon's last story was "slander" so Janelle Brown went back to one of our sources and got more details about exactly what is going down. The article also includes a response from Chiariglione."
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Yet More SDMI fallout More

Yet More SDMI fallout

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  • Besides, we all have way too many MP3's by now to switch to any new format but MP4 (someone should hurry up with that too!)

    Why not switch to OggVorbis [vorbis.com], which is already 33% smaller than MP3 at the same quality? Plugins are available for both Winamp and XMMS. Just because you have a lot of MP3s on CD-R doesn't mean you can't start using OggVorbis today. And because it's completely Free (Lesser GPL libraries; no patents), there will be no SDMI forced on you.

  • OK. Let's clarify a few things (Score:5)

    by JPS ( 58437 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @02:39AM (#693559) Homepage
    First, I have some severe doubts about the fact that all 6 technologies have been "cracked".
    Technologies D and E if properly implemented should not be crackable. They are basically digital signatures.

    Regarding techno A,B,C and F (watermarking technologies), the problem is the following.

    They start with a song A and create a marked version A'. Now there are two ways to "remove" the mark: either find A again (or something extremely close to A) or create yet a new version A'', which is not necessarily close to A, but where the mark is not detected. In the first case, you need a complete understanding of how the watermark is working, is the second, you can just randomly modify the song until the Oracle tells you it can't detect the mark.

    If you can recreate A, (or almost can), then it is a major crack, because (1) it will work for all song, (2) it will almost surely pass the audibility testing.

    If you won be creating some A'', then there is no garantee that your attack will work against another song, nor that the audibility test will be passed, nor that the audibility test will be passed for other songs.

    I assume most attacks followed the second path because they require less technical knowledge. This is why the SDMI needs to do a lot of testing.

    As a side note, the hard part in the contest, (if you really want to recover the original A), is to understand how detection works exactly. I won't mention the specific technologies, but I can tell that for some of them, finding the algorithm was rather simple. Some others introduced artefacts to make the recovery harder.

    However, SDMI people need to realize that if they release their system, it _will_ be reverse enginnered and that the detection algorithm will be made public. Once you know how detection works, it is usually fairly easy to peform this major cracking, e.g. surgically removing the mark, without damaging the song.
  • Oh my gosh.... strategic defense missle initiative and there's radiation associated with it? ARRRGGGHHH Anyone have lead lined suits for sale?

    On an on topic note:

    You realise of course that Leonardo Chiariglione has just about as much credibility as the anonymous source (Basically None till we see something more credible).

    Anon "SDMI is cracked..."
    LC "No it isn't"
    Anon "SDMI was cracked, here's what happened..info info info.
    LC "No it wasn't, see you shifted tense thereby invalidating your story, HAHA, we got you."



    Vermifax

  • Re:Doesn't matter if it was hacked or not.... (Score:3)

    by StoryMan ( 130421 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @02:39AM (#693561)
    Yes, that's true. At this point, it does not matter that it's cracked.

    The RIAA is losing the PR war -- the back and forth between Salon is proof of that -- by not handling things correctly.

    If they want people to respect, fear, or otherwise appreciate SDMI, they need to be up front about the whole thing.

    Was it cracked? Yes.

    What's next? We're not sure. Stay tuned.

    Pretty simple. I'd still think the RIAA are a bunch of money grubbing whores, but at least if they had cajones enough to admit defeat -- and admit that, yeah, it's a tough nut to crack, if not downright impossible to crack -- I'd realize that the suits in charge of the RIAA are savvy enough to realize that new media is different than the old media.

    That in itself would be a minor victory: a suit admitting that, hey, maybe we can't pimp our wares the same way we've been pimping it in the past. Maybe, uh, we need to sit down and examine this "internet" stuff. But they won't admit that.

    Leo won't admit that.

    And Jack Valenti -- the decrepit MPAA dude -- is convinced that he, too, can win the battle with PR spin. ("Hey, pal, I know movies! Me and Jack Kennedy loved movies!")

    Watching and listening to Valenti is like watching Boffo the Unemployed Clown parading around a smoke-filled room trying to score laughs with Don Rickles jokes -- "Heh, heh, that old hag was so ugly she even deflated my tires!! Ba da bing!"

    It's funny in a pathetic way. Like you're watching some old geezer unravel on the spot. Poor Jack.

    Poor Leo.

    Hey, guys, here's a tip: take your golden parachute retirement bonus, head to Martha's Vineyard to your country houses, and shut the fuck up.

  • see McINTYRE vs OHIO ELECTIONS COMMISSION 514 US 334 (1995) [cornell.edu], in which the court struck down a law prohibiting anonymous electioneering.

    Cynically, one might argue that, since money = speech (Buckley vs Valeo 424 U.S. 1 (1976) [findlaw.com]), this can be interpreted as allowing large wads of anonymous speech to be spent in Federal Elections...

  • "Golden ears"??? (Score:3)

    by Masem ( 1171 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @03:44AM (#693563)
    Reading on what the 'success' is of the test, it seems to me that SDMI's got a nice way to ignore successful results with their test criteria. Testing the removal of the watermark, sure. But using 'golden ears', of which some members may be RIAA, to see if the music sounds unchanged? Very iffy there... sure, I'm sure the golden ears are sound engineers and those that know what to listen for, but their employment is questionable.

    I'm not an audiophile, but I do know enough on wave theory that I would suspect that a better test would be to take both files, and look at the FFT of both samples at various times, using small time step units, and calculating some 'error' that the stripped file is off by. This should penaltize more for adding noise that wasn't there in the original sample than just for lower signal. Set some threshold that can be determined by doing the same comparison between a 196kbit-encoded file and a 128kbit-encoded. If the stripped sample performs worse than this, then the stripping fails, as it also took too much of the non-watermark stuff away. (Or some variation on this method -- again, I'm not an audiophile, just a scientist). This would make concrete winning conditions and take ambiguity out of it.

  • I think my favorite quote from the response was:

    "I happen to know that there are very limited numbers of people who have the complete data, and none of those people with complete data have talked to you."

    This can only be true if he's the only one with the complete data. If it's somebody else, they're not going to broadcast the fact that they were a source. These people live in a different world than the rest of us. It's comical.
  • This brings up an interesting point. Since more companies are starting to use the DMCA legistlation as a club to whack anyone they want, we as the grieved parties must come up with the "official" way to pronounce DMCA when used as a verb.

    I personally am leaning toward Dim'sa however it does sound a little like interesting food.

    "The RIAA DMCA'd me today and didn't even leave a fortune cookie!"

  • Why not OggVorbis? I can think of 3 reasons:
    • My Rio PMP-300
    • My Genica MP3/CDR player
    • My Apex AD-600A
    Ogg may be technically superior to MP3, but I don't listen to my music only on my computer. Until there's hardware to portably play Ogg files, it loses a couple of points to MP3.

    This, of course, is a business opportunity. And being the gadget geek that I am, I'd probably buy something that would play Ogg files off a CDR (as long as it would also play MP3, because I don't want to go re-rip all my CDs)

  • In your last article you wrote about how the record companies are running scared, emergency meetings, those kinds of things. It's so far from the truth -- it's not factually inaccurate, it's a perception, but it's not a fair perception.
    Ok so does that mean they are running scared since the previous articles were, "not factually inaccurate". This guy cant make his mind up. He is really saying "yeah well, your article was wrong, but actually was not wrong, but we dont like the fact it isnt wrong."
  • No, it says that "each *attacked* sound sample" (note, emphasis added by me :), meaning, after the sound sample was attacked and the watermarking removed. At least, that's the way I read it. So, their tests say, after we've verified that the watermark is gone, we'll check the sound quality. If it's equal to or better than a 64 kbps MP3 (per channel or total, I don't care), we'll consider that a break.
  • what you really mean is superposition isnt it?

  • Except the DMCA makes it illegal to exercise your fair use rights by subject you to an RIAA lawsuit everytime you decode an RIAA music file for space-shifting or distribution. It's bullshit, but that's what this new law accomplishes & shit judge's like Kaplan stand behind it while reaming the consumer in the ass.

    The DMCA is unconstitutional. Until it is thrown out, I see no immorality in ignoring it. I will continue to excercise my fair-use rights. The failure of SDMI helps me do so. Just like the freedom to bear arms, we now have the freedom to bear code! to defend our rights. What the Government giveth, the Corporations cannot taketh away. If they try, well.. let them try.

    hurrah for analog out!

  • An mp3 is fine for casual use but if I like something enough to hear it over and over again I'll buy a cd

    And there in lies the problem. If this succeds, the CD you buy will be SDMI watermarked. This ISN'T just for downloadable music. They want to apply this ACROSS THE BOARD to all purchasable and listenable music.

    Radio? Yes. Downloadable? Yes. DVD-A? Yes. SACD? Yes. CD? Yes.

    If this happens, get ready for MP3 sound quality to be new standard for high quality audio. That level of sound quality will be deemed acceptable for post-watermarking of high quality audio.

    -S

  • 128 kbps mp3s sound like shit. I really don't like to listen to them. If you use even a decent set of $20 headphones you can really hear the difference between 128 kbps and the original CD. If you're playing through a good stereo receiver and good tower speakers the difference is obvious. I will not pay money for any audio format that won't highlight the full capability of my stereo systems. I've spent quite a bit of money getting stuff that sounds really good and I'm not willing to give up quality sound so that the RIAA can turn a bigger profit. As stupid as these cartels are I think that they realize that without people like me getting on board these technologies aren't going to take off. If I tell my friends that a new technology really sounds like shit and that the CDs they have now are much better do you think that they're going to spring the cash for new players and new media? I think not. Am I going to be one of the first to buy the new stuff at inflated prices if I preview it at the local stereo stores and notice that the sound reminds me of listening to a farting contest on AM radio. Hell no. If they want this new format to take it's going to have to be better than the ones that I have now and MP3s aren't better than what I have now.
    ________________
    They're - They are
    Their - Belonging to them
  • I don't think this theory holds. Once the RIAA lies and says SDMI was unhackable, what's to stop the person who hacked from calling them on it and telling everyone what happened? Sure he signed away his right to talk about it, but the RIAA can't sue him for it without admitting that someone hacked SDMI which would blow their whole cover.

    Care about freedom?

  • Re:Better than a 64 kbps MP3 file???? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    mp3 is *perceptual* encoding.

    it strips out the shit you can't hear.

    you can't hear a 1GHz tone.

    mp3 encoding strips it out.

    ergo, they need one that mp3 encoding won't strip out.

    which means it needs to be audible, and affects the sound quality.

    do i need to write it in crayon for you?
  • OK, I won't comment on SDMI, however, what Kasich said re: B-2 is a *TOTAL* BS. It's a stealth bomber. Stealth != invisible. Stealth means two things: a) It has a low radar profile so it's hard to detect (and thus know when the bombs start falling or call the fighters) b) It has low radar profile so the anti-aircraft weaponry can't get a lock on it. He may be correct in the political sense, but BS argument is BS argument.
  • You forget... They can't pay a machine to say what they want.
  • As an audiophile, I find that statement to be absolutely revolting. It's impossible to get natural sounding music out of a file of such low bitrate. 128 kbps is tough. 192 is getting close to being acceptable.
    ...and remember that due to the design of the Layer-3 format, throwing more bits at the problem does not give additional fidelity -- at 128 KB/sec, Layer 3 sounds better than Layer 2, but at 256 or 384 KB/s, Layer 2 is significantly better than Layer3. Layer 2 at 384 is perceptually identical to an original linear PCM source.

    Also, perceptual encoding doesn't really strip away everything that's not audible -- there's plenty of room under the masking curve to hide things that will be encoded but never heard by humans. I'm not sure how robust any technique based on this idea would be in the face of transcoding through different algorithms, etc., though.
  • "It is simply impossible for anybody to have carried out the checks necessary to verify that watermarking had indeed been removed without damage to the music between the time the Testing Management Committee received information and the publication of the Salon.com article."

    Translation:

    "A cat has been thrown off a 1000' cliff but, since a qualified veterinarian has not yet performed an autopsy, you cannot conclude that the cat is dead."

  • chaotic evil (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Anybody else notice this drama is consistent with how a chaotic evil organization and its members would act?

  • Generally speaking, watermarking techniques are designed so that re-creation of A from A' is not possible without A. That's because the generation of A' from A is via a non-invertible process.

    However: if the watermark in A' can be detected, then it can be altered (in this case, made undetectable) in such a way that only the parts of A that were altered to form A' are again altered to transform A' to A".

    In that case, one would expect the additional degradation that comes from making A" to be of the same magnitude as the original degradation of A'. Actually, it should be less; a naive analysis would expect the degradation of A" to be about sqrt(2) times the degradation of A'. So if the watermarking system is designed so that A' is perceptually indistinguishable from A (for large values of "indistinguishable"), then A" should be pretty good, too.

    In other words: if the watermarking schemes have been broken at all then it is possible to break them in such a way that the music is not significantly degraded.

  • this kind of circle is called a spiral...

    I am just wondering if we're moving inward or outward:-)

    erik
  • If this succeds, the CD you buy will be SDMI watermarked. This ISN'T just for downloadable music. They want to apply this ACROSS THE BOARD to all purchasable and listenable music.

    Radio? Yes. Downloadable? Yes. DVD-A? Yes. SACD? Yes. CD? Yes.
    Why should we be worried about watermarks on CDs or the radio? I thought the idea of watermarking was to be able to find the person who committed the original copyright infringement. Since music from CD stores and the radio can be acquired anonymously, what good would a watermark be to the RIAA?

    ---------------------------
    "The people. Could you patent the sun?"
  • Salon is reporting on anonymously leaked data from a group which is going to carefully craft any official information releases so as to render the actual information useless.

    It's almost as if SDMI applied the watermark to their own responses, and the process of filtering through the media removes the watermark and makes the information useless...

    --
  • It sounds like the SDMI is attempting politics at advancing itself to big brother. Imagine the future if it has its way:

    All audible recordings must be recorded with a SDMI licensed recorder with an approved SDMI serial number registered to the owner's legal name and address. Recording technology is considered a munition and subject to export treaties and content may not be distributed to countries under embargo.

    I'm sure there would be provisions for recording class notes with a non-approved recorder. They would have no problem with 8-bit 8KHz recording.
  • For the test to mean anything, the "Golden Ears" must operate "blind". They must not be told which sample is the original watermarked one and which is the one with the watermark removed. If they know which sample is which, then the comparisons are invalid.
  • The idea is that the watermark is encoded in "noise" frequencies in the sound data, so that it can't be discerned by the human ear, but, with the proper decoder, provides information.

    Well lossy compression formats like mp3 are supposed to remove any information not relevant to the human ear, therefore one could assume that any attempt to introduce additional information in a stream encoded trough such a codec must result in an audible alteration of the audio.

    But since I know very little about audio encoding, I'd like to know if the above is actually provable. If it is, SDMI stands no chance of actually succeding.

    Anyone?

  • True but that doesn't mean they are _really_ going to do the test "blind" When money is at stake, people have been known to lie, cheat and steal before. And a lot of money is at stake here.

  • That's it. You've stumbled on it. SDMI did this contest so they can claim it's secure (that's why one of the testing steps is to have SDMI people listen to the recording and determine if it sounds the same -- not an objective measure). Then SDMI will be implemented (at a hefty licensing cost to everyone from artists down to the consumers -- they don't add the SDMI technology to your CD player for free).

    When someone in the consuming public tries to break SDMI on their own, then the RIAA will swoop down with the DMCA and sue the hell out of them. With judges like Kaplan on the bench, no doubt we'll all be made an example of.

    The technology doesn't work so they're going to use the law instead.

    Tinkering is against the law in this brave new America.

  • The whole ongoing SDMI fiasco makes one wonder why they even bother trying to create a secure format anyway. In today's CPU-cycle-saturated world, there is no such thing as a truly secure format! If the data behind that wall of encryption is valuable enough, someone, somewhere, will break it -- and in this case, the information is extremely valuable; break SDMI and you've got unlimited access to all the music the world wants, all for free! Who could say no to that?

    Now, that's not to say it's impossible to create secure music. But the only way to do that is to take the original master recording directly from the studio to a lead-lined vault ten miles below ground, lock the door, and throw away the key. Be sure to toss the band in there too, so they can't play unauthorized copies or variants of the song during their next concert. Of course, even then you're not truly secure, as the recording engineer or any other people who heard the session could sell his recollection of the arrangement to some cover artist to re-create, so you'd have to lock them in the vault too.

    Now you're secure! Of course, you're also unable to sell the recording to anyone. Oops.

    Given all that, one wonders why the industry doesn't just cut their losses, declare victory, and go home. They'd be well advised to follow the counsel of Rep. John Kasich, a Republican House member who has based his career on opposition to federal spending on programs that don't make sense. One particular hobby horse of Kasich's was the B-2 Stealth bomber, whose $1 billion per plane price tag Kasich found ludicrous. During one House committee hearing on funding the bomber's development, Kasich asked the Department of Defense witnesses if it wouldn't be cheaper and just as effective to simply announce that we'd built the B-2, rather than actually building any. After all, since the B-2 was supposed to be invisible, how could any enemy be certain we hadn't? Maybe the best outcome for all parties in the SDMI fiasco would be to just roll out a wide-open protocol, declare it secure, and concentrate on doing what they do best -- marketing and promotion of acts with mass appeal -- rather than doing what they are so manifestly bad at -- software engineering. Oh well, one can hope...

  • I'm not an audiophile, but I do know enough on wave theory that I would suspect that a better test would be to take both files, and look at the FFT of both samples at various times, using small time step units, and calculating some 'error' that the stripped file is off by. This should penaltize more for adding noise that wasn't there in the original sample than just for lower signal. Set some threshold that can be determined by doing the same comparison between a 196kbit-encoded file and a 128kbit-encoded. If the stripped sample performs worse than this, then the stripping fails, as it also took too much of the non-watermark stuff away. (Or some variation on this method -- again, I'm not an audiophile, just a scientist). This would make concrete winning conditions and take ambiguity out of it.

    Sensory testing for difference is nothing new. You use a triangle test. (Golden Ears or not)

    Assemble triplicates of a music clip; one of each trio should be either watermarked or stripped, with the other two matching. The listener has to pick out the sample that is different. If you use 20 respondents, and 10 are successful, then there is a statistically significant difference. (p=.1) If 10 of your 20 subjects can't get it right, the difference is undetectable.

    Using 2 or three testers is foolish. Either you have to be completely confident that they can discriminate between the two conditions (and how can you know if that's what you're trying to investigate) or they may guess, and obscure your results. A triangle test would be an easy, objective way to test the breaks. Assuming they want an objective test...

  • There is software for NT4 that masquerades as a sound-card, but writes a file to disk -- it came with source too, so you could see how it's done and rewrite for Linux.

    It's called "wtd.zip" -- stands for "WAV-to-disk".

    I don't have a link handy, but I believe that the project was stored on Geocities -- you might be able to find it with some heavy digging.

    NOTE: I haven't used this software. It might not work. It might be a virus. I have no idea . . . but it sounded cool, and once upon a time I actually had the .zip (although I've since nuked that machine).
    Well, FWIW, I guess.

  • They probably meant 64 Kbps PER channel, which would be 128Kbps for stereo MP3.
  • they can't patent the de-watermarking techniques because someone else created it, unless the original author had to sign over all rights, or didn't keep any evidence of having written it
    --------------
  • Fascinatingly, the litigation happy RIAA hasn't filed a lawsuit alleging libel. You would think that they would sue the pants off of Salon for publishing something untrue IF they actually demonstrate it was untrue.

    Instead of saying "We swear on a stack of Holy Bibles that SDMI isn't cracked" we got something like "No one can confirm the results...." and "wrote about how the record companies are running scared, emergency meetings, those kinds of things. It's so far from the truth -- it's not factually inaccurate, it's a perception,..."

    I think the lack of lawsuit/categorical denial is pretty good evidence SDMI has indeed died and it's just too early to admit it. If these people had a leg to stand on they'd already have Salon in court.

  • And this from a man who doesn't know the difference between slander [m-w.com] and libel [m-w.com]
  • Perhaps, but even so that's still an unacceptable criteria for sound quality.

    -S
  • In the news today, SDMI announces it has found a completely unbreakable watermark technology to be embedded in all music printed from this time forward. SDMI promises that the new watermark cannot simply be removed by removing the inaudiable bits of the song. In a related story, the music world was rocked today as drummers in all recording groups today were fired, to be replaced with the SDMI BeatMaster drum machine. The BeatMaster apparently comes with 4 different drum tracks available that artists must, er, "are strongly encouraged" to use with all their recordings.

  • I'll keep this comment within the context of music, mp3's, and CD's, rather then venturing off to the related DVD discussion. Traditionally, we receive our own personal copies of music in the form of CD or tape. CD's are really the only choice as a source for converting said music to mp3's. So, if we receive or music in CD format, and we have computers at our disposal with great encoding tools like Lame [sulaco.org], BladeEnc [mp3.no], and algorithms like mp3 or Ogg Vorbis [vorbis.com], why should we worry about the RIAA [riaa.com]?

    Seriously, folks. I don't see CD's dying any time soon, and by legal precedence, we have a right to make copies for ourselves or our friends. If this means burning new CD's or encoding an MP3, we have the right. Distributing said MP3's over the Internet may be another discussion, but actually encoding a song to MP3 format is NOT breaking the law. The RIAA is making the same old argument it always has, "We want control." In the end, common sense will hopefully prevail and once again quell the tantrums of the gorilla sized child.

  • You say It is impossible to add a non-audible watermark to music that can survive a well done perceptual encoding...

    All watermarking need do, really, is hide 1 bit in a 3MB file. There are no encoding schemes that purport to squeeze every single bit of redundancy out of an audio file.

    That said, I agree that once you publish the watermarking scheme (either by doing so explicitly or shipping products that can be reverse engineered [all products, really]) then it will be inevitably defeated.

    thad

  • Right, the ATTACKED sound sample "still sounds better than 64 kbps MP3". If I take that literally, it means that:

    1) The watermarked files sound at least as good as 64 kbps MP3; and,

    2) The attacked sound file STILL sounds at least as good as 64 kbps MP3.

    It doesn't say anything about how they sounded before the watermark was applied, but the implication is that after the watermark was applied (and after it was removed) the file had to sound at least as good as 64 kbps MP3.

    -S
  • Maybe the best outcome for all parties in the SDMI fiasco would be to just roll out a wide-open protocol, declare it secure, and concentrate on doing what they do best -- marketing and promotion of acts with mass appeal...

    you forgot the most important one: litigation!

  • The technology doesn't work so they're going to use the law instead.

    The real irony here is that they're trying to use the technology because the laws didn't work. Oh shit. What kind of circle are we into now???
    ________________
    They're - They are
    Their - Belonging to them

  • If SDMI isn't hacked now it will be hacked later. Encryption is at best only temporary, especially with computer speeds doubling every 12-18 months. They can only win with draconian copyright laws. But with 25 million (and growing) angry Napster users, Congress will see that what is happening is really a cultural change, going from horse to buggy, and not a matter of piracy at all. Music, in the end, will be set free.

    I'm a musician, have played professionally since high school, etc., and I want to see musicians get paid for their work, but SDMI and copyright laws that give nothing to the consumer and instead remove more rights from the consumer, isn't the answer.

  • Hey! Yo! Over here, guys! We got an expert in JPS! :)

    So, uh, could you be persuaded to post some more details? :) Did you, um, look at some kind of Fourier transform (discrete cosine transform?) and look for some tweaking between A and A'? Were you really able to find something??? It seemed to me that they had so many choices-- watermarking individual k-second blocks, say-- that it would be very difficult to reverse engineer their watermarking procedure based on a single example.

    My speculation had been that the scheme was cracked by someone with inside knowledge, as there are apparently a lot of folks in SDMI trying to undermine this thing through leaking. Maybe some people did have details of the verification process.

    As I understand it, their idea is to have a fragile watermark and a robust watermark in each song on a CD. Ripping to an MP3 will destroy the fragile watermark, but leave the robust watermark intact. A player can refuse to play if it detects this situation. Admitting their unforgability, what role do digital signatures play? Surely they can not be the robust watermark-- one could just clip them. Do digital signatures substitute for the fragile watermark?

    (The new Salon article says: "All four technologies in the public test had successful attacks submitted against them." The source is, apparently, only talking about the watermark technologies. I think the Salon author is a little confused on this point.)

  • This can only be true if he's the only one with the complete data.
    Now there's an idea. The anonymous source is none other than Leonardo Chiariglione himself! He's got the perfect cover, after all.

    ---------------------------
    "The people. Could you patent the sun?"
  • Time is everything. The RIAA waited WAY too long to get into digital music. The horse is out of the barn and into the next county. The RIAA would be better off setting up a web site with plan ole MP3s and charging for convenience and quality. Charge 50 cents for a single MP3, 5.00 for an album of 192K / 44K quality or better, 30 cents/single, $3.00 / album for 128K / 44K quality. Album liners would be available with the full album, you would just download them and print them. The label would get 50% and the Artists would get 50% of the take (the bands should get more, but i can't see the labels agreeing to less than 50%). The advantage to this is that one would not have to go through poor quality rips and all of the other garbage to get a good quality MP3 of a rare (or even current) song. I for one would pay a reasonable price to get a good quality MP3. It is too late (IMHO) to bring out SDMI -- the technology for MP3 is too mature and OGGs are almost "ready for prime time."
  • KEE - ar - EE - lee - oh - nay
    (that is, if my memory of Italian pronunciation is at all accurate).

    ---------------------------
    "The people. Could you patent the sun?"

  • Re:Better than a 64 kbps MP3 file???? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'll agree with you that 64kbps is far too low for acceptable audio quality for an audiophile.

    However, you have to remember what kind of processes the audio has been through, and what the purposes of those processes are.

    SDMI is about reducing the number of "unauthorized" copies of music. The RIAA has battled just about every possible format for home-duplication, (cassettes, DAT, CD-ROM) and understands that many individuals who duplicate music will accept lower quality in those reproductions.

    The point is that any music that is still superior to a minimum standard (64kbps MP3) after having been watermarked and then having that watermark removed, will be of an acceptable enough quality to enough of the average population to be worth the effort to de-watermark and copy. The degradation would be in both the placement of the watermark and its removal.

    Their ideal candidate for a watermark one that produces enough barely audible artifacts to still be acceptable to the average person, but that will produce an unacceptable amount of additional artifacts in any removal process. Don't confuse audible with tolerable.

    Bringing quality to AC posts since 1998

  • It wouldn't surprise me if all the watermarks were indeed cracked, but the SDMI group (really just the RIAA) was just using the $10,000 as bait to get dumb hackers to do their work for them. Unfortunately for them, they really think that poorly-designed crypto algorithms can be just "patched" to make them work better (there was an interview a while back in which one of the watermark designers said that bad watermarks can be "patched" to make them stronger). Last time I checked, crypto systems (including watermarks) were either secure or not secure. The problem with this type of watermark is that they are supposed to be hard to detect but everyone will have code to detect them. Once that's compromized, it's simply a matter of plugging it into some sort of evolution model and run it until there's no watermark left.

    Aaron Plattner
  • Not if there's a statistical 99% chance that that bit came from a watermark. A bit doesn't have to actually be a 1 or 0 on disk (if it were it'd probably get lost in compression). More likely there are slight statistical smearing of the data such that, if you know where to look, you can get a probability of there being a watermark. If it's over some threshold, the music is considered "watermarked".

    Aaron Plattner
  • Bad analogy. Most cats can survive a fall from any height, provided they have enough space to turn around and land on their feet (as they are known for doing). So a 1000' cliff would result in a cat that was probably not dead.

    (Score:-1,Offtopic)
    --
    No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.
  • Um... except your parent poster said that 64Kbps is NOT acceptable by any stretch of the imagination (and you don't really have to be an audiophile to agree, either. Have you ever listened to a 64Kbps MP3?)
    --------
    Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.

  • DMCA (Score:4)

    by No-op ( 19111 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @01:56AM (#693613)
    You know, the best part about SDMI is that they could use something like a simple XOR scheme and call it encryption, and say it's protected under the DMCA. so while you could strip the file easily, they could slam you for it.



    Watch the world turn into a place where all cops are replaced by lawyers.



    ...Oh wait...

  • Watermark detection in all player hardware.
    --------
    Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.
  • Oh another thing- don't forget that anonymous speech isn't protected free speech.

    Let's hope someone tracks down Publius, I'm getting tired of this secessionist colonial crap. Thank god I can just subpoena everyone in sight and threaten vague civil suits until I figure out who he is, right?

    The colonies will be ours forever! hahahahaha
  • MP3 only goes up to 48 Ks/s (kilosamples per second) as an input source. So, if you can manage to put a 1GHz sound in raw 48Ks/s, I will be amazed.
    --------
    Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.

  • Tense shift?!?! (Score:3)

    by StoryMan ( 130421 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @01:57AM (#693617)
    The funniest part about this new piece in Salon is Leo's reponse that, see, the anonymous source can't be correct because, uh, he shifts tenses!

    One of the more pathetic (and bizarre) spin jobs I've seen in a long time.
  • Yeah... but... these files aren't encrypted. they're just watermarked. if they do it right, you will (barely) notice its presence when listening, but easily tell them apart (at the binary level). if you superimposed two songs, the watermarks would (might) interfere, possibly giving you an invalid watermark? Read this for pics [jjtc.com] or this for mp3. [cam.ac.uk]

  • The RIAA is running scared. (Score:3)

    by Enigma2175 ( 179646 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @02:02AM (#693619) Homepage Journal
    I think the RIAA is scared of releasing the results. They are starting to realise that they are a behemoth that is obsolete in the new economy. The major function of the record labels is distribution and promotion, both of which can now be done over the internet by the individual artists. The RIAA doesn't even do that much, really are they are is a lobbying group. Why else would they be based in Washington D.C.? The dolts working for them will never be able to come up with a watermarking scheme that we will not be able to crack. I also saw a CNN article which mentions a "new project" by the RIAA to tag digital music files with a "unique identifier" to track them. They are partnering with another company and expect it to be done by the middle of next year. They are hedging their bets, trying different ways of controlling the distribution of music. I don't think it will work. As soon as a critical number of artists pull their heads out of their asses and start promoting themselves instead of signing with the major record labels, these big power hungry labels will go the way of the dinosaur

    Enigma
    .sigless


    Enigma

  • Can't they even get their terms right? (Score:4)

    by techwatcher ( 112759 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @03:03AM (#693620)
    When one gratuitously SPEAKS falsely of another to third party(ies), that is "slander." When the false, published allegations are WRITTEN, it's called "libel."
  • The source says they have been checked for absense of watermark and gone through preliminary listening tests for sound quality and Leonardo Chiariglione confirms it in his reply.

    OK so he doesn't exactly say it, he simply doesn't deny it, instead he complains about a shift in tense as the source talks about what happens next.

    Cracked, as sure as broken eggs is eggs.

  • Better than a 64 kbps MP3 file???? (Score:5)

    by sdo1 ( 213835 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @03:08AM (#693622) Journal
    From the salon.com article...

    subjected to preliminary listening tests performed by "golden ears" listeners to ensure that each attacked sample still sounded better than a 64 kbps MP3 file.

    They've GOT to be kidding! That's a VERY low standard. "Still sounded better"??? Is that to imply that once the watermark is applied, the acceptible level of sound quality is equal to a 64 kbps MP3 file?

    As an audiophile, I find that statement to be absolutely revolting. It's impossible to get natural sounding music out of a file of such low bitrate. 128 kbps is tough. 192 is getting close to being acceptable. Having listened to the difference between 44khz/16bit and 96khz/24bit, I can tell you with certainty that even pure 44/16 PCM is limited. If 64 kpbs mp3 encoding is the standard for sound quality, then we are about to take a huge step backwards in audio reproduction. Neverind the privacy and fair use aspects of this (which are VERY important), just from a sound quality perspective, this technology seems doomed to fail.

    I'll repeat what's been said here before...

    It is impossible to add a non-audible watermark to music that can survive a well done perceptual encoding (ie, MP3 encoding, etc). The idea of perceptual encoding is to remove everything that is non-audible to save space. These two technologies are at odds with each other. The only way to preserve that watermark is for it to be audible from the start.

    -S

  • The "music revolution" has already taken off, and it's out of the hands of the record industry. MP3 is a genie that can never be pushed back in its bottle. The record companies' revenue stream doesn't matter one bit to any music fan, they just want music and free is a damn good price.

    I'm actually surprised that they're not attacking MP3's more (not that they have a leg to stand on, but that never stopped them before) I expect to see lawsuits against shoutcast.com pretty soon though (for enabling the unauthorized rebroadcast of 'pirate' MP3s)

    Besides, we all have way too many MP3's by now to switch to any new format but MP4 (someone should hurry up with that too!)
  • Oh really? I thought they were using blind people because they have more acute hearing...

  • SDMI 2 (Score:3)

    by media_mogul ( 135419 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @03:22AM (#693625)
    The RIAA today announced the failure of its first attempt at creating a secure music delivery system.

    A spokeman commented 'We overlooked the human angle. If you can hear it or see it, you can hack it.'

    Accordingly the RIAA intends to create SDMI 2, directly addressing this issue. The decryption process will be delayed until the last possible moment and hardwired onto a sealed chip.

    The spokeman added 'By moving the location of the decryption process we can minimise the risk of a successful hack occurring. We recogise that this mean implanting the chip into every human brain on the planet but our IP is important to us.'

    Note for editors:
    The expected costs of the surgery required are likely to be below what would have otherwise been spent on failed technologies, lawyers and payments to successful hackers.
  • Uh, according to this URL [ssrn.com], slander is spoken defamation, libel is when it's written, as Leonardo alledges about Salon.

    Geez, I'm not a laywer, and even I knew the difference! If this lack of intelligence is typical of the SMDI folks, then they deserve to have their scheme get cracked.

  • I don't see how, when 128 kbps mp3's are in the vast majority, and that's what they're trying to combat.

  • The whole point of SDMI is not to protect artists' IP but to protect the RIAA's monopoly on distribution. The funny thing is that the RIAA's corporate urges are going to work against them, finally, instead of for them. In this case, since Corporate Culture demands that if you spend money on something it Must Be a Success to Save Face, they will press on blindly with SDMI and try to minimize/ignore that 1. it was cracked and 2. watermarking is a foolish method of protection when dealing with lossy compression algorithms anyway. So we will probably get SDMI forced on us despite its obvious flaw. That's fantastic! Because even if all of us wake up tomorrow with SDMI-compliant CD players substituted for our old ones, we can just continue to burn MP3's for time/space-shifting, distribution with friends, sharing, etc as we have always done legally, as is our right. The big fear was that SDMI would take away our fair-use rights. But since SDMI has been proven to be as much a joke as we all knew it would be, SDMI will fail to achieve its primary purpose (taking away our rights). We should all now cheer SDMI on!

    remember, there will always be Analog Out, and soundcards, and wave recorders, and Ogg [vorbis.com]. Only the hard-core audiophiles will find these tools to be insifficent, and those are the people who will buy Super-CD or DVD-A's anyway. But for casual listeners of music, we will always have the tools available to enjoy and legally share music as is our right under fair-use.

  • I also have to wonder if time has anything to do with it. The music industry throwing millions of dollars into this is probably not as big a deal as getting a product to the consumers and establishing a distribution channel on the net. Their target market is now trained on services like Napster and good enough audio formats like mp3s. They have to get something out the door and soon.

    Heck, SDMI probably isn't going to be their biggest problem. Providing a service that is easy to use and affordable will be of much greater importance. I remember one /. post that mentioned a music company that does have songs for sale on the net but charges ~2+ dollars a song.

    That's going nowhere. I might pay 50 cents for one song that was at or very near cd quality but no more. I'm suppling the physical media now and it will be up to me to make sure that I get some form of backup system to protect my investment. Previously all I've had to do is properly store my cds. If I want to play these files on my better sounding stereo system I'll have to invest in more equipment when it finally comes out and go through the hassle of transfering the files to another system. Heck, maybe a quarter is a better price.

    They can search for the Holy Grail of secure music all they want. What a shock it will be when they come back to find Camelot has been sacked.

  • Digital music sucks, analog and vacuum tubes all the way.
  • How in the hell are you supposed to pronounce that guy's last name?!

  • When it all comes down to it, one can say any piece of information is encrypted. Who's to say that this message isn't an encrypted and compressed recipe for Niemann Marcus' famed cookies or details of the Roswell Incident?

    The fact is, this message was digitally encoded in ASCII (unless Slashdot went UniCode). Taken at face value, this message is just a really big number, represented in binary. Your browser assumes it to be ASCII and "decrypts" it as such.

    Now, if my information on copyright is correct, facts cannot be copyrighted. A number is a fact. Thus, no one can copyright the number 7. Now help me out here, why can an MP3 file, which is, when it all comes down to it, a really big number be copyrighted?

    Cheers,
    Slak
  • Uh, yeah, I guess. The only time I ever did anything like this was to "subtract" one image from another, where one was supposed to have information hidden in it. The value of every pixel varied in each channel (RG+B) by only a few bits, so the "subtracted" image looked "black" but had values of like Red=2, Green=1, Blue=2. If you cranked up the contrast, it looked kinda cool, because you could still make out the original image, since truely black areas remained dark, etc. I imagine that "subtracting" two music files would result in a very quiet "noise" which would be the watermark (or two watermarks interacting). It might even sound cool, if it retains some aspects of the original work (like the pictures did). (I guess if you can't spin your LP backwards, this is what geeks of the 21st century will be left with! :) Comparing three, superposition? I guess. Never did go to college. No siryee. ;)

  • Pronunciation (Score:5)

    by bbhack ( 98541 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @06:27AM (#693634)
    And SDMI might be pronounced "S dummy".
  • If they are going to charge anything for the file it had better be of much higher quality than a 128 kbs mp3. An mp3 is fine for casual use but if I like something enough to hear it over and over again I'll buy a cd.
  • obviously, this source can't be correct then.
  • Sure they can: printf("The sound files are not close enough");
  • (Not a flame, nor a troll. Just some cynicism)
    Despite the cachet of the phrase New Economy, I still don't know what it is. Isn't the economy still based on the same premise: providing a service or selling a product to customers at a profit, while seeking to increase market share.

    Or is New Economy defined as: lose money since the profits come from VC investments.

    Seriously, while not a fan (nor enemy) of the RIAA, MPAA, etc., as a professional, I would be frightened too if suddenly everyone and their brother could, and did, copy and distribute my work with compensating me for it.

    Maybe that's the New Economy: Make money by distributing the non-material works of others without paying them.

    Color me cynical, but I fail to see that the RIAA's behavior is profoundly worse than that of the Napster-ite companies.

    (and no, I've never used Napster, et. al. Ever since programming for $$ in college, I've made an effort to not pirate. I'm not perfect, but it's easier by avoiding tempting sources like Napster.)
    -----
    D. Fischer
  • It's worth noting that watermarking video will probably work better than watermarking audio. Noise in audio is much more noticeable than in video. In video, of course, you have a lot more data to hide the watermark in.
  • I vote for "dum-cuh". It rhymes with "dumb c*nt" which adequately describes Hilary Rosen [lesbiannews.com]...

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak

  • DVD Audio (Score:2)

    by acb ( 2797 )
    There are plans to replace audio CDs with DVD Audio discs, which will be a lot more difficult to rip. (Basically, there will be no way of doing it without violating the DMCA, as is the case with DVD video.) As CDs are fundamentally insecure (for the content industry), the only thing keeping them from disappearing is market inertia. As soon as CDs can be phased out, they will be.

  • SDMI will never prevent you from copying the latest metallica single. SDMI is to prevent you from releasing your music to 'the masses' in a digital format. The new track from you favorite local band will not play on you SDMI 'protected' walkman.

    The intent is that same as DCC on a DAT player, to protect the channel the music companies use to become rich. When someone creates the hack that inserts a SDMI watermark that can fool the players, that will be something to write home about.

  • The whole idea is that cats have lots of air resistance. They can survive hitting the ground from their terminal velocity.
    --
    No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.

  • ...and back again... (Score:3)

    by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @02:08AM (#693656) Homepage
    ...to what the definition of 'is' is. From the surgical focus on the context and tense of the reports in question (and the responses,) I think it's fair to assume that:
    1. The Digital Watermark has been cracked at least partially enough to render both the music listenable and the protection useless (whether the music passes the "golden ears" test is a different matter, one that is no doubt playing a pivotal role in the SDMI's definition of "successfully cracked";)
    2. Salon's source is most likely not the authority they'd like us to think it is--probably a mid to low level person, possibly an individual operating strictly on what they've heard and picked up off peoples' desks (mind you, this does not mean that they are not a credible source; just that the data is probably not as cut and dried as Salon would like one to think;)
    3. Not only will we need to wait for the official test results for answers, we'll proabably not get those answers at all--at least, not in any form other than the carefully-crafted babble we've read all along from this whole episode.
    Don't hold your breath for too long. Salon is reporting on anonymously leaked data from a group which is going to carefully craft any official information releases so as to render the actual information useless.

  • Doesn't matter if it was hacked or not.... (Score:4)

    by Jason Levine ( 196982 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @02:14AM (#693659) Homepage
    Am I the only one who's thinking that it doesn't matter whether SDMI was actually hacked? It sounds to me like the RIAA wants to proceed with it whether it's really secure or not. They'll probably deny it was hacked in the end, proclaim it secure, and threaten to sue anyone who says (or proves) otherwise.

    They've thrown millions of dollars at making a secure (in their minds) technology. They'll spend millions more trying to convince us that it's in our best interest to ditch our old stereo equipment so we'll comply with their new rules. And then they'll spend millions more in court to silence people who say or prove that it's not secure (hiding behind the DCMA no doubt).

    Yup, SDMI is secure. Just like DVD. Can't be cracked at all. And on a similar note, those emperor's clothes look great.

  • "SDMI's Leonardo Chiariglione said Salon's last story was "slander"..."

    Well, isn't the sales tactic which SDMI is planning to use considered extortion by almost every corporate-world-hating human on the planet?

    I am seeing an alarming trend which 'net upstarts and conglomerate giants alike are using to push products: limited functionality per unit paid. This is evident in the many time-based and per-incident "services" out there (iOpener, Cue:Cat, TiVo, Y@p) and the rampant sales of consumable products (phone cards, printer ink cartridges that go for $50 per unit, etc.). The companies feel that they can start an endless stream of profit due to the nature of their products. The worst part of this is when the company knowingly makes the consumable products inferior (HP with their printers that can't clean themselves, Digital:Convergence with their shoddy PCB and housing, etc.). Then, there's the nightmare of customer service; companies that put you on hold eternally unless you buy more of their products. Personally, I am offended that the BBB and other watchdog agencies aren't cracking down on this. It's a blatant and legal swindling of the consumers.

  • A bit of history. Once Upon A Time, somebody invented a technology called "digital audio tape". RIAA refused to allow it to be used unless it used some form of "copy protection". What they came up with was to filter out a sharp "notch" of audio frequencies. Audio equipment would detect the lack of certain frequencies in the sound output and behave appropriately -- usually, it would refuse to record it.

    Now, here's the point. The RIAA's "golden ears" listeners supposedly couldn't tell the difference between the original and "notched" version. When other people got ahold of it, the differences were glaringly obvious (to the "golden ears") on certain types of program material.

    The conclusion was obvious. Either the RIAA's "golden ears" said exactly what the RIAA told them to say, or the program material that they tested with was carefully selected to give the results that they wanted.

    Note, BTW, what happened to DAT.

    Personally, the fact that two out of the three "golden ears" are from the RIAA kill it for me. They need to look up the definition of the word "independant".

  • What about digital subtraction? (Score:3)

    by ave19 ( 149657 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @03:37AM (#693666)
    Cracking one file might be hard, but I would be interested to know if anyone could gain an advantage by getting two copies of the same song and comparing them. Wouldn't you be able to "pick out" the frequency hopping watermark bits?

    If you had three copies of the same piece, it seems that at any given bit, one might not be like the other two...

    Any stegonographers in the audience tonight??

    (I'm assuming that the watermarks won't all be the same for a given song. Besides, what good would that be?)
  • Reminds me of a short story by Jorge Borges' "Library of Babel" which was a near-infinite structure that contained a staggering number of identical books. In fact, every single possible book of that lenght was in the library.

    Some books were all "a" repeated over and over, some were the true histories of famous people, some were the false histories of poor people. Some books coninued on from other books... you get the idea.

    The book that was the "holy grail" is the book that indexes all the other true books (probably with several continuing tomes). Of course, there were a large number of false indexes lying around.

    The story is basically making exactly your point, in that the difference between information and data is selection. I can enumerate all numbers encoding 3 minute songs at cd quality, but only a small fraction of them will be interesting to listen to. The information is telling you which one data point is interesting to listen to.

    To continue this rambling post some more; in the vein of GEB, any creation can be facted, by stating that it is a creation.

    "cherry blossoms fall pink / with dew drops / heavy from morning light" is my creation, and thus can be copyrighted.

    However, the entire previous sentence is a fact, and thus cannot (nor can this one). Tim Robbins ref: this sentence is in the mob; it has italic connections. This sentence is pregnant, it is missing its period

    erm. I forgot my point. ramble ramble
  • I've never used Napster either, not once, and yet I have a HD full of MP3s. Not ONE of them is pirated.

    SDMI and CSS and all of their ilk have very, very little to do with piracy.

    As a professional musician and music publisher for 25 years I have little love for the RIAA. Counrtney Love is suing her own record label. Many artists have built their own recording studios and are choosing to distribute their own music rather than continue to be slaves to the recording industry. We're talking major names here, not kids in the garage.

    Tell me this, if the RIAA are just professionals protecting their work why are the MOST hated by the artists they represent?

    Can you, in fact, name ONE item of intellectual property the RIAA has created and needs to protect? I can't.

    The RIAA dosn't create anything. They are meerly reprentitives. Who do they represent? The artist? NO! The record company. Who does the record company represent? The artist? NO! The record company.

    The record companies have created only two things, marketing and distribution. That's it. These are not intellectual property. They are front men, ad men, and warehouse men. They are not creators, they are middle men. The music recording industry is the only one that allows the ad agency and warehouse workers to skim 99% of the profits.

    MP3 and the internet allow direct marketing and distribution * BY THE ARTIST! *

    This is the * ONLY * issue of import to the RIAA. The ad men and the retailers are going to be cut out of the chain. This is an industry killer because * they have no other professional work of their own to sell. *

    The professional producers of the work are poised to take back into their own hands what is rightfully theirs and the true pirates are scared shitless.
  • They've GOT to be kidding! That's a VERY low standard. "Still sounded better"??? Is that to imply that once the watermark is applied, the acceptible level of sound quality is equal to a 64 kbps MP3 file?
    No, they're saying that once the watermark has been removed, it still sounds better than a 64k MP3 file. As other posters have pointed out, any "attack" on the watermarking system would most likely consist of adding random noise to the sound, until the watermark is no longer detectable. The same principle works for real paper watermarks, if you just run them through the copying machine enough times.

    What the source is claiming is that despite the fact that the watermark has been removed, the sounds quality is still acceptable. The sound quality with the watermark intact would be better, probably much better.
  • I'm concerned that at some point these people will go after the current state of copyright- to force people into their watermarking/armtwisting schemes. Currently, I could produce CDs (just burned the first promo today) and give them away in malls if I wished, and write 'noncommercial copying OK' on every single one (in fact I've done just that, literally), and I still retain copyright. The fact that I'm permitting fair use copying- even if I permit sampling and collage art from it! does not render the work into the public domain so that any commercial entity can use it as they please- if _they_ don't get rights they are breaking the law, and this protects me from:
    • unauthorised covers by major label acts
    • use in films or TV or Muzak (tm) or as background to advertisements
    • redistribution for profit by K-Tel or some comparable label
    This is very important. My nervousness is that at some point the argument will be made that if you expect copyright to protect you from these things happening against your will, you'd be using watermarks and prohibiting fair use and getting a Big Record Deal etc ad nauseam- and that the laws may be _changed_ using such arguments to punish anyone who is trying to uphold fair use and still expects copyright to protect against commercial exploitation. It's kind of like 'you can't have your cake and eat it too!' Except you can- under current law. At the moment it is _my_ decision whether I want to allow fair use, and I can do so without throwing away my rights to control commercial use, as I am the copyright holder. I would like to see this more broadly understood, because it would be a hell of a thing to lose this just because a lot of people are content to take the burden of 'breaking the law' onto themselves.

    It's fine that many people are willing to disobey a legal climate that they feel is unjust- but that mustn't cover up the fact that as a content producer I have a _right_ to allow and encourage fair use. It does _not_ equate to 'I am putting everything I do into the public domain, go nuts'. Currently I can allow fair use and still have leverage to resist unauthorised commercial use. If the line blurs and that begins to slip it will be a very bad thing. How would you like it if you made music and then discovered one of your tracks on TV with singing munchkins selling Windows upgrades or something? There are some aspects of copyright that need to keep their teeth.

  • You are aware the A copies of films are often on the open market even before the official product is in the can?

    How does this happen? The good old fashioned way. An employee steals a copy, and copies it.

    The A, by definition, has to exist. So here's what's going to happen if by some strange quirk they DO find a really, really tough protection method to crack. The A will be stolen and distributed. Even before the protected media makes it to market.

    It may be as simple a scenario as a record company secretary ripping a copy for her own use, giving a copy to her boyfriend, who gives it to a friend, who gives it to the Internet.

    The TRUE pirates will be pressing millions of clean copies that are physically undetectable from the orginal. They've been doing it for decades. These copies will be "clean" and the demand for pirate CD's will be GREATER than the demand for official product.

    This is the way it has always worked. This is the way it always WILL work.

    You can't put a song in a bottle because a song is useless to everyone until you pull the cork out of the bottle.

  • It doesn't matter how high the building is. Go look up "terminal velocity".<p>
    I don't know if this applies to tigers.
    --
    No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.
  • Just thought I'd post a more recent late-breaking article from Salon.com [salon.com] here:

    Another crack in the SDMI wall [salon.com]
    A team of researchers claims to
    have successfully hacked a digital
    music watermarking system

    (Basically, more corroboration that SDMI has been broken & SDMI knows it.

    I'm annoyed that consumer technology is being delayed [by years] for this.)

    --

  • Re:Success (Score:3)

    by Abcd1234 ( 188840 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @02:27AM (#693681) Homepage
    The thing is, as I understand it, watermarking is supposed to avoid this very thing. The idea is that the watermark is encoded in "noise" frequencies in the sound data, so that it can't be discerned by the human ear, but, with the proper decoder, provides information. The theory goes that if you pass said sound sample through various filtering software, decode it, re-encode it, etc, the watermarking (ideally) will remain, because it's stored in the audio itself... if you want to retain high-quality audio (in order to pirate it), you can't trash the watermark either... now, whether it will work in practice is another thing. :)

  • Re:Doesn't matter if it was hacked or not.... (Score:5)

    by danderson ( 157560 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @02:30AM (#693682)
    That's what I've been thinking. What's to stop them, really? Ask yourself could this happen:

    The SDMI invites "hackers" to defeat the watermarks on some samples of digital music. Many hackers do so, and hoping to win some of the $10,000 sign away their souls^H^H^H^H^H rights to the de-watermarking techniques they created. The SDMI carefully reviews the hacks and finds that in many cases the watermark was completely removed. These samples get passed on to the "Golden Ears" (note that in this case "Golden" refers to the amount of money these people are being paid to say exactly what they are told to say). The Golden Ears say that none of the hacked music files are worth listening to. (regardless of the actual quality). The SDMI then announces that their watermarking technology is "un-hackable" and companies start developing players for SDMI watermarked files. Those that did find watermark removal techniques are outraged because some of the de-watermarked music files that they can create sound exactly the same as the watermarked files. Because of the NDA, if they say anything, they will find themselves swamped in litigation. The SMDI then sneaks a bill through congress that makes illegal all music devices that fail to recognize the SDMI watermark, thanks to the DMCA.

    Think about it. The SMDI could be a lot smarter than we gave them credit for. Or maybe I'm just a conspiracy theorist.

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