SDMI Officially Reports on SDMI Hack 136
A reader sent us the press release that the Secure Digital Music Initiative folks have put regarding the hack SDMI challenge. They are stating that three out of the five were not cracked, contrary to earlier reports, and that of the two that were cracked, one was not a replicable event. Meanwhile, Salon has continued their coverage of the whole shebang.
regardless... (Score:4)
How does SDMI define crack? (Score:3)
Re:DMCA? (Score:1)
Would not anything less than "perfect/absolute access control" be, in actuality, "ineffective access control"? Either you control or you don't.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
Function of SDMI watermarks (Score:1)
Does it stop anyone from making copies. Whats the point.
No, but it stops people from using their copies on SDMI systems. For example, what if your speakers are SDMI-compliant? "You don't have authorization to play this CD; it is owned by Foobaz Library."
Re:Differential decoding... (Score:1)
For that matter, it's easier than that. Wait until SDMI comes out. Someone with a few extra bucks can go pay for the new version of Real Jukebox that can watermark songs. Rip a track, watermark it, and compare the watermarked copy to the original. The watermark will stand out.
Repeat the process a few times, perhaps with a couple different paid-for copies of RJ to see what parts of the watermark are serial numbers, etc.
SDMI is stillborn, we might as well let the RIAA spend time and money on it. It will keep them from doing anything productive in the meantime.
Re:heheheh... (Score:1)
If you can make it, someone will break it. I have absolute faith that something can be encrypted such that {DNA|quantum|brute force} methods are all infeasible. What if your cipher doesn't have discrete states?
-- LoonXTall
Re:regardless... (Score:2)
What is the appeal of mp3? File size. What happens as everything gets bigger, ie more bandwidth, more storage, etc.? We won't be worried about file size. There goes mp3's main advantage.
The future will definitely be a lossless algorithm, not mp3.
Re:this is what was sticking in my craw (Score:1)
i'm not trying to pick a fight here so stop me if this argument has been rehashed, but if i drop my VCR, Sony has no obligation to correct my stupidity. if you destroy your CD, you buy another one too, right?
(yes i am naive) doesn't the number of copies depend on the EULA anyways? here, they are allowing you to make as many 1st generation, digital copies as you like, AFAIK.
Re:Re-encoding as Ogg? (Score:3)
In an SDMI world, your soundcard would refuse to play the new .wav because it still has the magic mark of Cain.
Do you realize how *unlikely* this is to happen? Your average game probably has between several hundered and several thousand sound effects, and maybe a few dozen cinematics. Suddenly, every single one of them has to be encoded with the watermark from a completely different industry, just because they happen to both use the same hardware. Amateur musicans would be another group who might not quietly accept getting screwed if SDMI hardware becomes the law.
Re:DMCA? (Score:1)
i.e. the lock on your front door is effective for a personal residence but ineffective for a bank.
The courts who be the ones who define what is effective for a given situation.
Re:Re-encoding as Ogg? (Score:2)
And this was happening BEFORE DeCSS. DeCSS makes it easier to transfer the DVD data to other formats but the pirates were already using other methods of ripping the data out (mostly of the type listed above where they would play the DVD through an analog line and recapture it to digital in a non-secure format).
Re:Re-encoding as Ogg? (Score:1)
I don't know about BETA or Hi8, but I'm fairly sure that modern VCRs are supposed to have copy-protection circuitry in them. I've seen tapes that have been copied from rental copies, and they turn out all orange, unless you're recording with an old enough VCR.
Do DVD players put out this "copyright" signal as well?
Liars! (Score:1)
Just my $0.00002 (new technology finds ways of cutting pennies in to veeeeeeeery small pieces :)
-orakle
Re:So called golden ears tests (Score:1)
something that is sticking in my craw (Score:1)
Al Gore considering career change (Score:1)
In a quote from Mr Gore, he stated "These companies are going about the matter all wrong. Digital watermarking isn't going to work. What we need to do is take new music, and put it away in a lockbox, one to which only the President and the Speaker of the House have the key. With the music locked up tight in this lock box, it will be safe and piracy free for future generations."
Mr Gore went on to say "We want Britney Spears and other artists who could be hurt by music piracy to know that a promise made is a promised kept."
Editors Note: Mr Gore's previous technological experience includes inventing the Internet.
Princeton Team (Score:5)
The only consideration is that this group hasn't submitted their technical information (which automatically excludes their attempt from being considered). Now I don't know about most skeptics, but when a group of this stature claims to have done something, I would guess that they were being sincere - how many universities would allow research groups to do work on something like this and then make false claims?
Re-encoding as Ogg? (Score:2)
this is what was sticking in my craw (Score:4)
The FSF rep wasn't able to respond to this, but from my point of view, SDMI's ability to make a limited number of digital fulfills the "free speech" needs of the FSF, which was their main concern.
what do people think about that? do i have this wrong?
Re:renting CDs? (Score:1)
Re:this is what was sticking in my craw (Score:1)
Music Industry (Score:1)
Its not about the file type... (Score:2)
If I put a watermark on a piece of paper, and you use a (high-quality) copier on it, the watermark will still exist. The same sort of thing applies if you re-record the music, even if you switch it to analog and back to digital, or so I'm told.
The point here, as I understand it, is not to prevent piracy, but to be able to detect it.
Each song, then, would have a unique 'ID', which would be associated with your name when you buy it. If it shows up on napster, they come after you for the royalties.
If I'm right, hope this helps. If I'm incorrect, please correct me.
Zipwow
Re:Wha..?? (Score:1)
and apparently according to zdnet:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2
they have approved 3 technologies...atleast one of whom felton of princton claims to have broken... heh
Re:Go ahead, fib.. (Score:1)
That is because you couldn't make 100,000 copies of one song with a very few actions (Napster...)
So? (Score:1)
Well, if they do, they can feel free to release it.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
MeNeXT apparently does not live in the US (Score:1)
bah, encrypted music sucks (Score:1)
how many encrypted songs will you have to buy in order to listen to them on A: your computer, B: your portable SDMI device, and so on and so on..
Re:This is perfect (Score:1)
What do you expect? If they actually acknowledged a real winner, they'd have to give out money (and we all know how they hate to do that) AND effectively toss away all the cash they'd thrown into it. (Never mind that part of the point of research is to find out what doesn't work!) Plus, it'd be really bad from the PR point of view...
Oh, well. Its also obvious that the technological solution is just to reduce the number of people taking advantage of their fair use rights to those who would do it anyway, to reduce the number of targets for the legal teams to mob...
-RickHunter
Re:Re-encoding as Ogg? (Score:5)
The music industry blindly believes that as long as you can't make a perfect digital copy, their investment of millions into a protection scheme is a good one.
The music industry is wrong..Nobody seems to mind all the fairly crappy (compared to 'perfect digital copies') MP3 rips on Napster. Nobody will mind a protected song going to over high quality analog and being redigitized back into an unsecured format (Ogg or MP3).
It is all an exercise in futility and corporate self-ass-protecting.
heheheh... (Score:4)
Ok, lesson here is... if you can encrypt it, someone can break it. Plain and simple.
If it can be streamed, it can be recorded.
Secure Music? (Score:3)
Ok, let say you make it where a watermark is 'somewhat secure' (there is nothing "secure" only "somewhat secure"). Say it uses a bunch of random bits that is encoded in the music. What would stop someone from just remvoing the code from the music? The DMCA?
Everyone here has seen a sound wave. Wouldn't the "code" produced abnormal spikes somewhere in the wave? With a powerful sound processor, it could be possiable to proccess the wave in a way to detect the code and remove it. Oh course this is analog.
With digtal music, random bits can be place in locations where typicaly would not produce sound or abnormal sound. Drawing from a "clean" sample patterns can be found for the encoding. Do some math, and the water become clear as day. Once the pattern is found on the single sample, you have to find out how this sample compare with another samples.
This is where it gets complex. If the music effects the pattern of the watermark, one would have to figure out what influece the pattern. It can be rather complex. But here's the problem. One can't just add a bunch of random bits on digtal music and expect it to sound the same. Figuring out where to put the bits, helps the cracker, becuase it makes it easier to find a pattern.
Also, one is limited to the number of bits to the lost of enjoyment. How many can you really put using complex anaglothes in a 4 minutes song? How many of the 50 megs of a wave file or 4 meg in a mp3 isn't really used?
There is one good thing, with effective encoding, it can increase security for simple text messages.
=)
but why? (Score:1)
It is too late for them to jump on the wagon.
Even better: (Score:1)
Re:Easiest crack... (Score:1)
Re:regardless... (Score:1)
There's no need to crack SDMI when we can simply ignore it.
(OT)Slashdot is running customized Slashcode (Score:1)
Well, look at the source.
Slashcode is currently distributed under GNU GPL 2 [slashcode.com], which allows modification and (apparently) ASPing (using code to run a service without distributing binaries) without requiring modified source to be disclosed. GNU GPL 3 will have restrictions on ASPing, which <IANAL>may be construed as a public performance under copyright law</IANAL>.
Slashdot is presumably running a highly customized Slashcode installation. Fat chance you'll find lameness filters in the tarball [sourceforge.net].
Re:Re-encoding as Ogg? (Score:2)
But your scheme is workable, while what I described will never work, because destroying the watermark is much easier than creating a legal one. The problem is that nobody can make a recording without sending it to the RIAA to be "stamped" (no local device can stamp the watermark, even if it checks for an existing one, because that reduces cracking to the ability to destroy a watermark again).
This means nobody (like an independent band) can record music! Of course this is the goal the RIAA wants ultimately!
Re:hmmm (Score:2)
This is not a joke, and is of course the real reason that all computer professionals fear the DMCA.
Re:Wha..?? (Score:1)
I haven't trolled in a while; lately, it's been hard to compete with the real Bruce Perens!
Re:Re-encoding as Ogg? (Score:3)
What if the Watermark contains information to the effect of:
"Purchased on 11/09/2000, by g_mcbay. By listening to this music, g_mcbay agrees that he/she will not copy this music. BTW, his credit card number is xxx111222333"
If that gets all over the world, you could be tracked down and potentially held responsible for the unauthorized duplication of the music. So how do you ensure that the message is scrubbed clean without degrading the sound quality?
SDMI is a threat to better audio compression (Score:1)
The real problem I see is that SDMI will probably also get erased by accident by increasingly good compression technologies. What is going to happen then? Most like the music industry will scream "bloody murder" and be all up in arms about better compression standards (as if they weren't already), not just because they make distribution of music easier, but also because they erase the SDMI watermark.
In fact, a particularly cynical view of all of this would be that SDMI is intentionally weak in order to be able to have a future claim, based on DMCA, against the deployment of better, or at least alternative, audio compression techniques.
Re:Al Gore considering career change (Score:1)
Re:heheheh... (Score:1)
SDMI will win (Score:5)
I have less and less faith that people like those behind SDMI, the DMCA, Library/School filtering, etc. can loose. Yes, thus far people with reasonable, intelligent, knowledgeable positions have been able to hold all that money in check, but I just don't see how that situation can continue. What isn't technically possible _will_ be legislated into effect by people with the resources and desire to see it so.
What those who rose to the SDMI challenge did, if I'm to understand the implications of the end to the DMCA commentary period correctly, is now a felony. It is my understanding that even the Princeton team, a legitimate academic research effort, put themselves at risk of ending their careers by participating in this overtly sanctioned exercise in reverse engineering.
If the mind-blowing amount of money behing initiatives like SDMI can't create a technical solution, you can guarantee that it will realign to bring about a legislative solution, and once that's done, that money will move toward financing enforcement. The truly sad part is that we're already moving into the enforcement phase, and neither of the two possible next presidents have displayed any willingness to curb the trend. As the subject says, SDMI will win, not because of its technical superiority, but because there's too much money working to guarantee that it does.
I've been a cynic for a long time, but I've never seen so much to be cynical about as I have in the past year on the internet.
Re:Easiest crack... (Score:3)
Re:Re-encoding as Ogg? (Score:3)
High Standards (Score:2)
Re:Re-encoding as Ogg? (Score:1)
So it's hypothetically stopped at the SDMI-level, not the
Re:So called golden ears tests (Score:3)
If it wasn't for the fact that all freely accessible music formats are apt to be declared illegal I'd _love_ the idea of these clowns going ahead with SDMI. I can tell you that it is going to be _noticable_ if you have an ear- perhaps less so if you are 'watermarking' Britney Spears junk, but anyone who is getting a good sound will find that sound _defaced_ by the watermarking. That's not all- radio stations have elaborate equipment to compress and enhance detail on the music they play. Played through that even the Britney Spears stuff will be obviously flawed by the watermarking- it will bring out the distortion and make it audible, that is what this type of equipment is _for_: bringing out hidden detail in sound.
There is a Chinese ideogram (?) which represents both danger and opportunity. This SDMI garbage is just that- both danger and opportunity. There was a time when major label/corporate musical content actually was better than garage stuff- studios were paid for, artists got to concentrate on their work, and a lot of music got created that was really rather good. That's why you're still hearing it 20, 30, 40 years later instead of last year's corporate music product.
That time is gone- now, with SDMI, the corporate music product is boldly choosing to degrade the quality of its product to _substantially_ below what a clued electronic musician (with some sound engineering experience) can produce. That's because the corporate people think they have such a lock on media in general that they can _afford_ to do this to tighten their control- and that is the opportunity.
It's never been a better time to become a musician- not because there is industry support- there's not- not because there's money in it, there has never been money in it compared to, say, going public with a dotcom. The reason it's such a good time to be an indie musician is because the main competition, commercial media, is becoming so arrogant that it no longer cares about any sort of quality. This tends to alienate people, and there are going to be a lot of alienated people milling around trying to find music, entertainment, stuff to listen to or watch or even stuff with a message and a purpose. It's simple mathematics- as the corporate product gets complacent (check), lower in quality (check BIGTIME) and cynical (check), a market opens up for competition to come in. Straight capitalism- capitalism cuts both ways *g*
If mp3 isn't encrypted. . . (Score:2)
All compressed data is encrypted. It HAS to be to compress it. Think about it for a minute.
The key issue is that for mp3 the key is *public* rather than private.
KFG
Random thoughts (Score:2)
What the SDMI people forget when testing for perfict audio is that they are making a protecting against MP3 piracy.. This will have zero impact.
Accually ANY piracy would degrade the audio somewhat.
So golden ears can tell the diffrence while partly tone deff me can't tell the diffrence..
Someone pointed that SDMI will be flawed but the music industry will just get laws past so it dosn't matter.. Someone else pointed out (to me in RL) that with the United States ellections so close (In all offices) that we are likely to get a pritty much even mix of partys we'll end up with 4 years of bickering and political infighting.. no new laws.. and nothing gets done. So if the SDMI stratagy is to get a new DMCA type thing passed.. Good luck..
Basicly it's not so easy to buy people.. buy republicans and the democrats will oppose you on princaple.. and visa versa.. you can't buy em both...
Re:Question... (Score:2)
overreacting that goes on: some people really come across as though
they believe that if A) someone creates something, and B) it's really
easy to copy, then C) it must be made freely available to one and all.
But that's not the issue here. The issue is that a lot of
very--temporarily?
attempting to apply laws to a new technological and sociological
foundation, and that same foundation obsoletes many of those same laws
and concepts. They have their heads so far up their assets that they
don't see that this desperate attempt to make old models work in a new
world is doomed.
Perhaps the worst part, however, is that they're foisting the whole
load on the world as being in the interest of the artists. This
hypocrisy is what really condemns them for me. Since bloody *when*
have artists meant a sparrowfart in a hurricane to these execs? They
matter when they have a lucrative track record. That's it.
If you must pity someone, pity the artists. They weren't getting
treated what they were worth before, and they aren't now.
And please please please don't bother mentioning any of the vast
minority of artists who make it to the top rung. Sure, they get big
bucks and all the extras. You only know about them because they're
making money for someone else. Who do you think writes the press
releases, pays the studio/engineer time, yada yada? The execs. Why?
'Cause they'll make a bundle.
There are labels which buck this trend, but they're for the most part
quite new and have grown out of the underground/independent
scene. Which, by the way, is taking full advantage of the same
technology which the Big Boys are trying to suppress. Independent
music is flourishing, since creating and distribution of one's own
works is more available than ever before. Yes, this results in a lot
of drek. But at least with independent music, *you* get to decide what
you want to hear. You don't get your music selected for you by suits
pandering to market pressures. Think they want that pressure? Sure,
it's not a huge chunk out of their pockets, but the competition *is*
there, and lots of studios, bands, and labels are popping out of the
woodwork with independent/semi-independent works which are just so
much better than anything you ever hear on, say, RCA. Godspeed You
Black Emperor, Tortoise, Neko Case, you name it. The execs don't like
this either: competition sucks when your suit costs more than your
PC.
Eventually, with any luck the music industry will simply adapt to the
way things are now, instead of the way they wish they were. But for
now it's gonna suck for a bit.
Re:Easiest crack... (Score:1)
It seems to me the SDMI is totally based on identical reproduction.. do anything to elinminate that and you lose the watermark in the process
Re:heheheh... (Score:2)
Re:So called golden ears tests (Score:2)
didn't the parc team that cracked it say that the online testing "oracle" wasn't quite working either?
personally i could care less if the audio quality degrades a little for the convinience.
do they really think they are going to deter the masses from sharing music with this technology? even if no new mp3s can be ripped what about all the existing millions of mp3s already out there?
Re:So called golden ears tests (Score:3)
What's odd about this is that we have a means to break SDMI and produce a file which probably has excellent (given that the people to submit said cracks would be sufficiently happy with their results), but not quite excellent (failing the golden ear test), but free of copy protection. When it comes to "distributing" free music, what will the average user of such services look for? I'd argue that only true sound affectionados would be the ones to get the CD given the option between it and digital music files, and they'd be the only ones that could hear that difference that the golden ears tests revealed.
Basically meaning that since it can be hacked to remove the watermark, SDMI is pretty much defeated.
Save for that stupid little thing we call the DMCA.
Re:Music Industry (Score:1)
Re:DMCA? (Score:1)
Couldn't the DCMA be challenged legally on the basis that there really is no such thing as an 'effective access control' device in purely digital content?
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
hmmm (Score:1)
What are they going to do? Force an open source mp3 player to check from their water marks?? haha..
I guess the only thing they can really do is force the companies making portable mp3 players to use this technology.. That kinda sucks, but oh well.. I personally don't use them anyway. I'll just burn them to a cd instead..
-----------------------
Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg
Re:Al Gore considering career change (Score:1)
Re:Al Gore considering career change (Score:1)
Not if we want to keep the boxen locked ;-)
Re:this is what was sticking in my craw (Score:1)
Re:DMCA? (Score:2)
--
Go ahead, fib.. (Score:4)
Maybe they have some cute little exception (cant be reproduced on a p100, doesnt sound the same to golden-ears after the fact), but it seems like a fib or a stretch at LEAST to me.
So, what if they are fibbing?
More power to them. Let them release a flawed product, get everyone's support, have it added to a million products and songs, and weeks after release have a winamp plug-in come out that real-time decodes them.
Suits me just fine.
The honest, appropriate, and correct solution to the problem of digital security is to not be militant about it.
Sure, anyone can copy cassette tapes, and lots do. That didnt stop PLENTY of cassette sales.
You say its different because its digital, but it really isnt. The general populace doesnt have the knowledge, time, nor toys that support mp3's in a wide-spread way yet.
Not to mention I dont think it will become super-widespread for another 3-4 years.
(Yes, I know napster has a large user base. Thats not the same as the user base of people with cd-players (home, car, personal, AND computer) now is it?)
In short, the media giants need to just tuck tail. Its a losing battle. Mp3's sound more than decent, and are not secured. They will always be around now. If the music companies had gotten on board sooner, and done digital distribution sooner, they may have prevented it.
All they can do now is try to save their ass.
"They are *starting* that three..." Huh? (Score:1)
Perhaps "stating" was meant. I understood the poor editing when /. was a noncommercial entity produced by the grace and kindness of Malda's and Hemos' hearts but now I wonder if the editors, even though they should have the time (and money) now, do not have the skill to produce quality work.
Re:Easiest crack... (Score:1)
"By opening this package, you aggree to be bound by the ToS. For a copy of the ToS, please write to..."
No need to go bothering with a form when they can simply trick you.
Re:regardless... (Score:1)
Only a limited set of people can effectively ignore it. Remember that not everyone will be able to get the software needed for those older, non-SMDI-crippled formats, particularly if there's an effective effort by commercial software houses and equipment manufacturers to stop supporting them. Many /. readers may be able to download and compile their own Ogg player for their computer, but how many of them would be capable of hacking their portable SMDI player to play Ogg files? I'm not sure I could if the manufacturer was actually making a reasonable effort to make it difficult, even with good instructions. How much less so the general public, many of whom are uncomforable even with the relatively simple binary software installation available today? Remember that the RIAA doesn't need to completely stamp out music sharing, just knock it down to the point that they can continue to profit from the people who can't leap the higher technological hurdle that SMDI could impose.
Re:regardless... (Score:1)
Golden ears test is legit (Score:2)
All you people screaming at the RIAA for their supposedly bogus Golden Ears test should calm down and take a few breaths
Granted, I don't see the point of watermarking, period. If watermarking is used to control playback, you can always convert to a non-controlled format like Ogg or MP3 (through analog, if necessary). If watermarking is used to trace whoever first "steals" music, someone will just buy the music with fake ID, post in on Napster/Gnutella/Freenet, and then the RIAA will have no recourse.
Can somebody explain to me how watermarking is actually supposed to stop piracy (even if it isn't broken)?
Differential decoding... (Score:2)
Suppose you have two copies of the same song, both carrying a watermark, but different ones. Suppose you substract one song from the other. The bits that belong to the song should delete each other, and the bits that belong to the watermark and that are different in each watermark should remain. That should give you a pretty good idea how and where the watermark is in the song.
By flipping these bits randomly you should be able to perturb the watermark beond recognizeability without doing damage to the song beyond what the inital compression has done.
Currently, the crack attempts had only one copy of the song, and one watermark, to work with. How much easier will it be PACTOR style with two or n identical copies of the song, each with different watermarks?
© Copyright 2000 Kristian Köhntopp [slashdot.org]
I think it's a bit FUD (Score:1)
It's a bit like: suppose we'd chop off Hillery Rosen's arm, she'd still claim she has two arms.
The contest was boycotted, could it be that the real hack wasn't exposed to the RIAA?
And those golden ears, aren't these people paid to reject any hack posted? They even think that the watermarked songs were bad quality, so how would they determine songquality?
Re:Easiest crack... (Score:1)
So look out for some sort of simple gizmo, or maybe it'll get incorporated into a point-of-sale credit card PIN system or whatever. ("For your protection" of course.)
Re:SDMI will fail--so sorry (Score:1)
what if the RIAA requires that all this SDMI stuff is implemented in hardware, under an NDA and protected from reverse engineering in the manner above, well have quite a problem on our hands, wont we?
This is of course assuming that no-one will ever release PC software to run this stuff, which they probably will if there is a consumer demand, and as we all know from the DeCSS case, this is the weakest link in any access / copy control scheme.
Re:Re-encoding as Ogg? (Score:3)
Yes, I know: this whole scheme depends on having every single manufacturer of electronic components and systems play along. That's what the DMCA is for (and the recent FCC decision requiring that TV sets do "rights management.") It's Part One of the move to make manufacture of non-SDMI equipment illegal.
Re:How does SDMI define crack? (Score:2)
SDMI will fail--so sorry (Score:5)
All hacks to SDMI attempted so far have been made without access to the watermarking algorithm. If SDMI is ever released to the public, however, someone will reverse engineer the algorithm--and post it on the web for all to see. As soon as that happens, SDMI will almost certainly be cracked more or less completely. The current contest wasn't at all close to a real-world test.
Golden ears is not a misnomer (Score:3)
Has anyone ever had the chance to listen to some of those ear training tapes that sound people listen to to get that good? I listened to one once as it went through a series of sound bursts of 3 seconds through 1 millisecond. Past half a second, they all sounded identical to me. Then there was the test where they raised a certain frequency a few dB above a noise floor, at 50 Hz, 100 Hz, etc. all the way up to 22KHz. That sounded like a 2400 baud modem played backwards.
And yet, my friends in the professional sound field can hear these minute changes in the quality of the sound and correctly identify each one. That's why they get paid as much as ninja Solaris admins. They can't listen to anything less than digital to the speaker theatre quality sound without cringing. Me? I like MP3s and AM radio. So much for the golden ear test. Now back to my Rio.
--
Re:SDMI will win (Score:4)
We're talking about securing music files to rid the world of internet DIGITAL music piracy. Let me just say that the only piracy protection on games that the "Release Groups" have not been able to crack is the logged reg-key. Logged reg-keys are stored remotely, and every time a game - for the sake of argument, let's use Quake 3 as an example - is played (over the internet only) there is a check for the reg-key. If the reg-key which the user entered into the game is in their file of "released keys", then the user is allowed to play, if not, then the user is not. Besides, Quake 3 has been cracked to work with single-player. What can SDMI do? Force only internet-connected users to listen to music? Ha! That's a laugh. Anyway, good day.
Oh yeah, a note on "resources"... umm... one would think that MR Gates has LOTS and LOTS of resources, yet a lot of people use pirated Windows - just a thought.
Re:So called golden ears tests (Score:4)
The majority of people who buy music are those who are already used to the degradation caused by broadcasting, people who listen to audio cassetes in noisy cars, etc. As long as the music passes "tin ears tests" it's good enough, and the RIAA knows that.
This is perfect (Score:5)
Sounds like a good deal to me.
Jason
Re:So called golden ears tests (Score:2)
For most of todays 'top hits' it doesn't matter anyway if audioquality is slightly degraded and most people listen to that music as background to something else, like driving, working, chatting, partying etc. Under these circumstances audioquality doesn't matter too much, especially since with the audioequipment it is played on the difference is probably inaudible anyway.
But if the RIAA needs the illusion that noone will copy their music because it's slightly altered to pull through their SDMI scheme I'm just happy to let them proceed with it and fail.
Re:[OT] Totally off-topic - images.slashdot.org (Score:2)
On Slashdot, every day is abuse Windows users day
This could be good news... (Score:2)
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Consensus points... (Score:2)
1. Watermarks can never provide adequate security for music (or video) because they're necessarily irrelevent to the analog signal contents, which can be recovered without them.
2. SDMI is an unworkable battleground of the RIAA versus all the HW/SW players, where gridlock will reign for years, and technical reality will eventually trump rearguard lawyers.
3. The SDMI "challenge" failure is being stonewalled and spun by fools for RIAA purposes, but they're _not_ fooling anyone who understands music and the bankruptcy of the RIAA.
4. Nonetheless, RIAA controls SDMI (dollars are clout), will declare victory, retreat to an illusion of security, aided and abetted by Micro~etc, to control the masses (for a little while).
5. SDMI is Evil Tech(c) that is inevitably doomed to fail because it flies in the face of both physics (in the form of information theory) and plain common-sense (mp3 is good enough).
6. But don't explain this to the RIAA's fatcat morons just yet - wait until _after_ they commit their future business models to this flawed, hopeless scheme - then, take full advantage.
The MPEG / Fraunhofer / Ogg standards look like a clear case of the technicians sticking it to their corporate masters by defining clean interfaces not amenable to money-grubbing big-company monopolies. Way to go, guys & gals! The best part is that they've been shot throught the heart, but they'll never see it until their business models just keel over and die.
If I can send an artist (or band) $1 to download a whole CD, that will be just as much money as they'd get if I bought it from a RIAA distributor for $16. I'll make the trade and, more importantly, so should the artist or band. The leeches losing out are unnecessary, inefficient, passe' overhead. Labels are dead, now celebrate artists! Look forward to media freedom!
Re:SDMI will win (Score:3)
But they would loose more than win, many people would abandon windows and use alternative OSes, and once they use them at home they could use them at work too
For games it's a little different, by now the Softwareindustry has learned the fact, that any software selling millions of copies (games and popular tools) will have it's copyprotection cracked sooner or later, so they calculate to make their revenue in the first two or three months after it appears on the market (that's why they have to hype the product so enough people will rush to the store and buy it the day it comes out).
For the music industry neither of these arguments work: they loose more than gain from anyone grabbing their music for free, and once SDMI is cracked free copies of music may hit the net instantaneously after release. So for the music industry with their current business model (make the main income from selling copies of music) it's a simple equation: each 'pirated' copy is one copy sold less (a more realistic calculation would be more like 10:1) and so they will drag everyone they deem worthy of sueing to court (probably down to the student who shares his music files with the whole university) to frighten people from 'pirating'.
What good that will do them remains to be seen, maybe it only helps to create a free music scene, like commercial software bothered enough people to spark initiatives for free software, and as there can be money made from free software (with good documentation, training and support for example) there could be money made from free music as well (with fan articles, advertising, and concerts for example). It would be less money altogether, but OTOH there would be less overhead (mainly distribution and marketing) too, in the end the artists share might even be bigger (and that's what the music industry most cares about, the rights of the artists, let's not forget that).
Re:but why? (Score:5)
(If you live in the US: ) Easy. MP3 will be found to be an illegal bypass of the security measures found in SDMI and will be declared illegal. So will the CDs you own. And any tapes. And the concept of Fair Use will be thrown out. Just prepare yourself
(If you don't live in the US: ) Try not to laugh too hard at our stupid coporate laws.
Translation: from Corporate to English (Score:3)
Neatly morphs into...
"Despite our best efforts, it appears that all 5 encoding methods were cracked. We could not figure how people did it on 3 of the methods because they didn't send the program.
On the two groups that were kind enough to send their program, we could only figure out how to use one of them"
SDMI will NEVER be broken! (Score:2)
Now matter how many people actually break SDMI and no matter how good the audio quality of files so broken, it will never qualify as broken to the RIAA.
Why? Because they want to have a "secure" standard that nobody could successfully break. (Regardless of the facts.)
They did their part to make a truly secure standard. After SDMI is released and music starts getting pirated, then they can use the DMCA and cry, "look, we spent millions building a truly secure system that had industry support and those evil hackers broke it". This is a violation of DMCA.
In a nutshell, they have no intention of stopping piracy through purely technical means. SDMI is just part of what they need to fight piracy through the only means they understand -- litigation, money, political corruption, lies, etc.
Take the SDMI challenge ... (Score:2)
The industry funded RIAA reported that this conclusively proves the existence of life on Mars, and will proceed with plans to produce Colas that will sound the same to Martians and can't be cracked for their recipes. No Martians could be found who could crack the recipe, according to RIAA.
Rumors that there are no Martians, that colas don't work in low-pressure atmospheres, and that you will never make a profit when people drink the free Open Source cola rivers on Mars were all reported to be just rumors, according to the news media who depend on insider cola event tips and free cola concert tickets from RIAA.
So called golden ears tests (Score:5)
It is incredibly naive of them to consider a hack on SDMI unsuccessful because professional sound engineers could hear the difference in the watermark-hacked version!!! Especially in the case mentioned in the article where it was a 2-1 vote, meaning one of these professional sound engineers out of 3 didn't hear the distortion.
irrelevant (Score:4)
I'm not sure there's real news yet: The SDMI proclamation and the Salon reporting is just a war of words at this point. What will be of real significance is when an SDMI format is selected, files becomes available, and can be played by commercially available devices. THEN it will be significant if there are cracks of the chosen SDMI format.
imho, I don't think that the people motivated to produce the best cracks (and to build gui crack tools, which are what would do the real damage to SDMI) are also motivated to share the results with the SDMI folks. The real news will be whether successful, reproducable cracks and crack tools become available immediately after the SDMI release.
Great! (Score:2)
Re:Differential decoding... (Score:2)
Now, if a second person bought that binary, that person would get the same binary bit for bit, but for the watermark.
I'll bet two identical copies but for the watermark would not be so hard to come by, especially for the popular songs.
The inital question still stands: Does having two identical copies (but for watermarks) help erasing the watermark?
© Copyright 2000 Kristian Köhntopp [slashdot.org]
Re:DMCA? (Score:2)
"Our focus has always been on the scientific question of whether the SDMI's technologies, if deployed, could be defeated by pirates," the statement read. "We demonstrated that they could be defeated, by making small modifications to the music files so that the watermarks were no longer detectable but the sound quality was still acceptable. "Instead of the scientific question, the SDMI has chosen to focus on who is eligible for the cash prize that they have offered. Since we chose to forgo the cash prize in order to retain our right to publish our results, we understand that the SDMI no longer considers us to be entrants in their contest. Their announcement regarding their contest does not invalidate our scientific results."
So it looks like the Princeton hacks weren't counted. Furthermore, the Princeton team will be releasing their findings to the public, so if one of the "unhacked" technologies gets picked then info on how to defeat it will soon be public knowledge. I'm sure SDMI thinks they're going to sue under the DMCA to shut Princeton up, and I hope they do. It'll make for a great test case for this unconstitutional bit of legislation.
--
Re:Re-encoding as Ogg? (Score:2)
As long as you can walk into a HMV and buy a CD off the shelf, using cash, then it's going to be untracable who bought the 'original' copy of the media.
Re:Re-encoding as Ogg? (Score:2)
Absolutely true, but think a few years down the road when high-speed wireless access begins to creep into home stereo systems... sort of like digital radio on speed. Kick in micropayments, consumer profiling, the DMCA and encrypted streams. Although something as primitive as creditcard information would probably not make it in to the stream, some identifying information might.
On the upside, you'll never actually own the song, you'll just pay $.03 every time you want to listen to it. (recording it on your analog player will be illegal, and the watermark will contain information which makes any digital recorder halt when trying to record.)
I don't think these guys are worried about the next five years of home piracy, the general population still prefers to have CDs. I think they're trying to set themselves up for a whole new marketing model.
Re:this is what was sticking in my craw (Score:2)
If this kind of thing doesn't give you pause, then you should check out Pamela Samuelson's excellent article [negativland.com] on the subject...
-- Shamus
Pass It Along [chumba.com]
[OT] Totally off-topic - images.slashdot.org (Score:2)
ht tp: //advice.networkice.com/advice/Intrusions/2002901/ ?magic_cookie=2f312e31 [networkice.com]
Is it abuse-windows-users day today?
Re:DMCA? (Score:2)
Are you confusing "effective access control" with "perfect/absolute access control"