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Music Media

RIAA wants to assassinate MP3 205

Posted by Hemos from the got-you-in-my-sites dept.
Cicero writes "Wired News has an article about the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) plans for killing the mp3 format. It basically involves having the major record labels release music on a yet-to-be-defined, proprietary format called SDMI. The kicker -- require software and hardware companies that license the format to include some sort of kill switch which would prohibit the user from downloading and playing mp3 files. " I'd insert a snide comment here, but...I don't think I need to.
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RIAA wants to assassinate MP3 More

RIAA wants to assassinate MP3

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  • I suppose next we'll be handing out chastity belts to the computers so we can't download pr0n.
  • This will just make things worse for the record companies. It's still won't actually be illegal to use the mp3 encoding format, inventive hackers will crack whatever stupid blocks they have in the way, and mp3s will be cooler than ever. Still annoying that they think they can push this on us, though.
  • I still don't get this whole "MP3 Killer" thing. So what if the RIAA decides that record labels release electronic music in a protected format. What is going to stop Joe Average from buying the CD, encoding the songs in MP3 and up'ing them to the Net?

  • And this is new how? (Score:3)

    by Lwood777 ( 50291 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @09:23AM (#1892055)

    The RIAA and SDMI vs. MP3 is the same old battle as DVD vs Divx. DVD is an open format, and is winning, as is MP3.. the RIAA needs to take a rest on this..

  • Ok, that's it.. I'm buying a RIO. (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 14, 1999 @09:24AM (#1892057)
    I haven't seen a need to buy any of the portable mp3 players, yet, but I'm going to now.

    And perhaps it's now time to start giving them as gifts. With this sort of direct manipulation, it's time for consumers to react, in an organized fasion.

    Go Support the mp3 industry. Vote with your $$.
    (if you have any! I know there's alot of students here! :) )
  • Nothing is going to stop it. That's why the whole thing is stupid. All it's doing is showing the ignorance of the industry...

  • disabling mechanisms... (Score:4)

    by aaronl ( 43811 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @09:28AM (#1892059) Homepage
    So they're going to kill the ability to play MP3's in hardware? Hmm... interesting. Just like Sony stopped anyone from playing out-of-region games or copied games on the Playstation, eh?

  • Starving Artists. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How many one hit wonders later spent the rest of their lives in poverty while record company execs took vacations in St. Barts on the royalties from those songs? Oh, I feel so sorry for the stockholders in Sony Records. You MP3 bootleggers are stealing from the bands who made those records! You are bad! The MAN hasn't figured out how to own the internet, and he's getting scared.

  • Anti-trust? (Score:5)

    by jwriney ( 16598 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @09:29AM (#1892062) Homepage
    Is it me, or does this reek of using of unfairly shutting out competition? Apparently, if RIAA has their way, this new format will be ALL you can use, unless they decide differently. That's like Sony saying, "If you want to have a recording of a song, you MUST use Minidiscs. End of story."(note: nothing against minidiscs)

    Also, from a technical standpoint, how do they propose to do this? Release a new version of Windows that automatically searches and destroys non-RIAA music files on bootup? FTP clients that refuse to download *.mp3? I think not.

    --John Riney
    jwriney@awod.com
  • This isn't likely to be legal. Consider that it's similar to Misrocoft's exclusive licensing practices; you can use SDMI, but you can't use a competitor's format (or rather, you can use it until SDMI comes out then you must kill off your support for the competition).

    In other words, not the Justice Department will have something to do when they're through ripping M$ apart. It looks like the government just might be good for something after all :)
  • Please, correct me if I'm wrong ...but if it has an audio out, it can be copied. If the "kill switch" is imbedded in the music, it's hackable. Who cares what RIAA does now? It's just like MS flailing - too little too late. They're horked.

    My .02
    Quux26
  • My motivation for getting one (other than it being useful and cool) was the pleasure of having something that the RIAA doesn't want me to have.
  • Technically, it's easy. Either put in the timebomb, or you don't get access to the API's to program SDMI. Very similar to what the justice dept. was proposing with the encryption key escrow debate. What they are trying to leverage is the fact that they feel that everyone will have to program for SDMI for market reasons ... and what they have failed to understand is the open source movement programming for more than simply market reasons. That reason, more than any other, is why this will fail.
  • Let them do this. They will all be sent to jail and/or heavily fined for releasing a known virus into thousands of peoples computer systems.

    Gee, shows how well people THINK eh?

    Just to say it one more time, MP3 has already
    shown itself to be the defacto standard. There
    is no disputing that. Companies can release all
    the different formats they want, but it is just
    TOO LATE for anyone to bother using them.

    Use MP3 or lose money. Thats the bottom line. Like it or leave it.

    See yah, RIAA, time to die.

  • At the end of the first paragraph it ascribes to RIAA attitude of "...my way or the highway." Of course, I read this as "RIAA's way or the information highway."

    Gee. Choose RIAA's way, or choose the way of the internet. Let me think about that...

    j
  • The world of the major labels is about to be wiped out by the mp3 supernova. When a group like TLC can sell 10 million albums, yet only be paid $250,000 EACH, and they have to file Chapter 11, there is something very very wrong with the business model.

  • Liked this quote (Score:4)

    by Analog ( 564 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @09:36AM (#1892072)
    The RIAA has made it clear that it's willing to fight for its interests in the courts. It has the money and the muscle to try to convince technology companies and Internet music vendors to see things its way.

    Considering that the only way this will work is if the 'technology companies' run out of money while fighting the suits, and considering where most of the money is these days (checked the market caps of the 'internet stocks' lately?), methinks the RIAA may be in for an unpleasant surprise. It's tough when you find out you're not the biggest kid on the block anymore.

  • Every good virgin snow white angel with a chastity belt can pick a lock by the end of the week. Can't stop pokin'!

    Even if they did make locks and all that bull. People would crack it just for fun! Nevermind no one would never use it in the first place. These idiots don't get it...

  • RIAA doesn't get it; And they never will. (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 14, 1999 @09:37AM (#1892074)

    Ahh, it's refreshing to see technology ridding the planet of a horrible evil. The record industry has had it too good for too long; They can see the end and they're trying their old tricks to put off the inevitable. I don't know who their technical consultants are, but they obviously don't have a f*cking clue what's going on.

    Reasons why the RIAA is toast, or, mp3 is dead, long live mp3!

    #1: It's the Recording Industry of AMERICA

    Last time I checked, there were a lot of other countries, with a lot of music besides the good 'old (free?) USofA. Mp3 lets me get music that never makes it to the border in conventional format. And there's lots of coutries that have a skeptical view of american politking.

    #2: Mp3 is Open. And out there. Too bad.

    I have source code to players and encoders. 'Nuff said. I'll give those up when you pry them from my cold dead hands. And, any EE worth his salt could hack together a DSP mp3 player in a few weeks with little or no problems. Patents or no patents, mpeg technology is here to stay.

    #3: You have to listen to the music

    Unfortunately for the RIAA, you have to be able to listen to the music at some point. This is the downfall of all secure executable/information copyright enforcing schemes. At some point the information is viewable, and you can always resample it. Decks with phiber outs and pure digital signals make this an almost lossless proposition. Take your music and resample it to mp3.

    Does anyone remember DIVX? If the consumer doesn't want it, then it ain't gunna happen. This is a demand economy!

    "Do it, do it now kids! Stick it to the Man!" -- Duckman

  • A "kill switch" that would disable my ability to play mp3's? Now that seems criminal to me. My opinion is that labels that don't embrace and actually use mp3's (ala atmoic pop or good noise) as a distribution medium will fold within a decade. I mean, c'mon, remember when dat decks came out? All of the sudden recording companies were getting a cut of of sales to make up for 'lost mechanical royalties', and it didn't even make it into home use hardly at all. That sure as hell isn't the case here! Well, anyway, I won't - and I don't know anybody who would - use a technology that renders mp3 unusable. What greedy, fearful, bastards.
  • Ok. RIAA don't want mp3 to be used by record labels...I get that part...
    But, How the hell they are going to stop me from encoding my CD's and play them in my car-office-bathroom-house?
    mp3 is popular because people use it, not record labels...so why all this news about "killing mp3"???????

    Please RIAA explain me this!
  • According to a source who attended the SDMI meeting last week, participants discovered that the Internet and music industries have precious little in common.

    For the RIAA it's all about controlling(read: limiting) content and distribution channels. They still seem to think that they are in a position of authority. They aren't. In my random searches for music I have *yet* to not be able to find a particular song in MP3, and I don't even have to look on IRC.
    The RIAA is setting itself up for a major failure by trying to fight the juggernaut that is consumer will. What happens when you put customers in the lowest priority? Maybe some MBAs out there can answer that one...

    Even M$ with all their cash and tech. knowledge has had extreme difficulty controlling Internet formats, and the RIAA thinks, without extensive tech. experience, that it can control digital music? They are so severely out of touch with reality it's kind of scary, yet these are the folks that have controlled music for 30+ years!

    I could go on, but the choir needs to get back to singin ;^)



  • I won't download anything that "breaks" my ability to download MP3s, so that just means I won't buy their SDMI music. Simple enough?

    Also, how is this signal from the RIAA going to come? I honestly wonder what they mean by that. You have to connect to their server to play the format? By the looks of what they are suggesting, they don't understand what they are doing.

    Oh well, once someone actually hits the big time because of MP3, then we will have SDMI music.

  • Re:Correct me if I'm wrong... (Score:3)

    by acb ( 2797 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @09:40AM (#1892079) Homepage
    Audio out is analogue, which is lossy. Once the signal hits the audio out socket, it has already been through the D-A converter. You can redigitise it, but that introduces degradation. After a few generations, the results will be as dismal as a Nth-generation bootleg tape.

    Under Linux, it is possible to hack the kernel to redirect /dev/dsp to an arbitrary file, in effect providing a software-based digital audio out. Someone has written something like that for Windows as well, though since Windows is a closed specification, MS could hobble it easily.

    Wonder whether the RIAA will push for a ban on music decoding software for open-source OSes as well; it seems logically consistent with their attitude.


  • Right on, that about sums it up perfectly.


    You should mail that to the RIAA.

  • Hmm. what will prevent Joe Average from ripping songs off his CDs? nothing. But... if the next standard that comes out (I know this is being tossed around for DVD-audio) uses an excrypted format, then when Joe Average tries to buy the DVD and encode it, he'll just hear a bunch of garbage, because the music cannot be listened to without the key. I'm pretty sure that several companies are working on a standard for this. I know that InterTrust is working on it, because my neighbor across the street works for them. Check out their site [intertrust.com]. It might answer a few questions for you.

  • Wait a minute (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I got to ask Strauss Zelnick President of BMG Entertainment about the SDMI format and he said and I freaking quote:


    "The SDMI format will be open, the RIAA will not own the format."

  • The upshot is that the RIAA is still under the delusion that they can dictate format to the market, when the marketplace has always dictated media choice anyway. Just another example that the RIAA is about to join fossilized remains of T Rex's in the museum of history, and the part that fossilized first is from the neck up.
  • If there's a kill-switch in the hardware you use to play the both mp3 and SDMI encoded music on, the RIAA, as part of licensing the SDMI technology to the hw manufacturer, would also have a kill switch implemented in the hw. Once this kill switch was used, you'd no longer be able to use mp3's.

  • oh, recall the days when companies like AT&T would sue to keep their business, rather than innovating. recall the days before the information super highway. whatever. this is just silly. there is no way in HELL any institution can stop the mass printing of CDs, and change formats, and no way in hell anyone in RIAA would ever want to. why's this important? b/c even if they DO kill hardware MP3 players, as long as there are rippers and players (which are legal), the problem is going to exist. people going out and buying portable MP3 players are probably the smallest part of the "revolution" in my opinion. the real problem (or percieved problem) to the RIAA are the people who sit at their computers and leech tons of MP3s illegally, not average joe consumer who probably doesn't even know where to look for such stuff.

    oh, and then what, though? they make encoders and players illegal? big deal. they exist, they will continue to exist. the only thing the RIAA is doing is making people who LIKE blatantly ripping off RIAA member companies more pissed.... personally, if the RIAA keeps this up, i wouldn't be surprised to see an underground MP3 ripping off community (possibly growing out of the existing online communities) coming out and doing blatant stuff in retaliation.... that's just the kind of generation we are, i suppose... just my thoughts. they're not coherant (i just took my last exam for college.... EVER), but all the basic points are there. aaah.... sleep.....

  • Perhaps, but first you have get this new standard accepted. If noone buys into it, it dies. Remember laser disc? And it's not necessarily going to come down to quality either, again I point to laser disc. Audio and visual quality of laser discs kicks VHS's butt, but how many people do you know who actually have a player, and can find media for it?
  • Don't mind RIAA, they're just drunk.

    The only way I can think that they could come up with the "There Can Be Only one" idea would be if:

    - Everybody in the corporate foodchain is a tyrannical money monger
    - Nobody with any pull in RIAA knows what the real world is like
    - They're all drunk. Really.

  • I wonder how many of the OEM's would ``accidentally'' have buggy implementations of the RIAA's kill switch? Of course the buggyswitch would be in the hardware (probably at the RIAA's insistence), so a software upgrade wouldn't fix it. ;-)

  • I don't see how such a "lock" could be imposed, the worst thing that would happen is you would convert the sound to analog and mp3 it from there. Furthermore, one can ALWAYS just make a disk image which would hold a lot better quality then an mp3 (although much larger). I don't think the music industry has any idea about music, let alone computers. You can't ban music, such as you can't ban video.. if you can see it or hear it, it can always be copied. And yes, the quality can change due to how the media is recorded; however, "life always finds a way" - Ian (Jurassic Park)

    Piracy cannot be banned, people cannot be contained, and Microsoft cannot be trusted. This debate is as rediculous as saying that you don't want anyone to copy your email so you encrypt it, and then give everyone a copy of the decryption key.. and think you are protected because it was encrypted; however, this will not stop anyone from distributing the decrypted message which was your original intention.

    This article from the RIAA is an idle-threat to mp3 as Microsoft is to open source.
  • I'm old enough to remember when Dolby-B noise reduction was introduced.

    The RIAA went bonkers.

    "Cassettes recorded with Dolby-B will allow people to pirate and trade albums! This will be the end of the music industry."

    They tried to outlaw Dolby-B.

    Now cassettes encoded with Dolby-B are the music industry's bread and butter.

    When television came out, the movie studios went bat s**t. "No one will go to the movies anymore!"

    Didn't happen.

    When VHS tape came out, the Movie studios went bat s**t again. "This will kill the movie industry."

    Now the sales and rental of VHS movies represents the most profitable aspect of movie making.

    When DAT came out. RIAA went nuts again. "This will kill the recording industry."

    Didn't happen.

    You'd think by now the people in the entertainment industry would have learned not to be so damn PARANOID!

    Why can't they embrace MP3 like they eventually did the cassette? THEY can distribute their product in MP3 format!

    New consumer recording formats and distribution means have NEVER measurably hurt the recording industry! Why can't they look at their own history and learn from it?
  • Or if you did, you'd use it in a heterogenous system that is comprised of the SDMI-enabled util/hardware, an mp3-enabled util/hardware and a bridge between the two.

  • Not to mention that no one will want this new format.

    They may not be able to make you want it, but there are ways to make you "choose" it anyway. Right now, the major format is PCM (audio CDs). All they have to do is sell SDMI music at $1 per song, and raise the price of a 10-song CD to $40. Which will you buy then?

    And suppose you stubbornly buy the $40 CD. How are you going to feel when you find out that it comes with a "free" license for the SDMI music? You'll have bought into it anyway... You'll ultimately be faced with a choice of either giving up and letting RIAA win, or pirating.

    I know it seems silly to take RIAA's threats seriously, since it's so easy to have faith in the market. Just remember that these people can buy your elected representatives and pass all kinds of weird legislation (oops, too late, they already did, last year) to pretty much legally force you to do things their way.

    By all means, dance on their graves when it's over, but until then, watch out. I think the best thing to do right now is encourage good musicians to examine the possibilities of using formats like MP3 to bypass the labels/RIAA altogether, in order to increase their own profits. If the "prime movers" of music stop giving power to RIAA, then we'll win.

  • I've alreadyt thought of two potential ways of getting around this, and it's taken me less than ten minutes!

  • I personally own a record company and guess what, we want you to pirate our stuff. The theory behind that is band exposure.. So "Mr. Big Man" can =X my white butt.
    To check out my label (which is working on the bands page ) click there --> Jackleg Inc. Records and Zine. [dhs.org]
    "Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
  • yeah, and just like you "can't" copy VHS tapes
  • I never thought they'd go through with that. If anything, it has the potential to make things worse; a proprietary format means new tech, which costs money, which means the consumer pays in the end. And that means more people go to MP3.
  • from the article:
    "Steve Grady, vice president of marketing at MP3 retailer GoodNoise [goodnoise.com], said that if the record labels don't put the consumer first in their architecture plans, piracy will only increase and the industry could ultimately lose out on new business opportunities on the Web."

    What's this? An industry honcho with the consumer in mind? The RIAA and the companies it represents should take a lesson from this man.

    I'm not worried. If people want MP3, it will always be around. Plain and simple. As soon as SDMI starts becoming popular w/ the record companies (and it will) i'll find a cracked player (cracked not to take away from the developer(s), just not to fund the RIAA) and record the SDMI files to wav w/ total recorder [highcriteria.com] as they pass through my soundcard. After all, that's how i've been converting the liquid audio [liquidaudio.com] and a2b [a2bmusic.com] "secure" foramts all along.
  • whoops, sorry bout the double post...thought i hit preview (d'oh!). it was unformatted anyway.
  • Posted by el_steevo:

    SDMI is close to DMSI, (Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc)... I wonder if they chose that acronym to cheese off our friends in San Jose?
  • I see one major flaw in the RIAA thinking.

    As long as they produce physical media, we will continue to make mp3s. They can put out their new copywrited formats all they want, but the deal is, WE are the people make the audio files, not them. WE are the ones distributing them on the net, not them, and WE will continue to produce mp3s until the point in time in which you can no longer purchase a physical CD.

    Dont fret, mp3s arent going anywhere.


  • oh god, this is getting idiotic. the only reason RIAA even cares is because if music is "open sourced", then there will be no need for RIAA in the first place. they are fighting for their own survival. giving a new music format would allow the RIAA guys to keep their jobs. just more crap for us consumers to deal with. next they'll want to put their own advertisement in the end of the song.


    so stupid. same old fights, same stupid results. the consumer will get shafted.

  • Look at Caldera vs. Microsoft. The stuff Microsoft did was just as shady (and as subject to litigation) as this. Caldera may end up getting some hefty damages back, but it's too late: Microsoft controls the market.

    If RIAA can poison the environment for MP3 long enough to create a market for their format, then it won't matter if they get slapped with fines, class action lawsuits, etc. They'll pay out a few million dollars and do it with a smile. By then, Joe Schmoe (the same guy who bought Windoze in 1990) will have a collection of SDMI music, and will only buy players than can play it, whether those players can do MP3 or not. He'll outnumber clueful people 100-to-1, and his purchasing decisions, combined with economy of scale, will decide what products are available. Sound familiar?

    • The whole things smacks of illegality: 'kill signal' sounds like a virus. Plus the antitrust aspect is fairly obvious.
    • MP3 already has market and mind share. Anything hoping to beat it will have to be radically better in terms of compression ratio and quality.
    • RIAA is a fossil, totally out of touch with the Internet and the consumer.
    • Someone will hack their 'secure' format within a few months at most.
    • Copy protection doesn't matter anyway, people can still rip CDs.
    Another thing to think about, it took years to come up with MP3. It literally took hundresds of Ph.D. Person-Years to come up with it! RIAA thinks they can come up with something better by next year, but they are wrong. Add to this the infighting and jockeying for position among the many players, and I predict another two years, at least of lead-time for MP3.
  • >All they have to do is sell SDMI music at $1 per song, and raise the price of a 10-song CD to $40. Which will you buy then?

    I'd buy used CDs. Those with less morals will download MP3s off of USENET or use CD recorders. Heck, I've got enough of a music collection now I can live with just hearing new songs on the radio. Sometimes you have to pay attention to the customer...

    Or maybe I'd buy an older PC, and put SDMI on that. And keep MP3 on my other machine.
  • #1: It's the Recording Industry of AMERICA

    Last time I checked, there were a lot of other countries, with a lot of music besides the good 'old (free?) USofA. Mp3 lets me get music that never makes it to the border in conventional format. And there's lots of coutries that have a skeptical view of american politking.

    Outstanding point. Thank you.

  • Where do you suppose the RIAA thinks that people are getting the digital audio to encode as MP3s now? Even if they get their new standard off the ground there is nothing to stop people from ripping CDs to turn into MP3s. This whole scheme of theirs is doomed unless they quit distributing music on CDs...not a very likely possiblity!
  • Unfortunately, DAT ended up dead in the water. It survives mostly as a data storage medium for computer. Geez, even MiniDisc sees more of its intended use than DAT (radio stations love them minidiscs).
  • Hey man, don't be slagging Marc Bolan...
  • The way I understand it (and this is just what I picked up from the article), this kill switch is embedded in SDMI software/hardware (ie portable music players); it is NOT some magical switch that prevents you from playing MP3's on your computer permanently.

    Instead, the hardware manufacturers are allowed to sell players for MP3 with the option of SDMI. As SDMI actually becomes a viable standard, the RIAA says "okay, now hit the switch" and now your portable MP3 player no longer plays MP3s (or at least the ones sold after that date).
  • It will take guerilla person to person marketing to inform the consumer that these proprietary standards are an attempt to stick their hand in everyones pocket. If no one buys the technology, it could backfire with a dozens of players on the market with no one buying them. Think of all the jack they could lose while everyone is cutting their own MP3s.




  • Cretaceous-Tertiary Event (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Tsk tsk tsk. Poor old big corporations don't understand what is happening to the world's infosphere and will die of asphyxiation while the rest of us breathe easier. (if only we could say that about the atmosphere!)

    The record companies are accustomed to total control of the content base. They are a small cadre and thus are a controlling cartel. Anything that threatens their control threatens their whole basis of existence.

    If artists could promote directly, or form cooperatives, or deal with a wider field without the controlling giants, we'd have a freer music scene and the only losers will be the corporate middlemen who pimp the artists and take their 90% from the Johns. Good riddance to them. Let them fossilize under the KT boundary.

    -MikeR-

    "...accountants instead of music fans
    call all the shots at giant record companies now
    the lowest common denominator rules."
    ---Jello Biafra


  • I can see it all now, all music labels under the RIAA are forced to distribute all thier future music in SDMI format. Noone buys SDMI payers/encoders so therefor noone buys any music put out by the major record companies.. By noone of course I mean geeks cause the plbs and teenybopers are gonna buy the music they want no matter what the price of freedom is. But we have effectivly put up a very good campain and almost virtualy distroyed DIVX a technology that without our constant battles the pbls would have bought into in mass. Can we do it again.. and this time maby the RIAA will do down with it!.. Can we only hope.. Though you realise we are going to have to responsibility of replacing the RIAA and supporting the music artist would could be hurt by this action if we arn't careful.
  • Competing music compression formats which acheive 10:1 reduction in file size will be irrelevant when the average user has 10x more network bandwidth and storage devices with 10x the density.

    So in 5 years when it is feasible to FTP entire albums of uncompressed 44.1kHz 16 bit stereo sound to your home PC and write them onto flash cards which hold 2-10G of data, who will care if the RIAA supports a proprietary compression format for music distribution?

  • Stealing (Score:3)

    by Lionette ( 33558 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @10:20AM (#1892130) Homepage
    So when are we going to set up a site where the musicians recording the music circulating freely on the 'Net get compensated? Sure, MP3 is cool... what's not cool is that between the RIAA not allowing artists to release tracks as MP3s (and thus get paid for them) and people pirating music all over the place, there's no way for the artist to get their money.

    Wouldn't it be cool if we could somehow refund the artists without having to pay through the RIAA? Any ideas, people? Come on. Open standards might be cool, but cheating musicians out of their reward isn't.

  • Yah, but the guy was talking about mp3 playing
    _software_.. If the RIAA gets away with crippling hardware, we hackers will simply get around it as we always have, though it might not be as shiny or pretty as the Lyra [theregister.co.uk]...
  • and don't forget, they had to pay for their video, pay for the studio time, pay for the promotional stuff, etc. etc. then the lawyers, managers, etc. etc....

    They probably were lucky to net $80k each from that album.

    Unless you've already twisted the industry's arm (like REM, Led Zep in its day, etc) or gone and started your own industry (TAFKAP, Fripp), you are going to be royally shafted by record companies....
  • ...and mount a "grassroots" campain similar in tone as DVD enthusiasts did when DIVX came out. If and when this SDMI pans out, we need to constantly bombard the media/reviewers/retailers with the facts about the two formats and make sure they understand how much SDMI hurts consumers while MP3 is what benefits consumers.

    Because it is ultimately consumers that will decided the outcome of this "war". If we allow the RIAA to convince consumers that SDMI is right for them, then MP3 will be marginalized (note nothing can _Completely_ destroy a format).

    DVD should be hailed as the biggest success that consumers have had over corporations trying to tell them what they want. We should use the pro-DVD/anti-DIVX campain as a model for our own.
  • That's okay, let Sony and the others follow the RIAA's lead. Someone will just come up with a "Open Source" player, and make more money off it than all of the SDMI players.
    -G


    +--
    Given infinite time, 100 monkeys could type out the complete works of Shakespeare.
  • >They may not be able to make you want it, but there are ways to make you "choose" it anyway. Right now, the major format is PCM (audio
    >CDs). All they have to do is sell SDMI music at $1 per song, and raise the price of a 10-song CD to $40. Which will you buy then

    Heh. If they do, I'll simply use cash to buy a cd, or flash card, or whatever full of SDMI music, use one of the programs that nabs the digital audio before it becomes analog, make MP3s of it, and tada...

    And if it's digitally watermarked and survives the MP3ing? Big whoop. They'll know an anonymous customer bought it at a certain store.

    I will NEVER give my name when buying a product unless having to product tracked is in MY best interests.

    If they try this, they'll just piss us off in a big way, and we'll pirate to hurt them, instead of to save money. If everyone sold collection CDs with 12h of music on them for $2 at bus stations, the industry would feel it in a hurry. If they make us really mad, they'll pay.

    Not to mention that if I ever use a software product that intentionally disables another part of my computer in a provable way (they announce it as part of the strategy) then I'll sue them, and win. I use MP3s for distributing audio help files to my clients for the software I write. If they killed MP3s on my system, I'd have a nice lawsuit on the order of $50k. And if everyone jumped on...


    On second thought, I really hope they are this stupid. They'll be broke in a year, and all the execs who okayed the sabotage decision will be in jail, or personally liable for the damages. (While you aren't normally liable for the debts of your company, if you break the law, acting for your company, you and the company are jointly liable.)

  • It smells like an antitrust violation. RIAA is an association representing an entire industry; if they collude to exclude a competitor from the market, it sounds like a group boycott to me.


    If they go forward with this, or any evidence of this is available, there is every reason to organize a private suit against these guys, let them publicly announce first.

  • I think you hit the nail on the head right there. I could understand if we were all upset about the way RIAA treats the musicians, and is getting ever more cautious about mp3's... But what we need to do is give the artist more freedom. Let's face it, yea, we all have an mp3 collection, and I'm sure most of those could be considered illegal. Let's not forget that even though bands like playing music, sometimes they might want to eat.... (that's why I'm not in a band.. yet.....)
  • The kill switch (which some have called a simple virus) will be embedded in songs so that playing can only occur a finite number of times. Does this playing mean digital recordings of the said tracks with said encoding or does this mean overall playings of tracks with said encoding?

    I ask this since I can fire up something like sound recorder in windoze and hit the record button pretty much simultaneous to playing the music. Then I get to encode it with my mp3 encoder and voila, new mp3. Sure it's a long process, but it escapes the evil therein. (if you don't count the fact that I used an ms product as my example.)

    Will this destroy my tapes that I make to listen in my car oh great RIAA gods?

    Sounds like a bunch of smack talk that hasn't been fully engineered.

  • There was a link a few weeks ago to a point by point comparison of DVD and DIVX. I see MP3 vs. SMDI as pretty much the same thing.

    Neither DVD or MP3 have any "opinion" about copying policy. They're just data plain and simple and people seem to have accepted DVD. DIVX and SMDI are both designed to honor some restriction on usage that prevents things from going on that the studios and record companies can't make money on. People seem to have rejected DIVX for this reason.

    It comes down to something really simple. People will not accept restrictions when a free and easy alternative is available. The new format will fail.
  • Play a MP3 through whatever system you are using resample it onto anything else you have... what will it sound like? Great right!

    Now recompress it to add it to your collection... what does it sound like now?

    Other than that... right on, bud!
  • OK, so the Y2K thing was a little *cough* oversight. Now, they want to disable compressed audio transmissions on purpose? Sounds criminal to me. What a bunch of thugs!

    Oh well, a certain evil operating system pretty much self destructs and disables itself after about a year and a half anyway, so why not your audio/visuals too? Seems like the RIAA wants to become the software dictators for the 21st century.
  • exactly!!!

    the best music will be free!

    musicians who still want to make money will
    have to go on tour and/or license their music.

    that's the whole point...

  • This is no different than when software used to be copy protected. People cracked it, copied it, pirated it. People didn't buy copy protected software in enough numbers that the manufacturers eventually gave up. This will not work. I can imagine that not even all the record companies will go along with the RIAA if they try to artifically kill unencrypted CDs. As long as those exist, MP3's will be out there. This is worse than a waste of time, the RIAA could end up encouraging pirating rather than discouraging it.

  • Why is it that RIAA is completely in a world of it's own when it comes to what they can do legaly.

    Let's see.. is there any competition in the music industry? If any other industry bigwigs got together and said for instance let's hike up our ticket porices up 20%.. the government would be on their asses on an instant.

    To me, it seems like the RIAA is doing price fixing. And using anti-competative/monopolistic practices to beat up on the 'lill guy. And the government fopr some reason just let's them.. even though it would stomp on anyone else trying to do the same. Why?

    Ex-Nt-User

  • >The kicker -- require software and hardware companies that license the format to include some sort of kill switch which would prohibit the user from downloading and playing mp3 files. " I'd insert a snide comment here, but...I don't think I need to.

    This is illegal in three different ways, if indeed, it is as stated.

    1: If implemented in software, and it affects other programs ability to play MP3's, then the consumers can sue them for damages. What if I use MP3's as part of my job or work? Hmmmm?

    2: Same as above, the makers of programs that play MP3's can nail them for anti-competitive practices.

    3: If implemented in hardware, most hardware manufacturers (talking about, say.. soundcards, for example) would nail them for anti-competitive practices.

    Basically, it won't happen.

  • Well, Macrovision level 2 can pretty well hose the VCR-to-VCR transfer. Most DVD-MPEG cards for PCs Macrovision-2 their output too, to stop you from videotaping the output. (The macrovision signal doesn't confuse TVs too much, but it confuses the hell out of VCRs. It does make the brightness screwey sometimes, though) It hoses the image completely. The solution is to buy a $100 "color corrector" which has the (unfortunate) side effect of removing the Macrovision protection--it's a decoder->framebuffer->encoder.
  • These clods are killing themselves. This is REALLY funny! The encryption guys there are pulling their chains. They KNOW this is all BS, but they smell money. The RIAA will pump in mega-bucks and get jack in return.

    Meanwhile, we will keep right on ripping and jamming.

    Before their new "standard" gets out of the lab, we will all have tiny, wearable PCs with standard sound chips. Who needs a proprietary player when your pocket PC does so much more?

  • New consumer recording formats and distribution means have NEVER measurably hurt the recording industry! Why can't they look at their own history and learn from it?

    They are not worried about piracy. Well, not much. MP3 presents a new threat that didn't exist in any of the examples that you mentioned.

    Cassettes, CDs, DATs... these are physical things. They were never a serious threat to labels, because a musician still needed someone to mass-copy the media and distribute it to brick and mortar stores.

    Formats like MP3 make the labels obsolete. That's why RIAA is doing this. You can bet your ass that the one most important feature of SDMI will be that it is not open. A musician will not be able to encode his or her music as SDMI unless they sign something and give up some of their rights or a percentage of the profit. If SDMI is open, then it is useless for RIAA (and possibly useful for everyone else).

  • From what I undestand, it looks like the RIAA has been thinking mostly of portable players in this manner, or standalone players, not computers. An example would be a Diamond Rio type device, that is designed to play the SDMI format, not a normal PC.

  • How much do they get per CD now? $1, $.50? I think I read that somewhere. Hell, if I like their tunes I would be willing to double that. It would be a bargain, the musicians would get more dough and the big labels could go to hell.

    Treat it like shareware. Make it good, don't try to make a mint on each sale and if people like it they will cough up a few bucks. If they don't, they are dicks.

  • If these wacko people finally do kill MP3 do they honestly think that this SDMI will stop us from ripping music. It will just takes us a couple more days to code something to get around it or turn it off ourselves. They can never stop the online music revolution.
  • Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:

    >>I don't know who their technical consultants are, but they obviously don't have a f*cking clue what's going on.

    Think about it from this perspective, if YOU were the one that the RIAA had contracted to save their butts at what $100, maybe $200 per hour would you work 8 hours on the problem and say "Sorry, you're fscked. Give up now." take your check and go home? Or would you think, "Hey this is a multi billion dollar industry, they'll pay me indefintely if they think that I can save them." and say "Yes Mr. Schmuckateli I think I have a solution in mind for your 'little' problem." and milk them for every cent you can get?

    The consultants that they've hired should understand how things work on the internet. It's the company executives who do not. They're the ones who think that the internet is like a power grid or the telephone system.

    With the type of people involved, the truth isn't what they want, they want near simple easy to understand answers. I had a client once who had to claim that the network at her school was infected with a virus in order to get administration to pay for a service call so that I could fix her broken computers. We said that it had to be some type of stealth virus because I couldn't find any traces of it. The suits don't care about reality, just their little piece of the pie.

    LK
  • If TLC sold 10 million albums and only got $250,000 per person then TLC is to blame. The music industry is just like any other business, you negotiate your best deal and live with it.

    Sure it may not be ethical, but the goal for any company is to make money, they will take advantage of you if you let them. That goes for any industry, not just the music biz.
  • Well sorta. When our speed is 10x and storage is 10x we don't want the data itself to be 10x... what a waist of highspeed connection and good storage. But I can bet you we would be using 1:8 compression of mp3 (or a different technology) which litterly sounds EXACTLY its almsot scary. 1:10 or less starts to sound pathedic.. so given our bandwidth (future tense) we would probably ignore it.. But given good compression technology we will us it

  • Re:This time, the threat is real (Score:3)

    by for(;;); ( 21766 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @11:14AM (#1892162)
    TV was a "free" version of the movies. Did it destroy the film industry? No -- it just changed the film industry. Instead of pushing double-features with newsreels and cartoons (providing evening-long entertainment that could be gotten from TV), it had to start pushing relatively short movies that attracted large audiences.

    That said, there's still a need for major labels, and will always be. If I'm a musician, I don't want to have to deal with setting up recording studio time, or merchandising, or setting up promotions, or shooting music videos, or all that other crap. I want to have somebody do all that stuff *for* me, to buy me coke, and give me a limo, and hand me empty whiskey bottles to hurl at my fellow band members.

    Plus, people are still going to buy records, just as they buy software CD-ROMs today. Who wants to sit and download the white album? People thought the Internet would make books obselete, and that hasn't happened. Physical media is just too damn convenient.
  • With mp3, we're negotiating the best deal ever.

  • God Bless America.
  • Any number of tricks could get around a problem like this, for instance lightweight encryption (minimal size increse etc..)would make an mp3 unrecognizable to any program looking to prevent it from being blocked by, say... Netscape or Windows2000, and a nicely modular mp3 player like winamp would easily pick up the ability to play the file.

    Of course I dont see consumers letting this happen to begin with..
  • A friend just pointed this out in email... MP3 singles could serve much the same function for indie musicians that the radio does now. Remember, radio is largely promotional advertising for the record industry. They encourage radio stations to play singles so people will go buy CDs. Of course, this only benefits those lucky artists and pseudo-artists who get heavy label promotion. But for those who don't get promoted, buying a CD without hearing any of it first is a bit of a gamble for the consumer. MP3 changes that, giving the indie musicians a way for consumers to check it out at their leisure before committing to a purchase. And of course, the CDs can be purchased online, away from the brick-and-mortar selection-limiting mechanism known as record stores...
  • an interesting point,and it probably sums up why the whole "open source" movement is important...
  • After the movie industry did its ever loving best to shut down the Betamax machine, taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court, no less, what happened?

    Losers, losers, losers.

    The Supreme Court made clear than unless Sony was actually inducing people to pirate videotapes, there could be liability only if the apparatus had no lawful noninfringing use. Since the Court found that using a VCR for time-shifting of broadcast television would constitute fair use, this meant that a customer COULD be making lawful use of the VCR, and hence there was no liability.

    [Deep irony, of course, is that SONY couldn't manage to persuade the world to accept a seriously closed format, even though the alternative was technically inferior in many respects. At the end of the day, SONY owned 100% of nothing, and litigated the film industry into what was probably the most profitable legal result for a loser in history.]

    It seems apparent that opportunities for non-infringing use of MP3 format abound.

    Accordingly, what matter of this supposed "willing[ness] to fight for [RIAA's] interests in the courts[?] It has the money and the muscle to try to convince technology companies and Internet music vendors to see things its way."

    How? Sue who? For what? In the face of blatant Supreme Court authority? Fine. Time will put that threat to bed, although someone will have to suffer for awhile, with a probable award of attorney fees at the end of the day for a prevailing defendant.

    Boycotting the format? Well, for that to work, they'll have to accomplish what even OPEC could not -- a boycott on a prodigious format means ceding a potent market, and hence, as soon as one company decides to make a buck that way, it will take balls of steel but a mind of mush to ignore it. Record industry is no longer a lock -- alternative labels do and can "make it." Can RIAA's boycot?

    RIAA may be a formidable force. However, a free market is a far more formidable force. The natural and inexorable flow of capital flows harder and more forcefully than any dinosaur trying to protect a dying turf. Witness: OPEC.

    At the end of the day, RIAA's best hope is to find a magical alternative format that people will *WANT* to use. Anything less will not be enough. Any other strategy is losing.
  • This is pretty much the typical kind of thing I would expect from the RIAA. They do a number of other things, because they "represent the interests of the musician."

    If you run a tavern, or a bowling alley or supermarket, or really just about any public space, and you provide background music (records, or Muzak or even the radio) you pay a bill to the RIAA that provides "royalties" to the poor starving musicians.

    The fact that the "poor starving musicians" are basically locked into an RIAA prision (the Music Biz as it exists in todays market) means nothing to these people.

    The RIAA has been a monopoly for ages. It's a protection racket. And they're VERY VERY astute where it comes to the law, and lobbying.

    Needless to say they are threatened by MP3, as has already been said in this thread, they've historically challanged anything that threatens to disturb the status quo that they own.
  • Nobody just seem to concentrate on the main geeky idea of this mp3 kill thing. Like, how could something block me from receiving a stream of bits from a file, decoding them using a special algorhytm into PCM data which is being sent to the soundcard. Would all soundcards from now require a special key-protected system for sound output?! That sounds even less possible than Intel blocking me from running
    Linux software on a Pentium machine. Next idea - yes, I know - it gonna be a special virus-like debugging tracer which gonna look out for instructions which could possibly make up an mp3 decoder. Cute idea coders, eh?

    Anyway, if someone thinks I didn't quite get the point, by all means, tell me, I'd really like to know what those paranoids really have in mind. I think it gonna be funny :)

  • Basicly, the RIAA can't conceive of living in a world where the customers are expected to be honorable and pony up a few dollars for the support of their fave bands. Wildly amusing, since a number of bands have more from merchandising than selling CD's.

    But what do you expect from a business segment that is basicly dishonorable. Just ask Robert Fripp or Frank Zappa's family.

  • Yep, convert all music they release with the new locked format to MP3 and spread them from thousands of MP3 pirate websites around the globe. Fuck off RIAA you cant do a shit about MP3

    - nr

  • The RIAA does NOT care about the 1% of the population who read Slashdot, use Linux, have the technological background to thwart copy protection, the time to surf the net for mp3's, use crappy handheld one hour portable players, etc.

    They are aiming the initiative at the GENERAL population who would just like to go to CD-NOW and purchase a $1 single and download it to their computer.

    Also, even though MP3's are popular now, people would much rather use a format that is secure, cost effective, and easy to use. I'm sorry, but the MP3 format does not fit the bill. People still buy software even with WAREZ pervasive on the Internet because they are honest and don't want to break the law. I guarantee people will pay a lousy dollar or two for a song if it means they can easily download it and play it hassle free.

    Lastly, this hardware deactivation feature does not mean that it will deactivate current mp3 players on your computer, only those players that support the new format.

    When the general computer using population sees an add for $1 singles, they will go to their favorite online music store, download an SDMI enabled player, and the RIAA will have another user. The fact that it will initially support MP3's will simply be another feature for these users, but eventually the users will be weaned off of mp3's because SDMI songs will be so easy to buy, play and find.

    MP3's are popular now because there is no alternative. People weigh buying a $15 CD with downloading a pirated song and right now, Pirating songs wins a lot of the time. People don't like breaking the law if they don't have to. Once the record labels allow people to make their own customized CD's, it will immediately launch whatever format they support to the forefront. MP3's will be MAINLY relegated to pirating users and for people's own personal use. The rest of us, will start purchasing SMDI collections because our time is worth more than a dollar or two.
  • It would be very difficult indeed for the open source community to make a free alternative to MP3, unencumbered by copyright. Once the algorithm is developed, coding software to implement it is easy. But there are very few people in the world with enough time, money and knowhow to design a completely new audio encoding technology.

    Wasn't there an article about this linked to on /. quit recently?

    Gerv
  • The RIAA does NOT care about the 1% of the population who read Slashdot, use Linux, have the technological background to thwart copy protection, the time to surf the net for mp3's, use crappy handheld one hour portable players, etc.

    They are aiming the initiative at the GENERAL population who would just like to go to CD-NOW and purchase a $1 single and download it to their computer.

    Also, even though MP3's are popular now, people would much rather use a format that is secure, cost effective, and easy to use. I'm sorry, but the MP3 format does not fit the bill. People still buy software even with WAREZ pervasive on the Internet because they are honest and don't want to break the law. I guarantee people will pay a lousy dollar or two for a song if it means they can easily download it and play it hassle free.

    Lastly, this hardware deactivation feature does not mean that it will deactivate current mp3 players on your computer, only those players that support the new format.

    When the general computer using population sees an add for $1 singles, they will go to their favorite online music store, download an SDMI enabled player, and the RIAA will have another user. The fact that it will initially support MP3's will simply be another feature for these users, but eventually the users will be weaned off of mp3's because SDMI songs will be so easy to buy, play and find.

    MP3's are popular now because there is no alternative. People weigh buying a $15 CD with downloading a pirated song and right now, Pirating songs wins a lot of the time. People don't like breaking the law if they don't have to. Once the record labels allow people to make their own customized CD's, it will immediately launch whatever format they support to the forefront. MP3's will be MAINLY relegated to pirating users and for people's own personal use. The rest of us, will start purchasing SMDI collections because our time is worth more than a dollar or two.

    FLAME ON!

  • If TLC sold 10 million albums and only got $250,000 per person then TLC is to blame.

    Unless, of course, that was the best deal being offered. That's the crux of the MP3 vs. RIAA war. RIAA hates MP3 because it offers a new route from the musician to the listener, one that so far, gives each a better deal. For the listener, do I want to pay 8.99 (or so) to MP3.com for new music, or 16.99 to an RIAA member. For the musician, do I want 50% of 8.99 with MP3.com, or 10% of 16.99 from RIAA?

  • Technical details (Score:3)

    by heretic ( 5829 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @05:27PM (#1892228)

    Also, from a technical standpoint, how do they propose to do this? Release a new version of Windows that automatically searches and destroys non-RIAA music files on bootup? FTP clients that refuse to download *.mp3? I think not.

    Technically, this could be quite easy to do. Basically, the SDMI software would hook in at the object broker level and would register itself as the handler for MP3 objects. Under Windows the standard object broker is Microsoft's COM, and since the Win 9X version doesn't implement any form of security, it's quite easy for any piece of software to invisibly take over any object type and also for it to check if it's the registered handler for any type. I don't know if there's a formal name for the object broker on Macintosh but applications can register themselves as creators and editors for certain types. Under Linux, the nascent standard is CORBA (used by GNOME; I'm not sure about KDE or Netscape). While it would be easy under Linux to fool the SDMI software, I'm sure the RIAA can live without SDMI support for Linux.

    Anyway, the SDMI software would check to make sure it owns the MP3 type whenever it's invoked and would refuse to launch if this condition were not met. It could also possibly arrange for some sort of notification if other software tried to register itself as the handler for MP3. Under Windows, this would be possible by sitting on top of the OLE DLL's, or Microsoft could quietly slipstream such behavior into their object broker.

    While one could still have MP3 content on one's system, it would effectively be useless for the average Joe who's used to clicking and pointing at files. It would also render useless MP3 as a streaming format. I'm sure the average Slashdot user will have no problems in circumventing these mechanisms, but that's not whom the RIAA is concerned with.

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