DRM Technology To Be Added To MP3 Format 515
Bob Zer Fish writes "Cnet News.com has a leading story saying that the venerable MP3 music format is getting a makeover aimed at blocking unauthorized copying. Thomson and Fraunhofer, the companies that license and own the patents behind the MP3 digital music technology, are in the midst of creating a new digital rights management add-on. Of course, there are current standards, but most are incompatible."
An anonymous reader points to this brief mention as well.
So What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So What? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Time for oggasm (Score:5, Informative)
More insidious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More insidious (Score:5, Funny)
In AD 2101... (Score:5, Funny)
Mechanic: Someone set up us the update
Operator: We get DRM signal
Captain: What!
Operator: WMP turn on.
Captain: It's you!!
RIAA: How are you gentlemen!!
RIAA: All your MP3 are belong to us
Re:More insidious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More insidious (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason they get to decide is because of the DMCA, an act passed by our representatives in government. People that we elected. Is this situation a problem? Yes. Who's fault is it? Ours
The good thing is we can rectify this problem by being more responsible with our voting than we have been in the past. Look at Bush, only in the office in the first place because people felt picking the lesser of 2 evils (Gore would have been a nightmare)was prudent. Yet they had more than 2 choices. It's time to start looking at the ballot carefully folks.
All would-be presidents promise to fix problems. Noone has made it to office on the premise of changing things, just on the premise of fixing broken things. Half the time, what they promise to fix isn't broken and the change stands to make the candidate's current employer benefit greatly. The promise of fixing things is their trick, it makes you think of his intentions as opposed to his motivation. Although determing motivation is hard, there is a way to vote responsibly even not knowing this information.
Next time you go to the ballot, try thinking about things like a natural human being. Think about their negatives. All the advertising is meant to focus your mind on things the are a benefit to them when you see or hear their name (even accusationally slanderous ads, everyone knows who funded those ads--the opposing team). If everyone thought about the problems Bush would cause as opposed to the "good" things he'd do, he would have never been elected. Same thing could be said about Gore too, but if everyone had taken my advice 5 years ago they would have never been elected to candidacy either.
Re:More insidious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More insidious (Score:5, Informative)
And in the Copy Music options, the option to 'Copy protect music' is enabled by default for when ripping CDs.
So I guess by some extension you might think 'Copy protect MP3s' would get in there in a future version and be on by default.
But yeah. MS bashing again.
Re:More insidious (Score:5, Informative)
It is apparently enabled by default. I take great care to set up my mp3 tags "just so", using the excellent OSS MP3BookHelper.
I took my portable to work one day, and in order to charge the battery, I plugged it in as a USB drive and played my mp3s with Windows XP's Media Player.
Naturally, Media Player went out and started downloading supplementary information about the tracks being played, including a
But then, once Media Player discovered that there were MP3s on the drive, it insisted on iterating over the entire 60GB drive, in order to make a "convenient" database of my mp3s. Now, recall, the whole point of using Media Payer had been to recharge the portable's battery via USB. Iterating over the entire drive, of course, ran down the battery faster than the USB current could recharge it.
Then, to provide further "convenience", Media Player -- without so much as asking -- also rewrote the Mp3 tags I'd worked so hard to get the way I wanted them, adding proprietary Microsoft tags that didn't conform to the ID3 tag specification (the tag names were longer than four bytes, being prefixed with something like "MediaPlayer/"), and, worse (iirc) using its own judgment to rewrite some existing tags.
It's this sort of attitude on Microsoft's part -- that they are going to "help" me, whether I like it or not -- that more than anything else drives me away from using Microsoft products.
Re:More insidious (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? Why? FFS, WHY? And why act so surprised? You should know what WMP is like - if you didn't, you do now. Plus, there are well-known and superior alternatives [winamp.com] to WMP, so it cannot have been anything other than pure indolence that caused you to choose to allow WMP to screw up your files.
Re:So What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Several government organizations (supreme court!) use mp3 as one of the means with which they provide transcriptions.
"Their own music" (Score:5, Informative)
What about those that encode their own music... as in music they made.
If you record a song to which you do not own the copyright, you have recorded a cover song. If you distribute phonorecords (e.g. in MP3 format) of a cover song to the public, then you owe a royalty to the songwriter('s publisher). If you write your own song, record it, and distribute it, then you owe a royalty to the songwriter('s publisher) whose song you subconsciously copied. Subconscious copying is actionable infringement. Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, 420 F. Supp. 177 (SDNY 1976) [columbia.edu]. Or do you know of a foolproof way to write music while preventing oneself from accidentally copying a copyrighted work?
Several government organizations (supreme court!) use mp3 as one of the means with which they provide transcriptions.
Granted. Works of the United States government enter the public domain upon publication.
Who the hell modded this as "informative" ? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you write your own song, record it, and distribute it, then you owe a royalty to the songwriter('s publisher) whose song you subconsciously copied
WTF? Is this supposed to mean that no one can create anything new anymore, because it has "all been done before" ?
I know a large number of independant musicians and artists who would now like to beat your ass.
Maybe if you would get your ears out of the Top 40 drivel, you'd realize there's still a lot of original content being created daily.
Combinatorics says you'll end up in court (Score:5, Interesting)
Is this supposed to mean that no one can create anything new anymore, because it has "all been done before" ?
I once read a Slashdot journal entry that concluded that the chance of copying something copyrighted was so great that the risk of having to spend the funds to defend oneself in court wasn't worth it. The legal standard for copying is "access" (has the defendant heard the plaintiff's work even once?) plus "substantial similarity" (are they similar?); once Their Experts have presented strong evidence that the songs are in fact similar, you'll probably bankrupt yourself before you can get Your Experts to prove that you'd never heard the song.
Oh here it is [slashdot.org].
Re:"Their own music" (Score:5, Interesting)
Unacompanied Sonata [american-webshop.com]
(To avoid the inevetable off-topic moderation: this is a story about a young musical prodigy who is raised completely separated from any outside influences, so he can create "pure" music.)
DRM covers more than just copyright enforcement (Score:5, Informative)
There's no point during which they're copyrighted between fixation and publication which are distinct events though sometimes simultaneous.
It's true that unpublished works of the US government aren't subject to Title 17, but they're still potentially subject to 18 USC 798 [cornell.edu] until they're officially published, and some of the Defense FOIA regulations [cornell.edu] seem to translate "public domain" as "unclassified" rather than "uncopyrighted." I can easily imagine use of digital restrictions management systems to restrict access to works to promote national security rather than "the progress of science and useful arts."
Re:So What? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So What? (Score:3, Insightful)
But I doubt it. This is just going to be an obscure extension, like the encryption built into the .zip spec. There's no reason to adopt mp3+DRM. Other codecs already compress better, the only advantage of mp3 is that it's unrestricted and ubiquitous, and mp3+DRM is neither.
Re:So What? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So What? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So What? (Score:3, Insightful)
One word (Score:5, Insightful)
One word: patents. They can start enforcing them whenever they want. (See www.mp3licensing.com [mp3licensing.com].) Remember Unisys patent on LZW compression? All my old GIFs was working just fine too, which didn't mean I could keep using them. Fortunately, now with zlib, PNG and Ogg Vorbis, this is not an issue this time.
One word... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One word... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, yes. Yap yap. Ogg ogg. Zippity doo da and the yellow-motherfucking-brick road.
In case you haven't noticed, mp3 has made a successful push into the consumer market through concerted marketing efforts. Now, all the geeks can scream OGG! until they're blue in the face - hell, it's the first thing I thought of when I read this (followed closely by "why do I give a shit, I have plenty of mp3 encoding tools that will work just fine") - but nobody is listening.
Not enough people in the mainstream consumer market are going to adopt Ogg because nobody will support it and they don't know to ask for it. Unfortunately, unless you're preaching to them, you're preaching to the choir.
As usual, the ignorant consuming masses will continue to get raped on new technologies because they don't know any better and it's in various industries' best interests to keep them ignorant.
Yippee freakin' ki-yay for capitalism at its shit-eating modern-American finest.
The government really ought to just lock up the whole population for whatever reason happens to be most convenient, liquidate all their assets, and then turn them (the assets, not the populace) over to the various industry leaders. It's really the only thing that'll make them truly happy.
Whoa there! Somebody needs to calm down... (Score:3, Interesting)
We mention Ogg so much because we honestly believe (at least I think so...) it to be at least as good as MP3. What's wrong with us wanting someone "big" to try to put it in the mainstream.
So you can stop the vindi
Re:One word... (Score:4, Funny)
That, and because Ogg Vorbis is the worst fucking name of all time.
With apologies to Smuckers... (Score:4, Funny)
New advertising campaign:
With a name like "Ogg Vorbis", it's got to be good...
Why does everyone automatically yell OGG? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because some people sell music in a DRMed/encrypted version of some open format like MP3 or AAC doesn't automatically make that format evil.
Re:Why does everyone automatically yell OGG? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why does everyone automatically yell OGG? (Score:4, Insightful)
If some stupid media player company decides to make their player play only DRMed OGG files, nothing stops someone else from writing a player that doesn't from open specs. In the MP3 world, they could be sued into oblivion for doing so.
Needs a selling point (Score:5, Insightful)
But, until MP3 becomes annoying Joe User isn't going to care. There's really no way that companies are going to make it cost effective for the user to choose a more open format.
What companies fail to realize (or think the DMCA protects them) is that if you can see or listen to it, you can rip it to any format you want. And unless you're silly and start flaunting your rips for the whole world to see, there's nothing they can do about it. Who's to say that sound blasting from your stereo is comming from an "unauthorized" rip?
I say let them do their thing. The sooner they get going DRMing everything to death the sooner they go out of business under the weight of their own stupidity.
They should just stick to frying the big fish and not worry about how many fish are in the sea. If Joe User can rip a CD, oh well.
Ben
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hi Ogg (Score:5, Funny)
OK! But we have to walk to dinner. No car...
Re:Hi Ogg (Score:5, Funny)
Not a problem. The dinner, like the lunch, is free.
Try again, and fail again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Try again, and fail again. (Score:3, Funny)
This is what I think everytime I see some pro wrestling!
Re:Try again, and fail again. (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM's just supposed to keep honest people honest. Nobody expects it to pose much of a barrier to people who are hellbent on getting a free lunch.
Of course, if the implementation is too restrictive, or incredibly obnoxious (like how you have to sit through 10 minutes of commercials at the beginning of the Lost In Translation DVD), then it'll fail in the marketplace. That still doesn't mean all DRM is a wasted effort.
yours
Re:Try again, and fail again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummmm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ummmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Officer, arrest this man. He is obviously a user, and probably a dealer, of a terrorist-grade operating system weapon, capable of running audio playback software software (and undoubtedly encryption software too) not expressly authorized by the ministry of rights (MiniRight).
Yes, I know it sounds like a joke, but so did the DMCA before 1998.
Yet another reason (Score:3)
What? Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
It won't make any difference... (Score:3, Funny)
Of course (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Of course (Score:3, Funny)
Too bad, the cat's out of the bag already (Score:5, Insightful)
And I have a shiny sixpence in my pocket that says people will avoid the new "improved" version like the plague and stick to the older, user-friendly, non-RIAA-bullshit-encumbered version of the standard.
Re:Too bad, the cat's out of the bag already (Score:5, Insightful)
For every anti-DRM nerd out there, there are 50 (or more!) common people that just want to listen to music.
Re:Too bad, the cat's out of the bag already (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, I agree, people are mindless drones who'll buy players, then will buy music, then will play music and not think twice about it.
Then one day, they'll change their player and the new one won't play the 3 year old music files they had bought, because the "standard" has changed, and since the previous standard was not open, they'll have to buy their music *again*. And that is when the drones wisen up and begin to hate the music industry and stick to older, more "illegal", but open file formats.
Re:Too bad, the cat's out of the bag already (Score:3, Insightful)
For every anti-DRM nerd out there, there are 50 (or more!) common people that just want to listen to music
But the common people are the ones that use Kazaa and will totally miss the new mp3s because they won't be traded over p2p.Hrmm.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, someone will just find a way around this, there always is, nothing ever works long against these ingenius pirates.
Won't Make A Difference... (Score:5, Informative)
Honestly, has anyone even consciously *used* Fraunhofer's codec in the last four years for personal MP3 encoding?
Re:Won't Make A Difference... (Score:3, Interesting)
What, other than every single person who has made MP3s with iTunes or MusicMatch?
Cripes, man! Ever gone to a mainstream P2P network? LAME-encoded MP3s are the exceptions there, not the rule. I see far more Xing and FHG-encoded files on Kazaa and WinMX than LAME-encoded files.
not ogg again!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:not ogg again!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:not ogg again!! (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, you so don't understand the ogg philosophy.
See, ogg is the true geek music format: it is therefore *expected* not to be widely supported, otherwise it'd be taken over by big bad corporations, taken on by the music industry, and it'd become well-known and geeks couldn't go about preaching the good word on how good it is to the ordinary pleb.
Anyway, no need for ogg players, true geeks listen to Metallica just by reading the hex printout of the ogg files, printed with mpage -16.
Re:not ogg again!! (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're going to rip your music to an incompatible format with little to no hardware support, you might as well pick ogg vorbis.
Rio Karma (Score:5, Informative)
Finally... (Score:4, Insightful)
Long live Ogg Vorbis.
What incentive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Am i missing something here, or am I just stupid?
Don't forget the power of the patents (Score:5, Insightful)
And that they want a nickel for every download of a player.
Too Late (Score:5, Informative)
It's a waste of money to develop an add on and try to force it on the market. That won't happen.
Then again, "Trusted Computing" might be enough to force people.
LK
Exactly why... (Score:3, Insightful)
You can have my music... (Score:3, Funny)
Eeeeew, is that a plug of earwax?
You're all missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
This could really suck (Score:3, Insightful)
And if they can enforce DRM in authoring tools through nasty patent licensing, well, you can maybe kiss MP3 goodbye as a useful format.
That sucks. The CD in my truck doesn't do OGG...
c.
The nice thing about standards... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why does Fraunhofer think that their "standard" is going to get any more acceptance than any of the other options?
Not Open Standards (Score:5, Interesting)
So, is a non-open source implementatable standard actually an open standard? I would say not.
Why add DRM to MP3? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only reason why everybody uses MP3 is exactly because of that, everybody uses it! But adding a DRM layer will make it incompatible to all existing (hardware/software) players, so why wouldn't you use a better codec for some shiny new drm scheme?
Well that's nice (Score:3, Interesting)
Support? (Score:3, Insightful)
But, will the new devices support the old format (and if not, why would those with massive Mp3 collections buy them), and will the new format work on old devices (again, why would those with old devices use this format).
It seems really that they're shooting themselves in the foot, but I'll be glad when that means my next deck for the car should support OGG.
Read carefully, boys and girls (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that it says "unauthorized" copying. Not illegal copying, UNAUTHORIZED copying. Want to listen to it on RIO? Pay a fee. Computer? Pay a fee. Transfer to CD? Pay a fee.
Again, the simple solution to broken music is to NOT BUY IT. The people in RIAA are real smart. As soon as no one buys their crapware, they'll quit trying to shove it up our a$$.
Re:Read carefully, boys and girls (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Read carefully, boys and girls (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they'll blame pirates.
Re:Read carefully, boys and girls (Score:5, Funny)
I have yet to see any evidence of this.
Re:Read carefully, boys and girls (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly! Don't buy RIAA music. Download your shit online, use filesharing applications with bandwidth-limiting enabled so you are harder to detect. Change the default port numbers. Use obscure file sharing apps. Set up a node on freenet. Complain to your ISP and threaten to leave if they poo-poo P2P use. Teach others how to use file sharing properly. Avoid using file sharing at school, university, or work. Support BitTorrent by leaving your client running well after you're done downloading. Don't leave your filesharing apps unattended 24 hours a day. Keep your host free of viruses. Keep your music collections clean of tainted files or corrupt downloads.
We're slowly killing the big record labels... keep up the good work. I'm not being sarcastic, I really want to see these evil bastards go poor.
Re:Read carefully, boys and girls (Score:5, Insightful)
What you describe is only half-right in terms of solving the problem of a corrupt entertainment industry. The correct solution is this: Don't buy RIAA music but support independent / local / non-RIAA artists. That's right -- don't even share RIAA crap. Doing so only makes it more popular - and thus keeps people buying CD's and merchandise, watching MTV, and going to RIAA-artist concerts. And. incidentally, Hollywood is another good boycott target. Don't want DRM-laden HD-DVD's and HDTV components? Stop buying today's DVDs and going to every movie that hits the theaters! Cancel your ridiculous cable/satellite premium package! These people can do evil things only because YOU enable them with your dollars.
Look to software as an example. The answer to Microsoft's monopoly is not warez sites; it's Open Source. And it's working.
When alternatives exist to fight corruption, the legal one should be chosen first--not necessarily because the law is just, but because it's the easiest path. Unjust laws can be changed far more easily after monopolists have lost the reins.
Try the new MpDRM! (Score:4, Funny)
Copying protections (Score:4, Insightful)
It's much harder actually (Score:5, Informative)
1) The location of decryption. All someone needs to do is modify the device to get at the data. I mean lets say you invent a scheme where the data is encrypted the whole time until it hits the audio card. Not decrypted and re-encrypted, but simlpy kept encrypted until the soundcard. That then decrypts it. Well what happens when the data is decrupted? It gets fed to a little chip made by Texas Instruments or Sigmatel or someone like that. That is the digital-analogue converter. So you just go and tap the signal right there, which will no longer be encrypted and you're good to go.
2) The far easier method: The key. Encryption is inherantly a technology if trusted parties. You give the key to the people you wish to be able to decipher your message. Doing that, you lock everyone else out from being able to read it. The problem with DRM is that you are trying to lock EVERYONE out, including the person you give the message to. That doesn't work, you HAVE to give them the key in some form or another at some time or another. If you do that, they can find it, and make use of it to decrypt the data themselves. This is the problem with things like game copy protection. They release some new version of SafeDisc with 2048-bit, uber-secure, penis-enhancing encryption to keep the evil haxors out.... Which the key to resides on the disc. So, you debug the program, find where it gets the key, grab it yourself, decode the data, write it to disc and call it a day.
However for things like audio, it is generally just easier to say fuck it to digital and capture it analogue and re-encode it. It's real easy to get soundcards that exceed the CD spec for a reasonable price, never mind the quality of compressed audio. Just re-record it and go. Sure you loose a tiny bit of quality, but if done right no one but people with good ears and high end gear will be able to tell (who won't put up with compressed music in the first place).
Of course, once something is available unencrypted it can be quickly distributed.
Companies pretty much just need to knock it the fuck off. People WILL violate copyright, it's just life. Been happening forever. Now I don't object to some non invasive controls to make it more than just pressing copy to keep honest people honest, but it just gets stupid. No matter what you do, you won't lock out the hard core people, and you'll just piss off the legitimate users.
Game copyprotection has gotten really bad. Time was you were better off having a warez version of Neverwinter Nights. The new Securerom copyprotection was so screwed it wouldn't work on a ton of CD-ROMs with perfectly legit discs. It actually was punishing legit users, whiile doing nothing to stop the game from being copied by those that wanted to.
Oh, Golly, Gee... (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously the new format won't affect the legacy, but it might pollute the waters.
History lesson: Anybody here remember .arc ? Probably not - when its owners flexed their tiny muscles, it disappeared in a .zip. Yes, I know it was for different reasons, but the point is that in this digital age, things can adapt in a flash.
Stupid scenario (Score:4, Insightful)
"Hey man, put your jack in here to listen to my iPod this tune is great"
"Sorry dude, i don't own the rights to that song, maybe another time".
"Are you sure, here i'll put it on my portable speakers"
"NOOO I DONT HAVE THE RIGHTS AND NEITHER DO THESE PEOPLE ARGH MY MORAL CONSCIENCE"
(falls on floor in convulsions)
Can you imagine that? Come on. If you like Open Source so much, i believe you might want the same to music. I agree with protecting your hard work but it's getting out of hand.
No, copyrighting music is NOT stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
The part of the constitution that allows copyright and patent laws to be created is Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 8 which reads: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
Now as orignally written and enforced, they did just that. You'd make a creative work and get a copyright for 14 years, which you could extend once. During that time nobody could go and copy the work without your permission. This allowed you to profit from it. Remember, the U.S. is a highly capatalistic country so profit motive is important. Then, after your copyright expired, your work became the property of the people.
28 years was a good long time to profit, I mean that's over a quarter of even a long life. However it ensured that your work would fall into the public domain in a reaonable amount of time. You couldn't horde control over it forever, just for awhile. The idea being, of course, that it would encourage people to create, since there was an ecenomic incentive.
Also, your control wasn't absolute. You just got to control who was allowed to make copies. You couldn't control everything. People could resell copies they had legitimately purchased. Copies of portions could be made for education. People (or libraries) could loan a copy to a friend, then take it back later, and so on. This is what is collectively refered to as Fair Use.
There was not a problem with this system. It gave profit motive, which is important in a capatalism, for creative works and saw to it that society reaped the benefit.
The problem is with how copyright laws have changed. First there is the problem of extension. It is getting to the point of stupid how long a copyright lasts. Right now it's the lifetime of the author plus 50 years. Are you kidding me? How the hell does the +50 years have to do with profit motive for the author, not to mention that it flies in the face of the "limited times" clause.
Then there is this concept that you don't actually own the rights to do anything with the copy you buy. You can't use it in ways the author doesn't like, you can't trade it, sell it, etc. Well the law hasn't actually changed to say that, they just passed a new law, that says those things can be forced on you technologically and there's jack you can do about it. This of course clearly flies in the face of the "To promote the progress of" clause.
THAT'S the problem. Copyright is a good, and necessary, idea for a capatalistic country. It might intrest you to know that copyright is the reason the GPL can exist and be legally enforcable. With no copyright, the GPL would be worthless.
What's bad is that copyright is being twisted to add levels of control that are not intended or allowed by the constitution.
This is sure to be a success! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm glad I drink Pepsi (Score:4, Interesting)
Download.
Import with Quicktime
Save as AIFF
Import to iTunes
Convert AIFF to MP3
Copy over the tag and delete M4P and AIFF files.
(hint: easy enough to automated through Applescript
And frankly I can't tell the difference from a original CD to their AAC format to the newly converted MP3 file. As long as it passed my ear test I'll just stick with their DRM scheme and work right around it (the day I can't is the day I stop buying).
Of course with tools like AudioHijack
Bah -- DRM.
I don't think it will work (Score:5, Informative)
Sure. And all those millions and millions of MP3 players out there already will stop working.
They tried this before with the SuperMP3 or whatever they called it. Sank without a trace. Made the titanic look like a "good idea".
Sorry, Fraunhaufer, the genie is out of the bottle on MP3. There are "free" implementations, and 10's of millions of licensed players out there already.
If I'm going to go licensed, might as well use a codec like AAC.
Some predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) The P2P community will reject the use of the ".MP3" suffix on the new DRM-crippled files. ".MP3" will continue to mean the full-featured format, and something else will be adopted (by informal consensus) to label the crippled files. Expect a new generation of P2P clients that will do this suffix-renaming automatically.
(2) The owners of the MP3 format will want to (eventually) start forbidding the playback of non-crippled MP3 files. (Without this, there's no way that the DRM-crippled version will catch on.) This will result in:
(a) a huge demand for black-market "original" MP3 software (codecs, players, etc.), and,
(b) Microsoft will fight hard to make sure that MediaPlayer doesn't end up rendered useless by new MP3 licensing that forbids playback of non-crippled MP3 files. This fight could get very nasty.
roadblock is an offramp (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ungrateful sods and copyright pirates to be imprisoned, executed. "You're lucky to have those jobs we provide you with," says spokesperson for owners of everything.
Re:Extension? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think (Score:5, Insightful)
Ogg won't be popular until the developers get off their asses and put a big link on their front page that says "Install Ogg for Windows!".
At the moment they just give out the codec and say "you do what you want with it". Doing something useful with it? Well... ummmm... here's a bunch of third parties that can maybe do something useful with it.
If Xiph want Ogg to be popular they're going to have to break down and make actual usable technology with instant gratification for Win32 users. They don't want to have to know that a DirectShow fiter is what lets you play Oggs in Windows Media Player. They want to double click an installer and have their OS Ogg enabled.
I'll even point this out to you using references avaialable on the plain old intarweb. See Divx [divx.com]. Theres a "New To Divx" section! Fancy that! There used to be a direct "download Divx whatever version" link but it seems the webmaster woke up stupid this month. Then you download a file and you double click on it once it's finished and it gives you Divx! You can double click on a Divx AVI file and it opens in WMP and plays with all the Divxy goodness.
Xiph needs that for Ogg. They don't need a third party to fill the gaps. They don't need a billion programs nobody cares about with Ogg support. They need a standard installer package with instant fucking gratification and until Xiph get that through their heads people will either switch to WMA or download iTunes and switch to AAC.
Re:OGG (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OGG (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OGG (Score:5, Informative)
One already has. It was called Diamond Multimedia, the inventor of the Rio. If you'll recall, they stared down both barrels of an RIAA lawsuit, fought off a preliminary injunction (the RIAA tried to use the AHRA and the absence of a "serial copy management system" to interfere in the marketplace) and introduced the first commercially successful portable MP3 player.
Re:Can DRM actually work? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, it would be simple to do something like this:
#!/usr/bin/perl
open($orig, "mymp3.mp3");
open($copy, ">", "piratecopy.mp3");
$copy =
close $orig;
close $copy;
And whatabout even the most simplistic backup tools?
tar xv
would normally read a directory from streamer tape. How can they even MAKE tar distiungish between illegal copied mp3's and ones that you lost during a harddisk failure?
Anyway, IMHO the greatest threat to RIAA (and similar organisations) is probably not the file-sharing per-se but the ability of artists getting noticed (and therefore money) without having contracts with the Fuhrers in MusicCity Headquarters.
Remember: the greatest threat to any monopoly is that your worst enemy finds good and cheap distribution and advertising channels! Even well-known artists start releasing some of their songs for free. To quote SCO: "Giving away something for free is against the law because it hinders us to make profit!"
(Maybe they should sell products that are worth our money instead of pestering us with technology that won't make it anyway)