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Music Media

Is SDMI a Consumer's Nightmare? 253

Posted by Cliff from the stuff-to-read dept.
Milo_Mindbender asks: "I recently got hold of a solid-state music player that is Secure Digital Music Initiative (see www.sdmi.org) compatible. While the player itself is a fine device, the restrictions forced on it by SDMI appear to make it a nightmare for the consumer. I'd appreciate it if someone with more knowledge of SDMI could tell me if my concerns are real, or just the result of a bad SDMI implementation." Click below to read the rest of Milo's submission and to see the direction the RIAA wants to push us in.

"1. It appears you can't move the music files around on your disk. They get stored in an encrypted form and if you try and reorganize them other than through the SDMI compliant software, they go boom!

2. At least with the software I have, it appears all your music must fit on one device, there is no provision for multiple catalogs on several devices.

3. It appears that storing your music on read-only media like CDR will not be possible.

4. At least with the software I have, storing music on removable media like ZIP drives may not be possible.

5. It appears that if you have multiple computers, a laptop and a PC for example, you won't be able to transfer your music back and forth between the two.

6. It appears SDMI is a security standard only and doesn't guarantee interoperability between SDMI devices from multiple manufacturers.

7. I have yet to determine if the directory containing SDMI music can be safely backed up and restored.

8. It looks like SDMI might be one of those "standards" that can't be distributed as open source without its security being broken.

If anyone can clear up any of these questions for me I'd really appreciate it. Right now SDMI looks like it will make it terribly easy for the uninitiated to accidentally lose music by moving it in ways that seem innocent at first, but cause the security to kick in. It also seems to give the music less utility than music on a CD, that is I can carry a CD to work and play it on my PC there, or loan the CD to someone...SDMI seems to prohibit this. I don't have anything against protecting the musicians' copyright rules, but it sounds like they may be creating a consumer nightmare with all this format's restrictions.

Any comments? "
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Is SDMI a Consumer's Nightmare? More

Is SDMI a Consumer's Nightmare?

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  • Inside SDMI (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The basic concept of SDMI is that there exists a so called SDMI domain in which all your secure music tracks are stored. This (logical) domain extends over some part of your hard drive and/or the portable device which you use to listen to the music. A licence control manager (LCM) controls the passing of music content in and out of this domain. For entering or leaving the domain certain criteria are used, like copyright, the number of copies allowed etc.
    Inside the domain the files are bound to this domain by the use of serial numbers (drive ID, player ID, removable media ID and other unique identifiers ) Therefore it is not possible to move SDMI protected files from one disk/machine to another, at least not withput the "help" of the LCM I doubt that at the moment there is support for more than the hard drive and the portable player as being part of the SDMI domain, so this might explain ahy CD-R and removable media drives do not work.
    One interesting fact is that altough it is allowed to enter "free" content ( like normal .mp3 files ) into the SDMI domain, the files nevertheless have to be converted into SDMI compliant files, so moving them back out of the domain might not be so easy. (Users of the Thompson Lyra have discovered that all .mp3 files are converted to a proprietary format before being uploaded to the player)

  • Re:Industry Survey on SDMI (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    44% of people did not distribute because there was no "unfirom secure distribution system." That's more than the 16% of record execs. How many artists is that?

    67% think that SDMI actually does help the industry. This should be the most glaring piece of misinformation we need to correct. "Remember DAT?"

    36% thought that the SDMI decision making process was positive! That's more than the percentage that thought SDMI was for the RIAA agenda only.

    Those numbers are incorrect. I assume you came up with those numbers by taking the previous posters numbers, (ie 33% of respondents felt that SDMI only benifited RIAA) and subtracting that from 100. There were other options as wel, namely "uncertian". So only 17% actually claimed that SDMI actually benifited the industry as a whole.

    Next time, read the article before you quote it.

  • Re:format restrictions (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    it allows bands & independent labels to cheaply & easily distribute their music worldwide without the record companies getting their cut That's the real issue here. Why would a new band sign over the rights to their music to a record company when they dont have to? Right now they get pressured into it because its the only way to "Make it"..that is..to get the money to get the studio so they can record their music decently so they can press up some cds so they can put them in stores to sell.....whew...unless they own their own label and cd factory they "HAVE" to sign a contract with a label that forces them to do things in the label's favor if they ever want to get out of the bar scene. The internet and .mp3's are especially dangerous to the status quo of Music Label's coz they provide the medium for free (mp3 file format) and the distribution for next to nothing...you set yourself up with a web page for cheap on geocities or just get a cable box somewhere..as soon as hits start to take off you get a pro site with advertising to pay off the web server...which will work coz if by then you are getting the hits for your music off your site then obviously it will pay for itself. ..after that the scenario gets fuzzy coz im not too sure where the ultimate monetary profit is going to come from...will you make money off the advertising to your site and give your music away? maybe the band is in it just for the sake of making music and isnt out for profit at all? and of course you can uhhh..hmmm..."sell" mp3's off of your page..yeah right... But back to the original point....what the RIAA and MPAA are so pissed off about is the ability of others to manufacture market and distribute music and movies without the traditional industry ever entering the picture... remember what happened with Pearl Jam and Ticketmaster? from the ex-cabbie out of Ann Arbor who used to live with PO' musicians + freaks :)
  • ...at least in MegaCity One, anyhow.

  • The music industry has been screwing everyone for decades. Most artists get a pittance for each sale. It can't cost more than about $1 to make a CD. So the other $10-$15 dollars goes to these record companies. LPs were about $8 in 1987. The next year, they abruptly disappeared off the shelves to be replaced by CDs costing twice as much. I have no doubt that if the industry were to succeed in pushing a new standard, they would double prices again.
  • Look at the SB Live and probably a bunch of other sound cards with SPDIF connectors. Even if you had two sound cards (which many people do without even knowing it), analogue->analogue would produce fairly OK quality I think. SPDIF->SPDIF would be much nicer though :), but there aren't many sound cards out that have SPDIF connectors.

    Of course when you consider that there a lot of full duplex cards, it becomes even easier :)
  • It's important that people understand that the record companies have a substantial record of using copyright laws to further their monopoly interests. Here's a quote from an antitrust case [usdoj.gov] on music video price fixing ( I would call the RIAA a "copyright society"):
    The majors claim that under no set of circumstances could Sherman Act jurisdiction apply to their foreign conduct. However, the United States has reason to believe that, acting through various "copyright societies" and joint ventures-- including music video and "digital radio" ventures formed to conduct business in the United States--the majors may have entered into a worldwide series of related agreements designed to dominate, discipline, eliminate or extract monopoly prices from companies providing high-technology audio and music video programming services via cable, satellite and wire transmission (hereinafter "music programming") in all major geographic markets. In addition to the domestic effects arising from the operation of the American components of the alliance, it is likely that foreign components substantially affect the domestic and export commerce of American music programming companies.

    There was also a story on Bloomberg (which is down right now so I can't confirm it) a few weeks ago about a DOJ case on CD price fixing via kickbacks to record stores; I haven't found anything on the DOJ site about this, for some reason.

  • My take on this is different - Beta was better, but Sony controlled it, just as the RIAA wants to control SDMI, and the other suppliers balked. You'll notice that all the proprietary SDMI formats are "technically superior" as well.

    MP3 in your analogy is the VHS-like open standard, which is why, for instance, it has been adopted by a lot of electronics companies which have never been in the personal audio business before. The MP3 "copyright" battle is just a proxy for the format and distribution war that's going on now in the cozy electronics and music industry, of which Sony is the biggest player, AFAIK.

    (I submitted a story a few weeks ago about the big 5 CD producers being investigated for price fixing, including TWX-now-AOL; apparently no one thought it was relevant, but I see it as the other side of the same coin.)
  • Consumers will opt for devices that meet their requirements, not those of corporate lawyers. If the SDMI implementation is really as strong you say, these devices won't see wide-spread acceptance. But then, that's probably what the music industry wants.

    There's one problem with that statement... if the only available content is for SDMI enabled devices, what then? I don't know as much about this as I should before posting, so I'll keep this brief. My fear is that those that control the content can drive the technology.

    For eaxmple, who needs the ability to copy to removeable media if all stereos come with a jack or port to plug in your SDMI compatible player? You can still do everything you used to do with a CD or Tape (i.e. take it to a friends house, play it in your car, whatever). I'm not saying I like it, but if the content is marketed as better with more features, it will drive the hardware sales.

    Sujal

  • I'd appreciate it if you don't insult me by saying things like "I am probably thankful I don't have to listen to YOUR music, Mr. Musician." unless you've actually listened to my music with an open mind. Thanks. Oh, and just to let you know, in adition to radio airplay I also recently received a 1000$ award for my music. So apparently not everyone feels the way you do.

    Also, there is a MASSIVE difference between having talent and being a part of the commercial music industry. Your statement is like saying the only good software is the software a multimillion dollar company releases and promotes.

    If people only want to listen to commercial music, why did almost 500,000 people download music from amp3.com in the past MONTH alone. I don't know the numbers for mp3.com, but they could quite easily be double that. It is obvious that there is a lot more to independent music than "awful racket".

    Oh, and you said "So tell me again how the people who have content that people want to listen to are clamoring for MP3..." - if you had ever even visited any of the mp3 sites you probably would've seen the headline "AMP3.com Artist Chris Perez Nominated for Grammy". Chris Perez also won a 1995 Grammy, but then again, I'm sure no one wants to listen to his music.

  • > Who loses if digital media dies?

    The only way digital media can die is by uninventing alot of things.. We're only a few years into the game and look at the mess we've made already.. Some clever musician is teaming up with some clever web geeks right now somewhere, and they'll do a multi-diamond selling album without any physical media without ever getting a major involved... Imagine if Smells Like Children had been net-only.. Inside 10 years, someone will get it together and make some real fame and money off an MP3s.. The whole label system as we know it is toast.. Maybe the first whole industry to fall to the information age, but not the last for sure...

  • Something is escaping me here. I'm not as familiar with digital music as I'd like to be, but I remember the good ol' days of the fight over the DAT recorder.

    Isn't this "standard" just the MPAA (RIAA?) way of continuing the fight over digital media? And hasn't the recording industry been trashed in court before over this very issue (copying music), back in the '80s?

    As with the Linux/DVD fiasco, I don't see how these folks have a legal leg to stand on, what with all of the precedent out there. Feel free to fill me in..
    -----

  • Well, he's wrong then. :-) Finding a song you want is extremely easy and relatively painless, with programs like Napster and some of the better MP3 web searches.

    Only if you're looking for the latest boy band song. Try finding some more obscure songs/albums and you'll have considerably less luck.

    Instead, they'll destroy themselves in the process of trying to convince people that it's better to license music instead of buying it. What morons.

    They have to go at it full steam. They missed the boat with digital music. Digital music sat around and grew for a couple of years before the recording industry took notice of it. They're trying so damn hard now because they realize they screwed up. If I were a record exec, I'd be running scared too. With more people on fast and cheap connections and 20+ gig hard drives common these days, music can fly around at will. And it will only get worse for them. They will never relenquish control of their intellectual propery. They'd be crazy to do that. They want to make it as hard as they possibly can to find that cd you're looking for so you'll go buy it. Can't blame them for chasing profit.
  • Of course piracy will continue to exist. People have pirated things since there has been people and software. The software and music companies know this. Even though they won't ever stop all piracy, they can stop some of it. They protective measures won't stop people that make their lives out of pirating things, but they will stop Joe User from getting around the procection. If they can make it difficult for someone to pirate their wares, then they increase the chance of selling their items. For instance, if I wanted some new cd, I'd probably look around for a day or 2 to see if I could find it in mp3 format somewhere. If I couldn't, I'd just go out and buy the cd.

    The record companies try to prevent piracy for the same reason the police try to prevent crime: they know they can't wipe it all out, but they can keep it under some control.
  • to protect us from nonexisitant threats.

    Er, nuclear missiles don't exist? Then what were all those nuclear disarmament advocates who were camped out across the street from the White House all those years so worked up about?

    Steven E. Ehrbar
  • What's the URL for this one? I downloaded the "Live in Mexico City" concert in .asf format a while back. First time I tried to play it, Media Player launched Internet Explorer and went to a web page that asked me for an email address -- but every time since then, it plays like any other file. I really ought to get around to splitting it up into mp3's :)
  • Er, not quite. Roads are physical objects, subject to wear and tear. All maintained roads are toll roads, in a sense. The public roads on which there are no toll booths simply get their tolls as taxes somewhere else.

    Music is not subject to wear and tear as such, so there are no ongoing costs to maintain it. I think the artists are certainly entitled to compensation for the effort of creating the music. I'm okay with buying CDs, but that should mean for me that I have a license to privately do anything I want with that music. I should be allowed to back it up, to convert it to a different medium, or whatever.

    But I'm not at all interested in having to pay tolls every time I want to hear a song.

  • Excellent point!
  • The problem with "supporting" independent artists is that music is not a political statement, at least for me. I like bands regardless of thier record deal, based on whether or not the music is any good. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.
  • Another cunning way they killed consumer DAT was by putting a 'tariff' on blank DAT tapes so they would cost more than a CD.
  • then they probably shouldn't have moved to a damned island in the first place. sheesh. :)

  • some publisher has a monopoly on every band.

    This is all the more reason to support independant and underground musicians -- the ones that don't get signed. Keep in mind that musicians pay a terrible faustian price whenever they join a record label: they lose the rights to their own recordings. Even a bigshot like Bruce Dickinson can't afford to buy back some of his own albums [metal-rules.com] from his old record company.

    If the market can be manipulated by conscientious consumers (and that is either us or no one) then perhaps a situation can arise where it is more profitable for a musician to stay independant than join a label. Make it so that the entity who has the monopoly is the band itself.

    And that's what we need to do. Encourage the ones who do the Right Thing. Vote with your wallet.


    ---
  • I would have to say it would be geeks like people on Slashdot.

    DIVX essentially fails because the people who first bought DVD players chose a DVD player. Which was also first to market. The Rio was the first to market, and the press was a nice plus also.

    If you watch ZDTV "FreshGear" (shudder), they will have on some sort of online music player, and they call it an "MP3 player". That is the key. The people are looking for an MP3 player, and if they don't get one, they will get something else.

    Or so I think.
  • Well, the cat's out of the bag as far as MP3 ripping goes. We have the software, we have the CD-ROM drives, and there's nothing that the RIAA can do about it :-)

    One way that they could stop us from using MP3 would be to make the sale of MP3 players illegal. That isn't going to happen because the precedent has already been set - software and hardware for MP3 playback is already legally being sold.

    Could the RIAA place pressure on manufacturers to market SDMI only devices? Well, I'm sure they could try (and I'm sure that they ARE trying). Would the manufacturers go for it? My guess is no, for two reasons: The RIAA can't control or restrict the supply of music for MP3 format (we can rip our own MP3's after all), and there's going to be precious little marketplace demand for SDMI only players. It just doesn't make economic sense for the player manufacturers to go down this road.

    Could they place pressure on the distributers to sell only SDMI players? Yes they could, and I'm pretty sure that they'll try this one in the near future. Of course, they'll have to offer the retailers 'incentives' to do this as they'll effectively be removing themselves from a segment of the marketplace. I would imagine that the 'incentive' would be along the lines of "we'll refuse to allow you to sell our CD's if you don't". I see some interesting legal battles looming on the horizon over this one.

    Another way that they could stop us from using MP3 would be to limit music distribution to only their specified music format. I don't think this is going to happen, because it would require them to kill off the CD market - the MP3 marketplace just isn't big enough for them to be able to justify replacing the entire music distribution mechanism. Even if they DID replace the music distribution mechanism with the new 'SDMI' only version, it wouldn't be too long before someone produced a nice little software package that would convert the SDMI music files into MP3, wav, or whatever other format you wanted. Encryption just doesn't hold up for very long these days, as the DVD consortium recently found out.

    The only way that the RIAA would have a hope of replacing MP3 with SDMI is by providing such added value in the new file format that people voluntarily choose to use it. That clearly hasn't happened.

    So, what's the upshot of all this? That SDMI is a doomed technology. The RIAA just hasn't realised that it's fighting a battle that it can't win yet.

    --
  • Or being given away. Thanks Justin! :)

    A very good point. Justin Frankel has helped to radically change an industry that hadn't changed for decades previous...

    Not many people can say that :-)

    For the uninitiated, Justin Frankel produced and designed the WinAmp [winamp.com] MP3 player.


    --
  • Actually, come to think of it I don't think that WinAmp has the SDMI format implemented. Perhaps Justin should add it...

    ;-)

    --
  • Is there a particular reason that www.sdmi.org wasn't linked? So far the only explaination I can think of is needless displays of bias on /.'s part. Anyways...

    It seems that SDMI was really quite a knee-jerk reaction to the whole digital music media movement, and was never really planned as a true technical solution. I think such a restrictive standard shows us the intentions of its supporters, and their feelings about their customers as well.
  • But I suspect that SDMI is here to stay. Ask yourself who you know that is using mp3s... it's mostly geeks like yourself right?

    Well, the much larger market for music isn't and they want something convienent and legal. While SDMI may be inconvienent to use, I suspect it will be very convienent to buy on-line.

    mp3s will never have the legitamacy to be sold on-line through easily accessible channels. This will ensure that mp3s will always stay in the realm of rip-it-yourselfers (like me). The mass market isn't here though.

    As I said, I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect that mp3 will stay fringe and won't eat into the profits of the RIAA as much as they claim.

    GRH
    (with 20+G of mp3s)
  • Gee, that actually does make a lot of sense. I haven't bought a portable mp3 player yet, because - like you said - the amount of songs that you can put on them is ridiculously small. That is why I have been waiting for one that uses normal CD's.

    Now, I've never thought much of MD's before - my impression has been that they are a failed technology. Add the mp3 aspect, and I might actually buy one instead of an mp3/cd-player.

  • The MPman is an MP3 player, period. It was released before SDMI so how could it have anything to do with SDMI? These guys just figured out the format for sending files to the unit, and wrote their own software. You're not going to see anyone complain about this because a) The music starts off in an unprotected format (CDDA or MP3) and b) Saehan is a relatively small Korean company who are probably happy, if anything, that their device works on one more platform now.
  • As the other reply to your message correctly points out, not all ( and probably not even most ) of people who use pirated SW/music/etc do not have enouhg money to buy it. AFAIR from one of he older /. polls at least 1/3 of us here are IT professionals and surely can afford a 20$ for a CD or VHS tape. It is just the matter of not spending these 20$ for something you do not really want. If you download a few MP3 by some band and you like them there is a good chance tha you will buy their CD next time you are in music store. Yes, if you are ( say ) a student who took too many classes to have time for work and you just do not have 20$ then the above argument stands true, if you are unable to get it for free you are not going to get it. But in general, why would I buy something ( more then a 1-3$ in cost ) if I don't know what good it is. And with such things as software it is especially true. Even a demo version is not always enough. I have downloaded many a warez game and many an MP3 file
    Games I liked I bought, music I liked I bought. I always like to have an actual box with the game ( manuals, nicely printed CD ), an original CD ( not a CD-R but the original printed CD with cover and stuff ), original book ( all bound in nice cover not a printout or xerox copy ). You know what I mean...
  • He contends that searching for illegal takes time and it's difficult to find the exact song you're looking for.

    Well, he's wrong then. :-) Finding a song you want is extremely easy and relatively painless, with programs like Napster and some of the better MP3 web searches.

    If the music industry were to make it extremely convenient to get songs from them, consumers would pay a small amount of change for each song in exchange for the time saved.

    This is true, as far as it goes. They will NOT pay for something that's easy to get and pay for, if they cannot make copies for themselves and have it stop working. They will NOT pay for a music format they cannot give to a friend (regardless of the legality of this act). They will NOT pay for something that will only play on the one player they download it to and then not play on another player because the key is wrong. They don't care about keys and legality. They just want to listen to some tunes.

    If the music industry had a site where I could go and legally download MP3's, for a small fee, and not have to search, and be legal in doing it, and not have to worry about encryption problems, or compatibility, and where I could take the file they gave me and decrypt it to make it into other formats, then I'd be the first to sign up.

    But they'll never do that. They're not that smart.

    Instead, they'll destroy themselves in the process of trying to convince people that it's better to license music instead of buying it.

    What morons.


    ---
  • It should be realatively easy to trick SDMI players into thinking everything is kosher when in reality you can do anything you want with the data file. This has probably already been done. It's a simple matter of programming :)

  • Well there are toll roads where someone else owns the roads and you have to pay to dive. It is a similar situation with music.

    Sure, but they don't require you to only drive a particular make and model car, or require only Goodyear tires. You don't have to pay again if you change lanes. Once you pay the toll, the road is just as useful to you as a free public road. There are other roads that will take you to the same place if you aren't willing to pay the toll to save time and avoid traffic.

    None of those characteristics are true of SDMI.

  • The problem with the hardware based music players (Rios etc.) is that you are quite limited with the amount of music you can fit on them - 32MB is less than an single album. What would really be nice is a minidisc player that supports MP3 as well as ATRAC (MD's standard compression scheme which is about half as efficient as MP3.)

    An MD has a capacity of 140MB - 2-3 albums worth.

    Nick

    PS: for Americans - yes I know that everyone in the US thinks that MD is a failed tech but it's really popular in the rest of the world - when I was last in Europe I was astonished to see that even low-end integrated stereos are sold with an MD rather than a tape deck.

  • Yes, but the key question is what will I play my pirated music on?

    Suppose I am the RIAA what do I do? I know I can't stop digital music. I propose a new digital music format that can't be copied. This digital music format also gives me additional monopoly power in the digital music industry making sure I make barrels of cash and not some other startup distributer.

    But wait there is already a free unencumbered product out there. I must tie it up in lawsuits saying it is a pirating tool and urge congresmen to pass legislation making it illegal. At the same time I offer incentive programs to those who do produce my SDMI compliant devices. Lo and behold the hardware companies (especially if im sony) make SDMI compliant devices. The consumers, not really knowing the difference, buy the heavily advertised new SDMI model.

    Now everyone uses SDMI players. I copy a piece of music from my SDMI device. I can play it in my computer but I can't play it in my portable device. I can't play it in my stero etc.. etc... Thereby they guarnatee I still buy their music.

    Yes they technically can (but probably won't) make a secure enough system for this purpose. The RIAA makes a master RSA key. Embed the public key in every player sign authorized RIAA music with the private key. Oops I just created a monopoly too locking out those pesky independent artists.
  • As an independent musician, let me say this: SDMI sucks. I totally agree with you that SDMI is going overboard in attempting to protect the musician's interests.

    Wait a second...I just thought of something...although it's being touted as a tool to protect the interests of musicians, how many musicians do you hear talking about how much they want to see more SDMI stuff? Indeed, more artists are supporting mp3 than SDMI, and mp3 *supposedly* harms musician's interests. You hear more from record labels about SDMI than anyone - they're just trying to protect THEIR interests. SDMI will allow them to further control how, where and when you listen to your music. They don't care if it makes people less interested in listening to the music from the artists people think are supporting SDMI, they'll just put out more and more bands to keep their profits up.
  • But I thought that another prong of the RIAA attack on MP3 was to create copy-protected CDs that couldn't be ripped, except maybe by proprietary software.
    Well, if they succeed in creating a copy protected CD, I won't buy it, since it won't play on my existing player or in my CD-ROM drive.

    And if it will play on my existing player and in my CD-ROM drive, it's not copy-protected, is it?

  • The record companies wanted the cheaper menium so they just decided to stop making vinyl albums and went with CDs.
    Sure they wanted to, but the reality is that they didn't stop pressing vinyl until the public stopped buying it.

    They'd love to force you to buy SDMI rather than CDs, but they're not stupid enough to stop pressing CDs while there's still big money to be made on them.

  • One way that they could stop us from using MP3 would be to make the sale of MP3 players illegal. That isn't going to happen because the precedent has already been set - software and hardware for MP3 playback is already legally being sold.
    That does not in any way prevent them from lobbying for a new law banning sales of non-SDMI-compliant digital music players. At best it just means that the MP3 player you buy before such a ban will probably be grandfathered in.

    You may think this is unlikely, but they've successfully banned VCRs that aren't affected by Macrovision. This means that new 8mm VCRs actually have to have special circuitry added to detect Macrovision, because their normal AGC circuit is unaffected (unlike most VHS decks).

  • You're absolutely right that SDMI is the consumer's worst nightmare, that's the idea. The only interest the RIAA has in preserving artists' copyrights is insofar as it makes them money. Thus, the point of SDMI is to make copying music as difficult as possible. Unfortunately, as we all know, being able to freely copy data is totally essential to the proper function of most computerized tasks. If I can't move my file from here to there, what good is it? The RIAA, whose board of directors must have an 8-track in its office, doesn't get this.

    Back when SDMI was first announced and starting getting "industry supporters", I predicted this would happen (not to toot my own horn or anything...). The beauty of MP3 is its simplicity, and SDMI ruins that. Fortunately for us, this may be one area where big media conglomerates that see themselves as omnipotent may not be able to fool a sufficient number of consumers for their lame-brained efforts to succeed. From my point of view, it's far more convenient and cost effective for me to spend my money on even a MiniDisc rig than an SDMI device. In fact, ANY current alternative beats SDMI, even plain old compact discs. What's more, I think that most consumers will see it a similar way. The hassle of SDMI will outweight the benefits of a digital, solid-state playback device, and consumers will turn up their buyer-regret meters and go back to whatever they were using before. I hope.

    MoNsTeR

  • Duxup dun said:

    Well there are toll roads where someone else owns the roads and you have to pay to dive. It is a similar situation with music. Not to say I'm very fond of that particular system myself.

    I dunno about where you live, but where I live (Kentucky) and in other places in the US, tolls have typically been placed on highways to pay for the construction costs of the road (especially if the state doesn't think it'll recover costs of construction quickly from things like property bonds, gas taxes, trucker gas tags, etc.).

    As a minor note--until a few years ago, Kentucky had the single highest number of toll roads in the US (no less than eight major interstate thoroughfares were toll at one point, including sections of I-65 (the old "Kentucky Turnpike"--when I was very young, parts of I-65 south of Louisville were still toll)...). This has pretty much been reduced to two or three (if memory serves, the Bert T. Combs Parkway and sections of the Mountain Parkway, which still haven't been completely paid for); this is because by now most of the parkways (which are basically the state version of interstate highways--limited access and all--which is important because Kentucky has all of four interstate highways going through it which don't cover most of the state) have been paid for in tolls. (In fact, the parkway system here in Kentucky is good enough that parts of it are being very seriously considered for the proposed I-66 interstate--the infrastructure is already there and paid for, they just need to officially designate it as interstate).

    In fact, there are roads in West Virginia that are toll (including interstates) for the exact same reason--West Virginia is a poor state (even poorer than Kentucky is) and about the only way they can afford to build interstates is to recover construction fees via tolls (construction costs also tend to be expensive there because you're dealing with building interstates in mountains--I honestly think there might be three acres of flat land in the whole of West Virginia :) and the cost of mountain construction is also a major factor in why the Mountain Parkway is still toll in Kentucky).

  • Some anonymous coward dun said:

    Actually toll roads provide a streamlined/better route to drive. This is more like saying "Pay me money if you want to use this better/higher fidelity music player." This is a completely different statement than "I know you think you bought it but you are only allowed to play it on this one particular device."

    Again, I don't know where you live, but more often than not (at least in the part of the US I'm in) toll roads aren't so much because they're "limited access" but they are toll to pay for road construction bonds (I've posted a much more extensive discussion here [slashdot.org]--in Kentucky and West Virginia, for example, tolls have been to pay for road construction costs, not for limited access).

    I'd dare say that the situation isn't quite the same as with SoDoMI--the latter is far more akin to a protection racket ("buy from us or we send ya up the river and make you Bubba's prison-bitch") than a matter of paying for road bonds. :)

    In fact, if memory serves, the reason there are so many toll roads in Chicago is largely to pay for maintenance, so that further blows holes in your argument.

    The use of toll roads is completely by choice. I'm not aware of any areas that are _only_ accessible by toll roads. The restrictions of SDMI is completely without choice (except of course for the choice not to buy SDMI related stuff)

    I can name a few. Until fairly recently, it was literally impossible to travel to Owensboro, Kentucky without hitting toll roads along the route (unless one wanted to attempt driving on multiple, two-lane roads). There are still sections of Kentucky (especially along the Mountain Parkway) in which it is literally impossible to get to those areas without paying toll, because the Mountain Parkway is the only major access road into those areas (and yes, that includes the two-lane roads that connect to the Mountain Parkway). There are sections along a major interstate in West Virginia where one cannot go without paying toll on the interstate (because there are no other connecting roads, interstate OR two-lane, to the area)--the whole state is mountains, and construction of roads is very expensive there. Until around 1975-1976, you couldn't go north to Louisville on I-65 without hitting toll. Until around 1990 or so, you couldn't go through much of Kentucky on anything better than a two-lane, twisty, guardrail-less goat-track without hitting toll (Kentucky has an extensive parkway system, equivalent in quality to interstate highways, which was almost completely a toll system--nowadays it's almost completely free except for two parkways), especially if you wanted to get to any towns in western Kentucky.

    Or, better yet, Chicago. :) I am not making this up--literally every route of access larger than, say, a goat track is toll into and out of Chicago. Yes, this includes even two-lane highways on occasion. This goes out to about fifty miles away from Chicago, and when I first saw it on a road map I stared in disbelief. I have NEVER seen so many toll roads concentrated in one area. :) (Of course, one could make the snide comment that Da Mob is running the toll booths as a protection racket... :)

  • Is music that you can't hear - and I'd bet that even that statment is overstating the security of SDMI.

    SDMI is a nightmare for the consumer and I'm sure that within a week of a proper player release there will the the equivalent to a CD ripper being used to convert these files into mp3.

    What a shame that the record companies contracts gave them all the mechanical royalties - the mechanical sales channel can't last too much longer.

    The thing with SDMI is it's designed to make sure companies get their money. The fact that artists get paid is merely an extra. What we need is to make sure that the artists get paid for their work while admitting that there's no way to make a secure audio system.
  • Although the other methods are sound, writing to Best Buy and Circuit City is bound to be useless.

    They sell music, and large portions of their marketing budgets are underwritten by the record companies. These stores will cooperate with the music labels when it is profitable to them.

    Ever wonder why crap like "Macarena" and "Blue" became so popular? Endcaps, baby, endcaps. The stores don't choose what to put at the end of each music aisle. Record companies PAY for that space, and dearly.

    These stores DO ignore the record companies now and then, when it is profitable for them. That's why Best Buy was the first national retailer carrying the Rio. They knew the product would be smashingly successful, and the profits to gain were certain to outweigh the losses due to pissing off the record companies.

    Keep in mind that the MAJOR reason why other national retailers didn't support DIVX is NOT because the format was crap, it was because Circuit City owned it and invested a fortune in it. Best Buy and others didn't want their major competitor to profit every time they made a sale.

  • Secure Analog Humming Initiative.

    After the death of digital music distribution, the main channel for 'theft' of music becomes the humming of the melody by someone who has paid the per-use fee enough times on a SuperEncryptedWindowsOnlyDeathDisc to learn the tune. This allows someone who doesn't use SuperEncryptedWindowsOnlyDeathDiskDistrobution to hear hear a song.

    To combat this horribly, anti-capitalistic 'theft', the industry proposes SAHI compliant Vocal Cord constrictors. This allows the consumer to be choked to death if he or she hums the melody of a song in the vicinity of someone who doesn't own a humming license for a song. This is, as the industry has us believe, true empowerment of the consumer and protection of the artist's rights.

    Someone please kill me.

  • It should be noted that while cd's that can't be ripped are possible to produce, and indeed have been produced, they have some severe drawbacks for the record companies.

    1)They can only be played in very new cd players -Even some players that are a year old can't play them.
    2)They can't actually be sold as compact discs, since they don't meet redbook standards for cd's.
    3)They can't be played in any cd-roms.

    As you can imagine, all these factors really limit both the number of people that can play (and buy) the cd's, and the number of people who actually would buy them.

    --


  • Does anyone remember when you'd buy a tape and have to buy a new one in 6-8 months because it degraded or just plain wore out? That doesn't happen anymore.

    I heard a story, which may or may not have been true, that the album "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd stayed in the top 200 best selling vinyl albums from the time it was released until the time it was put out on CD.

    The explanation offered was that many audiophiles use that album to showcase their stereos, and would replace it over and over again every time the vinyl wore out.

  • 6. It appears SDMI is a security standard only and doesn't guarantee interoperability between SDMI devices from multiple manufacturers.

    And that's the loophole, now and forever. If it doesn't work with your 1989 stereo and computer, then you have every right to do whatever it takes to make it work. Even DMCA will let you.

    SDMI will only be a nightmare until it is cracked. And if it ever becomes widespread, it will be cracked within a few weeks or months of reaching that critical mass. After that, it'll just be Yet Another lame distribution method that nobody will use for storage.


    ---
  • Well, the cat's out of the bag as far as MP3 ripping goes. We have the software, we have the CD-ROM drives, and there's nothing that the RIAA can do about it :-)

    One way that they could stop us from using MP3 would be to make the sale of MP3 players illegal. That isn't going to happen because the precedent has already been set - software and hardware for MP3 playback is already legally being sold.

    Could the RIAA place pressure on manufacturers to market SDMI only devices? Well, I'm sure they could try (and I'm sure that they ARE trying). Would the manufacturers go for it? My guess is no, for two reasons: The RIAA can't control or restrict the supply of music for MP3 format (we can rip our own MP3's after all), and there's going to be precious little marketplace demand for SDMI only players. It just doesn't make economic sense for the player manufacturers to go down this road.

    Another way that they could stop us from using MP3 would be to limit music distribution to only their specified music format. I don't think this is going to happen, because it would require them to kill off the CD market - the MP3 marketplace just isn't big enough for them to be able to justify replacing the entire music distribution mechanism.

    Even if they DID replace the music distribution mechanism with the new 'SDMI' only version, it wouldn't be too long before someone produced a nice little software package that would convert the SDMI music files into MP3, wav, or whatever other format you wanted. Encryption just doesn't hold up for very long these days, as the DVD consortium recently found out.

    The only way that the RIAA would have a hope of replacing MP3 with SDMI is by providing such added value in the new file format that people voluntarily choose to use it. That clearly hasn't happened.

    So, what's the upshot of all this? That SDMI is a doomed technology. The RIAA just hasn't realised that it's fighting a battle that it can't win yet.

    --
  • When will these guys learn?

    DIVX was the same thing to video and is dead. DVD's adoption has been very slow due to all the restrictions. And SDMI doesn't have a chance against the momentum MP3 has gained.

    People buy things that give them value and convenience. I have no problem with industry safeguarding their rights to media (film, music, print), but in going to such great lengths to prevent copying, they lose billions more in lost sales than they gain from the reduction in small-scale "pirating".

    Most of this stuff has a time value anyway. Hit songs and movies are only hot for a few weeks or months. This is plenty of time for the legit distributors to make a bundle. And they will make FAR more on an open (or more open) medium than on a closed (or even semi-closed) one.

    All this money and effort would be better spent lobbying governments of pirate havens to crack down on the big offenders (who are only slightly inconvenienced by these copy protection schemes), instead of killing sales through this kind of copy protection mania.

    Any RIAA types out there listening to this? Please get a clue ...
  • about 8 yrs ago, I remember a project on the dat-heads mailing list that was a hardware kit that would allow the user to control the SCMS settings. there were hundreds of kits sold, I believe. and it wasn't all that hard to build, either. in fact, for about $50, there was a kit in Japan that would strip SCMS nicely from the digital stream. and the pcb was only a few inches square - small enough to embed inside a dat machine, if you wanted to.

    Most MiniDisc players - which also use SCMS when doing digital recording from CD/DAT/MD/etc, also have a "test mode". Many of these allow you to switch SCMS on or off. See http://www.minidisc.org [minidisc.org] - be aware tho, you want to read instructions carefully, test modes allow you to do things like re-align heads, fiddle with rotation speeds etc. It can be *extremely* easy to screw up your MD player/recorder beyond all recognition.

  • Not really failed, but until recently (in .au) anywhere, the pricing was prohibitive - upwards of one thousand dollars. Now you can get portable recorders for $500 or so. I love it... I digitally copy all my CDs and MP3s to MD straight away. My MD player is only about 80% of the size of a pack of cigarettes (roughly).
  • ATRAC is about half as efficient because it is 292kbps (IIRC). If you wanted to (and were able to bring it down to what most people encode MP3s at (typically 128 or 160) then I'm sure you'd see more.... :)
  • By non-existant threats i mean that the russians weren't stupid. They knew that if missles were launched, it would destroy the entire world. It didn't matter if we lanched fist or they did. SDI would protect against incoming missiles, the only problem is that if there were ANY incoming missles, we'd all be fucked anyway, who cares if we can shoot down 80% of them. There are still enough to obliterate the earth 10 times over. (by the way that leaves 2 earth-obliterations left :-)

    A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
  • Ok am I the only one who sees "SDI" whenever I should read "SDMI"? Actually, come to think about it, they are both overglorified efforts based on over-extravagent technology to protect us from nonexisitant threats.

    You all remember SDI, don't you? The Strategic Defense Inititive? Star Wars? Ronald Regan? Savings and Loan? Gorby? A Black Michael Jackson? Sheesh, I'm old. :-)

    A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
  • from the Wired Article [wired.com] talking about the huge f_up with copy protected CDs...

    "It's a cost-benefit to the company. If copy protection can drive 50 percent more sales, then maybe it's worth it," Hoffman said.

    Sweet Mary Mother of Gates! These people actually harbor delusions in their heads 1) that 50 of their stuff is pirated 2) that every pirater, if "forced" would actually BUY the stuff rather than live without it.

    How far, exactly, does your head have to be crammed up your ASS to think that you could do 150% more sales if you could somehow just make it harder and more complicated for your customers to use your products to the point that they are unusable?

    First - if you anticipate 50% more sales - you have to anticipate that at least 90% of your product is being pirated... because we all know that if these pimple faced WaREz geeks weren't filling up harddrives full of Autodesk 13 and Photoshop, they be lighting cats on fire or some other stupid, useless thing to consume their time.

    Is the concept of a person like me (thru the power of his G4/450, in record time, i might add) cranking out entirely LEGAL CD collections of 300+ disks into mp3s ONLY to gain portability and ease of use just _that_ f_ing alien to these people?

    These people are more confused than the FBI at a Richard Jewel look-alike contest. They make the Special Olympics look like a fuckin MENSA meeting.

    Whackamole, technology supremecy, old-fashioned CP hacking (Go C64!) will force these people to change - since technology alone just doesn't seem to work.

    If they took the time and effort into stupid shit like SMID and put it into forming silly things like BUSINESS PLANS on how to sell mp3's over the net, they'd be even MORE rich than they are now.

    These guys are real-world Dr. Evils... instead of blowing up the planet, they should just sell the fucking Starbucks.
  • Yes, but the RIAA is a cartel, and like all cartels, it controls the distribution of the product you need. Your mp3 player is useless if you can no longer rip CDs and it can't play the music you buy off the web.

    Think of it this way. How useful is a DVD player that can't decrypt the CCS encryption?

  • Here's my opinion about all kinds of pirating, whether it be software, music, or movies. Why does pirating occur? It's because the people who can't afford to go out and buy their favorite music/movie/software can't afford to do it. And what does this mean? It means that the people who actively seek out pirated music/movies/software will never, ever, ever go out and pay for it because they can't afford it. Downloading MP3's, ASF's, etc off of IRC or a warez site is the only way these people have to get what they want. What does all this mean?

    It means, boys and girls, that the music/movie/software industries would never have received any money from these poor downtrodden victims of the American Way anyway; therefore, piracy costs them almost nothing in lost revenue. If piracy didn't exist, these people would simply do without it because they'd have no other choice; there would be no difference in the monetary intake of Virgin Records, Paramount Studios, or Microsoft.

    Think about it.


    "All truth passes through three stages: first, it is ridiculed; next it is violently attacked; finally, it is held to be self-evident."
  • What we need is to make sure that the artists get paid for their work while admitting that there's no way to make a secure audio system.

    Artists make their money from:
    • Live shows
    • Royalties from the mass media (TV shows, commercials, etc)

    CD sales won't make artists rich. That's why most of them don't really care whether people use MP3. Many encourage, it. They understand mindshare like we do.
  • you have to pay to dive

    Hmmm... Are you sure you're talking about roads, not about swimming pools? :-)

    But, I don't agree with what you're saying here. With music, you buy the music, you'll 0wn :) it. With the road, you certainly don't buy a piece of the road, you pay to use it for a short while.

    It's more like you buy a car and you'll only be able to drive it on certain highways. If you want to drive through the bushes, the car stops. That sucks and I won't buy such a car.

    Thimo
    --
  • Anyone up for creating a website devoted to musical artists who want to share their contributions with the world? I got the idea earlier when someone mentioned that music should be open sourced.
    You ought to check out the Free Music Philosophy [ram.org] site.
  • You all remember SDI, don't you? The Strategic Defense Inititive? Star Wars? Ronald Regan? Savings and Loan? Gorby? A Black Michael Jackson? Sheesh, I'm old. :-)
    Hey, I remember. But maybe I'm just old too. I just turned 30, I don't wanna talk about it.

    But it looks like some of that 80's stuff is coming back. I'm seeing 80's hair styles full of gel - even Mohawk haircuts. "Greed is good" seems to be a popular message again. SDI, or a similar program, is being discussed seriously. Some guy named Bush is running for president.

    But I think we can forget about ever seeing a black Michael Jackson again. B-)

  • If I buy a cd, I can legally make a tape recording (or another CD I suppose) to use in my car, etc. This is fair use. So why should I not be able to COPY my SDMI music from where it is located to anywhere else (to another PC of mine, onto CD so I can listen to somewhere else)? This seems like a draconian restriction.

    Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla [sourceforge.net]
  • But I suspect that SDMI is here to stay. Ask yourself who you know that is using mp3s... it's mostly geeks like yourself right?

    I work as a helldesk minion in a university computer lab. From my unscientific method of walking around looking at what people are doing, 50% of the users are downloading/playing mp3s. Since this particular lab is associated with the Business School, most of these users are not geeks. They are future Suits.

    Whether this is good or bad is probably something for Jon Katz to discuss :-) but it's happening. Even the thickest luser can understand that mp3s are (potentially) free beer, not to mention familiar and well-tested and playable almost everywhere.

    but I suspect that mp3 will stay fringe

    ...when every university in the USA has high-speed Net access and loads of music-oriented kids with plenty of spare time, mp3s tend to be everywhere in those universities. And since elementary and high schools in the USA are getting connected as well, anyone passing through any higher educational institution will be exposed to the format and its possibilities. If you think this is "fringe", then I want some of whatever you're smoking.

    I suspect [SDMI] will be very convienent to buy on-line.

    Yet Napster et. al. have made it very convenient to find free (beer) mp3s on-line, and these search engines/filesharing programs will only get easier to use. Hmm, do I pay $1 for this Beatles song, or spend 5 minutes finding where I can get it for free? 'Tis a no-brainer.

  • Finding a song you want is extremely easy and relatively painless, with
    programs like Napster and some of the better MP3 web searches.

    Not really, unless you're looking for the hottest of the hot and the poppest of the pop. It took me about a week of checking Napster nightly to get a copy of Ruben Blades' "Pedro Navaja," to say nothing of Carlos Vives' "La Gota Fria" or 80's Chilean prog-rock band Los Prisioneros. I'd shell out 75c or a buck to download the whole song -- if I could find it. I wouldn't buy a whole album of Blades, because there's only so much salsa I can take in one go -- but "Pedro Navaja" is pretty sweet.

    gomi
  • If those are the results, then we need to inform people.

    44% of people did not distribute because there was no "unfirom secure distribution system." That's more than the 16% of record execs. How many artists is that?

    67% think that SDMI actually does help the industry. This should be the most glaring piece of misinformation we need to correct. "Remember DAT?"

    36% thought that the SDMI decision making process was positive! That's more than the percentage that thought SDMI was for the RIAA agenda only.

    Until we can hit 90% or better on the points you mentioned, we'll not have the mindshare we need to get through to the company execs and money makers. They'll continue to put out flowery press releases crowing about SDMI "protecting the customer" -- what they won't include is the fact that they're really protecting the company from the customer.

    Spread the word today. Strongly associate DIVX and SDMI devices. Make sure people understand fair use means they are allowed to have MP3 backups of their music, and don't need to buy two copies of everything (a "play" copy and a "good" copy) since they can listen to the MP3s on wonderful devices like the Rio. How many of you like having to buy new CDs because the old ones "wore out" or otherwise became too scratched?
    ---
  • Well there are toll roads where someone else owns the roads and you have to pay to dive. It is a similar situation with music.
    Not to say I'm very fond of that particular system myself.

  • That's an interesting point. One that I was quick to point out when it was first announced here on /. IMOHO, everytime you purchase a blank CD, you are prepurchasing the right to copy songs you've haven't purchsed otherwise. I would find it hard to believe that effective legal arguments could be made to counter this.

    "It seems you've been making copies of songs that you don't own."

    "Actually, when I purchased my blank CD's, the industry was paid for the songs that I copied."

    "Is this true?"

    "Well, yes your honor. We have a tax for this purpose on every blank sold."

    "So you've already been paid for the songs indirectly?"

    "We'll, yes, your honor. But we have the right to be paid as many times as we see fit."

    "If the plantif has already been paid...blah...blah..."

  • Merely by buying an SDMI-enabled player, you increase the chance of music ever being released on SDMI *only*.
    Worse: Even if it plays other formats, because SDMI will be an orphan format, your player will probably not have any upgrade path (assuming you care). It will be an orphan player for an orphan format, one more piece of junk to clutter your drawers or take up space in a landfill.

    SDMI: Just Say No.
    --

  • Consumers will opt for devices that meet their requirements, not those of corporate lawyers. If the SDMI implementation is really as strong you say, these devices won't see wide-spread acceptance. But then, that's probably what the music industry wants.
  • >WTF is wrong with the dumbasses in the motion picture and recording industries?

    Just because an industry grows bigger with change it doesn't mean that all the original players involved will profit. From a big corp/establishment perspective, uncontrolled change is bad -it allows other people to make money in an industry where I/my company dominates. I believe there's been a number of books written about resistance to change in corporate cultures.

    On the other hand, while consumers think they are buying music, the industry thinks they are selling content that is bound to the media. There's a big difference which explains many of the actions, laws, and lawsuits of the industry distributors. Historically, they've been able to control the content by controlling the media and thus will need to be dragged forcably into the 21 digital century where content is independant of the media.

    BTW, If digital media trivializes the cost and effort of content distribution, much of the music & movie industry is extraneous. They're just Luddites looking to protect their cash cow...

  • Of course, in the meantime, the encryption scheme will have been broken and/or people will have figured out a way to intercept the music. There's no real need for concern.

    Well, won't there? Someone has broken the DVD format, but I still don't have a way to back DVD's up. Why? Because MPAA (or in this case RIAA, same shit...) have much too much control over the hardware makers. Diamond got away with the RIO, but would they have gotten away with a DVD-R which can write the code tracks? Will we ever have such a drive? (Affordable, without 'tax'?)

    Corporate power reaching across hardware-content boundaries leads to pain for the consumers.

    dufke

    -
  • SDMI has nothing to do with musicians. Probably 8 out of ten of them oppose it. SDMI exists solely for the major record companies. MP3 has major record companies scared stiff-- not only because of piracy, but more importantly because it allows bands & independent labels to cheaply & easily distribute their music worldwide without the record companies getting their cut.

    Isn't it possible to take the SDMI technology and use it against the recording industry? Technology is supposed to be double-edge sword. If the purpose of SDMI is to screw the consumer base why could it not be turned against the RIAA?After all SDMI has one advantage over MP3: it sets up formal procedures for making payments. Consider the following scenario:

    1. Plans for SDMI-compliant hardware are ditched, the specifcation becomes a wire-protocol

    2. Restrictions on copying are removed

    3. The protocol is used by independent artists to sell their work over the web

    The RIAA is out of the loop, the useful parts of SDMI techology (payment for content) is salvaged and everyone is happy.

    BluesPower

  • You have a very good point. I got turned on a electronic music a few months back, and it this had been, say, 3 years ago, I probably would have bought some albums. As it is, I'm streaming the Electronica Trip channel from Green Witch right now. Why would I buy an album when I can chose what type of music I want to hear, and hear it without commercials?

    --Kevin
  • I agree with you except the part about net result. MP3 players are already being manufactured. When hardware companies see that people don't want SDMI devices they will remember the the unrestricted MP3 devices sold like hotcakes and they'll go back to selling them (if they ever stopped in the first place). Follow the money.

    And I don't think they're evil. They are morons. Then don't understand the concept of a toothpaste tube (its one way).
  • If they were clear about the licenses, they might have to say something like "fair use entitles you to so-and-so". They'd rather not admit fair use exists, and have lobbied for the likes of DMCA to put it in a smaller and smaller box.
  • Security gone bad? maybe...

    See this from the perspective of the folks who built that "standard" though. They want you to pay for a song, store it somewhere, and not be able to redistribute it to others or make copies you haven't paid for.

    Of course you're usually allowed to make copies for your personnal use, but apparently they forgot THAT part of the copyright law when they designed the crap...

    What seems to be really stupid though is that the software allows you to move files around, which renders them unusable, and it doesn't warn you?? If that's the case, it doesnt qualify as user-friendly to me.

  • Before one can know if SDMI does the right thing, one must have a clear picture of what the right thing is. One thing the recorded music publishers have neglected for years is that they were only incidentally selling atoms. Really, they were always selling licenses.

    I have here a brand-new shrink wrapped CD. Copyright mark and one warning on the outside - "unauthorized duplication is violation of applicable laws". Pop the wrap. Disc itself has the same print. Liner notes have copyright statements, same warning.

    So here's an odd thing - I've bought some atoms and a license, but I haven't got a clear picture of that license.

    I took a quick pass at smdi.org [sdmi.org] and wasn't too informed by it. So I buzzed over to riaa.org [riaa.org] where this item is a pointer on The Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 [riaa.com] I should run over and read the acts, but I haven't yet. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse..."

    Music licensing is fiercely complex anyway - many organizations can "own" an aspect of the same performance. Making rights visible would go a long way towards making SDMI restrictions comprehensible - and maybe getting rid of some restrictions.

    Henry Troup

    hwt@igs.net

  • but there was certainly a good used market in 'once written' dat tapes.

    companies like HP used full length (2 hr) dat tapes for software updates. when these updates were not current anymore, they'd sell them to folks who knew how to bulk erase them and resell them for audio use.

    these 2 hr tapes typically costed about $2 ea. and a 2 hr tape could usually hold about 2 cd's worth. and for those who really wanted longer play length, they could use the 32k LP mode and get 4 hrs on one tape.

    so if you played your cards right, you paid no tax on those tapes and could fit 2-4 cd's worth on a single dat. aaah, those were the days ;-)

    --

  • dat uses scms not sdmi. sdmi wasn't even around when dat was at its peak.

    even though scms stopped some level of direct digital copying, having to go thru an analog generation and then back to digital wasn't all that bad. studies of the time showed that you could go thru 10 such generations before the sound would deteriorate noticeably. and that was with the cheap 16bit dacs and a/d units that were available at the time. with today's 20 and 24bit units (internal resolution) I bet you could get many more than 10 gens by copying this way.

    about 8 yrs ago, I remember a project on the dat-heads mailing list that was a hardware kit that would allow the user to control the SCMS settings. there were hundreds of kits sold, I believe. and it wasn't all that hard to build, either. in fact, for about $50, there was a kit in Japan that would strip SCMS nicely from the digital stream. and the pcb was only a few inches square - small enough to embed inside a dat machine, if you wanted to.

    dat isn't dead, btw. its just not accepted for home/consumer use (mostly due to the high cost of the player/recorders and the high maintenance cost - without regular maint. you'd get the infamous 'digital buzzsaw' effect due to misaliged and dirty rotary heads). the pro's still use it quite heavily in the studio setting (and they can afford to keep the units in clean working condition). its odd that if you spend a little more money and get a 'pro' dat deck, it has built-in controls to defeat scms. so obviously scms defeating, by itself, wasn't illegal. the laws were certainly ambiguous since they stated that you couldn't actively defeat any built-in scms controls, yet you could buy a deck that didn't ever have them in the first place! ;-)

    and when spdif cards became available for PCs, the notion of needing a realtime blackbox to strip scms became a low-tech solution. today, you import the bits off a cd or dat directly into a pc, then do what you want with it and finally burn a copy (or even write it back to another dat deck). I never saw spdif cards being on the government's "hit list" - what's up with THAT?

    --

  • RE: Is SDMI a consumer's nightmare : Answers! (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 03, 2000 @09:36AM (#1309367)
    Answer to the questions about the SDMI spec are in line below.

    -n.o.

    ===

    Milo_Mindbender asks: "I recently got hold of a solid-state music player
    that is Secure Digital Music Initiative (see www.sdmi.org) compatible. While
    the player itself is a fine device, the restrictions forced on it by SDMI
    appear to make it a nightmare for the consumer. I'd appreciate it if someone
    with more knowledge of SDMI could tell me if my concerns are real, or just
    the result of a bad SDMI implementation." Click below to read the rest of
    Milo's submission and to see the direction the RIAA wants to push us in.

    "1. It appears you can't move the music files around on your disk. They get
    stored in an encrypted form and if you try and reorganize them other than
    through the SDMI compliant software, they go boom!

    == Answer ==
    The files must be stored in a protected manner, but the fact that the system breaks when the files get moved around your file system is not a result of SDMI. This is probably because the implementation expects the files to be in a particular location.
    ===

    2. At least with the software I have, it appears all your music must fit on
    one device, there is no provision for multiple catalogs on several devices.

    == Answer ==
    Again, not a result of SDMI. SDMI explicitly supports multiple devices for a single user.
    ===

    3. It appears that storing your music on read-only media like CDR will not
    be possible.

    === Answer ===
    Archived clear text music is not "SDMI compliant" so if you mean you cannot write LPCM to CDR and be SDMI compliant, this is true. However, there is no restriction which prevents you from storing your protected files on CDR as long as it is not possible to make copies that work in any PC. SDMI allows you to store content to any media as long as the media is bound to the media or to the user's "local environment" which might include more than one PC (see below).
    ===

    4. At least with the software I have, storing music on removable media like
    ZIP drives may not be possible.

    == Answer ==
    See above. Again, this is a limitation of the software, not SDMI. Zip disks (I believe) have unique IDs which means the content can be bound to the disk. This will allow them to be played by any computer with the appropriate software, but will also prevent bit-identical copies.
    ===

    5. It appears that if you have multiple computers, a laptop and a PC for
    example, you won't be able to transfer your music back and forth between the two.

    == Answer ==
    Not true. The specification is a little hazy about this, but you are allowed to make copies and move them between devices and PC's. The number of copies is limited, however.
    ====

    6. It appears SDMI is a security standard only and doesn't guarantee
    interoperability between SDMI devices from multiple manufacturers.

    == Answer ==
    Yes, the 1.0 specification says nothing about interoperability. SDMI is scheduled to discuss interoperability in the future, but many people believe that any real interoperability progress will come from outside of the group.
    ===

    7. I have yet to determine if the directory containing SDMI music can be
    safely backed up and restored.

    == Answer ==
    This depends on the implementation. The spec says that backup and restore should not be a security hole (back up on my PC, restore on yours). Of course, everyone knows that this is a very difficult problem to solve well.
    ===

    8. It looks like SDMI might be one of those "standards" that can't be
    distributed as open source without its security being broken.

    == Answer ==
    Only partly true, since the SDMI spec is not a technical specification. It provides a high level set of requirements that software and hardware must meet in order to be called "SDMI compliant". These requirements are somewhat general and say things like "SDMI compliant components must authenticate eachother," but it does not say which authentication protocol to use.

    The one place where this is true is with respect to the watermarking technology.
    ===

    If anyone can clear up any of these questions for me I'd really appreciate
    it. Right now SDMI looks like it will make it terribly easy for the
    uninitiated to accidentally lose music by moving it in ways that seem
    innocent at first, but cause the security to kick in. It also seems to give
    the music less utility than music on a CD, that is I can carry a CD to work
    and play it on my PC there, or loan the CD to someone...SDMI seems to
    prohibit this. I don't have anything against protecting the musicians'
    copyright rules, but it sounds like they may be creating a consumer
    nightmare with all this format's restrictions. Any comments? "

    == Final Comment ==
    To sum up, the problems you identified are restrictions of the particular implementation you have. Most of SDMI is very aware that unless security is invisible to the user, SDMI compliant systems will not be adopted. Provisions were made to allow for the kind of uses that you mention and for other uses which consumers would normally expect. Most SDMI attendees are only interested in SDMI so long as it is possible to make compliant products that are attractive to consumers.
    ===

  • Re:Makes sense from the company's point of view... (Score:3)

    by The G ( 7787 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @05:57AM (#1309368)
    Of course you're usually allowed to make copies for your personnal use, but apparently they forgot THAT part of the copyright law when they designed the crap...

    I think that's precisely what they have in mind. The corps regard fair use as a "bug" in the law, and are trying to put together a technical workaround to this "bug." Fair use is the bane of the RIAA, MPAA, and their ilk.

  • Re:SDMI (Score:3)

    by Eric_Scheirer ( 14197 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @05:55AM (#1309369) Homepage
    I think it is quite clear that all of the problems described here will come to pass, unless the SDMI process changes somehow. The problem as I see it is that unlike MPEG, the IETF, and W3C, which are standards groups attended by geeks, SDMI is mostly attended by suits (lawyers and marketroids). The suits set the agenda and then try to develop a technical standard that fits, even with no real understanding of technology.

    I wrote a long column for MP3.com about the dysfunctions of SDMI; you can read it here [mp3.com]. The head of SDMI, Leonardo Chiariglione (who is also the head of MPEG), responded in his inimitable manner here [mp3.com].

  • SDMI will die the death of DIVX (Score:3)

    by larz ( 23116 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @05:43AM (#1309371) Homepage
    The death of DIVX demonstrated that consumers will not accept a standard that further restricts their use of intellectual property when a more open standard already exists. Its too bad the "open dvd" didn't turn out to be as open as we thought. Mp3s are here, now, and will not go away soon. SDMI has to be converted to audio at some point, and as a result can and mostly likely will be recorded, circumventing the technology. Someone will find a way to grab the digital out before its converted to analog by the soundcard. The industry doesn't understand they're fighting a battle they can't win. Until they send the audio directly to people's brains, no format will be secure.

  • Re:Website for SDMI (Score:3)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @06:44AM (#1309372) Homepage
    What SDMI is, what it's not? David Futrelle from IBM has a comment [ibm.com] about that:
    • As far as I can tell, the main aim of the plan [using SDMI] seems to be to confuse consumers as to what is and isn't kosher in the digital music arena so none of them will have time left to engage in music piracy.
    Instead of trying to make it harder for the consumer, he suggests that the music industry makeit easier for people to get to music. He contends that searching for illegal takes time and it's difficult to find the exact song you're looking for. If the music industry were to make it extremely convenient to get songs from them, consumers would pay a small amount of change for each song in exchange for the time saved.

  • Backups (Score:3)

    by CdotZinger ( 86269 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @06:12AM (#1309373)
    It wouldn't surprise me if backups are impossible or intentionally inconvenient to the point that a repurchase is preferable (and who's gonna do that?).

    Here's what happened to me the first time I attempted to use a "licensed" audio file.

    1) I download a "free" 30 meg King Crimson concert at 56k; this takes about nine hours including failures and disconnects.

    2) It's in Windows Media format, so I go download the Windows Media Player so that I can listen to my precious, hard-won "free" Crimson.

    3) Since Microsoft makes the WMP, I backup my whole system before installing it, including the Crimson show. This is common sense, I think. MS likes to delete other companies' libs without asking and replace them with their own, unstable ones for some reason. Something to do with monopolies or something.

    4) I install WMP and it hoses a decent percentage of my system files.

    5) I re-install my system, including WMP, and this time it "works" because I didn't install anything hoseable yet.

    6) I click and attempt to enjoy the grandeur that is Crimson, but I can't because I'm no longer "licensed" to do so. The "license" was an invisible file that, if moved, no longer functioned. I could at this point either A) re-download the whole thing just to get a 10k "licence" text file, or B) say "Fuck this."

    7) I say "Fuck this," delete everything, and vow never to futz around with "licensed" content again. SDMI/WM et al lose one customer.

    I would expect this scenario to repeat in the homes of millions until SDMI joins DIVX in Acronym Hell. I hope it does, anyway.

  • Re:format restrictions (Score:3)

    by re-geeked ( 113937 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @09:37AM (#1309374)
    To echo another response to this post, the important part of your post is "and much like the recording and movie industries, the real artists don't make beans". That is what I think the MPAA and RIAA are trying to ensure -- that they maintain control of the *production* of content, to keep a monopoly position and to reduce costs. There's no way that a Hong Kong pirate shop or an internet rip site is going to compete with these guys in serious ways (and, yes, the maintenance of the perception that we are buying content, not media, is essential to making these competitors seem illegitimate). But, if independent musicians and filmmakers felt they could cheaply distribute their work, and not have to sign away their rights to the studios, that *would* threaten their monopoly.

    Ironically, they try to defend themselves as protecting the artists!

    Mind you, I think that, for all the reasons you mentioned, they are on balance still dumbasses.

  • Re:format restrictions (Score:4)

    by ibbey ( 27873 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @08:26AM (#1309375) Homepage
    Where do you draw the line between protecting the musician's interests and giving the consumers value for what they pay for?

    SDMI has nothing to do with musicians. Probably 8 out of ten of them oppose it. SDMI exists solely for the major record companies. MP3 has major record companies scared stiff-- not only because of piracy, but more importantly because it allows bands & independent labels to cheaply & easily distribute their music worldwide without the record companies getting their cut. By implementing these kinds of senseless restrictions, the majors hope to kill off any & all forms of digital music distribution. Obviously, in the long run it's a losing battle, but they've got the money, so they won't give up the fight easily.

  • Re:SDMI will die the death of DIVX (Score:4)

    by gorilla ( 36491 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @09:29AM (#1309376)
    On the same subject, BMG has withdrawn it's copy protected CD's, Wired [wired.com] has the story.

  • format restrictions (Score:4)

    by _UnderTow_ ( 86073 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @05:42AM (#1309377)
    Where do you draw the line between protecting the musician's interests and giving the consumers value for what they pay for? This is kind of like buying a car and being told that you couldn't drive it at night or on certain roads. There is no way I would pay money for digital music with these kind of restrictions.

  • Does it even matter anymore? (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 03, 2000 @05:53AM (#1309378)

    The fundemental question is not wether SDMI is good or bad..its wether its even relevant anymore.

    Music has and will continue to be produced on simple, plain-jane audio CD's because you're not gonna convince the American public that they need to throw out their CD players and buy a new box to listen to their Milli Vanilli with. Videos will still be released on VHS, because for most people, they dont care if their movie has digital quadrophonic Dolby THX surround-sound. They just want to see a damn movie.

    What _is_ relevant now, are applications like Napster, and how its existance and similar "community trading" apps will impact how media is reproduced and sold. Not just music, but all sorts of things. Napster for movies. Napster for warez. Hell, even Napster for porn.

    See, nothing prevents Sony Music from setting up a server, and selling MP3s securely..You could purchase the MP3 online two weeks in advance, before the audio CD hits store shelves. Nothing prevents Virgin from setting up kiosks in their stores that let you burn your own custom audio CDs from a catalog of artists. Infact, they would probably make more money in the long run doing that, than they would by selling a CDs of individual artists. Most people are reluctant to pay $17 for an album where there are only one or two songs on it they like -- I'm sure they'de much rather pay $20 for a custom-burned CD where THEY decided what got put on it, so they could ensure that every song appealed to them, and the whole 75 minutes of the disc were used.

    The cat is already out of the bag, and its meow sounds suspiciously like "MP3".

  • They Don't Lose (Score:5)

    by Effugas ( 2378 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @05:53AM (#1309379) Homepage
    Who loses if digital media dies?

    It sure ain't labels? Nah. They've still got their distribution networks set up, and the massive payola scenario they engineered with (former) radio station owners means that the advertising networks are locked up pretty tight too.

    They've got the songs, the stores, and the stations. What they didn't have is the software, and the hardware that comes inside. By threatening to sue and/or refuse to license standards to consumer audio hardware manufacturers, they get to force some absolutely ridiculous amounts of anti-consumer design.

    Would you want to buy a player that would refuse to play your music? Are there market forces that are pushing you to say, "Gee, I wish my music collection just didn't work. I'd love it if I could lose my entire investment to a rogue hacker. If only nothing worked together, and I could only use Windows, and I was only allowed to have a single music playing device, and I was miserable with anything but CDs!"

    Nope, but there sure as hell are labels that wouldn't mind you saying that.

    SDMI's doomed to fail, because that's what it does best. SDMI fails. People are proclaiming the death of a PC over a failure rate that is infinitely lower than SDMI's <i>intentional</i> rate of failure.

    And when it fails...the status quo, pre MP3 but post payola, will be maintained for the labels. That's the plan--musicians, consumers, hardware manufacturers, linux coders be damned.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com

  • Remember, folks - the market rules! (Score:5)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @05:49AM (#1309380) Homepage Journal
    SDMI devices are coming to market, and MP3-based devices are already out there. The one thing we all need to keep in mind here is that MP3 already is the de facto standard for digital audio. If the consumers stick to MP3-enabled devices, SDMI will die on the vine, like Betamax. Ultimately, all the consumer electronics manufacturers will act in their self-interest, and stick to "fishing where the fish are".

    Ultimately, SDMI's fate is in our hands, because we control our own pursestrings. If we don't buy it, they'll stop selling it. The recording industry may think SDMI is the be-all-end-all of digital playback, but it doesn't matter how much they market it or how pretty the box is if we dogs won't eat their dogfood.

    What can slashdotters do?

    Buy only MP3 devices for themselves. Do not buy devices that support SDMI instead of, or in addition to MP3.

    Evangelize your friends and the less technically astute. Don't hammer them with the technical details of why SDMI is inferior. Say things like "you'll want to back up your songs, right? SDMI can't do that" or "Only MP3 players work as-is with your existing CD's, just like making tapes for your Walkman". Keep it simple. MP3 still wins.

    Write to the big consumer electronics resellers. If Best Buy and Circuit City alone emphasized MP3 players they could almost single-handedly ensure the death of SDMI. They may support it now, but if they do that's because they genuinely think the marketplace will accept SDMI. Circuit City, in particular, should have learned their lesson about proprietary systems from the DIVX fiasco.

    - -Josh Turiel

  • Website for SDMI (Score:5)

    by Merk ( 25521 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @05:45AM (#1309381) Homepage

    http://www.sdmi.org/ [sdmi.org]

    Just so we know what we're talking about. From that site:

    What SDMI is: A forum for these industries to develop the voluntary, open framework for playing, storing and distributing digital music necessary to enable a new market to emerge. SDMI is working on two tracks. The first has already produced a standard, or specification, for portable devices. The longer-term effort is working toward completion of an overall architecture for delivery of digital music in all forms. What it is not: SDMI is not producing a single format, technology or design. The SDMI framework allows a variety of competing technologies and download formats to be used within its system.

  • RIAA SDMI Antitrust Liability (Score:5)

    by doogieh ( 37062 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @06:22AM (#1309382) Homepage
    Everyone,


    Last year, an RIAA official publicly stated their intention to eventually "phase out" MP3s by putting an "off switch" on all SDMI compliant software. After the SDMI standard becomes widespread, the consortium would "flip the switch", and make MP3s completely unplayable on all computers with SDMI installed.


    This is made particularly incideous because the Digital Millenium Copyright Act makes a copy control system legal, and makes it a criminal offense to remove such a system (regardless of your intent!) However, the RIAA has gone beyond a copy control system.


    By considering (and possibly implementing) such an "off switch", and other attributes of the SDMI standard, the music industry is group boycotting the MP3 standard. They can't do that, at least not the way they are planning to do it now. The DMCA doesn't allow it, and it may be an antitrust violation.


    When they do, a number of us will be here, waiting. And for the RIAA/MPAA/DVD-CCA lawyers reading this (We know you're there), recognize that some of us see the potential antitrust violations you've wired or may wire into your software codes. If you keep your efforts limited to honestly restricting piracy, and don't prevent competition with your proposed proprietary formats, and if you stop using your monopoly on movies and/or music to control the downstream market for players, then your industry associations have nothing to worry about. But we're watching, like thousands of hawks.

    The moral of the story: we should stick to open MP3 players not made with SDMI, for now.

  • Industry Survey on SDMI (Score:5)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @06:04AM (#1309383) Homepage
    I found a survey about SDMI here [musicdish.com]. 32% of the people who took the survey were musicians or songwriters, and 16% were executives or label owners.

    There are several interesting results:

    For the people who don't have music available on the web, there were several reasons given. Piracy was halfway down the list.

    56% of the people responded No to "Has the lack of a uniform secure distribution system limited your distribution of music online?"

    33% responded "RIIA" to "Do you feel that SDMI has furthered the objectives of the RIAA or the industry as a whole?"

    64% responded "Detrimental" to "Do you feel that the fact that the SDMI decision making process, not being open to the public, press or interested parties, had a detrimental or positive impact on the group's work?"

    There are many more questions on the survey, read it for yourself [musicdish.com].

  • Re:format restrictions (Score:5)

    by gfxguy ( 98788 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @06:53AM (#1309384)
    Let's get history straight. If people want to know why we study history, part of the reason is to make children good at memorizing things, and part of it is to learn the mistakes of the past so that we don't repeat them.

    The world according to gfxguy:

    • When consumer recording devices started to become popular (reel to reel, 8 track and eventually cassettes), the recording industry made the same complaints. The consumers won their freedom to record their music, and music industry boomed. Every year set a new record in number of albums sold (until CD took over). The recording industry may have lost a few sales to pirating, but overall they simply raked in the cash in unbelievable bucket loads.

    • When consumer grade video recording devices hit the shelves, the movie industry made the same complaints. Consumers won their freedom to record from TV. Again, while pirating may occur, the movie industry made bucket loads of cash hand over fist from the rental market...often making more in rentals than in theatrical releases.

    • Video games became a large market. The companies tried all sorts of stupid human tricks to make us stay legal, including purposely damaging their disks (so copy programs wouldn't run), and the off disk copy protection was simply a nightmare for consumers...and who was hurt? The one's who legally purchased the game. The pirates broke the off disk copy protection, and gaming became a more pleasurable experience when you broke that stupid look-up-in-manual-or-codewheel copy protection. I did this to many games I legally owned. It was just stupid. They stopped doing it. The gaming industry has grown every year and they too make bucket loads of money (and much like the recording and movie industries, the real artists don't make beans).

    • Digital formats started becoming more and more popular. The recording industry once again when crazy about DATs and recordable CDs and so forth. It was a draw. DATs didn't catch on - for whatever reasons. The record companies promised that the format for CDs was a cheaper manufacturing process, and CDs are cheaper to make - the reason they were so expensive to start was because of the volume. They promised that when volume was high enough, prices would come down. They didn't - even record prices rose. Once again, the recording industry was and still is making money hand over fist - sales grow at an exponential rate every year. Obviously recordable media didn't effect this to any great extent - at least not at the loss of profits, even though CD's could be copied with no loss in quality.
    So the question remains: WTF is wrong with the dumbasses in the motion picture and recording industries?

    I believe this is a much bigger issue than even slashdotter's, who tend to overreact anyway, are making it out to be. It's not just inconvenient, but WE are the ones who ultimately pay for this inconvenience! Anyone who supports these people by buying a DVD or some ridiculous secure music format is subsidizing this stupidity.

    I was about ready to buy a DVD player until I heard about the regional codes. That alone made me hesitate. Good thing, too, because I hesitated long enough for the @!#$ to hit the fan with this whole DeCSS thing, and now I'm just going to wait. I like the quality, but not at the cost of freedom.


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