RIAA to deploy "foolproof" DRM for Christmas 2006, industry sources say.
Ace of Spades
from web shite)
http://technews.zznet.com/article.php?preview=true,art=20060104.tech.riaa.drmStory.htm
(I'm not sure this is actually supposed to be available yet, but
someone posted the link on a blog I read, and it works even though it
says preview and the date is in the future unless they put the month
first in their CMS. If it goes down, fear not, it's reproduced in its
entirety below, and it has a creative commons license that just says
non commercial use only so this isn't a copyright violation.)
RIAA to deploy "foolproof" DRM for Christmas 2006, industry sources
say.
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"Our technical experts are predicting that on December 25 there won't
be a single copy of a single track of any of the experimental new CDs
on a single BitTorrent site -- and there won't be a copy to be had with
eDonkey2000 on, before, or after New Year's either." Strong words?
Yet for once, the DRM vendors may have actually developed a formula
that works. Read on, and decide for yourself.
Full story
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RIAA to deploy "foolproof" DRM for Christmas 2006, industry sources
say.
While official sources inside the RIAA hint at a new wave of lawsuits
targeted at filesharers in the near future, an insider, who requested
anonymity, indicates a major change in strategy may be in the offing:
DRM even "that Felten d00d at http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/ won't
deny is effective," in his own words.
The "foolproof" DRM is "guaranteed to prevent a single copy from ending
up on the p2p nets", according to our source, who proceeded to divulge
the trade secret: "The new DRM focuses not on player software, computer
code, player hardware, or any kind of watermarking or encryption, but
on the user instead," he quoted from a technical paper the leaking of
which he claims he will attempt to engineer, a task compounded by its
being in evil PDF format with Adobe's infamous copy restriction
"features" all enabled, but which will probably only be a matter of
some perseverance and a few hours pretending to work whenever the boss
comes wandering by the cubicle instead of actually working.
He notes that they toyed with the notion of anti-copying propaganda
encoded subliminally in the audio recording before, in an
uncharacteristic display of only-slightly-below-average intelligence,
actually successfully guessing that this might "maybe backfire" on them
and "wouldn't work". Felten of course would instantly jump on the
niggling little fact that even if it were 100% effective and didn't
cause bad PR, that scheme would be defeated when someone ripped the
disc to p2p without listening to any of the tracks first, thereby
avoiding exposure to the subliminal programming. The resemblance to the
Sony/SunnComm DRM (defeated trivially by disabling CD Autorun in
Windows, as exposed by none other than Sir Felten himself) is
noteworthy. But, our source emphasized, this is not the scheme they
intend to deploy in the run-up to the Christmas shopping season this
year. Instead, certain albums by popular singers, unnamed but likely
including at least one Britney and at least one boy-band New Kids
knock-off, will employ a novel encoding method called "user aversion
encoding".
This is, apparently, technical jargon for "the music will suck"; suck
somewhat more than major-label music, already pap catering to the
lowest common denominator, already does, we surmise. The music will
simply not appeal to anyone at all. Consequently, nobody will want it;
nobody will bother ripping it to p2p; and even if some idiot does,
nobody will download it, and it will be doomed to p2p obscurity by
having few sources and poor availability. "Our technical experts are
predicting that on December 25 there won't be a single copy of a single
track of any of the experimental new CDs on a single BitTorrent site --
and there won't be a copy to be had with eDonkey2000 on, before, or
after New Year's either."
We actually believe them. It's not just that they are making their own
in-house DRM, rather than buying from a known snake-oil vendor like
SunnComm; we actually think the technical merits of this newest DRM
scheme may actually have, well, merit. While we cannot dismiss out of
hand the possibility that Ed Felten will concoct some devious technical
countermeasure or otherwise prove that it is as flawed as its
predecessors, we are no longer anything like confident that he will,
which is a complete first.
"Messing with the user's head," our source says, "so they don't *want*
to share it bypasses all the circumvention tricks old Ed's cooked up
over the years of being a thorn in [the RIAA's] side. They won't *want*
to circumvent the DRM. There is no formula or transformation to make
what we're planning to put on these disks something anyone would enjoy
hearing, at least short of taking a steak knife and lopping off both
ears." We seem to recall someone (named, we think, Van Gogh) attempting
a similar circumvention of a TPM of some sort in Europe once without
success, but we digress.
The source proceeded to give some details of the technical specs, which
involve a novel recording technology involving a large plaid burlap
sack into which a number of felines are placed and from which
sound-conducting resonant tubes protrude; said sack is then squeezed.
We will spare you most of the gory details; however "the smell gets
awful and the cats have to be changed every couple of weeks". There are
plans in the works for a food delivery chute to reduce this frequency,
despite which the new recording equipment will "cost less to maintain
than the old" and is also unencumbered by patents and the associated
licensing fees. Apparently there is some obscure prior art from the
British Isles or some place in northern Europe or thereabouts going
back a couple of centuries or so. This probably won't stop some
unscrupulous vendor from attempting an infringement suit, but the RIAA
has the resources to weather such storms, unlike, for example, RIM. "We
think we're in the clear, as far as patents are concerned," our source
commented; "We don't anticipate any risks on that front."
As this went to press, we received the cracked PDF with the technical
specifications. They were even more bizarre than we expected, baroque,
ugly, and strangely appropriately Victorian in character. Until the
microphone in front of the CD mastering system, there's nothing more
sophisticated than in a steam locomotive involved -- just a Britney,
something whose only moving parts are apparently Siamese cats, and a
whole lot of soundproofing tiles. "The studio in which we made our test
recordings, which had standard soundproofing, generated so many
complaints, some from residents of municipalities in different states
and one on the East Coast, that we had no choice but to quadruple the
amount of protection. We actually had the police knock at our door!
Many of the technicians actually felt relief at the sound of the
sirens. It was 'music to their ears' after what they'd been listening
to for the previous several hours."
One of those test recordings found its way into our hands, which may be
a copyright violation but is not one the DRM was designed to prevent.
Indeed, after listening to it for 2.6 seconds, we are finally converts.
DRM *can* work, and the RIAA has come up with the magic formula where
the third-party vendors, all two of them, have failed time and time
again. After two seconds, we pulled the plug; nobody at this office has
any intention of releasing this thing onto any p2p network. "It would
be like releasing a new and infectious strain of Ebola into the middle
of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Nobody in their right mind would
want to do that," Shirley, one of our media lab workers, explained. We
disagree; Osama bin Laden would love to get his hands on this stuff and
release it onto the p2p nets, but nobody will ever let anyone whose
name rhymes with "llama" or who wears a turban in the middle of
sweltering July weather go within a thousand miles of one of the
protected discs, so this is a moot point. Readers do not have to fear
that terrorists will weaponize these discs.
On a sadder note, our other tester, who unlike Shirley was not tone
deaf and unfortunately attempted to listen to the test recording's
entire length and not just to the first two seconds, was pronounced
dead this morning at 06:15 Eastern time of massive internal bleeding
and brain hemmorhage. Our hearts and condolences go out to Mark's
family. Unfortunately, it is unlikely they can claim damages; the disk
was after all not obtained through normal distribution channels, which
would seem to absolve the RIAA of any legal responsibility from
consequences arising from its use or misuse. Besides, it has a
disclaimer absolving the RIAA from any legal responsibility arising
from its use or misuse stickered right on the jewel case, even though
it's only a test recording they didn't intend to see wide distribution.
(Don't worry; it won't.) Our legal department concurs that the RIAA is
not liable in Mark's death.
Our conclusion is that this DRM actually works, although, disclaimer or
no disclaimer, it may be wise for the disks to bear prominent warnings
that they are not standard music discs (lack of such warnings has
caused problems for purveyors of copy-protected CDs on multiple
occasions in the past). We suggest the skull-and-crossbones symbol
found on caustic household cleaning products.
All of this leaves us naturally wondering why this DRM won't also
prevent the major record labels from *selling* the protected discs. But
our source says the marketing department has an answer to that, which
is the same as their answer to everything else. "Advertising," he says,
"should prop up sales. It worked for the last Britney album. It works
for all kinds of dubious products and services. Those guys are real
miracle workers that can make anyone believe they not only want, but
need, *anything*, and I do mean *anything*. These are the same guys
that figured out how to make ads that will let bottling companies
bottle tap water and sell it to consumers whose faucets work perfectly
for the price of a bottle of Coke, after all!" And, we observe, the
same guys that make ads that will let recording labels jewel case CDs
and sell each disc to a consumer whose CD-burner works perfectly for
the price of a whole case of blank CDs, nevermind just one bottle.
Something the legal eagles at the RIAA
haven't managed to accomplish. Thank heavens for the marketing
department, or the RIAA would be out of business, and we'd no longer
have stories like this to print and we'd quickly follow them!
"We predict a good run of sales in November and December," says our
source; "Everyone will be buying the latest and greatest albums for
their loved ones, protected or not." We predict parallel booms in the
sales of earplugs, and brisk business for ear, nose, and throat
specialists, mortuaries, and ambulance-chasers in the new year -- the
latter despite the RIAA's disclaimer stickers.
After a disappointing beginning, things are finally looking up for the
copy-protection industry, and after a rocky last decade or so, things
are finally looking up for the recording giants. "It's the realization
of a dream; the apotheosis of the business model the major labels have
pursued from time immemorial," our source waxes eloquent. "The key was
the realization that with modern marketing, there's no requirement that
anyone actually want to *hear* the CD -- people will just want the CD,
because it's the next big Britney album, or because their friends all
bought it, or because it's on everyone else's Christmas wishlist, or
whatever. And so many gifts and purchases just sit around unused
anyway. The marketing department commented in a board meeting that
given all these facts what was the point in putting anything anyone
would want to listen to on the disks anyway? It's not necessary from a
sales standpoint, and it just tempts thieves and pirates and evil mp3
swappers. Our legal department didn't see a problem, for the first time
in the recorded history of legal departments, and the technical people
said it was feasible and suggested making the content actually
repellent, rather than just blank. The original model suggested was
like those expensive T-shirts that are the same as a blank T-shirt but
with "Tommy" or something similar painted on. Why not an expensive disc
that's the same as a blank disc but with "Britney" or something similar
painted on? But everyone liked the new idea even better. 'Serves 'em
right if they listen to it, the jerks', one of the senior attorneys
said about the proposed actively-repellent disc contents." There does
seem to be one downside, besides the likely negative impact on public
health in a year of public health scares ranging from bird flu to
threats by prominent terrorist organizations to debut several *more*
reality-TV shows this coming fall. Designer-labeled blank CDs have the
additional value of being useful if you record something to them, such
as bootleg mp3z. But then, delivering some kind of actual value in the
way of products or services has never been a core part of the business
philosophy of the recording industry. It would be somehow wrong for
them to ship the first discs that actually have some use as part of
their ultimate realization of a business plan dream spanning decades,
or whatever it was.
The other sexy thing is that the new copy-protection scheme's recording
technology is on the cutting edge of the emerging field of
biotechnology, and it doesn't just use stem cells or recombinant growth
hormone grown in yeast or something, but whole complex animals (namely
cats and Britney) in complex sound synthesis machinery. Our research
team has confirmed that all other known whole-animal biotechnologies
are years and probably decades away from maturity.
The SPCA has made noises in the wake of the leaking of earlier
technical documents we now know related to the new copy-protection
technology. The recent increased offshoring activities of several major
labels now also seem explicable as jurisdiction-shopping; if the feline
abuse happens in Malaysia the SPCA has little recourse other than to
make some noise about it in the press, and the RIAA has faced much
harsher negative publicity. We still recommend against any use of fuzzy
kitten imagery in the advertising of the recombinant cat albums.
-- Assholiated Press contributed to this story
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Related links:
RIM to settle lawsuit with NTP
Settlement reached in Sony DRM "rootkit" scandal
Sunncomm DRM easily defeated by holding 'Shift' key, according to
prominent computer/data security researcher.
New species of flying mammal unrelated to bats, porcine; Ed Felten
astonished
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Rubbermaid Earplug Division +3.45 @ 75.32
Sony +14.33 @ 58.33
American Association of Ear, Nose, and Throat Specialists +4.14 @ 77.19
MSFT -16.43 @ 654.56
Google +15.34 @ 492.15
BMI Music Industries +16.42 @ 72.11
Limewire LLC -14.19 @ 102.21
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El Marko
"Ace of Spades" <twist...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1141245943....@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
Jac
: Why don't they go out and get a job like the rest of the world?
<snip>
Jesus, you're an idiot. You included the original 17KB post just to add
your silly, top-posted one-liner? You MUST be the head of the "Lamers
Club", right? LOL!
j.