Efforts to stop music piracy 'pointless'

BBC News Online ^ | 11/22/2002

[GeneD]

Record industry attempts to stop the swapping of pop music on online networks such as Kazaa will never work. So says a research paper prepared by computer scientists working for software giant Microsoft.

The four researchers believe that the steady spread of file-swapping systems and improvements in their organisation will eventually make them impossible to shut down.

They also conclude that the gradual spread of CD and DVD burners will help thwart any attempts to control what the public can do with the music they buy.

Doomed disks

The paper was prepared for a workshop on Digital Rights Management, (DRM), at the US Association for Computing Machinery's annual conference on Computer and Communications Security.

Digital Rights Management describes attempts to stop people copying music from CDs and sharing the tracks via peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa and Madster.

To stop this piracy some music makers are starting to produce CDs that will not play on computers.

Websites such as the Campaign for Digital Rights are documenting which CDs will and will not play on home computers.

The music industry as a whole is also using the courts to shut down file-swapping systems and so far has enjoyed some successes.

But Peter Biddle, Paul England, Marcus Peinado and Bryan Willman write that ultimately these attempts at control will fail.

The success that the music industry has had in stopping file-swapping on systems such as Napster was due entirely to the fact that many of them rely on a few people to provide most of the material being swapped.

By targeting these super-swappers the record industry could severely restrict how much music is available to the majority of members who take without sharing.

The researchers point out that the growth of consumer broadband and cheap data storage will mean the numbers of people willing to swap is growing and will soon outstrip attempts to shut them down.

The growth of instant messaging systems will also contribute to this gradual loss of control.

The rising numbers of recordable CD and DVD drives are also making it much easier for consumers to create their own music compilations and share them with friends which could also stymie anti-piracy work.

Price fix

The paper also pointed out the technical flaws in DRM systems and said that, so far, all of them have been defeated.

In one case the CD protection system designed to stop people playing the disks on a computer was foiled by using a marker pen to cover the outer ring of a disk.

The authors reserve strongest criticism for watermarking systems which put invisible markers in music that stops tracks being passed around and shared.

But the "severe" commercial and social problems inherent in such schemes plus their technical shortcomings mean that they are "doomed to failure", warn the authors.

The paper's researchers emphasise that it represents their opinions rather than those of Microsoft, but their conclusions are likely to make uncomfortable reading for music industry executives.

In essence, say the researchers, file-swapping systems have already won. The only way for music companies to compete is on the same terms by making music easy to get hold of and cheap to buy.

Evidence gathered by critics of the music industry has shown that CD prices have steadily risen over the past few years and may have contributed to the slump in sales as much as the rise of file-swapping systems.

In late September five music companies and three music retailers were fined more than $143 million after being found guilty of fixing CD prices too high.

[Savvymusician]

Music on a CD may not play on a computer but it is still pretty easy to transfer. Just play it and record onto a cassette, then hook up your cassette player to the computer's sound card and record from there. It is fruitless what the music industry is trying. The only thing that will really make a dent is when they stop sending those cease and desist letters and really invest in multiple lawsuits against individuals (not just companies like Napster) who are pirating and downloading tons of copyrighted files. Just like they did with the MIDI sites there will be a trickle down effect, putting the fear of lawsuits into millions of people. Since teenagers are often the biggest culprits go after a few legally (and their parents) and all the MP3 sites will start to shut down of their own accord, wondering who will be next.

[latrans]

George Harrisons new album was available before it was
released.

[lelio]

The music industry is going to spend more to fight piracy than they'll bring in just ignoring the pirates. Except they'll offload a lot of their policing to the FBI / local cops and so I'll end up paying for it.
The music industry should just give it up and realize that they're always going to be pirates and you can't fight it. They should embrace it, like Universal, and offer downloads of individual songs for $1. That's about $1 of pure profit too, vs a CD that they have to press and sell to a retailer, etc.

[Fury]

Record industry attempts to stop the swapping of pop music on online networks such as Kazaa will never work

Maybe not, but the technology is there to block this stuff. We use a Packeteer PacketShaper and it blocks this, Aimster, Gnutella, etc. Our problem of Internet bandwidth being consumed by these applications is solved.

[Lael]

Microsoft and the other 'enablers' of the copyright monopolists had better stop and smell the coffee. I will not buy ANY TCPA, Palladium, or 'FRITZ' chip CRIPPLED system, ever.

And, in fact, there is no need to...go to Powerleap.com to see enhancements to older systems that, for under 200 bucks, can make older Pentium, P II, and P III systems perform almost as fast as brand new ones.

If Intel, AMD, and Micro$oft aren't careful, that much sought after Tech 'rebound' could be pushed back to second half 2006.

[BrooklynGOP]

Just play it and record onto a cassette, then hook up your cassette player to the computer's sound card and record from there.

Skip the cassette player. Just hook up your CD player to your soundcard via analog.

[ContentiousObjector]

The music industry went after MIDI websites?, these Hollywood freaks must have alot of spare time if that became a priority

[Smogger]

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out. They are just going to have to give up their enormous profit margins.

CD's have been overpriced for years. $15 dollars for a piece of plastic with 3 tracks out of 20 that you like. They can sue and pass all the laws they want. You can't stop the march of technology.

BTW: All the fuss over peer to peer is hilarious. That software is for noobs. You can hop on Usenet and download whatever software, movies, and full albums you want at 100 times the speed of peer to peer networks. Not to mention IRC.

The MPAA/RIAA have already lost that war. Their pricing and distribution models are obsolete.

[billybudd]

Why bother with a cassette? Just draw a cord from your CD player to your sound card directly. The point is, all digital methods of protecting music will fail. As long as you can hear the music, you can copy it. The only argument against this is "Transferring digital-analog-digital degrades the quality". But digital-analog transfer technology only needs to improve to a certain level, because the human ear has a limited sensitivity (which is why MP3 works in the first place). Besides, all you need is one person with a good transfer device. Once the file is digital, it's copied for good.

However, there is one problem that I see with p2p file swapping. Free riding. Some studies were done about this and found out that actually a minority of Gnutella users share files. If there are only a few people sharing, then you may be right that the music industry might try suing individuals. Another problem is that there is no p2p market - there's no incentive to share music, to have a fast connection, to not cancel the transfer 90% into it. Maybe this is what Microsoft is aiming for - bringing order to the p2p world.

[Bella_Bru]

Actually, all you need is a Sharpie. Run it around the outer edge of the CD, and bam!, it now will play on your pc.

[w_over_w]

Digital Rights Management describes attempts to stop people copying music from CDs and sharing the tracks via peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa and Madster.Which is the premiere file sharing system vis a vis download time and music selection?

After, Napster they shut down Audiogalaxy . . . I liked these two systems because with their coding configuration I could download the MP3 in under a minute (using a T3 line). I've switched to WinMix and it's slower than whale dung on the ocean floor . . . selection is okay. What say ye pirates!

[Savvymusician]

Well I hope you're right in your hope.

[js1138]

My college kid sources tell me that stuff is easy to find. Not as easy as Napster, but still easy enough. At some point, the industry is going to have to design a business model based on quality and convenience. The current model is based on vinyl. When that was the only way to make a quality product, you didn't need to worry about copies. Now there are several quality grades available, and all but DVD and Audio DVD are easily copied without loss of quality.

[longtermmemmory]

They may have lost the war but who is going to tell teh teamster truck drivers their services are no longer needed? The MPAA/RIAA better act on its own survival. If they are just the errandboys of the Studios, they are lost. However, they should expand to attract the independents who have found it easier without them than with them. I doubt this as the studios are in a blood fight for their very existence.

[Revolting cat!]

A couple of months ago, in an article published by PC Mag, John Dvorak used historical data from the beginnings of the recording industry a hundred years ago to calculate what today's CD's ought to cost. Dollar forty is the figure he got and seriously proposed as a realistic price. You've heard the old saying that if automobile technology had evolved the same way as computer technology, cars would cost $500. Well, that one maybe a false parallel, but a comparison of mass produced copies of recordings to mass produced memory chips, is right on target, in my view.

Whatever, the $18 list mass produced CD, that hasn't been touched by a human hand until it got to the store, is nothing but obscene price gouging.

[tortoise]

Why bother with a cassette? Just draw a cord from your CD player to your sound card directly. The point is, all digital methods of protecting music will fail. As long as you can hear the music, you can copy it. The only argument against this is "Transferring digital-analog-digital degrades the quality". But digital-analog transfer technology only needs to improve to a certain level, because the human ear has a limited sensitivity (which is why MP3 works in the first place). Besides, all you need is one person with a good transfer device.

What you'll find is that with decent D/A/D conversion gear (which is dirt cheap these days), you can actually make lossless conversions. The old saw about cascading conversions isn't really true any more as the technology for doing analog/digital conversion has become exceptionally cheap and high-quality. There are many relatively cheap converters on the market today that easily exceed even the theoretical resolution of a CD, so you really wouldn't be losing any quality.

It used to be that even recording studios minimized conversion cascading, but these days the conversion is so perfect that nobody bothers worrying about it any more.

[Salgak]

Yeah, file-sharing is inappropriate in a business setting. It leaves an employer open to some serious liability. not to mention eating bandwidth that the company paid for.

OTOH, most file-swappers are running their clients on their home boxes, on their own paid bandwith. . .

I hate to say it, but file-sharing is one of the "Killer apps" of consumer broadband. . .

[billybudd]

No, it's not price gouging, it's the actual price of the CD. Not the price of the physical CD, or of burning, or of packaging, all of which probably cost $0.50. The cost is derived from matching supply and demand and I don't think the music industry is so ignorant as not not have refined their economic models (well, maybe they are, who knows).

[billbears]

I've switched to WinMix and it's slower than whale dung on the ocean floor

LOL! You've got that right. I never could get it to work very well. I also didn't think it was user friendly. I prefer KaZaaLite