March 10, 2003
More on Loopholes in DRM
Earlier, I examined the Times article “How Important is Copy Protection?” and questioned whether the “Texas-sized loophole” in online music services’ DRM actually exists. Oscar Wilde (which is a great name) brought up some interesting points in a post and in a brief email, which I’d like to share with you:
1. Mr. Wilde asserted in his email that recompressing an MP3 – that is, turning an MP3 into an audio CD and then compressing that back to an MP3 – does not greatly reduce the sound quality. Thus, the “Texas-sized loophole” does exist to the extent that the resulting MP3 is still piracy-worthy (this is not to say that recompression has no effect, as the writer for the Times implies; there is no way that the MP3 will be exactly the same after recompression). This is contrary to my experience with recompression. I will try to do some tests later this week. Anyone else done it? Did I just use a bad encoder when I tried it?
2. Mr. Wilde also pointed out that a larger loophole exists in streaming audio. He pointed me to Total Recorder, which records audio as it goes to your soundcard and thus differs from programs like StreamRipper, which captures audio as it is streamed to your computer. StreamRipper cannot capture encrypted formats like WMA (without circumventing the DMCA); but that encryption has no effect on programs like Total Recorder. Mr. Wilde notes that, “Microsoft’s solution, as I understand it, is ‘Secure Audio Path’. The audio signal sent to your sound card will be purposely degraded unless the card’s software driver is certified by Microsoft; and of course the Total Recorder driver (which intercepts that signal) will never be certified. But we’re not there yet.”
Anyone know anything about this? I should look into – it’s an interesting issue.
During the CARP proceedings, the music industry cried a lot about this loophole. I wonder how many are actually using such recording programs, and how much music on P2P services comes from such recording. Anyone have any stats?
3. Mr. Wilde also brought up the analog hole: “CD analog audio and A/D converters are so good that you will be hard put to tell the difference once the audio is encoded at, say, 128 kbps. The analog hole will never be plugged for adequate-fidelity audio. Too much equipment is already out there.”
Well, the analog hole could be plugged. But, he’s right that there’s too much current technology out there to make and redigitize analog recordings that it might not matter. The question is: how many people know enough to redigitize? How many people would there need to be to allow piracy to continue in the face of DRM/Hollings bill/etc?
I suppose the answer is one. You only need one non-DRM copy on a P2P service to allow the file to spread. But is that completely true? How many copies of song X do you need initially to quickly saturate a P2P service with that song? Is the relationship between speed and initial number of copies a linear or exponential relationship? Anyone have any stats or thoughts?
Filed by Derek Slater at 11:11 am under General news
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