Apple's new music service: Will it help curb piracy?

[Howedar]

Of course, that would only be temporary, as I expect DVD-R drives will go the way of CD burners - down in price to the point where everybody's dog has one.

Its an interesting idea, and I think its better than what they're doing now.

[Darth Wong]

Of course, that would only be temporary, as I expect DVD-R drives will go the way of CD burners - down in price to the point where everybody's dog has one.

I have one. But a DVD-R drive will only burn a DVD-4.7, not a DVD-9. So if they deliberately pack enough goodies on the disc to make it fill a DVD-9, it will be impossible to make a perfect copy of it. At best, they can increase the compression ratio, spend hours crunching it, and produce a lower-quality version.

[Joe]

Some companies are already doing this; including DVDs with bonus features with CDs.

[weemadando]

Very few businesses are based on decades of residuals for a one-off product, and most workers in conventional industries generally cannot do ONE good thing and then live the rest of their lives on that, the way musical one-hit wonders can. The exception would be patents, but they are time-limited, and anyone who seriously thinks that a song benefits humanity as much as a genuine advance in technology is deluding himself.

You would have gotten along just brilliantly with Plato.

[Darth Wong]

Very few businesses are based on decades of residuals for a one-off product, and most workers in conventional industries generally cannot do ONE good thing and then live the rest of their lives on that, the way musical one-hit wonders can. The exception would be patents, but they are time-limited, and anyone who seriously thinks that a song benefits humanity as much as a genuine advance in technology is deluding himself.

You would have gotten along just brilliantly with Plato.

Why not? He was always very clear in his belief that a man unversed in mathematics and the sciences is useless. And he never charged residuals for his ideas.

[Durandal]

Well, the AAC files don't appear to be encrypted at all. It looks like purchasing information is just embedded in a tag in the file.

I picked up my first three tracks from the Apple Music Store. Three The The tracks that are long versions or remixes of some of my favorite tracks. All three were off of the singles album for which I already have the other 17 or 20 tracks on other albums.

I could justify spending the money because it saved me money.... uh, yeah. That's the ticket.

In any case, that gave me a chance to play with the DRM a bit.

As noted the purchased tracks have the purchaser's information embedded in the tags within the file. They are not encrypted. If someone happens to have the specification for the tags embedded in an AAC/".m4p" file, it would be trivial to whip off some Python to parse 'em out. Please send pointers/URLs and I'll summarize here.

Clearly the files contain DRM information and that information is preserved when the files are copied to (and from -- I modified Podestal (unreleased version and this ain't it) to support AAC files) an iPod.

It isn't clear that the iPod actually uses the DRM information. It also isn't clear if the track contents are even encrypted. I didn't look hard and am not going to-- I'm not interested in breaking the DRM, just in learning how Apple has implemented this so elegantly (it is pretty frickin' amazing for a 1.0 -- "just works" was muttered around here a lot). Frankly, it would surprise me if the music data is heavily encrypted. The iPod is a pretty tight computing platform to start out with -- I can't imagine there are a lot of spare cycles floating around after doing the AAC decoding...

In any case, the DRM seems to be most tightly coupled to iTunes itself. In particular, you cannot download a track to an iPod from a computer that is not authorized to play the track. Authorization and de-authorization is painless. Double-click a DRM protected track and iTunes automatically asks you to authenticate.

I don't know what happens if you already have 3 computers authorized and try to authorize a fourth. The account summary page in iTunes indicates how many computers are authorized, but it doesn't give indication as to identity (which would be hard). The big question is whether or not one machine can effectively "steal" the authorization from another or if the account "owner" can break the authorization at will.

[phongn]

I was going to leap to the defense of the artists as copyright holders, seeing as my dream is to be a professional writer, but if the publishing industry tried to pull the same shit the music industry has, they'd deserve to go bankrupt, and at any rate, the solution for publishers if they want to prevent losing sales to file transfers is to keep publishing in a format that's difficult and time-consuming to convert into an easily copied and transfered file--i.e., books. Or, conversely, they could sell e-books, realize they're going to lose money to file-sharing, and then smile and realize how much money they've saved not having to print, bind, and distribute physical books.

There are a few publishers that 'print' eBooks (Baen is a notable example). Mostly, though, I've seen older stuff available.

[Wicked Pilot]

It's much easier to take a printed book to the toilet with you than taking your whole labtop.

[phongn]

It's much easier to take a printed book to the toilet with you than taking your whole labtop.

I've used my Palm VII before to read stuff, but it just isn't the same as a "dead-tree" book.

[SirNitram]

It seems to be confirmation of something I mused on once: While computer networks are fine and nice, a large scale, broadband internet like the one evolving now will completely change the world it's attached to. And I mean it when I say 'Large scale'; it's now possible for a working-class couple in West By God Virginia to have a broadband connection.

The RIAA, and to a lesser extent, the MPAA, are being revealed for what they are: Monopolies that work off a crackaddled business model. Only their ability to control the mediums, their distribution, and the media and politicians have kept them going this far. But now the Internet is in the hands of their customers, and their learning that everything the RIAA told them was bullshit: It doesn't cost millions to send music around, it isn't a Herculean task to get a new band out there. A few are starting up thanks to the ease of MP3's. More are making it by with burning their own CD's.

Now, what should the RIAA do? I agree with Mike: Go with DVD-9's, give their audience more for their buck. A good chunk of those discs will be filled once you get the songs themselves, the instrumentals of the songs, the music videos, and of course, the Karaoke versions(Hey, trust me, people love that stuff). Throw in the artist's comments on their work, those silly 'making the videos', and some other knickknacks, and bang, a real, viable product.

What will the RIAA do? Continue to fight the Hydra, forever cutting one head off only to find two more in it's place. They will continue to lobby in the US government to make things illegal and take away rights from the people, until they finally get sued for every last penny. Then we will dance on their graves and build something new.

[Bug-Eyed Earl]

Hell no.