Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Holy Grail Located: HD-DVD and BLU-RAY Processing Key Found
While the previous crack of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD by Muslix64 were individual (patchable) workarounds, the guys over at the Doom9 forum have essentially found a key generator for both formats simply by watching the output keys for a very long time.
Looks like a user by the name of arnezami found the crack and posted it on Feb11th.
Here is the Processing Key which should work on all HD DVD discs (and maybe even Blu-Ray discs) released so far:The implementation of the crack appears to involve an offset by the system clock after a certain initial value.Save it. Store it.Code:REDACTED
-arnezemi
Will inevitable cracks like this convince media companies that DRM is ineffective? Lets hope so.
Update by Cory The AACS licensing authority has threatened to sue us over this post. On advice from lawyers, I've removed the link to the Doom9 forum and the hex-key. However, Google shows more than 100 websites that link to the Doom9 post. Here's Boing Boing's post.
Piracy in the Developing World
Although we've already discussed piracy in the developing world before, a recently written article by Nathan Spande follows the subject from a both similar, and different, angles.
Spande argues that as pirated software more readily avaiable in the developing world, more users will be using 'dirty' versions of MS Office than not. In a place like China then, where millions of users have relatively high-speed internet access, there is a potential for the majority of theses users to be utilizing pirated software on a large network. The security risk is obvious - flood the 'black' and 'grey' markets with Malware and BOOM!, you've got a huge problem on your hands.
What is there to do then? Spande offers numerous ideas, such as using open-source software, but finds that they all leave an inadequacy. MS Office and its similar software counterparts and standards for business computing, and as such, must be know for someone to compete in the job market. As such, the most viable option is to force down-pricing of the content, an unlikely event indeed.
Spande argues that as pirated software more readily avaiable in the developing world, more users will be using 'dirty' versions of MS Office than not. In a place like China then, where millions of users have relatively high-speed internet access, there is a potential for the majority of theses users to be utilizing pirated software on a large network. The security risk is obvious - flood the 'black' and 'grey' markets with Malware and BOOM!, you've got a huge problem on your hands.
What is there to do then? Spande offers numerous ideas, such as using open-source software, but finds that they all leave an inadequacy. MS Office and its similar software counterparts and standards for business computing, and as such, must be know for someone to compete in the job market. As such, the most viable option is to force down-pricing of the content, an unlikely event indeed.
MySpace Experiments with Video Filtering
Wired News picks up an AP article about MySpace's experimental video-filtering system. Through technology licensed from Audible Magic, MySpace hopes to keep copyrighted content off its members' sites. The filtering program works by searching video for unique digital fingerprints that it compares with a database of known fingerprints of copyrighted content.
Hilariously, MySpace officials claim that "the latest offering was unrelated to Universal Music's federal lawsuit in November, accusing MySpace of illegally encouraging its users to share music and music videos on the site without permission." MySpace then proceeds to refer directly to Universal Music as a beneficiary of the filtering software:
Hilariously, MySpace officials claim that "the latest offering was unrelated to Universal Music's federal lawsuit in November, accusing MySpace of illegally encouraging its users to share music and music videos on the site without permission." MySpace then proceeds to refer directly to Universal Music as a beneficiary of the filtering software:
In the video-filtering pilot, MySpace said it would block unauthorized music videos and other clips containing Universal Music Group's music, while still allowing the Vivendi SA unit and its artists to circulate promotional audio and video they authorize. MySpace, a unit of News Corp., said the tools would be available for free to other content owners as well.(via Wired News)
Monday, February 12, 2007
DRM: More Bad News (super short post)
As I was browsing Wikipedia for fillable info gaps, I came across this nugget in the DRM entry:
"The use of DRM may also be a barrier to future historians, since technologies designed to permit data to be read only on particular machines may well make future data recovery impossible - see Digital Revolution. This argument connects the issue of DRM with that of asset management and archive technology."
It's a consequence I hadn't thought of; and one I find especially disheartening...
"The use of DRM may also be a barrier to future historians, since technologies designed to permit data to be read only on particular machines may well make future data recovery impossible - see Digital Revolution. This argument connects the issue of DRM with that of asset management and archive technology."
It's a consequence I hadn't thought of; and one I find especially disheartening...
2004 Study: P2P Effect on Legal Music Sales Negligible
A 2004 study by Felix Oberholzer (of Harvard Business School) and Koleman Strumpf (of UNC Chapel Hill) that was recently published in the Journal of Political Economy provides evidence counter to the argument of many of the large labels: that illegal downloading has a statistically insignificant effect on album sales.
The study, entitled "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis," looks at .01% of the world's downloads from the last third of 2002, and in doing so examines only observed behaviour - there are no surveys integrated into the study, only empirical evidence. After some analysis, the study concludes that the effect that download have on album sales is "statistically indistinguishable from zero."
According to some quick calculations performed in about six seconds by me, in order to offset the decline in album sales last year (about 30.3 million less than 2005), downloaders would have had to download 151.55 billion more albums (at 100mb per album, that would require a 15.155 more terabytes of music) in 2006 than in 2005. As a contrast, small independents have seen increases in popularity due to the advent of digital distribution and the publicity afforded by torrent sites such as indietorrents.com.
(via arstechnica)
Links:
The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis
Top 50 Albums 2005
Top 50 Albums 2006
The study, entitled "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis," looks at .01% of the world's downloads from the last third of 2002, and in doing so examines only observed behaviour - there are no surveys integrated into the study, only empirical evidence. After some analysis, the study concludes that the effect that download have on album sales is "statistically indistinguishable from zero."
We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales. OLS estimates indicate a positive effect on downloads on sales, though this estimate has a positive bias since popular albums have higher sales and downloads. After instrumenting for downloads, most of the impact disappears. This estimated effect is statistically indistinguishable from zero despite a narrow standard error. The economic effect is also small. Even in the most pessimistic specification, five thousand downloads are needed to displace a single album sale.This study puts in the limelight accusations made by the major labels over the course of the last ten or so years. If downloads are having such a powerfully negative effect on album sales, why is there no hard evidence of this causation? Do these accusations hold any merit?
According to some quick calculations performed in about six seconds by me, in order to offset the decline in album sales last year (about 30.3 million less than 2005), downloaders would have had to download 151.55 billion more albums (at 100mb per album, that would require a 15.155 more terabytes of music) in 2006 than in 2005. As a contrast, small independents have seen increases in popularity due to the advent of digital distribution and the publicity afforded by torrent sites such as indietorrents.com.
(via arstechnica)
Links:
The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis
Top 50 Albums 2005
Top 50 Albums 2006
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Warner Music Group Executive Responds to Jobs' "Blog Post"
While EMI contemplates offering music DRM-free, Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. responds to Jobs' "Thoughts on Music" with some harsh words and an endorsement of DRM.
(via washingtonpost.com)
(via washingtonpost.com)
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