[AUUG-Talk]: Downloading and playing legal music

[Chandana De Silva]

On Mon, 2005-10-24 at 17:08 +1000, Chris Maltby wrote:

> Certainly you could use steganographic techniques to put identification
> information into media files - which might be used by copyright owners
> as evidence in claims for licence breaches. But it's entirely another
> thing to make the media file self-enforcing of its DRM policy.

May be intrinsic is not quite the right word. Suppose a data file was
encrypted with two-factor authentication. 
The the person wishing to read the data will need something (possibly
from the owner of the data) each time they want to read it. Think of the
RSA Secure ID token. Now think of a simple device (possibly a USB key)
which generates the token. The decryption software will need to lookup
the key from the device to decrypt. The one token can be made to work
will all of the songs, books etc., that a person has downloaded. This
will prevent the data file being shared. It will not prevent the data
being decrypted and written on to a CD, and then ripped any number of
times from the CD. But the present system does not stop that either. But
this system will  work irrespective of the software, and the software
can be as open as you like.

> The music industry has not yet made sufficient case to the users that
> the end (protecting the RIAA members' ability to extort cash for crappy
> recordings) justifies the means.

I don't really think that justifications necessary (ignoring the crappy
recording bit). If a musician wants you to pay him some money in order
to get a recording of his/her song, then they are entitled to that. If
we can open up the protection mechanism, there can be many places from
which you can obtain a recording, and you can pay more money for a
better recording if you like. The present system allows M$ to monopolise
the market, this giving only data compressed via a lossy process.

> 
> Vote with your feet. Find alternative entertainment that doesn't come
> at the expense of your freedom!

The idea is to make the entertainment (songs in this case) available via
Linux, so that more people will start using linux.