I present to you, the Ultimate DRM Buster 2000:
photo © me
This nifty cable should allow you to copy all the protected music you want. You simply plug in one end to the earphone jack, you plug in the other to a microphone jack and you are set. There is some loss in quality, but hey – it works. It’s that easy. ;)
Here is what I think – it is not possible to plug the “analog hole”. Sure you can try to make analog copying difficult, degrade quality and etc… But it is not possible to ever eliminate low tech analog solutions.
Btw, I found that cable in the “assorted junk and cables” drawer at work. No idea what did it originally come with or what was it originally for.
Btw – this is intended as a joke. There are better ways to strip DRM from your media. I’m just trying to illustrate a point here: you don’t have to be a security expert, or a skillful cracker to break the DRM. Anyone can do it, with very simple tools – and there is no way to change it. Because as long as you can watch or hear the media, you can copy them.
[tags]drm, drm buster, copyright, copyfight, analog hole[/tags]
Aww, come on now. Have you ever heard of Tunebite?
Don’t waste your time with stupid shit like that.
Elephantman – this was intended as a joke. I took the picture of this random cable I found to illustrate a point of how easy it is to break DRM.
Sure, you can break the encryption algorithmically – but that takes skill. Someone has to write the code and etc… But just about anyone can exploit the analog hole. If you can watch it, or hear it – you can copy it. And no amount of technology will change this.
So anyways, no I did not intend to use that cable to actually copy anything.
Oh, then I apologize for that. I was just indulging in criticizing you I guess. Yeah, analog sucks, funny how people go into their games and don’t even bother trying to break this flimsy plastic lined protection.
DRM is inevitably going to fall. It already has.
No problem. :mrgreen: DRM was broken in the past, is broken in the present, and it will be broken in the future. It is a waste of resources.
Every form of DRM that comes out gets broken almost immediately
I really don’t see why they carry on trying – its inevitably doomed to fail.
The real pirates are never going to get shut out, all it serves to do is annoy people who are trying to make a single copy (for a different format/device/backup etc) until they decide to get their stuff from the “real” pirates
Then they just carry on getting stuff from there because the legal means are more difficult and more expensive for the exact same thing
Not to mention that the really “damaging” zero day releases are not really caused by casual users ripping their DVD’s. These things are usually leaked out of the movie studio, stolen out of the cutting room, taken from a DVD manufacturing plant, or lifted from those complimentary copies sent to movie critics and award comities.
I’m sure that may be the case to a certain extent. But to another; realize the amount of sharing that’s been going on; ISP’s are looking at cacheing our internet so it’s faster for them, and they’re not as overloaded.
Our sharing will make the industry disappear into something much different.
I hope I see the day where there is no buying DVD’s…Only downloading them. Music will be free as well.
Open source is the best
I sure hope so. I really hope I will live to see it, but looking at the current trends, I’m not sure if that will happen.
Anyway, it has to get worse for it to get better, because for the most part people don’t care. So this copyright insanity will only escalate over time, untill it gets so bad that copyright reform becomes a public concern.
The way it is right now, copyright reform is not a political platform you could run on. Some of us really care about this, but general public doesn’t. And as such it remains the domain of lobbyists.
Unless of course the increasing expense of developping ever more complex DRM and diminishing returns caused by people turning to illegal sources for better quality products will break the back of the entertainment industry and they will be forced to rethink their strategy.
Will it ever be free? No, not really – at least not anytime soon. I mean, the artists have to eat too. They will just have to work on different models of distributions. Monthly subscriptions, itunes like stores, streaming online content – this stuff is already here, and it is working.
I mean, if you can legally get any song you want, in hi def audio, in the format of your choice, without any DRM for $1 or less, from an online store then the incentive to download from illegal source is minimal. Same with the movie – if you can get a movie you want in a format you want (either a watchable mpg or an ISO of the dvd) for less than $5 then most people would probably do just that.
You also have to factor in the file sharing trends. People often download content to see if they like given TV show or band. So you make promotions – first episode of the show is always free. One song per album is free. You make up money you lose this way by displayng ads on the download page, and other marketing tricks (entice customer to buy other related items at discount prices, etc…).
Always the advertising. As I may have already said; the sheep.
The damn sheep.
Then consider though, the newer High Schooled generation is using Bittorrent mostly, (unfortunately Limewire is standing in the way of that for all the newbs.)
Artists have been making money for a long time without DRM, and they’ll find ways to do it in the future that don’t rely on technology that is inherently breakable.
Like you say – different methods of distribution will come in. Even now, people will choose to pay a little for stuff instead of downloading it illegally to show support for the band, give them something back etc etc, or just because you know youre getting the real article when you get it straight from the source, instead of a possibly down-graded quality copy that may or may not (depending on the download) also contain something to fuck over your computer.
Having said that, the official stuff can’t always be replied on to not fuck over your computer *cough*Sony*cough*
There’s a way for people to get their stuff, and the artists to get their money without all this DRM madness, record companies need to wake up and smell the.. whatever it is that companies drink in the mornings
Yeah – that’s the thing. Sony is an extreme example, but this is the trend these days. It seems to be safer to just download a rip of the CD you own from some torrent site, than it is to actually play the CD in your computer.
Surprisingly, most illegal releases nowadays rarely include malicious sofware- and if they do, they usually get flagged by the community so you can avoid them. On the other hand most legal releases contain some weird anti copying software that may or may not call home, fuck up windows and etc..
Doesn’t surprise me there isn’t much ad ware in bit torrent. I personally disagree with the idea of the public trackers; one for safety of data; two for safety from police (consider mistakes, listing the IP’s and such); and also; what about the ratios! If false reporting could happen with Bitcomet then it’ll happen again surely! I personally enjoy register trackers a lot more. Ratios are recorded and people have a reason to seed.
I appear to be getting notifications every time Elephantman comments, I had about 6 or 7 emails telling me about his comment in the middle of a bunch of comments on topics I hadn’t read yet :?
Checked my subscription list in case it was in there and I’d added it by mistake, but nothing there about subscribing to a particular person’s comments
Crap! This happened once before I think. It looks like a bug in the email subscription plugin. I’ll see if I can patch it or upgrade it.
Ha, that picture says it all. The “analog hole” is all you need.
When all else falls, all you need is a simple cable. It reminded me of “Is this a crime?”.
– Dave
Yup, in todays’ day and age, and average consumer with a desktop computer, and some off the shelf software can often produce media with better values than top shelf record industry merchandise.
The problem is, that the current copyright law is so complex, that implementing an easy, one click licensing scheme for the masses may be impossible. :P
i use MelodyCan and don`t have any problem ;)
Quite a novel way of stripping DRM – seems simple ingenuity won again over the brute force that software sometime is ;)