Music biz wants tougher DMCA, CPRM 2 to protect copyright.

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: "Jay D. Dyson" <jdyson () treachery net>

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Hi folks,

        As if the RIAA hasn't done enough to destroy our liberties and
fatten their wallets. 

        It's just like anti-Second Amendment laws.  Once one gets passed
and proves to be totally incongruous with U.S. liberties, then the people
behind it push for even more draconian laws in order to force their will
onto the people.

        Of course, it should be noted that when the RIAA shut down
Napster, they immediately made known their plans to open a for-pay
Napster-like service.  Think the artists will see royalties from the money
the RIAA makes off that service?  WRONG!  The RIAA told the artists to
kiss off.  (So much for the RIAA's complaint against napster that it
damaged the artists' incomes.)

        This is why I have not purchased a music CD in 18 months.  I
refuse to support an industry that is so utterly willing to assail the
American way of life for its own avarice.

- -Jay


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Music biz wants tougher DMCA, CPRM 2 to protect copyright

By Tony Smith

Posted: 08/10/2001 at 11:08 GMT

The music industry and its hired muscle, the Recording Industry Ass. of
America, plans to step up its war against MP3 file sharing and CD ripping
with campaigns targeting legal, technological and Internet access fronts,
The Register has learned. 

Last week, the RIAA hosted a secret meeting in Washington DC with the
heads of major record labels and technology companies, plus leaders of
other trade bodies and even members of the US senate. 

Present, we are told by sources close to the RIAA, were Intel's Andy
Grove;  IBM's Lou Gerstner; Disney's Michael Eisner; Jack Valenti, head of
the Motion Picture Ass. of America; International Federation of the
Phonographic Industry chief Jay Berman; Vivendi Universal's Edgar
Bronfman; AOL Time-Warner's Gerald Levin; EMI's Ken Berry; Sony's Steve
Heckler; and from Bertelsmann, Strauss Zelnick. 

Also present were the CEOs of Matsushita and Toshiba, and senators Fritz
Hollings and Ted Stevens. 

The meeting's keynote was made by RIAA head Hillary Rosen. The drop in CD
sales can be directly attributed to "the new generation of file sapping
services", she said, and promised that her organisation would pursue the
companies behind them vigorously. 

What does that entail? According to Rosen, there are a number of tactics
the RIAA will employ. First, she says, "we are working with sound card
manufacturers to implement technology that will block the recording of
watermarked content in both digital and analogue form". That will noble
attempts to rip and distribute encoded material, but what about existing
files and CDs? Step forward PC manufacturers, whose help the RIAA hopes to
recruit to "find ways to block the spread of legacy content". 

Register readers will recall the RIAA's attempts to prevent content
distribution directly at the hard drive level through its Copyright
Protection for Removable Media (CPRM) initiative, brought to light by The
Register late last year. Such was the level of (entirely justifiable)
anger at the prospect of the music industry say what users can and can't
store on their own hard drives, that the plan was dropped, seemingly for
good. 

But not so. "The failure of the CPRM specification to be applied to
computer hard drives was a giant step back for the publishing, music and
entertainment industry," said Rosen, and promised to "develop a new
specification that accomplishes what CPRM would have done." 

In the meantime, the RIAA will be lobbying "our friends in Washington" for
tougher laws that target "the hackers and file-sharers themselves", so
clearly if you thought the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA) was harsh enough already, think again. Indeed, the RIAA wants
legislators to block any loophole in that law which can allow file-sharers
to continue to distribute copyright material. 

For example, Rosen wants the protection granted by the DMCA to ISPs from
the infringing actions of their subscribers to be removed. If the RIAA
gets its way, ISPs will be as guilty of copyright violation as their
subscribers.  "Because of the magnitude of the problem, ISPs can no longer
be shielded from the wrath of the law," shrieked Rosen righteously. 

Of course, Internet companies will have an even harder job of policing
copyright infringement than the music industry has, undoubtedly leading to
mass blocking of file-sharing software, preventing those applications'
legitimate usage as much as their illegal usage. 

Worryingly, legislation designed to protect computer users' privacy are
likely to be tackled too. Disney chief Michael Eisner pointed out after
Rosen's keynote that "privacy laws are our biggest impediment to us
obtaining our objectives". 

So too is the ongoing ease with which music recorded on today's CDs can be
ripped onto listeners' hard drives. Rosen pointed out that trials of
anti-rip technologies, such as Midbar's Cactus and Macrovision's SafeAudio
have been "extremely successful", though we're not as confident as she is
of the claim that "no one has been able to circumvent them". 

The big labels are certainly keen on them. Vivendi Universal will be using
anti-rip technology on all the discs it ships from Q2 next year. AOL
Time-Warner will do the same in Q3 2002, following private and public
trials with SafeAudio and Cactus between now and then. 

All this points to a move by the major music labels - and undoubtedly the
movie companies too - to do anything they can to halt the transfer and
even the storage of copyright material without their explicit say-so,
primarily by limiting content at source and using the law to block
whatever material gets through the net. And if anyone's rights get in the
way, well that's just too bad. 

We'll leave the last, chilling word to Sony Music Entertainment's Steve
Heckler: "Once consumers can no longer get free music, they will have to
buy the music in the formats we choose to put out." You have been warned.


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