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M1CUK > INFO 23.09.02 05:48l 132 Lines 6499 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : AE1953M1CUK
Read: DB0FHN GUEST
Subj: Microsoft at it again!
Path: DB0FHN<DB0ZWI<DB0HDF<DB0ERF<DB0FBB<DB0GOS<ON0AR<ON0AR<GB7FCR
Sent: 020923/0228Z @:GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU #:17316 [Blackpool] FBB-7.03a $:AE1953M1
From: M1CUK@GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU
To : INFO@WW
'Free' Costello CD seeds DRM, MS Media Player 9
By John Lettice
Posted: 22/09/2002 at 15:55 GMT
Hardware supporting Microsoft's Secure Audio Path DRM
technology seems to have arrived, albeit somewhat bashfully, and as if
that wasn't enough, today the UK Sunday Times newspaper unleashed a neat
little trojan that'll upgrade you to Windows Media Player 9, complete with
all those lovely facilities to protect 'your' music. If you're not
careful, that is.
To remind you, Secure Audio Path is a Digital Rights Management technology
designed to interpose its body between encrypted digital music and the
output device, thus stopping DMCA-breaching criminals diverting the stream
to an unauthorised application. In order to work it needs compliant,
authenticated output devices, and by a miraculous coincidence we've just
been tipped off about one of the first cuckoos to go public - Creative
Labs.
Microsoft itself publishes a helpful list of players, marking those
including Windows Media DRM, but bear in mind the list is dated May, so
there should be quite a few more around by now. In addition, it's not
particularly easy to track which PC sound cards and audio systems are
compliant, so let's hear it for Creative, which has quietly announced a
couple of them in the readme files of its Soundblaster Live update
software.
These state:
"Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a technology which enables
the copyright owner of an intellectual property (for example, a digital
audio file), to control how the listener uses the file.
"To protect against unauthorised duplication, Sound Blaster Audigy [or
Sound Blaster Live!, in the other readme] shuts down its digital output
when encrypted files are played back through a Microsoft DRM supported
audio player (for example, Creative PlayCenter)."
Creative will of course by no means be the only company whose products do
this, and we wouldn't be at all surprised if many of them didn't feel the
need to inform you of the feature on the packaging, in the manual, in the
licensing agreement or even in a readme several folders deep in the
software. But one can pick up the odd clue. Here, for example, is one of
Microsoft's lists of audio chip manufacturers supporting WMA format. Note
the reference to Corona (WMP 9) and, way down at the bottom: "Windows
Media offers the industry's only integrated digital rights management
solution."
The hardware could get kind of tricky to avoid, but the file format itself
is currently less so. Which makes today's Sunday Times exercise rather
interesting. As far as we know this is the second such exercise performed
via a ST freebie. We didn't pick up on the first (Oasis, sorry people),
but we've had a good look at this one.
It consists of preview tracks from Elvis Costello's When I was Cruel -
Collector's Edition, due out on Monday. There are some audio tracks, which
are unprotected, a couple of unprotected WMAs and a couple of protected
ones, which you're only supposed to be allowed to play four times. Wearing
our best face-mask and lab coat, we investigated.
Linux finds the file system on the CD alien, and declines to mount it. You
can cancel the autoplay and browse the CD under XP, then copy a protected
track to the hard disk and try to open it with Ashampoo, which is a nice
little player which also supports .ogg files, and which we just recently
discovered. It starts out thinking it's a WMA file, but then reports an
unsupported file format.
OK, so what happens if you let the CD autoplay? You get the Sunday Times
opening screen, then clicking continue takes you to a screen listing the
tracks, what you can do with them, together with entries for "how it
works" and "test your PC." The salient points of the first are that you
need:
"-Windows Media Player 7.1 or later, configured to automatically acquire
licenses.
-A internet connection is necessary to acquire a license for the protected
tracks."
The test routine merely checks if you qualify and points you in the right
direction if you don't. Opening the files with WMP, by the way, takes you
in pretty much the same direction. You get the following message:
"The content you are accessing requires an additional level of security.
In order to play it, you will need to update your Digital Rights
Management Installation.
"When you click OK, Windows Media Player sends a unique identifier for
your computer to a Microsoft service on the Internet. Click learn more to
find out how the Microsoft service protects your licenses, files, and your
privacy."
Unhappily, as Agnitum firewall was in the way we never did learn how
Microsoft was protecting us. The page of recommended media players is
however here. Note that the XP installation is running WMP 8, but that it
still needs to have its DRM switched back on (which we presume would
happen if we persisted) and to have the unique identifier issued. OK, try
Windows 2000 with WMP 6 on it. On trying to play a file with this, you're
advised that Media Player 7.1 or above is needed, and if you go ahead and
click on upgrade, it takes you through to the Media Player 9 beta. At the
bottom there's a link for all available versions, but even there you've
got the beta listed first.
So, you've got a free preview of a couple of tracks, and you can listen to
them each four times so long as you just follow the instructions. If you
do, then you'll (most likely) end up with the beta of Microsoft's latest
DRM player, and you'll also have your settings changed so that your
installation facilitates DRM, WMA format and pay per play. But don't
worry, it didn't cost you anything.* ®
* We were contacted by a reader a couple of weeks ago with a cautionary
tale about players that protect your music. The reader was maybe a little
careless, true, but it's easily done for people who never look in their
settings, and who might not notice things getting switched on. Say you've
recorded bought CDs using WMP, and you decide before upgrading to XP
you'll do a clean install, so you back up your music files, vape the disk
and then do the install. You did back up your licences as well, didn't
you? Oh dear...
------------------------------------
73's
Trev, m1cuk@gb7fcr.#16.gbr.eu
SysOp gb7fcr
ax25 - tcp/ip - telnet - axip - RF & Internet Linked System's
Located in Blackpool, Lancashire, On the North West Coast of the UK
Message timed: 03:20 on 23 Sep 02
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