Ahhh yes, this was to be expected. However I gather this would still only
solve half the problem (from the crackers point of view). They would be able
to write a program for a PC (generic Personal Computer not IBM PC) to get
the MP3 from the SDMI file. However, you would need to modify your Hardware
player to crack SDMI encoding (which should be very hard with off the shelf
chips) or convert SDMI->MP3 (or another unsecure format) to play on your
player. Thus a SDMI only player would need to be modified to play SDMI's and
I imagine the hardware would be designed so it would be hard to crack the
decoding and still have it able to download music from standard sources.
i.e. the SDMI 'vending machines' would also use the encoding chip to verify
nthe device was unmodified. And more importantly impossible to crack in a
non obvious way.

So, I don't see that this especially effects SDMI's security itself. In
terms of the fact that once SDMI (or it's replacement) is the only method of
getting new music it will be exceedingly hard to pirate music as you would
have to modify all your hardware players as they would only support SDMI. As
for making music secure in the present I fail to see that is possible. As
long as music is released on CD, preventing copying is impossible. However,
if all elctronic music distribution is via SDMI or the like it'll make
pirating electronically distributed music just that little bit harder. And
when EMD is the only way...

I mean no one can argue software piracy prevention techniques are foolproof
(they thought CDs'd stop piracy - yeah right) but they still have a use.

Tom.
----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Blick <bblick@SABER.NET>
Subject: Re: [OT] New Digital Audio specs? SDMI? MP3?


> Both SDMI and Liquid Audio have been cracked(that's what I read on
> Slashdot), so it's definitely not "Secure"
>
> -Bob