The SDMI Challenge and RIAA position

[Malk-a-mite]

http://slashdot.org/articles/01/04/21/1319251.shtml

"Everyone has probably forgotten the SDMI challenge to hackers to try to break a handful of proposed watermarking and "other" protection mechanisms? Well, it was recognised that a group of researchers at Princeton University broke all of the protection mechanisms and were due to publish a paper on at the 4th International Information Hiding Workshop (25-29 April) but have been threatened with the DMCA if they publish the results. So much for academic freedom, eh? SDMI seem particularly upset because one of the protection mechanims broken in the paper, The Verance Watermark, is currently used for DVD-Audio and SDMI Phase I products. Oops. Somehow, a copy of the threatening letter and the full paper entitled "Reading Between the Lines: Lessons from the SDMI Challenge" has appeared on John Young's excellent Cryptome site. SMDI's urge to "withdraw the paper submitted for the upcoming Information Hiding Workshop, assure that it is removed from the Workshop distribution materials and destroyed, and avoid a public discussion of confidential information." seems a little weak now...."

SDMI challenge FAQ:
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/sip/sdmi/faq.html

The paper:
http://cryptome.org/sdmi-attack.htm



...... Hell yeah.

[TankGirl]

Thanks for a very interesting update, Malk!

The paper itself was most interesting reading - a well-written scientific work that gave a good insight into the techniques that are currently being tried to produce digital watermarks of audio material. The final conclusions are worth quoting:

Do we believe we can defeat any audio protection scheme? Certainly, the technical details of any scheme will become known publicly through reverse engineering. Using the techniques we have presented here, we believe no public watermark-based scheme intended to thwart copying will succeed. Other techniques may or may not be strong against attacks. For example, the encryption used to protect consumer DVDs was easily defeated. Ultimately, if it is possible for a consumer to hear or see protected content, then it will be technically possible for the consumer to copy that content.

The whole effort of audio watermarking seems patently stupid. The cryptographical problems stemming from the inevitable closeness to the analog domain are big enough to discourage it. You can only squeeze that much extra digital information into an inherently analog wave before the 'golden ears' start hearing it as a disturbance or a distortion. Add a little more and everybody will suffer from it.

The technical results of the study give also a deeper symbolic lesson in regard to the whole idea and approach behind the effort: you can't really 'glue ownership' onto an audio wave that is meant to be public. The harder you try, the worse it starts to sound.

- tg

[Drakonix]

The exact information provided varied among the challenges. We note, though, that in all six cases SDMI provided less information than a music pirate would have access to in practice.

Looks like SDMI stacked the deck.

I guess it was necessary for them to save face by being able to say "not all the technologies were compromised", even if it meant failing to provide adequate samples of the protected tracks and providing a faulty oracle.

Wonder how long it's going to take them to understand they have a pipe dream type fantasy?