Glimpse of a Palladiated Future

[Seth Johnson]

(Forwarded from DMCA Activists list.  Article text pasted
below.  -- Seth)

-------- Original Message --------
Date: 15 Aug 2002 12:30:02 -0400
From: Matthew Caron <matt at ele.uri.edu>
To: DMCA <dmca-activists at gnu.org>


> http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4477138,00.html

In short:

1.) Guy rips CD's using Windows Media Player, and forgets to
turn the "Copy Protection" option off.

2.) Guy copies files off machine.

3.) Guy reloads machine

4.) Guy puts files back.

5.) Files no longer play.

Now, the article talks about ways to get around it, even to
stop it from happening in the first pace, but:

1.) What if there is no "copy protection" option anymore in
WMP?
2.) What if WMP is the only Palladium "trusted app" so
another app is out of the question?
3.) Given 2, what if therefore WMP is the only way to play
CD's?

Sounds to me like a central licensing authority will know
every time you rip a CD, and play a ripped CD.

And, of course, we won't even get into the fact that forging
the necessary licenses to play the music, or reverse
engineering the file format to dump it to another type (if
possible) is a violation of the DMCA...

-- 

MS Windows is only cheaper than Linux if you steal it.
			- Matt and Liz
~~~ Matt Caron ~~ 

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----

> http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4477138,00.html

Ask Jack 

Send your questions and comments to
Jack.Schofield at guardian.co.uk

Jack Schofield
Guardian

Thursday August 8, 2002


Catch WMP

I have been collecting music using Windows Media Player to
copy from CDs. When I needed to reformat my hard drive, I
copied all my files to CD-R, re-installed my operating
system and copied them back, only to find my music would not
play. 

Rowan Burgess 

Jack Schofield replies: Microsoft's web site says: "By
default, Windows Media Player [7.x] is configured to protect
content that is copied from a CD to your computer from
unauthorized use by using Personal Rights Management. When
this feature is enabled, each track that is copied to your
computer is a licensed file that cannot be played on any
other computer unless you backup and restore your licenses
on the other computer." 

Reformatting the hard drive has made your PC, in effect, a
different computer. Since you did not back up and restore
your licenses, there is no obvious way to play the protected
files. However, Michael Aldridge, lead product manager in
the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft in Seattle,
says: "There is still a way to get these licenses back and
it is pretty easy using our Personal License Migration
Service (PLMS), [which] was designed to address the exact
situation you outline. The customer just has to be connected
to the internet, then they can automatically restore their
licenses just by playing the music files in question.

Windows Media Player will recognise that the music had a
license and will go out on the web and update their music
files with new licenses. All this service does is note these
files once had a license and provides a new one. No internet
connection is required for playback after that. "If the
reader is connected to the internet and this is still not
working, it is most likely because they created their music
collection with an earlier version of Windows Media Player
(7.0) and then upgraded on top of that collection. We did
anticipate this scenario and developed a tool to help them
update their licenses: the Personal License Update Utility.
This must be run before they upgrade their system or
transfer their music files to a new PC. 

If they don't use this utility they will need to re-create
(re-copy) their music CDs into their music library on their
PC. Find out more information about this process at
www.microsoft.com/ "You can also choose to turn off copy
protection when you create your music collection, which can
be done easily in any version of [WMP7.x or later]. 

When you first run Windows Media Player, it will ask if you
want to keep copy protection on, and you can turn it off if
you wish. If you missed that dialog box, it is still easy to
turn off copy protection by going into the Tools|Options
menu. Click on the Copy Music tab, and under Copy Settings,
uncheck the 'Protect Content' box. In previous versions,
this box was called the 'Enable Per sonal Rights Management'
check box." Turning off copy protection would seem the best
idea.


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