[Reader-list] Music/Science/Copyright

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

MUSIC  -  SCIENCE - COPYRIGHT/COPYLEFT

An interesting case of  how big business puts the screws on research and 
science, especially when it comes to copyright issues, and music. Should be 
of interest to all those amongst us who like music, and science, and dont 
like the smell of  money

Cheers

Shuddha
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Scientists Drop Plan to Present Music-Copying Study
By JOHN MARKOFF
New York Times, April 27, 2001

Facing strong objections from the recording industry, a group of computer 
scientists who had successfully defeated an industry copy-protection system 
abruptly withdrew the paper detailing their research from a scientific 
conference yesterday.

The dispute grew out of a technical contest created by a music industry 
standards organization last September that offered a $10,000 prize for 
anyone who could successfully remove a digital "watermark" from a musical 
recording.

The four-part challenge put forth by the organization, the Secure Digital 
Music Initiative, was met by a group of computer scientists from Princeton 
and Rice Universities. But the scientists subsequently disputed the 
industry's claim that the technical details of their achievement could not 
be publicly disclosed because of limits established by the Digital 
Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

The dispute underscores an escalating conflict between advocates of freedom 
of speech and academic freedom, on one hand, and an industry that is trying 
to extend intellectual property rights into the digital world.

The Princeton and Rice researchers have been in negotiations with the 
recording industry about their right to publish and although they said as 
recently as Wednesday evening that they hoped to reach an agreement that 
would permit them to present at least a portion of their findings, the 
talks collapsed.

The industry has maintained that information developed as part of the 
research is proprietary and that disclosure violates the 1998 law, which 
restricts disclosure of methods used to break copy-protection systems.

One scientist, Edward W. Felten, a Princeton computer scientist who also 
served as a technical expert for the Justice Department during the 
Microsoft antitrust trial, announced the group's decision yesterday at the 
conference, the Fourth International Information Hiding Workshop, in 
Pittsburgh. Standing outside a conference room, he read a statement 
explaining the decision.

"Litigation is costly, time-consuming, and uncertain, regardless of the 
merits of the other side's case," Dr. Felten said. "We remain committed to 
free speech and to the value of scientific debate to our country and the 
world."

In the afternoon the recording industry issued a statement, saying that the 
organization had not legally threatened the scientists. "The Secure Digital 
Music Initiative Foundation (S.D.M.I.) does not — nor did it ever — intend 
to bring any legal action against Professor Felten or his co-authors," the 
statement said. The organization said it sent a letter to the scientists 
because it had an obligation to the record companies who own the 
watermarking technology.

A copy of the scientists' paper and a copy of the letter from a recording 
industry official were placed on the Web site of a freedom-of-speech 
advocate (www.cryptome.org) last Friday.

The letter, written by Matthew Oppenheim, head of litigation for the 
Recording Industry Association of America, reads in part: "Any disclosure 
of information gained from participating in the public challenge would be 
outside the scope of activities permitted by the agreement and could 
subject you and your research team to actions under the Digital Millennium 
Copyright Act."

Organizers of the conference said they were concerned about the effect of 
the industry's actions on academic freedom.

"This was an excellent technical paper," said John McHugh, the chairman of 
the program committee and a senior member of the technical staff at the 
Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. "This was 
pure and simple intimidation. This paper didn't do anything that a bright 
technical person couldn't easily reproduce."

Moreover, he said two French researchers, Julien Boeuf and Julien P. Stern, 
would present a similar paper today.

Dr. Stern said he had successfully attacked three of the four watermarking 
techniques used in the challenge and would detail one attack.

The technical founder of the conference said that he was skeptical about 
industry intentions in challenging the researchers, particularly since, he 
said, the basic digital watermark approach being pursued by the Secure 
Digital Music Initiative group had been disproved three years ago.

"The specific echo-hiding techniques that S.D.M.I. wanted to keep secret 
were broken three years ago, so what is the fuss about?" the founder, Ross 
Anderson, a Cambridge University computer scientist, said. "The big 
embarrassing question for S.D.M.I. is why did they pick it?"

Shuddhabrata Sengupta
SARAI: The New Media Initiative
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29, Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 052, India
www.sarai.net