[FYI] WashPost: "Online Music Safeguards Withstand Hackers"

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49514-2000Nov8?language=printer

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Online Music Safeguards Withstand Hackers 

By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday , November 9, 2000 ; Page E04 

A coalition of companies in the software and recording industries 
declared yesterday that three of five technologies aimed at stopping 
the online piracy of music had so far survived attack by hackers 
seeking to win $10,000 for cracking the security measures.  

The coalition, which calls itself the Secure Digital Music Initiative 
(SDMI), sponsored the public challenge as a means to test the 
strength of the five technologies, some of which embed a digital 
"watermark" in the music to prevent unauthorized copying. The 
technology that the SDMI eventually embraces will be used by the 
recording industry in an effort to help protect its copyrights while 
drawing consumers away from the popularity of easily traded MP3 
files.  

"Of the five proposed technologies that SDMI still has under 
consideration, successful attacks were not identified on three 
technologies and were identified on two," SDMI Executive Director 
Leonardo Chiariglione said yesterday in a statement. Chiariglione, 
whose group is meeting this week in Washington, did not identify 
which technologies had been defeated.  

Some participants in the challenge questioned the SDMI's verdict. A 
group of researchers based at Princeton University, Rice University 
and the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center had previously claimed that 
it cracked all of the proposed security measures.  

[...]

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