The Diamond Multimedia MP3 player shook the recording industry when it hit the markets and now it appears that MP3 is becoming a de-facto standard online. The RIAA's Secure Digital Music Initiative announced that they had completed the specifications for new Walkman like devices that would stop online piracy by not playing newer audio tracks. The thinking is muddled and it has little chance of remaining secure!

The specification is under review and it is expected to be ratified at the SDMI plenary meeting on July 8th in Los Angeles and published shortly afterwards. The new devices would be available by December.

The approach is two phased. Phase I is basically an adoption of the specification by manufacturers. The manufacturers of the Diamond Rio player and the Creative Labs Nomad players stated that their products would be SDMI compliant. Phase I is purely a transitional phase so that the SDMI specification can be implemented by the manufacturers. The fun really begins with Phase II.

When Phase 1 is complete, anyone downloading legitimate tracks from the internet will be prompted to upgrade their software of their player to Phase II. In Phase II, there is a piracy filter that prevents the player from playing pirated tracks. Of course in both phases, the user will be able to rip tracks from their CDs and download unprotected tracks.

According to one report, new CDs would be digitally encrypted so that they would only play in new players. This of course is rubbish as it would render obsolete all CD players in the market. The most likely approach is some form of more secure anti-copying bytes in the datastream.

The experience with ordinary CD players has been less than successful. The circuits for devices to circumvent the anti-copy bits have widely published. However SDMI is aimed at the architectural level of portable players. The main copying path to date has been from CD to magnetic tape. There is apparently nothing to stop someone taking the analogue output from the soundcard or CD player and ripping it. The SDMI press release emphasises that the user will be able to rip tracks from their CDs and download unprotected music just as they do now. The SDMI specification will only stop the direct piracy of tracks containing the SDMI data when played in SDMI compliant players. 

Integrating the SDMI specification into the chip level would make it a lot more difficult to technologically counter from a pirates point of view. The flaw lies in the methodology used in online piracy. The online piracy of MP3s relies on using the computer as an intermediate stage.

It is difficult to comment accurately without seeing the specification document. However the aim of this whole procedure seems to be to give the recording industry an illusion of security. Once published, ways will be found to circumvent the SDMI. Even the most basic way of doing it - playing the analogue output of  CD or player back in through an MP3 encoder - will work.