siqe
05-01-2001, 05:33 PM
There was an article in my school newspaper last week which I unfortuantely threw away. Anyhow it was about how some record company did what MS did. They coded in some sort of digital serial number or something like that, that would keep people from being able to transmit the song files or something. I don't know how all that works but they essentialy did the same thing MS did. The deal was though that they had 4 different types of code that they put in the music and as a sort of test for the system, they put samples of this stuff on a website for download specifically for crackers to try and figure out how to get around it. The crackers would then submit what they found back to the website and the music company would tell them if they cracked any of the 4 codes. I guess they did this so they could work out the kinks and make the system more fool-proof.
Well a group of theoritcal computer scientist at Princeton took the challenge and figured out all 4 codes in like a week or something.
The punchline is that they were going to discuss the whole thing at some CS theory convention but the music industry threatened lawsuits over this and that (you know how there's always something that someone can slap a lawsuit on you over). Anyway, the scientist decided they didn't want to fool with it so the presentation never happened.
Oh well, the comment on LNO's front page will turn out to be right I'm sure. Industries that aren't dealing with computers constantly can't afford to keep up with the times. They expend all their energy to come up with something they think is infallible and a team of people break it down (for fun) in a matter of hours. :o
Well a group of theoritcal computer scientist at Princeton took the challenge and figured out all 4 codes in like a week or something.
The punchline is that they were going to discuss the whole thing at some CS theory convention but the music industry threatened lawsuits over this and that (you know how there's always something that someone can slap a lawsuit on you over). Anyway, the scientist decided they didn't want to fool with it so the presentation never happened.
Oh well, the comment on LNO's front page will turn out to be right I'm sure. Industries that aren't dealing with computers constantly can't afford to keep up with the times. They expend all their energy to come up with something they think is infallible and a team of people break it down (for fun) in a matter of hours. :o