The SDMI Hack challenge seems to have gone down in flames.

October 17, 2000 9:53 PM

The SDMI Hack challenge seems to have gone down in flames. And apparently it wasn't even very difficult to break into it. This article goes into it in some detail. [more]
posted by Steven Den Beste (5 comments total)

The thing is this: no-one has yet actually produced a compelling reason to suggest that even if SDMI were technically successful (and probably it can never be), that it could ever be commercially successful.

SDMI is one of those things which everyone thinks is a grand idea -- except the customers. Why would anyone want to buy a system so badly crippled, when there's that nice pretty MP3 player right next to it on the store shelf for about the same price which doesn't have any of those silly limitations on it?

The emperor has no clothes. I think that deep down everyone associated with this knows it will fail, but no-one wants to be the first to say so. I have to wonder how the engineers on it feel knowing full well that what they're attempting is technically impossible, and that it's also commercially infeasible. Morale must be terrible.

The only people who seem enthused about this are the top recording execs who know so little about technology as to not have any clue. They need a quick lesson in the history of the DivX fiasco.

posted by Steven Den Beste at 10:00 PM on October 17, 2000

Here's another report on it.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 10:03 PM on October 17, 2000

I just spent maybe 10 minutes all up looking for mp3's, and i was suprised by the amount of them out there.
The SDMI conglomorate are really kidding themselves if they think they can stop this mp3 mania with some improved security.
posted by Zool at 10:41 PM on October 17, 2000

Even some of the suits seem to doubt the viability of an SDMI-type scheme. This forrester report from a bit back claimed, "Consumers don't want business rules or restrictive technology -- and it only takes one person to break down the security barriers and share content on the Net". They concluded that traditional music and book publishers who failed to grasp this would lose close to $5 billion by 2005 in "theft". (Although they thought the movie industry would do just fine)
posted by tingley at 4:48 AM on October 18, 2000

If I were a technician working on SDMI, I highly doubt I'd think I was doing anything really possible, but more like a challenge. Me against the world, bay-bee!

It'd be interesting and challenging, if nothing else.
posted by cCranium at 6:21 AM on October 18, 2000