SDMI INVITES PHASE TWO PROPOSALS dotmusic.com The Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) has now requested submissions for Phase Two of its proposed audio security standards. The SDMI organisation was set up in 1998 to co-ordinate the efforts of over 100 recording and electronics companies in establishing definitive copyright-protected hardware and software for digitally-distributed music. It is intended that SDMI regulations will be introduced in two phases. Phase One devices will play both protected and unprotected music; after the introduction of Phase Two, consumers will have to update their machines via the Internet in order to listen to protected music. New releases will be "watermarked" and illegally-copied tracks will be "detected and rejected" by the hardware. Moves to secure entertainment media have been extremely controversial and it is not yet clear to what extent they will be accepted by the public. Earlier this year BMG Records Germany released the first commercially-available copy-protected CDs only to withdraw them after a tide of technical complaints and customer criticism. Last week at the Signal or Noise net music conference, Harvard law professor Terry Fisher suggested that the recording industry will not succeed fully in its attempts to restrict illegal copying but should instead consider a radical business model based on freeing intellectual property entirely. comment on this article e-mail this to a friend start a discussion [about i-drive] writing index dotmusic index Problems? Questions? Suggestions? Contact me: mail@tobyslater.com back to top back to home page

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