Monday, February 19, 2007

Hip-Hop Outlaw (Industry Version) - Samantha M. Shapiro - New York Times Late in the afternoon of Jan. 16, a SWAT team from the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, backed up by officers from the Clayton County Sheriff's Office and the local police department, along with a few drug-sniffing dogs, burst into a unmarked recording studio on a short, quiet street in an industrial neighborhood near the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The officers entered with their guns drawn; the local police chief said later that they were "prepared for the worst." They had come to serve a warrant for the arrest of the studio's owners on the grounds that they had violated the state's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO, a charge often used to lock up people who make a business of selling drugs or breaking people's arms to extort money. The officers confiscated recording equipment, cars, computers and bank statements along with more than 25,000 music CDs. Two of the three owners of the studio, Tyree Simmons, who is 28, and Donald Cannon, who is 27, were arrested and held overnight in the Fulton County jail. Eight employees, mostly interns from local colleges, were briefly detained as well. Later that night, a reporter for the local Fox TV station, Stacey Elgin, delivered a report on the raid from the darkened street in front of the studio. She announced that the owners of the studio, known professionally as DJ Drama and DJ Don Cannon, were arrested for making "illegal CDs." The report cut to an interview with Matthew Kilgo, an official with the Recording Industry Association of America, who was involved in the raid. The R.I.A.A., a trade and lobbying group that represents the major American record labels, works closely with the Department of Justice and local police departments to crack down on illegal downloading and music piracy, which most record-company executives see as a dire threat to their business. Kilgo works in the R.I.A.A.'s Atlanta office, and in the weeks before the raid, the local police chief said, R.I.A.A. investigators helped the police collect evidence and conduct surveillance at the studio. Kilgo consulted with the R.I.A.A.'s national headquarters in advance of the raid, and after the raid, a team of men wearing R.I.A.A. jackets was responsible for boxing the CDs and carting them to a warehouse for examination. 5:02:09 PM

RIAA Hires Artists, Then Sends In the SWAT team. RIAA Hires Artists, Then Sends In the SWAT team. cancan writes  "The NY times is carrying an article about how the RIAA is hiring hip hop artists to make mix tapes, and then helping the police raid their studios. In the case of DJ Drama and DJ Don Cannon, they were raided by SWAT teams with their guns drawn. The local police chief said later that they were 'prepared for the worst.' Men in RIAA jackets helped cart away 'evidence'. Just the same, 'Record labels regularly hire mixtape D.J.'s to produce CDs featuring a specific artist. In many cases, these arrangements are conducted with a wink and a nod rather than with a contract; the label doesn't officially grant the D.J. the right to distribute the artist's songs or formally allow the artist to record work outside of his contract.' " ---  This is more of the shenanigans that we've previously discussed on the site. [Slashdot: Your Rights Online] 4:58:44 PM

AACS: Slow Start on Traitor Tracing. AACS: Slow Start on Traitor Tracing. [Previous posts in this series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.] Alex wrote on Thursday about the next step in the breakdown of AACS, the encryption scheme used on next-gen DVD discs (HD-DVD and Blu-ray): last week a person named Arnezami discovered and published a processing key that apparently can be used to decrypt all existing discs. We[base ']ve been discussing AACS encryption, on and off, for several weeks now. To review the state of play: the encryption scheme serves two purposes: key distribution and traitor tracing. Key distribution ensures that every player device, except devices that have been blacklisted, can decrypt a disc. Traitor tracing helps the authorities track down which player has been compromised, if key information is leaked. The AACS authorities encode the header information for each disc in such a way that keys are distributed properly and traitor tracing can occur. Or that[base ']s the theory, at least. In practice, the authorities are making very little use of the traitor tracing facilities. We[base ']re not sure why this is. They surely have an interest in tracing traitors, and failing to encode discs to facilitate traitor tracing is just a lost opportunity. The main traitor tracing feature is the so-called sequence key mechanism. This mechanism is not used at all on any of the discs we have seen, nor have we seen any reports of its use. A secondary traitor tracing feature involves the use of processing keys. Each player device has a unique set of a few hundred device keys, from which it can calculate a few billion different processing keys. Each processing key is computable by only a fraction of the players in the world. Each disc[base ']s headers include a list of the processing keys that can decrypt the disc; any one of the listed processing keys is sufficient to decrypt the disc. For some reason, all existing discs seem to list the same set of 512 processing keys. Each player will be able to compute exactly one of these processing keys. So when Arnezami leaked a processing key, the authorities could deduce that he must have extracted it from a player that knew that particular processing key. In other words, it narrowed down the identity of his player to about 0.2% of all possible players. Because all existing discs use the same set of processing keys, the processing key leaked by Arnezami can decrypt any existing disc. Had the authorities used different sets of processing keys on different discs [~] which was perfectly feasible [~] then a single processing key would not have unlocked so many discs. Arnezami would have had to extract and publish many processing keys, which would have made his job more difficult, and would have further narrowed down which player he had. The ability to use different processing key sets on different discs is part of the AACS traitor tracing facility. In failing to do this, the authorities once again failed to use the traitor tracing mechanisms at their disposal. Why aren[base ']t the authorities working as hard as they can to traitor-trace compromised players? Sure, the sequence key and processing key mechanisms are a bit complex, but if the authorities weren[base ']t going to use these mechanisms, then why would they have gone to the difficulty and expense of designing them and requiring all players to implement them? It[base ']s a mystery to us. Share This [Freedom to Tinker] 4:45:38 PM

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