[vorbis] Streaming Considerations.

[Kenneth C. Arnold]

On Mon, Jun 19, 2000 at 04:09:30PM -0400, Adam Scriven wrote:
> Hey, I'm not sure if this should be in -dev or not, so I'll post it here first.
> If that's wrong, LMK and I'll post it there.
> 
> I have a friend who's running an online radio station, well, group of 
> stations, actually.
> They're stuck in the .ra format, which I personally think sucks rocks.  MP3 
> has a lot of flack surrounding it these days, as well as the problems that 
> the RIAA doesn't like, such as being able to save a stream and stuff like that.
> 
> Will a vorbis stream be able to be saved?  Is it possible to somehow lable 
> it private, such that it won't be able to be saved?

No matter what a stream is simply _labelled_, you cannot prevent a user from
saving or doing anything else with it. (You have the source, anyway...) They
can always just intercept the sound card and capture the data that way. So
the only good business model here would be encryption. How about everybody
gives your friend their public ssh key, and encrypt the data that way? They'd
still be able to save the data to disk (netcat?), but at least you know _who_
is doing it.

> Morality of the RIAA aside (I hate them personally, and think they should 
> all die slow, painful deaths), this will be a key point, I think.  If you 
> can hear the music legally, without being able to save the stream (at least 
> not easily), then I think vorbis will have another venue to get ahead 
> in.  RA encoders cost a mint, and you also need the servers, and the 
> licenses per user, all of which add up to thousands and thousands of 
> dollars.  If Vorbis can do better, for cheaper, and have the stamp of the 
> RIAA, then I think it would be a "good thing".

Now for places where you _do_ control the data stream, e.g. a set-top box, you
are free to do these things. A little smart card with a private key can work
wonders.

> Now, if they were to be "unsavable" streams, and yet another piece of 
> software ignores that, that's all well and good too, as long as the server 
> ends meets the RIAA requirements, that's all I care about.

I don't know if simply labelling the stream "unsavable" will satisfy RIAA
requirements. Just throw an extra bit into the header, for all that matters.
The end decoder is free to ignore it, as always (mp3 has a "copyright" bit,
but have you seen _any_ decoder that honors it?).

Kenneth

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