WHAT IS AN MP3?

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MP3 for dummies

THINK out of the box, we're often told. But in the fight to ensure that MP3 (Moving Picture Experts Group audio layer 3) wouldn't be used as a tool for online music piracy, a technology called DigiBox is making itself heard.

This software from Magex (www.magex.com) is supposed to help put a stop to online copyright infringement and facilitate secure electronic commerce transactions by encrypting not only MP3 files, but also other digital file formats. Magex was formed in 1998 when National Westminster Bank (www.natwest.com) launched the company using technology from US-based digital commerce and information security company InterTrust Technologies (www.intertrust.com).

The Magex system allows content providers to set the procedure by which users can access premium content, either on a pay-for-play or outright purchase model. For the moment, Magex is offering online music-attesting to the popularity of MP3-but the system's future releases would also support video, software, games and text on a wide variety of media.

At the heart of this system is the DigiBox technology that locks in the encrypted content in a digital "envelope." DigiBox is an example of online copyright protection tools known as Digital Rights Management solutions. This not only contains the actual file, say an MP3 song, but also the predefined rules by which you can access the song, as determined by the content provider. For example, Asian MP3 portal Asiamix (www.asiamix.com) uses the DigiBox technology to sell songs on pay-for-play basis. When you download a DigiBox-protected file and pay for its use, you get the key to unlock it. If you decide to pass on the file to your friends-and in fact, you're encouraged to-they would have to get their own keys to unlock the file on their own PC. This way, the process is (theoretically, at least) as easy as the current way of sharing MP3 files-whether legal or pirated. Encryption, however, allows the content provider and copyright owner to protect their rights and determine the terms of use. These rules could vary from one provider to another, making the system flexible.

Fans of Diamond Multimedia's Rio and other MP3 players (the hardware, not the software program you use to run MP3 files on your PC) might be glad or disappointed, depending on which camp they belong to, to hear about the Secure Digital Music Initiative, which is meant to ensure that only legal MP3 files can be played on SDMI-compliant devices.

SDMI relies on digital watermarks and is supposed to complement DRM solutions by making it harder to copy from CDs. Ripping, of course, is what you call the process of recording music from your CD into an MP3 file, using programs such as AudioGrabber or RealJukebox. Thing is, while you're only supposed to create a copy for your private use, nothing's stopping you from sending that file to your friends or compiling the MP3 files on a CD and selling it for P100 or less.

With the digital watermark, however, SDMI would only allow you to make just one copy of a CD. If you make a copy of the copy, the watermark is "broken" and you would no longer be able to play the file on a SDMI-compliant device. SDMI-compliant products will be trademarked as DMAT or Digital Music Access Technology devices. For more on SDMI, visit www.sdmi.org.

Incidentally, digital watermarks have been around for quite some time and have been used with varying degress of success by different content providers, such as Playboy. And in case it's been buried under MP3's popularity, one would-be contender for a secure digital audio format is Liquid Audio (www.liquidaudio.com), but it's hard to contest the fact that MP3 is the de facto standard for online music.