Pocket PC/Smartphones and DRM - A Completely Broken Scenario

[Jason Dunn]

Janak brought <i>OSUKid7's</i> <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=31699&highlight=">post </a>to my attention and it was a reminder of something I meant to post on a while back: Pocket PCs and Smartphones, even running the newest Windows Mobile 2003 SE OS, are not compatible with music download service such as Napster, Wal-mart, or any other WMA-based DRM store - at least when we're talking about memory cards. The reason as to why is long and complicated, but there's a reason why <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9Series/gettingstarted/personalization/Devices_Wireless.asp">no Pocket PC is listed</a> as being "Music Service Friendly". And this isn't related to the <a href="http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3362541">Janus DRM</a> either - that's DRM for subscription-based music that will time out. This problem, as far as I understand it (and I'm no expert here) relates to the issue of how memory cards are handled by the Pocket PC. Pocket PCs themselves have unique identifiers for music and eBook DRM security, but memory cards in a Pocket PC or Smartphone are problematic because they don't have these unique identifiers. So if you were allowed to copy your DRM'd music over to a memory card, you could take that memory card out of your Pocket PC and put it in another Pocket PC and play the music on it. Oh the horrors! :roll: This is, of course, exactly what the content providers want to avoid - the easy sharing of content.<br /><br />I did some testing on my Dell Axim X30 using DRM-protected songs from Puretracks, an online Canadian music store. I could sync and play tracks from both internal RAM, and internal storage. When I performed this test two months ago using Windows Media Player 9, I remember being able to sync to the memory card as well, and that being unusual because people using Napster and Wal-mart couldn't. However, Windows Media Player 10 beta doesn't recognize the memory card on the X30, so I can't perform the test again to confirm that. When I sync the song to internal memory and then cut/paste the track to the memory card, it won't play. I wonder why the DRM license needs to be on the memory card? Why not have the DRM licenses remain in main system RAM from the sync process, the DRM'd songs go to the memory card, and the songs on that memory card would only work in the Pocket PC that was part of the initial sync. That would seem to be the goal Microsoft is going for. There must be a technological reason why this isn't possible, because it would seem to be the shortest way to accomplish the goal of both protecting the content and letting Pocket PC and Smartphone owners buy music online.<br /><br />At any rate, if you've been wondering why your Napster/Wal-mart DRM'd tracks won't play on your Pocket PC, that's why. Completely broken scenario. :? The only solution is to burn a CD and re-rip the track at the same bitrate that the original file was in - that should minimize audio quality loss. Not ideal, but it's the only solution I'm aware of. I've done this with all my songs from Puretracks because the DRM was such a hassle (check out <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com">Digital Media Thoughts</a> tomorrow for a big rant on that subject).<br /><br /><b>UPDATE:</b> It's been suggested that since the music companies use more sophisticated encoders for their music, when you rip the CD, you should encode it one or two notches higher than that original source file. So if you have a 128 kbps WMA from Napster, burn it to a CD, then rip it at 160 kbps or 192 kbps.

[OSUKid7]

I wonder why the DRM license needs to be on the memory card? Why not have the DRM licenses remain in main system RAM from the sync process, the DRM'd songs go to the memory card, and the songs on that memory card would only work in the Pocket PC that was part of the initial sync. That would seem to be the goal Microsoft is going for. There must be a technological reason why this isn't possible, because it would seem to be the shortest way to accomplish the goal of both protecting the content and letting Pocket PC and Smartphone owners buy music online.That sounds like a great solution. Too bad it isn't availble though.

Guess I'll burn and re-rip them. On a side note, is there any way to burn/rip to a virtual CD, therefore not needing a CD-R?

[Jason Dunn]

Guess I'll burn and re-rip them. On a side note, is there any way to burn/rip to a virtual CD, therefore not needing a CD-R?

It might be possible with some virtual CD mounting software, although I have my doubts that a ripper would see it as a valid music source - that seems like a lot of work to save 20 cents. :-)

[OSUKid7]

...that seems like a lot of work to save 20 cents. :-)lol, yes and no - if I get the hang of it, I would do it that way every time. My car doesn't have a CD player, and I haven't used my portable CD player in years. All of the music I really need to listen to is on my computer and/or iPaq/SD card. It's not the 20 cents I'm thinking about, it's the uselessness of the CD-R after I burn/rip the songs.

[pootp]

yeah. isn't it faster just to create a CD image to hard disk, then mount it using daemon tools. then rip.

faster, easier, and no waste of CDs. better for the environment too!

[Jason Dunn]

It's not the 20 cents I'm thinking about, it's the uselessness of the CD-R after I burn/rip the songs.

Ah, ok. I hear ya - it is indeed kind of stupid. I usually "save up" my DRM'd tracks for a while then burn a whole CD's worth.

[maximum360]

Yeah, there's the dilemma. I just had to do that this weekend. I got some music from Napster and since I'm thinking of going OGG I had to burn them to cd again then copy them back to my hard drive to avoid the DRM issue.

I'm considering doing Real Networks music but I'm not sure what software I can use to convert to wma, ogg, or mp3 from Real Audio (or AAC). They have the highest bitrate for music downloads at 192 Kbs. Music Match does 160 Kbs and Napster does 128 Kbs.

[hockeydude]

I dont know about this......I just bought 10 songs from Walmart and they play fine off my CF card in my PPC using WM2003. I used Windows Media Player 9 to transfer them there from my computer and it works fine. Is this illegal to do? If so, I wasnt aware of that. It says you can transfer to an unlimited amount of mobile device's.

[Janak Parekh]

I dont know about this......I just bought 10 songs from Walmart and they play fine off my CF card in my PPC using WM2003. I used Windows Media Player 9 to transfer them there from my computer and it works fine. Is this illegal to do?
No one's talking about legality here -- burning and ripping are legal, amongst other things. ;)

I think Jason's point is more that it's an unsupported configuration -- it may work or it may not work. People's reports suggest this. And that's not really a good conclusion. :|

I can't believe I'm saying this, but one "good" thing about Apple's relatively closed music platform is that there's no surprises. The iTunes Music Store is ridiculously easy to use and a joy, especially with iPods. Let's hope Microsoft fixes these issues, because I find Janus, especially, an interesting technology to watch.

--janak

[PetiteFlower]

If they want to prevent easy sharing of content, they'll have to stop putting music on CDs entirely. Hey, I can take my CD out of my CD player and put it in my friend's *gasp* the horror!!!

[Jason Dunn]

I used Windows Media Player 9 to transfer them there from my computer and it works fine. Is this illegal to do? If so, I wasnt aware of that. It says you can transfer to an unlimited amount of mobile device's.

Consider yourself lucky that it works. :-) There seems to be some random chance in terms of when it will work and when it won't, but you're the first person who's ordered from Wal-mart that has gotten it to work. Unless Wal-mart changed their DRM implementation?

[szamot]

Guess I'll burn and re-rip them. On a side note, is there any way to burn/rip to a virtual CD, therefore not needing a CD-R?

It might be possible with some virtual CD mounting software, although I have my doubts that a ripper would see it as a valid music source - that seems like a lot of work to save 20 cents. :-)

Let's see if I understand this DRM stuff - in simple terms. Let's say I am thirsty and I have a pitcher in one hand and a water hose in the other. So I use the pitcher to dig a well, then I put the water hose in the well and fill it up, then I use a bucket to draw some water and have a drink with the dirty pitcher I just used to dig the well. Yep, got it - it all makes sense now....if I could only market this brilliant idea. Honestly it seems the more technology we get them more steps back we have to take to make the simplest thing work. No wonder so many people just use a walkman to this day.

[alexkro]

The only solution is to burn a CD and re-rip the track at the same bitrate that the original file was in - that should minimize audio quality loss.

If you think that you don't have any quality loss you're wrong. The encoder that media companies use is not the same as the encoder the desktop media players have. They use better, more sofisticated encoders. I bought tracks from Napster encoded at 128 Kbps. Then I compared it with the music I rip from my CDs with the same rate. The result is that Napster's tracks have wider frequency range and sound better. I was able to get closer to the Napter's encoder at the rate about 164 Kbps.

So my advice would be if you burn and re-rip: use higher bit rate than the original track's rate. Otherwise the quality loss is inevitable.

[surur]

This is why I bought total recorder, which can rip any sound stream that makes its way to the sound card in whichever format I specify. I have wasting a CD for every song I buy, and I hate having to wait for 10 songs to accumulate (which can take weeks) before I burn.

I think excusing the companies because we can burn and rerip is wrong. Not only is the music then degraded, but we lose album art, lyrics and all other id3 data, which have to be re-entered manually.

The lack of integration between microsoft's various products have always amazed me. Why was the pocketpc not designed to be the premium player of WMA DRM content? Surely it would only have made sense, would not have been too difficult, and would have driven sales. Instead they go down a completely different route with their mobile media players, for which there is currently no significant installed base.

They are set to fail, and its because they dont put consumers ahead of their DRM customers.

Surur

[PatrickD]

I have a Dell Axim X5 which has an CF and SD slot. I discovered (after many frustrating hours, and several customer support emails) that I can copy DRM protected content I purchased from PureTracks to my CF card but NOT my SD card :? My best guess as to why, is that the SD card on the Axim is not SDIO. In any case it doesn't matter since I have resorted to the old burn and rip like everyone else. I wouldn't mind going through this tedious process if I could actually see how it would prevent or reduce piracy. But it seems to me that if I can burn and rip, so can the pirates and file swappers, therefore it is just an inconvience that has no real impact on piracy. Actually the music pirates are probably the only ones who still buy CD's, so they can get a cheap high quality master copy to base their work on.

[Shuushin]

Let's see if I understand this DRM stuff - in simple terms. Let's say I am thirsty and I have a pitcher in one hand and a water hose in the other. So I use the pitcher to dig a well, then I put the water hose in the well and fill it up, then I use a bucket to draw some water and have a drink with the dirty pitcher I just used to dig the well. Yep, got it - it all makes sense now....if I could only market this brilliant idea. Honestly it seems the more technology we get them more steps back we have to take to make the simplest thing work. No wonder so many people just use a walkman to this day.
Brilliant.

The next step, if you want to have clean water again, is to shut off the hose, empty it out and very carefully pour the water from the bucket back into the hose. Some will spill, but most of the dirt will stay out - and you can toss the crappy bucket.

Then you can drink from the hose (hoping that it is still water and not knowing for sure until you taste it).

[BugDude10]

Great, now I'm confused *and* thirsty. :?

[PetiteFlower]

Wow, that's probably the most obscure analogy I've ever seen.....

:confused totally:

[Kati Compton]

Wow, that's probably the most obscure analogy I've ever seen...
I think that was the point. ;)

[Janak Parekh]

I have a Dell Axim X5 which has an CF and SD slot. I discovered (after many frustrating hours, and several customer support emails) that I can copy DRM protected content I purchased from PureTracks to my CF card but NOT my SD card :? My best guess as to why, is that the SD card on the Axim is not SDIO.
I don't think that's it -- I've heard troubles reported from SDIO-enabled devices. From what I've read in the forums, people seem to have a bit more success with CF than SD. Why, I don't know. Both are still unsupported. :(

Anyway, I personally refuse to burn-and-rip -- the quality degradation is too much for my ears, and the hassle is tremendous. Instead, I buy most of my music on CDs, which enables ripping into multiple formats. I do have a bunch of iTunes tracks, and if I needed to play them on a Pocket PC, I'd find a magical way to use a player that handles AAC (and I refuse to elaborate further. ;)) Fortunately, I've not been in that situation yet.

--janak

[lhauser]

Guess I'll burn and re-rip them. On a side note, is there any way to burn/rip to a virtual CD, therefore not needing a CD-R?

It might be possible with some virtual CD mounting software, although I have my doubts that a ripper would see it as a valid music source - that seems like a lot of work to save 20 cents. :-)

Am I missing something? Why not use a CD-RW? It takes a little time to reformat, but time doesn't seem to be the issue here...

All this makes me sooooo glad I used my raise to buy an iPod and buy what little online music I do through the iTunes music store. I've never been happy with the playback quality on my Axim, and I use Hymn to de-DRM the iTunes music to move it between my laptop (I have broadband only at work) and my home desktop.

[PatrickD]

I have a Dell Axim X5 which has an CF and SD slot. I discovered (after many frustrating hours, and several customer support emails) that I can copy DRM protected content I purchased from PureTracks to my CF card but NOT my SD card :? My best guess as to why, is that the SD card on the Axim is not SDIO.
I don't think that's it -- I've heard troubles reported from SDIO-enabled devices. From what I've read in the forums, people seem to have a bit more success with CF than SD. Why, I don't know. Both are still unsupported. :(

Anyway, I personally refuse to burn-and-rip -- the quality degradation is too much for my ears, and the hassle is tremendous. Instead, I buy most of my music on CDs, which enables ripping into multiple formats. I do have a bunch of iTunes tracks, and if I needed to play them on a Pocket PC, I'd find a magical way to use a player that handles AAC (and I refuse to elaborate further. ;)) Fortunately, I've not been in that situation yet.

--janak

Well maybe that's not the problem but it is the only difference I can see. Everything else is the same. As for buying CDs, if you want to buy the whole album, your right a CD is the way to go for quality and simplicity. The trouble is I don't often want to buy a whole CD just to get one or two songs that I like.

[Jason Dunn]

The encoder that media companies use is not the same as the encoder the desktop media players have. They use better, more sofisticated encoders. I bought tracks from Napster encoded at 128 Kbps. Then I compared it with the music I rip from my CDs with the same rate. The result is that Napster's tracks have wider frequency range and sound better. I was able to get closer to the Napter's encoder at the rate about 164 Kbps.

Interesting - that's something I've always wondered about, and even tried to test, but I wasn't able to find software that would do a frequency analysis on the DRM'd track. Thanks for the correction!

[Jason Dunn]

I think excusing the companies because we can burn and rerip is wrong. Not only is the music then degraded, but we lose album art, lyrics and all other id3 data, which have to be re-entered manually.

I certainly didn't mean to give the impression that I was excusing them - I think the current scenario is horrible and completely unacceptable...but the only way out of it for us as consumers is to burn and re-rip, which sucks. :?

[Jason Dunn]

Anyway, I personally refuse to burn-and-rip -- the quality degradation is too much for my ears

Interesting....you can hear the difference?

[mcsouth]

Anyway, I personally refuse to burn-and-rip -- the quality degradation is too much for my ears

Interesting....you can hear the difference?

At one time, I figured that I had pretty sensitive ears, and I used them to buy a pretty nice hi-if system. You know, NAD amp, Mission speakers, Nakamichi cassette deck (original B series, not the Oriental crap they sell now). However, when I finally started ripping music for my PPC, I ended up using 64kbps WMA's....why? Mainly because the file size meant that I could fit more on an SD card (I've maxed out my 512MB, and looking for a cheap 1GB card), and between the audio system on my iPaq and the earbuds that I got, that music quality is fine for my ears. I'll admit that it isn't so nice on my PC with sound card and qualtiy speaker system, but I'm too lazy to rip at two different rates for two different systems........now, if there was a PPC with a 4GB microdrive built in....... :twisted:

[Janak Parekh]

Anyway, I personally refuse to burn-and-rip -- the quality degradation is too much for my ears
Interesting....you can hear the difference?
Well, I guess not if I rip at a substantially higher bitrate, but then I'm losing out spacewise, and the hassle factor is still there. ;)

In any case, my ears are particularly sensitive to degraded cymbal and string instrument sounds. They bother me a bit even with "clean" rips at 128kbps WMA/Ogg/AAC/MP3. (Of the four, I'd guess Ogg sounds best, and MP3 CBR the worst.) I rip everything in 160kbps AAC/Ogg or 192kbps MP3 VBR to avoid that. I wonder if it's from my history of listening to classical music extensively?

In fact, that's another reason I won't buy much from the iTMS... the 128kbps AAC is decent, but not great. I'll primarily buy a few singles and albums I can't get here for a decent price.

--janak

[Janak Parekh]

However, when I finally started ripping music for my PPC, I ended up using 64kbps WMA's....why? Mainly because the file size meant that I could fit more on an SD card (I've maxed out my 512MB, and looking for a cheap 1GB card), and between the audio system on my iPaq and the earbuds that I got, that music quality is fine for my ears.
I tried this in two ways -- ripping straight to 64kbps WMA and transcoding through WMP -- and I couldn't take the poor quality. Cymbals degrade to shiny tinkly-sounding things. WMA is a pretty good codec, but 64kbps ain't CD-quality no matter what MS says. ;)

--janak

[jlp]

I find Janus, especially, an interesting technology to watch.

If, as I understand it Janus DRM is time locked, based on you renewing your subscription forever (and that means ALL your descendants if they want to keep your music, like you could keep your grand parents LPs), there is nothing interesting about that!!

Something to ponder that I read on Wikipedia: "Janus head is a popular phrase for deception, that is, when action does not match speech." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus_(mythology))

[baralong]

However, when I finally started ripping music for my PPC, I ended up using 64kbps WMA's....why? Mainly because the file size meant that I could fit more on an SD card (I've maxed out my 512MB, and looking for a cheap 1GB card), and between the audio system on my iPaq and the earbuds that I got, that music quality is fine for my ears.
I tried this in two ways -- ripping straight to 64kbps WMA and transcoding through WMP -- and I couldn't take the poor quality. Cymbals degrade to shiny tinkly-sounding things. WMA is a pretty good codec, but 64kbps ain't CD-quality no matter what MS says. ;)

--janak
I must have bad ears, or low standards. I have a heap of MP3s ripped of CD at 128 and it's fine for me. When I want to transfer something to my ppc I just use send to device and get it to reencode at 64 wma, it sounds perfectly good to my when I'm on my bike or through the caset adapter in my car. I have to ad mit that I still tend to buy CDs I have never downloaded or purchased music on line. I figure in a few years the cost of storage will be low enough that we'll encode with lossless compression (from CD) and be done.

[Janak Parekh]

If, as I understand it Janus DRM is time locked, based on you renewing your subscription forever (and that means ALL your descendants if they want to keep your music, like you could keep your grand parents LPs), there is nothing interesting about that!!
It is just that if I read correctly. The model is fundamentally different than the current CD-purchasing model. It's more like a subscription to the radio station of your own composing. I'm not saying it's for everyone, and in fact Steve Jobs has decisively nixed the idea. But if it was only a few bucks a month, it'd be a great way to discover new music.

I must have bad ears, or low standards. I have a heap of MP3s ripped of CD at 128 and it's fine for me.
No two people's ears are the same -- you might hear things I don't, and vice-versa. :) Speaker quality also makes a difference. But in my case, I can hear certain pieces at 128kbps that actually sound harsh to me. I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse... :lol:

(It's worth pointing out, incidentally, that I didn't notice it at first, but after extended listening to music at 160kbps I started noticing what I was missing, and now I can't go back.)

--janak

[Jason Dunn]

If, as I understand it Janus DRM is time locked, based on you renewing your subscription forever (and that means ALL your descendants if they want to keep your music, like you could keep your grand parents LPs), there is nothing interesting about that!!

Are you that angry about the fact that your descendants don't get to keep books that you've read from the library? Same concept. ;-) You can't think of it as owning the music, you're getting a subscription. Cable TV, renting DVDs - it's all the same basic concept.