Tony is absolutely right. At every step of the way, SDMI has schemed to keep this information from becoming publicly available.

First, as Dan's group pointed out, they set intellectually dishonest parameters for their "Hack SDMI" contest. Running the contest for three weeks (especially after they spent two years dragging their feet) without publishing any information about their algorithms is not consistent with industry practices for testing security models.

Then, they tried to paint Salon.com as a bunch of liars because Salon dared to publish interviews with SDMI's own technical experts saying that the watermarking technology is hackable.

Finally, they hoped to get all of the hackers that broke the watermarking scheme to sign NDA's. This way, SDMI could conduct months of "additional phases" of testing in private and eventually declare watermarking a success.

SDMI doesn't give a rat's ass that their algorithms aren't secure. Their goal is simply to get some sort of "security" standard adopted in a bunch of consumer electronics players, and then get it declared as a legal standard, just as VCR manufacturers are now legally required to employ Macrovision copy protection in all of their units. Then, the software and hardware manufacturers have to pay big licensing fees to SDMI to make a legal digital music player.

And if you don't think that our friends at Empeg would have been under enormous legal pressure to pay those licensing fees, then you haven't been paying attention.

Corby
MK I, SN#320, 6-Gig Blue