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Comment by foxfired | Hacker News Reader

The biggest piracy threat to the music industry is my sound card. I can record any sound that comes out of the speakers.

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Don't say it too loud or they'll replace your ports with some fancy DRM safe stuff.

Like they did with HDMI?

Wait, what? There's DRM in HDMI?

Bloody hell!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content...

Stop protecting bytes from being copied!

Which of course is added complexity and a source of incompatibility between playback devices and screens. Can't count the number of times in the early years of HDMI that I couldn't play a DVD because my projector didn't support it.

On the other hand, the pirated copy still worked great.

HDCP my dude. Take a jog up history

Wasn't there something about UBS-C too?

So you don't think it possible for an inaudible DRM scheme to be embedded into the music? Perhaps a signal to any digital recorders? I wouldn't put it past Apple to forbid one Apple product from recording anything broadcast by another.

This is already a thing in another medium: money. Digital printers, and some software packages, are trained to identify embedded signals to disrupt attempt to scan/print paper currency.

So you don't think it possible for an inaudible DRM scheme to be embedded into the music?

This exists commercially: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia

I don't know if it's truly "inaudible", maybe some experts can detect it? But probably 99% of people can't.

There are cases where "inaudible" watermarks in paid audio downloads are actually audible[0], meaning that buying the FLAC download gives a worse experience than a properly ripped CD.

[0]: https://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermar...

I mean if you can hear it on your PC you can record it regardless with plenty of free open source software.

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