Sorry. I don’t see why MQA requires PKI (which means certificates that eventually expire). Public key encryption just requires that the recipient possess the public key corresponding to the private key of the sender.
PKI is all about providing a mechanism for distributing those public keys over an insecure channel. But MQA doesn’t require that. The public key can be embedded in the hardware at the time of manufacture.
This does raise the interesting question of what happens when, at some point, the private key is compromised or otherwise needs replacing. That instantly renders every existing piece of MQA hardware obsolete.
Find me an artist that ever did. Or sound engineer.
That Dr.Axis, nor Niel Young ever did sign off anything tells me that the whole MQA is a scam. Reading that paper is scary.
If, what was in that paper was true, it may be a good thing. Not sure. However none of it is true. Who sign for dead artist’s. Who signs for a band.
Who signed off the batch process of all those red book files ?
Thanks for bringing this paper to our attention. Take a copy, before it’s redrawn.
The labels sign off on most MQAs, as MQA says on their website (where they indicate it can be artists, producers, or labels). There are a few small labels like 2L, Unamas, and others where the producer controls releases and makes his own decision on release formats.
This appears to be the business model in the industry, that is, the rights holder determines how releases will be done and negotiates contracts with streaming services or download sources, as well as contracts with the artists.
I don’t see MQA as a scam, but they don’t control how the labels handle these deals.
There is also a large indie segment where independent artists create and sell their own work, and artists probably coordinate tightly with their recording team. That might mean direct artist sign-off and would appear in (I’m guessing…) Nugs Net, Bandcamp, live streaming and so on.
This whole DRM argument is one I don’t understand… I get my MQA from Tidal, I pay Tidal to access their service, if I don’t pay, I don’t have access. So where does DRM come in to the point that I care?
My self released album was tagged by Tidal as an MQA Master. I have no idea why as I’m the artist, engineer, producer, and label owner, and I was definitely not contacted by anyone to have the files authenticated.
The music industry does not want you to be able to own the music you stream, you only must be able listen to it. Ok so far.
Now we have the fact, that you can easily save the music you download. Basically you copy the record without buying it. Today I can crawl through the TIDAL Library and creating a copy of everything they got. Even the HiRes stuff, which is basically the master copy. Today I can copy and save all music I stream. Basically I get hold of the master copy.
The infrastructure established with MQA allows now to digitally sign and encrypt the music, so you can only play it in HiRes, if you got a matching device. This is only controlled so far today, that DAC manufacturers have their devices checked by MQA to comply with the license agreements. You as a consumer can copy the MQA file and play it on every MQA capable device. It sounds very similar as the master copy. But it is not the master copy anymore, it is a crippled format.
Now look 5 years into the future. MQA becomes widespread. Then, with the technology embedded in MQA, it is easily possible to apply short living certificates. In other words, you can play it on decent hardware for one week in HighRes. After that period you can only play it in LowRes or theoretically you can make it impossible to play it at all. Until you pay again.
This is the part where DRM comes into play. The existing infrastructure allows to establish something like pay per play. You do not simply pay a monthly fee. You also have to pay extra if you want to listen to the album Z of artist Y. Maybe it is also only something like you can own the file, but it is no better than an analog recording.
If you look at the patents of MQA, at license terms of MQA, everything is ready for this scenario. Maybe you have to do a firmware upgrade at some stage on some DACs, I don’t know.
But as soon as MQA got enough marketshare they can flip the coin. The tried to do it already several times. It never really worked. This is another approach.
Maybe you don’t care about giving money to Reinet / Richemont to have access to the full definition of the files you already paid Tidal for with your subscription, and maybe you don’t care about the engineering ressources that were wasted in implementing that imbecilistic format into your dac and made it more expensive, and maybe that you don’t care that in their own ideal world, MQA Ltd would impose this on everyone…
Additionally here is the patent which describes it:
A method of providing a streamable PCM signal allowing conditional access to a lossless presentation of an original PCM signal, the streamable PCM signal having the same sample rate and bit-depth as the original PCM signal and providing a controlled audio quality when played on standard players, the method comprising the steps of:
reversibly degrading a representation of the original PCM signal in dependence on degradation information for degrading the original PCM signal;
embedding the degradation information into the representation using a method of lossless watermarking;
creating a token in dependence on additional information; and,
inserting the token into the degraded representation to provide the streamable PCM signal.
This draconian scenario is absurd. Think about what you’re saying. It would end the business model of every streaming service and probably the labels themselves. Labels are there to make money, not to stifle and anger all of their customers and cut off all innovation.
And MQA always have said it wasn’t implemented. Not all patents from the company even relate to MQA, and patents don’t prove anything about actual implementation.
Tidal shows only one of the tracks labelled as Master (the 6th, Heartland) and it doesn’t play as a master, it’s 44.1 PCM.
So the Master label on the track is a mistake.
May I remind you of the BMG rootkit scandal, or others’ degradation of RedBook in the name of DRM (remind you of something ?), which prevented some of the better players of the era of playing some of the better music ?
(those schemes had two qualities to them: they didn’t work, AND they angered customers. Yet it took years for them to be taken off the market…)
