Audio encryption and you…and Phase Shift…
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We have some changes coming to how C3 handles Phase Shift releases that you may have heard about in the Author Chat. Changes already live – all C3 Phase Shift releases are now downmixed to stereo audio.
Since I’m not in the Author Chat, I wanted to take some time and go over some points that I think need to be understood by all involved in this operation. While the Admins make the decisions, every Author is an important part of C3 and has a hand in C3’s future, to some degree or another. So while you don’t have to love every Admin decision, it can only help C3 if we can get everyone on board. To be clear, I’m neither an Admin nor much of an Author at this point, but I do happen to be the guy who hosts the C3 files, creates C3’s tools, and also has a tiny bit of experience in the American legal system, under which we must operate. So I suggested this to the Admins, they (mostly) agreed, we’re moving forward.
I’ll address everything in a sort of FAQ format, and if your particular question isn’t answered here, feel free to post it and I’ll respond to the best of my ability.
What’s going on? What’s going to change?
Starting with the January 23, 2015 songs, all future C3 songs released in Phase Shift format will have stereo audio. Over the next week or so, I will personally go through the back catalog and re-do existing Phase Shift songs with multitracks so nothing hosted in the C3 database for Phase Shift will have unencrypted multitracks for Phase Shift. All done.
Why?
Releasing the audio files without the express consent of the rights holders is illegal. But everyone and their mothers can Google “artist x – song x mp3” and get the stereo audio for any song. So it’s unlikely we’ll ever get any attention from rights holders that way. We haven’t yet in nearly two years.
But studio stems are a whole different thing. And C3 has, increasingly more so, been releasing multitrack songs with stems to which we don’t have the rights to release. And this is becoming more and more a potential legal problem.
Back in early 2014 we hit a potential solution with the encryption of mogg files. Since then, all of my songs and all of the admin songs were encrypted, and authors have been encouraged (required?) to encrypt their releases.
As you are aware, however, Phase Shift does not support encryption in the audio, and so for all the measures we’ve taken to protect C3 with encryption and obfuscation of the mogg files, all anyone ever had to do was download the Phase Shift version and bam, here are your studio stems.
By downmixing multitracks into stereo files for Phase Shift, we can both remove the potential complications of hosting unencrypted studio stems and continue to offer support for the Phase Shift players. The alternative, at this point, is to drop support for Phase Shift altogether. No, continuing to offer unencrypted multitracks for Phase Shift is no longer an option.
How does this affect us? Why do we care as authors?
It doesn’t affect you, unless you explicitly author to then play on Phase Shift. I don’t think we have any authors in that situation. However, I figured you needed to know because I know how strongly the opinions run here. We can discuss it in an orderly fashion and address your concerns or questions this way.
But nothing changes in your workflow as an author, except…
What if it’s MY song (Gigakoops/Nightmare Lyre/EdtanGuy, etc) and I want to release the multitracks for Phase Shift, or I have express permission from the artist to release the multitracks (Arcanon, etc)?
Great. Disable mogg encryption in Magma: C3. Right now, it’s a few steps to get there through the options. Next update to Magma: C3 will put a nice button on the main form where the other buttons are for you to easily choose to encrypt a song or not. Done, button is there.
Before you start with “but what if I want encrypted for all other systems and not Phase Shift?”, let me point out that there is no protection for your stems if they are encrypted for Xbox/PS3/Wii and not for Phase Shift. It’s WHY we’re here now. If you want protection, encrypt the mogg. If you don’t want protection, don’t encrypt the mogg. The Phase Shift Converter will still separate multitracks as before as long as the mogg is not encrypted.
Are there any other benefits besides protecting C3 with this move?
Absolutely. Because of the protection we have on encrypted audio, only bluzer and a couple other individuals have the required passwords to convert to Phase Shift songs with encrypted audio. Since now we’re making all encrypted audio into stereo audio, anyone will be able to convert any song to Phase Shift, without needing to wait on bluzer or myself to get around to it. This benefits the impatient Phase Shift users and hopefully stop them from asking when the Phase Shift versions will be released in every single release thread like impatient children.
What if [for some reason I can’t possibly think of] we want an encrypted song to have separated stems in Phase Shift?
C3 Admins and I have the ability to still process those songs if the situation presents itself.
I’m on board. How else can I help protect C3?
There’s a few things you can do:
1) Do not ever give anyone the password given to you as a C3 Author. If anyone asks you for it, direct them to the thread in the author board. If they’re not authorized to see that thread, then they’re not supposed to have the password. Simple as that.
2) Encourage use of C3 CON Tools. Since we began encrypting the mogg files, C3 CON Tools helps us by obfuscating the encryption, effectively making it impossible to decrypt a C3 mogg file that is extracted using C3 CON Tools. Anyone asks you about anything that has to do with CON files -> C3 CON Tools.
Likewise, if anyone explicitly asks you how to extract the audio from a CON file, tell them to use C3 CON Tools. Also mention that the audio is encrypted and there’s no way to get at it. We need to discourage potential snoops.
3) Encrypt all your past releases already in the C3 database. You can use C3 CON Tools v3.6.4 or newer and use the Batch **cryptor feature to batch encrypt your existing CON files – click on either of the Restricted buttons and enter the C3 Author password to enable these tools. Or you can manually re-compile with encryption enabled and reupload on the server with the same file name. Your links won’t break, your stats won’t get lost. If you do, please advise StackoverflowX and request that he re-do the conversion for Wii for that song. PS3 converts all must be encrypted by default, so you don’t have to worry there. And I’ll handle the Phase Shift downmixing as I said above. If you’re a C3 Admin this doesn’t apply to you, as your songs are all encrypted already in the server.
As a side note, I didn’t invent the encryption we use. This encryption was cracked by someone who no longer wishes to be associated with any of this, so I won’t mention his name. That was back in 2008. Some 7 years later, there’s probably not even 100 people in the world who could decrypt a C3 mogg file extracted using tools other than C3 CON Tools. As of right now, there’s not even 5 people in the world that know how to decrypt a C3 mogg file extracted with C3 CON Tools. So let’s keep it that way.
Do you hate Phase Shift users?
Come on now, what kind of question is that to ask myself? I am, after all, the creator of the tool that makes it possible for them to easily play C3 songs.
However, it’s no secret that I am very biased. For various practical, technical, and clintilona reasons, this is my preferred order of platforms for C3 purposes:
Xbox 360 — PS3
Wii
Phase ShiftMy question isn’t answered here!
Ask below and either I or an Admin will answer.
Would it be possible to request that certain “back catologue” songs not be encrypted into a single audio file for Phase Shift? I ask because I have three songs that I composed that I would rather remain multitracked on Phase Shift, for both gameplay reasons and just because I like having my multitracks available for folks to use.
Absolutely. If it’s not encrypted on the server. It won’t get downmixed by the Phase Shift Converter when I go over the back catalog. If you’re keen on having your stems available, I assume you didn’t encrypt the audio when releasing the Xbox version, so the Phase Shift Converter will just separate the stems as before.
This is answered in the FAQ in the OP.
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif” />I thought it was required that all songs be encrypted, so those songs are also encrypted. Would it still be possible for you to skip those, or will I have to rebuild them sans encryption?
Just list the songs and I’ll leave them as is. It just saves me time to not have to process them.
The whole concept of requiring encryption of the audio is that we don’t own the rights. I would have assumed (wait for admin confirmation) that it doesn’t apply if you’re the artist and own the rights to the song. Makes no sense that it would.
The songs are as follows. All three have 2x Bass Pedal versions:
Gigakoops ft. Nightmare Lyre and Squiggle Glitz – Trumpy the Acid Trumpet in Space Adventure 9: The Chronicles of Life and Death
Gigakoops – The Closing of Chaos
Gigakoops – Good Grief
The whole concept of requiring encryption of the audio is that we don’t own the rights. I would have assumed (wait for admin confirmation) that it doesn’t apply if you’re the artist and own the rights to the song. Makes no sense that it would.Yes, the whole point is that technically a single Jammit stem that we diffuse in the wild can hurt us 100 times more than anything we’ve done. For that reason we changed the policy, but obviously if an author owns their own stems, well, they can do as they please.
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif”>Updated OP.
New release of C3 CON Tools makes the hidden tool Batch **cryptor available to C3 Authors. You need to enter the NEW C3 Authors password. This tool will batch ENCRYPT mogg or CON files. Decryption is restricted to admins and you will not be given the secondary password. Do not ask for it. Do not try to guess it or the program will crash (on purpose).
So if you have songs up on the database that haven’t been encrypted, please download them, batch encrypt, then reupload, replacing existing files = nothing breaks and songs are now encrypted
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif” /> Also, every C3 Author should download Magma: C3 3.2.7 – this now uses a new and much more robust encryption and obfuscation method for added security. It also adds a nice shiny button to make it easier for those of you who don’t always want to encrypt your songs to enable/disable encryption easily. Remember the encryption rules set by C3 must be followed.
As an update:
– all Phase Shift songs on the server are now downmixed to stereo – jesus christ that took a while – coincidentally, doing this saved us about 10GB of storage space on the server
– all GHtoRB3 old songs have been taken out of the RAR files and encrypted and reuploaded as CONs. farottone will be modifying the database to account for the changed links – right now they’re not reachable through the DB until this change is made
Can I get confirmation from those of you who have encrypted your songs? Have any of you done it? It’s as simple as downloading your songs, running the batch encrypt, and reuploading and overwriting the files on the server. Piece of cake
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif” />Can I get confirmation from those of you who have encrypted your songs? Have any of you done it? It’s as simple as downloading your songs, running the batch encrypt, and reuploading and overwriting the files on the server. Piece of cake” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif” />Done. I also sent Hugo a message about converting the Wii links.
Good stuff. I am not asking Stackoverflow to re-do Wii conversions. Going forward his conversions will encrypt the audio if it’s not already encrypted. I would think it would be too much to really demand that he go back and re-do them. I may create a tool for him to batch encrypt them from within the RAR files, we’ll see.
For now we just need the cooperation of authors. For those of you doing your part, thank you. Specially there should not be any C3 releases happening with no encryption. I won’t mention names, but even in 2015 we’ve pushed out C3 songs without encryption. That should just not be happening.
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