I think I know what the SDMI "challenge" is really trying to accomplish. These people are not trying to seriously test their watermarking schemes -- those are broken from the getgo because the players will be in control of (and owned by) their adversaries, and they know it. Moreover, it should be possible to create a program that can render any all-instrumental music in a watermark-free form, by simply recognizing the instrument (from the watermarked sound) and substituting with the same instrument from a recorded library of sounds, plus standard filters for modulation and mixing, so the existence of a watermarked version is almost irrelevant except in cases of vocal music. Nor are they trying to impress stockholders with the security of their stuff. There is no competition in the watermarking business yet; as far as stockholders are concerned, you are doing it or you are not. Nobody's is "more secure" than anybody else's, hence effort spent convincing stockholders that the security is an advantage is a waste of time. What they are trying to do, I think, is to set up a legal status indicating that they "did their homework". That way, when the crack of their published system happens (and it will) they can more easily get a favorable judgement from a court and try to legislate and sue the crack program out of existence. I know that DeCSS had this happen to it even though the MPAA didn't really do their homework -- but given what happened with DeCSS, I don't think the SDMI group could make a really solid case that the crack was totally unexpected in their case - and the DeCSS case hinged on expectation. Security by siccing a herd of lawyers on the incursion may be ridiculous from a technical standpoint - but it is effective in restricting what a business enterprise can do, as long as that business is owned by someone using a True Name who must answer to the law. Bear