Slashdot Mirror
Copy Protection - Scapegoat or Real Threat?
ZenShadow asks: "Okay. The RIAA is screaming about MP3s being a problem because they
can be digitally copied and distributed. Now we have this recent
slashdot article in which the FCC cites copy protection as a key
issue in digital TV standards. My question is this: We've had cassette tape recorders and VCRs for years now, so why is this such a big deal? Is this just an excuse by the industry to hold back the advancement of technology, or is the ease of distribution -really- that much of an issue?"
Put simply, technology never supported an encryption option before, nor would it have been a salable feature for consumers.
If someone put out a version of the Philips cassette which was impossible to duplicate from, this 'feature' would meet with a singular lack of enthusiasm from consumers. Let's get creative and add that the new Philips cassette not only can't be copied from, but will only play on the tape player that you have, plus there's the option of spending a dollar less for a tape that will play only ten times and then destroy itself neatly without injuring the drive.
Well, woo frickin' hoo- what a triumph of technology for purposes either orthoganal or hostile to what the consumer wants! This would not fly. At the time of the 33rpm LP, the Philips cassette, even the CD, this sort of thing was not attempted. DAT was 'secure' from unauthorised consumer use- and DAT died in the consumer market.
The goal of the recording industry, and indeed the movie industry as well, is to establish a new playing field in which none of the power falls into the consumers' hands. You buy your DVD- if you move to another area you have to buy another copy of the DVD for that area's players. Limited-play media are another recurring industry wet dream, especially when confronted with the specter of 'perfect media that lasts forever'. The fact of vastly cheaper media production than the old days combined with raised prices on the grounds of higher quality is nice for the industry, sure, but perfect media copying scares them... hence the paradigm change.
The change is from rude methods of interoperability (many people make audio cassettes, but they all pretty much play on all the decks you can buy, due to rigorous specs as to the dimensions of the cassette shell and standards for tape speed and dimensions), forced by the reliance on cruder analog media, to the new world of entirely virtual media- media that is no more and no less than a bunch of data. The data is easier to standardize- but it is too accessible! Any clown could write that format, or alternately could suck the data off the disk and start making identical copies. So the paradigm is to treat media, data, like it is hostile software- the word encryption, and especially the word security, give people a sense of potential danger safely contained.
But whose safety is being protected? Hint: it is not the consumer's. Indeed, in many ways the world of the media consumer, with data that can only be played on regionally localized players, data that is only rented and though you own the container you only are licensed to view the data in certain ways and don't own even the copy you purchased, data that is increasingly way beyond the consumer's ability to comprehend or control- this world is less safe for the consumer than the days of 45s and LPs. The consumer is increasingly restricted, controlled, and where once the idea of a consumer's copying off loads of tapes was seen as an intolerable abuse of the consumer's reasonable freedoms, now we approach an era where the consumer may be literally not allowed to own their own media. Instead, he or she can only be trusted to buy and care for the carrier media for streams of data- which are marked off as explicitly not the consumer's property, and which may be so well defended that the consumer can only plunk a dvd into a player and watch the fiberoptics deliver a tightly encrypted datastream into a black box in a _speaker_... inaccessible, unopenable. One wonders if the music and film industries are devising scuttling charges, so that if evil hacker people try to open the black boxes, they destroy themselves, thus preserving their secrets and forever withholding... the consumer's purchase from the consumer.
That's the paradigm change, bigtime. Are you buying the data of a song when you buy the CD, or are you only buying permission to listen to the sounds? If you analyzed the grooves of a record to determine the harmonic content of Pink Floyd, would you be thrown in jail for it? Obviously not- the concept is absurd, you own the physical record. Now, what if you crack the encryption to run a fast fourier analysis on the harmonic content of a Pink Floyd DVD? Curious how the activity is the same, but all of a sudden you're in jail for what you are doing with your possession... or is it your possession?
*sigh*
I don't know about anybody else but I know where I stand on the matter. I have purchased a modern 20-bit ADAT (an 8 track digital audio recorder) and will be producing music again, after rather a long hiatus. I'll be releasing this music in MP3 and seeing if maybe I sell 'original master' CDs on the side. I also intend to offer free recording to the likes of slashdot nerds who also intend to release mp3s for free. If I end up too busy I might also require that the musician code something and release it under the gpl ;) but anyway, each of us eventually find our own best battlefield. For me it is using my sound engineering and musical skills (which are better than my writing or coding skills) for the purpose of the new media- putting a big-ass stake in the ground of mp3, lest trendy encrypted _crap_ wash it away. And yeah, I'd give up profit for that cause. It's not so much about 'where I want to be' as 'where I'm just not willing to go', and I confess to serious dread and ill feeling over the rage for encryption and redefinition of entertainment media as stuff that's owned by big corporations and only _lent_ to consumers on promise of good behavior. I do not think my behavior warrants my 'license to own music data' being revoked unconditionally- I don't think it's reasonable that I not be allowed to open the box and poke around inside it to see how it works and maybe break it, or maybe get it to work better.
I build audio gear now- but when I was a kid I killed something like four cassette 4-tracks :) I wanted them to do more! sound better! and I took them apart and tried to do things to make the sound bigger or brighter or just generally more amazing. This usually did not work, but eventually I learned neat and useful things.
It horrifies me that the kid like me, today, trying to take apart digital media and make it bigger and better, is a criminal- not for plans to make bootleg copies for all his little friends (that wasn't my concern either), but for having the arrogance to want to take apart the media and do it a different way. We now have a situation in which people are harrassed as criminals for simply grappling with information- not government secrets, not 'if you open this the warranty is *buahahaha!*', but criminal liability and court involvement to punish what I was doing for years as a reclusive geeky kid. And I find that quietly intolerable, and cannot coexist with it.
So geek musicians, keep posted, be ready to travel to Vermont (not like I can afford to do road trips!), because I'm moving as fast as I can, trying to answer this situation with action. I want to get _great_ music out there with sound that meets or beats the best the industry can offer, and have it be data that people can _have_ and do what they wish with. I've made that rant before. On the eve of my wonderful 20 bit adat arriving (yaaaaay!) I am ranting it again. There can be no coexistence with me and the industry- I hope more people come to that realisation within themselves. I'm no pirate and do not steal the music industry's so-paranoidly-guarded wares. In fact, I don't even download mp3s- I intend to make them and _upload_ them. I don't want to make the industry poor, I want to make them irrelevant. >:)
Cheers, slashdotters. -chris
Recent stories on Slashdot have told of the ongoing "tennis match" between digital content providers versus consumers and technically skilled people. The recent cracking of DVD's Content Scrambling System (CSS) lent ammunition to the opinion held by computing professionals and users that copy protection systems are doomed to fail. The effort has been likened to building a dam against the ocean; a foolish and useless exercise. In Slashdot discussion fora, the point has often been raised, "If you can perceive it, you can copy it. What are they going to do, encrypt the bits all the way to the speaker/electron gun?" If the Copy Protection Technical Working Group gets its way, that is precisely what's going to happen.
I received a piece of email spam today, which actually turned out to be useful (probably the only time that's ever happened anywhere). It directed me to a flat panel display industry group. Among others, one of the links pointed to the California Display Network, which had a link pointing to technical info on flat panel technology. Since I currently earn my living writing graphics card and display drivers, I clicked through to see what I could learn.
I found an entry for an overview of digital visual interfaces, provided by Silicon Image. As I reviewed the headings of the slides, one entry stopped me cold: Conten t Protection Status. Content protection? In a flat panel?? Yup: "Implementation of DVI content protection is suitable for PCs and monitors." [emphasis mine]
Thus began an evening of link clicking and Google searches to find out what this off-handed remark could mean. The slide made mention of the 'CPTWG'. This is the Copy Protection Technical Working Group, a consortium of content providers (movie companies), consumer electronics manufacturers, and players in the IT industry. This is the same group that developed CSS for DVD players.
One paragraph from the above page is particularly disturbing:
The most recent meeting of the CPTWG was yesterday, 8 December, 1999. Their meeting announcements may be found here. According to the December meeting announcement, the next meetings will occur on 11 January, 2000, and 9 February, 2000. It costs $100 to attend.
The attendance roster from the November meeting (PDF file, sorry) lists a very interesting, and possibly worrying, mix of organizations. A partial list of representatives included:
If you download the roster and read closely, you'll see every major piece of your computer represented. There is no doubt that at least one part of your computer -- your CPU, your RAM, your disk drive, your graphics card, your monitor -- is manufactured by one of these companies.
If you look further still, you'll see there are no consumer advocacy groups listed.
What are they all working toward? Quite simply, to prevent you from using your lawfully obtained digital material in any way they don't want.
Here's one example of how they'll do it: If you've visited Fry's or CompUSA recently, you'll notice that full-size flat panel displays are starting to appear. Currently, most of these displays are based on the old VGA analog signals, which are converted into the digital signals needed by the panels. The Digital Display Working Group is working on a new connector and signalling standard called Digital Visual Interface (DVI) that will allow computer displays to go all-digital. You won't need a DAC on the video card; the digital signals will be fed straight through to the display. Image fidelity will be much higher, since there won't be any intervening DAC/ADC conversions. Version 1.0 of the standard has been published and is available for download (PDF format). The DVI spec currently does not stipulate copy protection measures. However, plans are in the works to incorporate it.
Intel is one of the primary contributors to this effort. On Intel's developer site, they have some papers on copy protection for IEEE 1394 (Firewire) digital streams. In two separate articles, 1394-based Digital Content Protection: an Intel Proposal, and Content Protection for IEEE 1394 Serial Buses (the latter being a Powerpoint presentation masquerading as a PDF file), Intel outlines its proposal for protecting digital content over Firewire. By using cryptographic authentication techniques, a device offering digital content will "handshake" with other devices on the bus to assure that digital data is only received by, "compliant devices." In a revised overview of the proposal, IDF Talk: Content Protection for the IEEE 1394 Bus, Intel offers concrete implementation details, including:
The full proposal (currently version 0.91), with lots of technical detail, is mirrored on CPTWG's site (the links to Intel's site don't work).
Intel's proposal also recommends that the copy protection system be field-upgradeable to thwart ongoing attacks, and that it should be possible to revoke (read: disable) a device determined to be "compromised." (The tone of the proposals is also interesting. It's previously been thought that, because of USB, Intel is hostile to IEEE 1394. Yet these proposals suggest that Intel's quite enthusiastic about 1394... Once copy protection is incorporated.)
Intel's proposal mentions only IEEE 1394. However, it also mentions that there's nothing preventing the technique being applied generally to any bi-directional link. So for all occurrences of '1394', substitute 'DVI', and you've got an idea of what to look forward to in your new digital monitor. And your new DVD player. And your new HDTV set. And your new USB speakers.
Intel goes even further in their paper, A Framework for DVD-Audio Content Protection. In it, the author suggests that DVD-Audio recorders permanently remember the IRSC (International Standard Recording Code) of every song the device is asked to copy, so that it may only be copied once, period. They go on to suggest that the recorder could have a modem built-in to authorize (read: purchase) the ability to make additional copies.
In short, through this industry consortium, Hollywood proposes to exert control over every link in the digital chain, from the digital camera, to the disk drive, to the CPU, to the graphics card, to your display. They will decide what rights you have. Even if a court decides Fair Use includes multiple copies for personal use (such as assembling a video montage), it won't matter. Your computer will still refuse to make the copies (and probably fink on you, as well).
This coordinated effort is ostensibly to combat unsanctioned copying (which the industry chronically refers to incorrectly as 'theft' and 'piracy'). However, no one has ever been able to provably quantify the value of unrealized sales due to such copying. All dollar estimates that have been published are just that: estimates, based on idealized extrapolations of what-if scenarios. Moreover, although the industry claims to "lose" billions every year, they continue to post record profits. Finally, despite the proliferation of CDR drives and the Internet, most unrealized sales are the result of organized mass counterfeiting rings, not casual copying. None of the proposed methods I've seen appear to thwart mass counterfeiting at all. So clearly there's some other reason for all this.
The thing that puzzles me most is why the computer and consumer electronics industries haven't told Hollywood to take a hike. Intel's copy protection proposals state, in bold letters, "No content protection = No Hollywood content." This belief is taken as axiomatic by all the players, and appears to be the driving force behind the entire effort. This belief is also false.
Audio on CDs are recorded as plaintext, and the music industry continues to earn rapacious profits. Even the with the advent of CDRs, no music industry executive in his right mind would suggest dropping CD sales and going strictly with cassettes and vinyl. If nothing else, the manufacturing costs for CDs are lower than those for cassettes and vinyl. Likewise, DVDs are tremendously cheaper to produce than videotapes. Videotape duplication is a labor-intensive process; DVDs can be stamped out automatically. The savings in cost-of-goods alone would more than balance against any unrealized sales from casual copying. Corporate shareholders, always mindful of the bottom line, will also demand that the studios move to the cheaper, higher-quality process, copy protected or not.
The fact is that the computer and electronics firms are in the driver's seat, and are free to dictate how the new digital formats will work. Hollywood will use whatever format becomes popular, whether it has copy protection or not. They may grumble about it, but they'll use it. The economics afford them little choice.
We are only now beginning to explore the social and ethical consequences of a Star Trek-like universe where everything can be infinitely duplcated at zero cost. We have no idea where things will end up. But now is not the time to start erecting electronic walls and imposing artificial scarcity. The ignoble and richly-deserved death of DIVX showed -- fairly unequivocally, I thought -- that consumers want to make free, fair use of their digital media, without interference from outside. I believe its death reinforces the future toward which we've been pushing for centuries: Increased abundance at reduced cost.
Nevertheless, the CPTWG and the organizations supporting it are blindly moving forward. It may turn out it's impossible to dam the ocean, but they're gearing up to give it one hell of a try. We can only hope that the lesson of DIVX will be repeated until it is learned.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
There are some major differences between now and 5-10 years ago, which make this a much bigger issue than it was then.
Copying of movies and music certainly existed then (which is why even really old videos have that FBI warning on them), but it was limited in several respects. First of all, the media you mention, like all media back then, was analog, and duplication of analog media produces an irreducible loss of quality. To a lesser extent, even playback damages them. This means that one can only copy a tape a certain number of times before it becomes useless. Futhermore, real movie/music buffs won't settle for anything less than top quality, which means the original tape as sold by the studio or label.
This changed with the advent of CD and (recently) DVD. With digial media, one can easily make an exact copy of the original, and digital media generally don't wear out either. This is what terrifies the studios about DVD, and what bothered the labels about CD when it first came out- not the prospect of copying, but the prospect of perfect digital copying.
More importantly, the difference lies in distribution. 5 years ago, even though CD writers did exist, piracy wasn't a huge problem, except from large, organized pirating operations. This is because there is an irreducible cost contained in the physical media, and the shipping of that media. 5 years ago, if I wanted a song without paying for it, I would have to put in some effort, and a nonzero amount of money, to get ahold of it, whether paying for a blank CD or tape, or making the effort of locating someone with the song to copy from. On top of that, it involved a per-copy cost to the original owner- he must spend the time and effort to make each and every copy. The economic term for this is that there was a nonzero marginal cost for each additional copy. This put a practical limit on piracy- any given disc sold would be unlikely to produce more than, say, 5 pirated copies, and very few discs were pirated at all to begin with, so the problem was small. Imagine trying to pirate a DVD today. DVD CCA smokescreen aside, it's pretty much impossible- you have to find a copy of the movie, a DVD burner, and buy a blank DVD, which costs more than the legit movie does.
The internet is changing this situation rapidly. With mp3, the cost of distributing a pirated CD is essentially zero. There is a small bandwidth cost, but it is quite manageable thanks to MPEG compression. And, thanks to internet distribution, a single CD could easily spawn thousands of pirated copies, because once the disc is ripped, the marginal cost of giving the mp3s to someone is essentially zero, and so pirates became willing to give even complete strangers copies. On the other end, if I want a pirated song, I can get it for no more than the cost of my time searching for it, with no additional effort or cost to physically ship it or get it into playable form. This has led to a radical explosion of piracy.
Sooner or later, the same thing will probably happen to DVD. Right now, this is prevented by the combination of a high bandwidth cost and the absence of any software capable of playing a movie directly from a file stored on disc. The CSS crack will address the second relatively soon, leaving only the first. As the mp3 experience shows, that point is probably a lot closer than one might think- only a few years ago, distribution of CD-quality music over the 'net was unthinkable.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
I'm a small-time artist (or was not too long ago anyway). I don't pirate CDs. I really *do* delete mp3s I download if I don't plan to buy the album (and I've bought many albums after getting to hear a few more of the songs on it). When the predecessor of the RIAA tried to stop DAT, it hurt *me*; it took away a tool I needed to record and distribute my music. The industry tried to stop the VCR, reel to reel, and the compact cassette, all tools I needed and used to their fullest. When the RIAA bans mp3 (not that I think they'll succeed) it prevents me from distributing my own music (and trading legit amateur music with my friends). "You want to distribute music without a contract? You must be a criminal."
To drive the point home: Heard much from Joan Osbourne recently? No, because her recording label hasn't liked her second album attempts (she wanted to go in a different direction), refuses to release the music and yet retains rights to it all. Her only option is to not record again. Same with XTC (whose contract recently expired), Prince (who is so pissed at Sony he's planning to rerecord *all* of his hits from the 80s). Don't give me *any* line about the RIAA or the music industry having anyone's interests at heart; their own musicians won't come out to back them.
The RIAA represents corporations with a big fat cow of money at stake. It's common sense: They will act in their own interests. They'll try the easy ways and go for the biggest pot of cash first. That in itself is not greedy or evil (although it is amoral). The tactics they've decided to use are the worst kind of FUD. "You don't believe in the Free Market and Capitalism? You must be a criminal."
The RIAA wants to turn a battle for artists' rights (that's right; I'm on the artists'-- my-- side) into a piracy story. It is not in their interests for artists to have any freedom. That will cut into their profits, so what do you expect them to do? The DVD Forum (which doesn't particularly like Linux or OSS; they want you to play on platforms they can strike Deals with) are turning a battle entirely about interoperability into a battle about piracy. "You want to watch DVDs with unapproved software? You must be a criminal."
Monty
xiph.org