SightSound To Distribute Films Via Gnutella

asonthebadone writes: "The online video firm SightSound.com plans to distribute feature movie content with Gnutella. The film content will be 'protected' by Microsoft's Digital Rights Management System. The article from CNET goes on to quote various security 'experts' as stating that Gnutella is "fundamentally insecure" and that its usage would sow the "seed of one's destruction". If you're looney enough to run a file of unknown origin with a .vbs extension, that would be referred to as Darwinism." (More)

Carnage4Life writes with more details: "Sightsound has put up for grabs on the Gnutella network a dozen encrypted movie files from Miramax Films, for which SightSound has secured online distribution rights. Once people obtain the file, they are required to rent or purchase a license to view the movie. [...] If this works this could spell the beginning of the embrace of online digital distribution of movies, music and other forms of IP by the entertainment industry. Maybe then all the Napster madness will be over."

So long as it's a greater inconvenience (or a large enough moral dilemma) to crack such files for a critical mass of people, it seems like everybody could win here.

Comments

Re:Crack em!

[dirk]

I, for one, would not pay. In fact, I would immensly enjoy trying to crack this protection scheme. I would enjoy trying to crack it way more than I would enjoy watching the film. An I would enjoy watching a film I cracked (or recieved a cracked copy of) way more than watching a film I paid for.

So what you are saying (and apparently the moderaters agree with you) is that all the people that have been spewing about "If they make something easy to get and affordable on the net, we'll buy it instead of steal it" is a huge load of crap? Here is something that is distributed in the "great new way" everyone wants, yet no one is willing to pay for it, because it will be cracked and available for free. Once again, it is proven that high prices don't cause piracy, piracy is justified by bitching about high prices.

How much to pay per view?

[DeepDarkSky]

I wonder how much they are going to price it?

The reason why I ask is, I think if you take the entire population (of the world) and work out two variables, x number of people willing to spend y amount of dollars, you'll see that as y goes down, x goes up. The amount of money made by film producers (or distributors, or whatever) would be roughly x times y. Over time, however, x becomes more important. x is actually more along the lines of number of viewings rather than number of people willing to pay. But my point is, if you make y low enough such that an acceptable percentage of people are willing to pay, then they wouldn't have to worry about piracy.

Let me borrow, as an example, currency. The reason why printed currency works and why the government goes through all the anti-counterfeit stuff is because would-be counterfeiters would have to spend a lot more money than the value of the currency that they are trying to counterfeit. The government has the economy of scales on their side. They spend less than 10 cents printing each bill, but it would be much more expensive (though not impossible) for counterfeiters to produce counterfeits that can fool people. That's why counterfeit money is usually higher is denomination, because the lower denomination just wouldn't pay off. That's perhaps why the U.S. has, as it's highest denomination, the one hundred dollar bill.

Back to the encrypted movies. If they priced it so that it would not be worth anyone's time to pirate the movies, even though inevitably, a small percentage of the population will anyway, they can reduce the effects of piracy and actually make enough money (it's never enough, I suppose, and they want to get the money while they can), and the consumers will not complain about how expensive it is to watch a movie. Imagine if pay-per-view was only 10 cents? Take an average long-ish 2 hour movie, if you watched movies non-stop for a month, you'll average about $30, less than most utility bills and DSL fees. Would you do it?

Re:the (forebidden) apple

[Kris_J]

The problem is that if an established power base attempts to ban an item or product (and sometimes behaviour) it is assumed by at least a large minority, if not the majority, that it's something worth having. This does unfortunately have a pretty good basis - look at the banning of X-rated material in Australia, followed by complaints from the very politicans that enacted the legistation when they themselves were blocked. I didn't seriously consider buying a Rio until the RIAA attempted to ban it.

A mindless ban on something typically doesn't work as well as decent education on the topic. Not that education seems to be valued very much any more anyway. I believe that if sex, even erotica, was discussed openly and sensibly from a young age then demand for pornography and prostitution would decrease dramatically. You always need to target demand, not supply.

The problem for artists is that their work is hideously undervalued. To survive they typically invest their money (and any "power" they do have) in power hungry little dictators that have no more interest in the actual art than the rest of the population. The result is the MPAA and RIAA - a marketing and legal machine with a choke-hold on popular art. It's no longer about the art, just the money.

I say, support local artists, buy stuff from independant labels, look up the word "patron". Sure, take in a mainstream movie every so often, but try to lose the false sense of need that's been implanted by immoral marketing practices. (I tell you, many of the complaints about DVD make people sound like they're hooked on drugs rather than home movies.)

The failings of Rights Management.

[griffjon]

OK, this is back to my general DRM (Digital Rights Management) speech.

GIVEN: The entirity of the user base will not accept a technology that restricts or degrades their experience with a medium they previously had greater rights on.

given that, let's explore the possibilities here.
Anything you can view can be copied. Remember the BetaMax suit. That's been solved by some tricks which don't noticably degrade the movie but do degrade any copies, if you don't have tech know-how or some low-grade video editing software.
Computers make copying data much easier--no degradation that can't be fixed. In a perfect, trusted computing environment where the OS, nay, the hardware, was working in concert with DRM software, the data could not be copied digitally.
Firstly, there are no such environments. Secondly, even in the perfect possible case, it doesn't solve the problem--if something can be viewed, it can be copied. Whether it involves getting a video-out from your video card and stereo from your sound card, (let's presume they're also working with DRM), or simply getting a dark, soundproofed room and setting up a video camera, it can't be stopped.

DRM in the digital world will be no better than the real world. Does the existence of VCRs manufactured for mass copying, copier machines, cameras, audio-out and -in jacks, and camcorders ruin the film/tv/music industry? no. When the dust settles, the digital world will be similar. Pirated data will be more available. Vendors will have to deal, or find better business models. Blockbuster and Xerox seem to be doing just fine on their business based off of technologies once thought to be the doom of their respective areas.

The apple. RIAA and MPAA in the garden of Eden

[Money__]

RIAA, MPAA and Microsoft in the garden of eden with Adam and Eve.

1) Eve can't eat the apple.
2) Adam can't eat the apple.
3) Eve can't copy the apple.
4) Adam can't tell Eve about the ATI (Apple Tree Interface).
5) Eve can't inform Adam about the ATI because of the click thru EULA (Eden User Licence Agreement).
6) Adam can't use the trademarked word apple without the expressed writen consent of god and monday night football.
7) Eve can't walk around eden with the apple in her hand without first ataining the exclusive distrubution rights from AAE (Apple Association of Eden).
8) Adam is prohibited from making apple sauce or using any other "compression algorithm" on the copyrighted apple.
9) Eve is prohibited from telling Adam about the apple sause maker because it would be contributing to the use of compression tools in order to facilitate piracy.
10) Neither Adam ore Eve are permitted to make caramel apples as that would be using encryption and obfuscation on copyrighted materials with the expressed intent of unauthorized distribution.
11) The snake can only sell the apple at a minimum advertised list price of $17.99.
___

the apple

[Signal 11]

Something needs to be said about the concept of the forbidden apple. The Romans tried to stop christianity. Christianity became popular. Drugs were made illegal in this country. Drugs became popular. Rock music was chastized by the establishment as being "satanic". Rock becomes popular. Anyone starting to see a pattern here?

Now, music becomes illegal to download. Downloading music becomes popular. As any sysadmin who has made the claim that their system is "uncrackable" will tell you, saying that something is impossible is a very good way of drawing engineers in - like moths to fire.

So Microsoft goes out and builds this standard. Then they say it's impossible. Then, to top it off, they make it illegal to crack it. Who shall be the first to taste the forbidden apple?

Breaking the code

[DranoK]

Maybe I'm dead wrong here, and if so just tell me =)

It seems to me sending encrypted data over utilities such as Naptster etc could be a good or bad idea. Well, we all know the good so I'd like to point out some problems I see *grin*

1) Liscence creation/distribution. To ensure that the liscencing scheme is sound, I would think the best way to do it would be to have two classes of liscences. Type A would be a one-view liscence, and Type B would be a constant liscence. Each would be encrypted via a different scheme. With this, however, comes some inevitable problems. To make this work right, it would be assumed that one must be connected to the internet to check the liscence with an ever-growing online catalog (to make sure nobody has broken the scheme or is giving away their liscence code to everyone else). So....let's say you bought a one-view liscence. You're running winblows. Your machine crashes half-way thru viewing. Must you buy a new liscence? What if you get disconnected? When you dial back up and re-run the liscence their servers would say you already used your activation. Any other method besides online auth could be easily cracked.

2) How many people would downloading it not realizing they needed a liscence and jam tech support lines?

3) Why not stop spending time cracking the encryption method (which almost HAS to be stored in the viewer program and not online; else ...well, I'll leave the problems up to you) just hack the code (hex editors are your friends!) to tell the proggy that the code is authentic no matter what.

Nothing is secure. Nothing. Sorry, but everything can be cracked. You'll spend so much time and money trying to stop it that you wonder when it just won't be worth it anymore.

God...WHEN is this whole Intelectual Property shit going to go away!?

DranoK



That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.

Target Audience

[seizer]

You just have to consider the target audience. The fact of the matter is, that just now, people who use Gnutella are almost all there to get copyrighted materials without paying for them.

I'm not judging that.

But these same people will almost always have a level of technical expertise which will enable them to get the crack as well. Sightsound should aim more at the website distribution model they have just now, which is targeted at a different audience. The Gnutella idea is just as silly as setting up an iRC fserve, or putting it on some l33t ftp.

Also, what's to stop people putting the crack (for there is no doubt in my mind that there WILL be one) on Gnutella with the same or similar filename as the movie, so users searching for the movie will get the crack in the search results at the same time? At the end of the day, I do like this endorsement of Gnutella as a legitimate distribution medium, but it's just not going to work!


--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me

why this will never work

[BlueLines]

this is going to fail the same way microsoft's secure music codec did. if grabbing the unencrypted output of a sound device is really the work of "hackers", then i can't wait to h4x0r the temporary file the movie streams to after decryption.