IETF on DRM, Internet Faxing

Rich Salz writes: "The Internet Research Task Force, a sister of the IETF, has a research group on Internet digital rights management. Ebooks, secure content, no-fair-use (sic), etc. According to a presentation at the last IETF, one of the group's work items is to influence other IETF activities to support/architect DRM. IDRM membership is open to anyone, presumably including nay-sayers." Meanwhile, the IETF has put on hold its work toward an internet fax standard, as Adobe and Xerox squabble over a file format.

Comments

Their charter contains the problem

[Mactire_Dearg]

From their charter: 'IDRM is concerned with legal and social issues only to the extent that they affect or constrain DRM technology.'

I think thats more than half the problem. They arent asking IF something should be done, only how to do it. If someone comes up with a way to track every word I read in an ebook and then delete it so I cant re-read it what are the bets these guys would support it rather than 'constrain' the technology?

Maybe we should form the Internet Social Issues Team (IS IT) to address the things the corporations dont want to be bothered with.

The IETF needs a Patent IP policy for standards

[hillct]

Squabling over Intellectual Property in standard protocols is short sighted. It reduces the possibility the company holding the IP will be able to have the market advantage that comes with inclusion of their technology in a atandard (because no one will bother to include their technology) and potentially harms the quality and viability of the proposed standard There are plenty of residual revenue streams that come out of such inclusion of IP in a standard, that do not have the potential of harming the diability and rate-of-adoption of a standard (like treditional IP licensing would). The article about the internat fax standard says:

Adobe refuses to support TIFF-FX unless Xerox releases rights for its MRC technology to Adobe.

Xerox, meanwhile, won't back TIFF-FX unless Adobe promises to support the standard in its next version of TIFF.

This shouldn't ever be an issue. There should be a standard mechanism implemented for management and status handling of Intelectual property which becomes part of IETS standards (protocols, file formats, etc) such that there is never a question as to the availability for use of a standard. This is the same sort of issue that came up in an earlier discussion of Dolby Digital AC-3 decoding where the standards body, the Advanced Television Systems Committee has a patent policy which states in part that:

A license will be made available without compensation to applicants desiring to utilize the license for the purpose of implementing the standard.

Unfortunately, even with this policy, Dolby Labs is making claims against the NetBSD project for inclusing an unlicensed decoder in an Open Source product. The IETS needs to learn from this situation and develop an iron clad patent and IP policy such that these issues never arise when people attempt to implement IETF standards.

--CTH

Internet faxing is available

[MobyDisk]

Typically, you use the SMTP protocol and the "PNG" "GIF" or "JPG" file formats. Our office uses "DOC" "HTML" and "PDF" internally. Do any of these sound familiar to anyone else?

Seriously, what advantage does internet faxing have over email? Email is fast and open-ended. It can handle any type of file format. It can be secured, tracked, provides return reciept.

If you read the article, it talks about two companies using proprietary extensions for color faxes, and they are talking IP rights before the working group has even made a draft! I'm not interested in protocols being manhandled by corporations. Standards are standards. (Remember USRobotics and modem standards years back?)

Standardize DRM is impossible

[Sloppy]

Is it even possible to have standardized DRM? I thought that every single attempt at DRM, has absolutely and solely relied on security through obscurity. If you publish a standard, don't you lose obscurity?

When will the world learn:

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two kinds of organizations:

A) Hardware/Infrastructure
B) Software/Content

Type A has no business getting involved with type B goals and priorities. Type A's job is to make things work. Type B goals like DRM make things NOT work.

Stop it stop it stop it, stop it right now.

No-fair-use ?

[nickovs]

" Ebooks, secure content, no-fair-use (sic), etc."

The charter for this RG says explicitly that "it will address technologies that promote both copy-protection and fair-use copying of digital objects" which hardly sounds like no fair use to me. People on Slashdot all too often seem to think that all digital rights management is inherently evil when this is simply not the case. For instance, DRM covers schemes that allow unlimited copying with strong tracability so that you can make all the copies you need but if you start selling them the owners will know the who the culprit is.

You should all remember that this is an open IRTF group. If you have ideas about how DRM should work to both protect the fair use rights of consumers and also allow fair dues to the authors, then go and let them know. Sitting around on Slashdot moaning that the IETF is going to become a branch of the MPAA is both disingenuous and unproductive.