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What's The Future of DRM?
Cdgod asks: "I am working on a thesis regarding DRM (Digital Rights Management). I would like to get it published and instead of having the regular recycled net material, I would like to hear opinions and thoughts on how it should and could work. Think 20 years in the future, how can you see your world with DRM in place? Will it cost you a few pennies every time you look for the time on your watch? Are you limited to only coping that CD 3 times before it is locked forever? Can you think of uses where DRM will actually give the user more rights? Try to think outside the current models in place, such as video on demand, purchasing music online, and DRM e-books. And yes, I will be arguing that the current laws are not taking the user's point of view, but of the large media companies." My personal thoughts on Digital Rights Management (copy protection, for laymen) is that as long as it interferes with the user's use of the material, it's not worthwhile. Most of the current solutions which have been proposed seem more like draconian measures that will be forced down our throats...whether we like it or not.
How about if DRM in the future prevents the use of ideas from my /. comments becoming part of someone's thesis? See if you can spot the watermark in here somewhere :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Slashdot previously covered this. The Letter from 2020 is here.
To me, this seemed like a pretty plausible outcome of DRM.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Yes, once it's deleted, it will allow the user to recover valuable hard drive space.
sulli
RTFJ.
One thing DRM might do is enable me to share my personal information privately with one entity, without fear that the entity could share it with others. (That is, if DRM could work.)
That might be good, but I'm much happier with the world we live in now!
I work in tech M&A...and can tell you that DRM iniatives will manifest themselves whether you like it or not. I can also tell you that the market for video content though is viewed as pretty distant still. ie, commerce in viedo content over broadband - excepting porn of course which is and will remain ubiquitous.
As far as DRM goes - I do view it a little like software proection. There's always someone on the outside who is a better coder than the group on the inside and can break it.
Here's your future: Millions of people will refuse to adopt these bullshit standards. They'll figure out a way to write a college thesis in Word without paying Microsoft by the character. They'll listen to their rightfully purchased CDs without paying the RIAA by the hour. And the US Government will throw huge numbers of these non-violent "terrorists" (read: you & me) in jail at huge expense.
You can use our current drug policies as a guide to the future of DRM...
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
Really effective DRM (that is, DRM that's based on something other than the DMCA to make it "effective") would require some fundamental changes in the world of computing devices (of all sizes). Regardless of the strength and cleverness of cryptographic packaging technologies, if there is a pathway through the computer for digital plaintext then the DRM scheme is ipso facto defective.
On the other hand, the introduction of pure hardware schemes that retain the cyphertext of the protected material until it is transformed (within a tamper-proof sanctioned device) into perceivable media (image on screen, sound from speakers) would have a chance of real effectiveness. Now this would represent a profound change to the way we normally think about computing devices and about the freedom we have to put together systems of any type using whatever basic parts can be found. Such work would still be possible of course, but DRM-protected media would be unusable without the presence of secure tamper-proof decoding hardware.
The need for such hardware (which, by the way, is not sci-fi: check Intel's work on secure digital interfaces for digital flat-screen displays) implies a controllable market, since some organization would have the power to issue or not issue licenses and keys to manufacturers.
Think that, except for firemen coming in to regularly set fire to all your media. No matter if you're grandfathered or not: there exists the picture of impropriety, so better to err on the side of safety.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
and instead of having the regular recycled net material
You came to slashdot to avoid recycled net material?
That's courage.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Have you ever used Emusic? You pay like $10/month and you get access to everything in their catalog. It's all MP3 so I could certainly distribute it all over creation, but why would I? If somebody else wants to hear the music they can get their own subscription. It's very easy for me to share a few songs with friends which gets them interested in the bands and gets them signing up for the service.
A thing I've noticed in my personal use of Emusic is that I've discovered music by a lot of obscure bands I never heard of that I like. I mean since I'm paying for it anyhow it's worth it to me to download a whole album by some band I've never heard of. I can just delete it when I don't want it. Why go buy the new album from some big name band for $15+ when I can download music for free?
Trying to impose pay-per-use technology on music is just going to turn people off to it. If you want proof of people's reaction to this, just look at DivX. People like to own things, and they hate having to deal with complex rights mangement architectures. The only way you could find a DRM that would be really appealing to people would be one that's transparent, but by it's nature it can't be transparent because it has to stop me from doing something forbidden by the publisher.
If The big RIAA labels opened up their collections to me and charged me like $15-20/month to download all I want, I'd be all over that. But if they had some goofy DRM technology on the music, I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
If I were to look 20-30 years down the road at a U.S. ruled by DRM via laws like the SSSCA, I would have to say it would be a pretty sad place. First of all, you have a generation of people who will have grown up beleiving that its normal to have to pay for *any* kind of information, and then think its taboo to share that information.
People will collaborate less and will have learned that it's 'wrong' to pass along data or information of any kind. This kind of mentality will manifest itself in an atmosphere where it's considered morally and ethically wrong to try to do things without doing them in the approved (legal or corporate) manner. I don't see a lot of technical or scientific innovation coming from people who have this mindset.
The Dark Ages was a fairly direct result of the Catholic Church's desire to control information, in their case, religious doctrine. The crusades brutally crushed scientific, philosophical, and mathmatic progress in the middle east. Human progress came to a virtual halt for several centuries.
This is the same thing. Instead of a rich, powerful church, we have a oligarchy of rich, powerful corporations who beleive it is in their best interest to control information of any kind, be it entertainment, scientific data, math, or any kind of production algorithm. The future is grim indeed if these companies get their way.
The renaissance, the richest period of exploration and innovation in human history happened when the controls imposed by the Catholic church started to break down and both religous and scientific information began to flow freely.
Freedom of Information == Human Progress and Advancement
Proprietary Information == Fear, Paranoia, Superstition, and Human Misery
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Digital Rights Management is bad for users in the short term, will take some wrangling and creativity on the side of the license holders. They are trying to create technology and legislation that will allow them to know who and when someone uses a property that they license.
Initially, it will be more expensive for people to listen to music or read books, because instead of buying cd's or books, you buy the right to hear the song or the right read the book.
People will pay what they feel the material is worth. If I think that listening to a Wu Tang Clan is worth 3 cents, and they want 8, I won't pay. In terms of the market, this makes the market more efficient and provides some feedback to the artists. It also makes it possible to bundle in things like advertising to offset the cost (advertising is more valuable in this case because they know who they are marketing to.)
In the future, people will be able to pay for whatever they want, and the number of choices available to them will reflect the value they percieve in the service.
Troll Like a Champion Today
Can you think of uses where DRM will actually give the user more rights?
No.
Bend Over
I bought the videos..
...
I bought the wide screen version..
I bought the THX videos
I bought the Laser discs
I bought the DVDs
I bought the Super DVDs
I bought the holo cube
I bought the
The only scheme I have ever seen that actually works is the use of CD keys in online games to make sure that there are only unique (and in theory paid for) clients connected at any one time. Of course this scheme is useless for anything that doesn't require a net connection. So long as the online game servers are where the fun's at, the user is out in the cold without a legit copy. The key part of this scheme is the dependency on a resource that is outside the user's control and can't be modified. Without the actual use of a remote resource for a major part of he product's functionality, though, such a scheme would be intolerable (why would you want to log into the internet to listen to a cd?). This also does not prevent the thing from moving around, only the simultaneous use of a single copy.
Microsoft's WPA scheme is similar to this, but since it's only a one time verification and gives the user time before he has to set it up, it is vurnerable to tampering.
The really interesting problem in DRM is not what happens on the desktop, because on-line/live-time subscriptions aren't too hard to do by issuing new licenses repeatedly.
It's in the portable market where DRM will sink or swim. Right now, very few portables fully implement SDMI or anything else. All but a few lack the secure clock required to prevent people from beating dates by rollback.
The ones that do implement clocks or real security are proprietary and have low market share, like Sony's WMA-wrapped ATRAC3 devices.
Share and Enjoy!
However, DRM in my opinion, is only useful if it meets the following conditions:
Is transparent to the user.
Requires no processor overhead.
Is secure. (increasingly difficult, arguably impossible) If the DRM is circumventable it's pointless.
It's cheap, and doesn't raise the cost of the medium. If it's costing more to protect it than it's saving, it doesn't belong there.
It must allow at least one copy to be made.
All in all, that's a very tall order. So I doubt any time within the next ten years these things will be realized. Until then, consumers will continue to scream bloody murder.
--I hate big sigs.
There's a story of a king who passed an edict forbidding the tide from rising. He sent his soldiers to the beach with orders to beat the ocean back if it didn't obey the edict. The King was trying to make a point that even he, the almighty King, could not alter the forces of nature by a simple decree.
Imagining a world where successful DRM laws exist is no different than imagining the world if the ocean had been held to the King's edict.
I could be wrong. I suppose if all hardware manufacturing was nationalized, borders were sealed, and prisons were cleared of drug users (to make room for copyright offenders), it may be possible to put digital media genie back in the bottle.
If it is possible to have successful DRM, I guess imagining the future would be like imagining the present if the printing press had been outlawed by the Monks who were put out of business by it.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
. . . when distributing IP for the personal use of the consumer. I'm thinking specifically of cable TV and video rentals.
The advantage of cable TV is the subscription model. It's better for the consumer, because their cost-per-use tends to be lower. And it's better for the content producer, because their revenue is steady, reasonably predictable, and not subject to spikes and canyons in usage. Lesson learned: consumers vastly prefer to pay a subscription fee for a huge library of content from which they can pick and choose. Compare this to pay TV or video-on-demand, the revenues for which lag pathetically behind a the regular cable TV subscription base.
The advantage of video rental is, well, obvious. People who are not willing to pay $20 to own a copy of a movie may be perfectly willing to pay $3 to rent it for a few days. Lesson learned: cost-per-unit for "ownership" of content is too high for most people, if they're unfamiliar with the content in question.
Both modes of commerce are subject to piracy. However, the effect of piracy is mitigated by the fact that the copies which are made tend to be of lower quality compared to the original. Case in point: I'll tape every single episode of the Sopranos, but I'm still willing to shell out cash to own the Special Edition DVDs so that I can watch them in widescreen. Lesson learned: people like the freedom of making copies, but they're still willing to pay for a higher fidelity / more contentful version.
I think the real solution to DRM can be found in a subscription-based broadcast-on-demand model, which allows people to easily create (analog quality) copies to store locally on their machine or carry with them in their personal music player. People who want digital quality simply need to either a) buy the CD, or b) be connected to the network.
Now, this might not be very satisfactory in the short term -- your Rio-like device would be restricted to tape-quality music. But there's a great deal of push already to expand the country's broadband and wireless infrastructure -- in another 20 years it would probably be perfectly feasible for your personal digital music player to store nothing more than a playlist, wirelessly streaming the music as you go.
I think everyone wins under this model -- what little revenue companies lose from file trading would be more than compensated for by the subscription base, and consumers would have the choice and flexibility that they crave.
In the end, DRM management will hinder, not help, even those who seek to profit from their creative works. The petty steps needed to make use of copyrighted material under DRM will ultimately have to give way to yet another system I see as the ultimate answer. Such a system will have to be a broad subscription based scheme, where instead of paying specifically for each creative work, you end up paying a general rate, and then have access to all those works. The authors and publishers then earn from that based on the proportion of how much their works are used. Even a random sampling of 5% of usage would give a fairly accurate measure of proportion for the various works to determine how much each author and publisher is paid.
Take a look at some of the big MP3 collectors. There are some people with over 100 gigabytes of downloaded music. At the statutory wholesale publisher rates paid through HFA, this comes to over US$100,000. The retail value of such collections could be US$1,000,000. And it would take months just to listen to everything once. But these are people who would not go buy all that at $12/CD. They aren't downloading it to be able to listen to it all, but for the stud factor of having an awesome jukebox. Eventually we will reach a point where we can have any creative work delivered in real time whenever we want, and even mobile at some point. We'll be paying for delivery of content, not the scale of the choices. Many of the downloads now are to achieve scale of choices, and that will be greater as bandwidths and storage leaps allow, but eventually it might not be needed (except for those unwilling to pay a dime).
Imagine paying a rate about the same as cable TV or internet access that lets you listen to any music you want, any time you want, anywhere you want. Whether you listen to the same 5 tunes over and over, or jump around among 100 genres, your rate would be about the same since it would be based on what is delivered, and at most you could listen to about 43,200 minutes a month (there might be a lower price for listening to less). Once this kind of service is available, there won't be much value in actually storing the music. As long as the pricing structure is based on fixed time, rather than how many different tunes you have access to but rarely listen to, it will beat not only most piracy, but also recorded media sales (why buy 1000 CDs if you typically listen to about 20 of them?).
It might still take another decade for the music industry to get a clue and try to build it this way. Last mile bandwidth is not there yet, especially mobile, for everyone. And then it might take a few more years for the motion picture industry to "get it", too. But eventually it will have to happen. DRM will then simply be a yes or no question.
The system won't be totally perfect. There will be those unwilling to subscribe at all, and will still steal music. There may be privacy issues regarding what we listen to. Some of this can be addressed by legislation (whether we agree that it should or not). Some of this can be addressed by the open market. And some of this can be addressed by technology. The delivery is certain to be encrypted. The ability to decrypt it is certain to be isolated to hardware like portable players and sound cards in your computer (the software would just be shuttling an encrypted data stream through, and hence open source operating systems won't be a risk). Time window based encryption would prevent storing the data for later playback (and this defeat delayed leakage to non-payers). Interim technology could allow doing a combination of storing encrypted streams with live delivery of a time window based key (and the hardware still does the work).
Given this, storage of music by consumers won't be needed, and thus DRM will be moot. This is still a few years off, but mark my word, it is coming as soon as entertainment executives figure it out for themselves.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Originally intended to provide a public benefit -- to encourage and promote the widespread availability of information -- copyright law has been distorted to the point where it allows a powerful few organizations to control vast seas information, allowing access only those who can pay fees that are often unreasonable. Gone, too, are the days when we could realistically expect copyrighted material to be contributed to the public domain after a reasonable period of time. Our national concept of "copyright" is a perversion.
Before we legislate "rights management" into hardware, we ought to ask why we have these "rights" anyway. And if the answer isn't solely to promote the public good, we should do away with them.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's not draconian if you have a choice, and you do have a choice in the matter based on your wallet.
Don't like the DRM measures coming forth on CDs? Don't buy the CDs. Don't even listen to the music. While some pop bands are obviously a profit-centered venture, most artists actually *do* want you to listen to their music; measures taken to stop this listening will not only hurt the labels in the pocketbooks, but also get the artists themselves to argue against whatever measures are being taken to reduce public listening.
Also, let me just say that paying "a few pennies every time you look for the time on your watch" is X-Fileish and activistic to the extreme. Obviously this is not going to happen. Do you think high-level executives in the government and military personnel (to cite recent events) would ever warrant this?
For that matter, I'm a firm believer that the subscription plans in place now (like cell phone bills) will eventually be dwindled to nothing based on current competition. There are only so many minutes a cell phone company can provide in a month. After a while you hit limits, and gradually the costs erode to practically nothing (similar to water and electricity, communication will eventually become publically-owned).
http://www.freesql.org/sssca.htm
That's why the SSSCA will make non-DRM controlled hardware illegal.
Eventually, after enough hacking of the systems, PCs will be required to be tamper-proof, DRM enabled, no end-user access to raw bit streams, etc. The SSSCA could pass, and the certified systems required by the act could include such requirements.
And the DRM system will likely prevent playing of unauthenticated content. Ostensibly to stop people from making analog recordings of music with a microphone, but it would also make independant music production impossible. The legally mandated system could require that in order for a piece of music to play, it would need to be signed with a valid key - and only the RIAA could license such keys. Onle would then need an RIAA license to make music.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
You may or may not care about a very short essay I wrote on this subject that was published at here, entitled "The Alexandria Effect", in which DRM leads to a new sort of Dark Ages, similar to what happened after the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
with a very simple question: "Does this particular law increase the freedoms or quality of life for the majority of individuals it will apply to?" Traffic laws are a good example. The law that says you must drive on the right (in the U.S.) increases your freedom to move about by reducing the chance that some other fool will be driving on the left. Laws that are passed to increase someone's profits do not pass this test. Laws that increase someone's profits are the direct result of political bribery, and political bribery is a fact of life in the U.S. of A.
The real thing I see coming out of a DRM future is foo-on-demand. Think of a song? Type in the name and get an instant download, at high quality, high bandwidth, with the lyrics and all supplimental info, with all the ID3 tags intact and correct (a few cents for a single play, maybe a dollar for unlimited plays). Missed Enterprise? Download any episode of any tv show, again, fast, painless, legal. Maybe even free for the version with commercials embedded in it, a buck or so for a commericial-free version. Ditto for movies, books, games, software, or really just about anything that can be digitally transmitted. Pay a few dollars to watch some movie, widescreen, in DVD quality, and then if you want a few more to download the entire Collector's Edition DVD, so you can burn it yourself. Of course, all of this assumes that the FLAs are will ing to allow all this, but...
Visit me on #weirdness on the Galaxynet.
That depends on how the compromise is drawn. Consider the position of the framers of the U.S. Constitution: from a natural rights perspective, all expressions of ideas, works of art, etc. covered by copyright are free to be shared and copied as desired. However, the framers also understood that taking this approach would not maximize the amount of intellectual "property" or "content" available to the public.
The founders' response was a compromise between the natural rights and the best interests of the people. They allowed useful, novel ideas such as machines to be patented, or writings and art to be copyrighted, granting a monopoly for a limited time. The key here is the "limited times" clause. By making sure that works would eventually enter the public domain, the founders gave inventors, artists, and publishers a compelling reason to fully disclose their inventions and publish their works: monopoly profits. In exchange for the protection of patents and copyrights, the owners agreed to release all claims on the works after a period of time.
This compromise was a stroke of genius, as it balanced the need to provide incentives to creators and distributors of ideas to maximize their production with the natural rights of the people. Unfortunately, the founders left it up to Congress to define what the "limited times" clause meant. The Supreme Court has ruled that this clause allows Congress to set any non-infinite period without violating the Constitution. The Court cannot set a maximum period on its own authority because that would violate the separation of powers between legislative and judicial branches.
The problem with current DRM schemes, the DMCA, and the SSSCA is that they completely ignore the natural rights of the people. Intellectual "property" corporations like publishers, movie studios, and conglomerates (AOL Time Warner, Viacom) have spent the last two centuries trying to indoctrinate people with the belief that intellectual property is a natural right. The repeated extensions of copyright terms during the 20th century suggests they are winning.
However, a DRM system consistent with the framers' intent would be beneficial to everyone. Digital media technologies have undermined the balance between natural rights and maximizing available content. Current DRM systems and supporting legislation go too far in the opposite direction, undermining the peoples' natural rights.
What we need is a DRM system that works to maintain the framers' compromise, rather than benefitting either side. It should ensure that fair uses are permitted, that works enter the public domain when their copyright expires, and that creators are given the necessary returns from their work to ensure a vital public discourse.
This suggests that legitimate DRMs must codify ideas like limiting the number of serial copies (copies of copies of...) that may be made, but must also codify the right to view at any time after purchase, the right to transfer ownership to another person, etc. The Congress has thus far failed to strike this balance because they have not been educated about its importance.
DRMs do not have to be totally secure; that is unnecessary and probably impossible. However, they do need to be sufficiently secure that the cost of circumventing them is prohibitive. (Should circumvention tools be legal or illegal? I'm not sure.) I believe such a level of security is attainable and sufficient in the general case, because people value their time.
This is as far as I've been able to get, but I think it's a good starting point for a reasoned, non-kneejerk discussion of copyrights and intellectual "property" in the digital age. I look forward to reading comments and followups to these ideas. DRMs need not be the end of the world.
I don't believe that, in the future, DRM will be absolute. We will always have formats that do not enforce rights; you will always be able to 'pirate' information, regardless of the form.
Now.. DRM will be an important part of media delivery in the future... but the thing that will make DRM work is not a better DRM solution... it's the content itself, and the price we pay for it.
You see, as long as a CD costs me $20, I'm going to try for mp3 instead. It's not because I can't afford to spend any money.. but given that I can get it for free, the cost of the associated extra hard-drives to store my growing music collection on, plus the internet fees to get it, are still far cheaper than what it costs me to buy a CD.
If, on the other hand, I could just pay Music Company X $20/month and be able to stream *any song* from their *entire library of recorded music* whenever I wanted.. I might just go for that. It needs to be cheap enough that it's not worth my time to pirate the music.
The same goes for video. Well.. actually.. it's almost true of video now. DivX is great.. but DVD's are surprisingly cheap, and hence, DVD piracy is not really an issue. Oh sure, people rip DVD's and download divx (or whatever) over the net... but I doubt it's currently affecting DVD sales to any measurable degree. DVD is a large increase in quality over the online versions... and it's very convenient.
Books as well. I won't pay for an E-book yet; because I can't lay in bed and read it comfortably. Real books still present some value that a digital copy just doesn't have yet. IN the future, however, if I could pick up my little book-like electronic reader, log-on to it with my finger, and pick which book I want to read, I would again be willing to happily pay a subscription fee to read books.
Now some thoughs regarding online music delivery.
I should be able to pay a monthly fee that entitles me to listen to X different tracks a month (spread out over different categories if they like.. this is just the basic idea). Now.. I should also be able to pay some small 'extra' fee and 'purchase' a title. This means I can listen to it anytime I want from anywhere I want, from now on, and it won't count towards my monthly subscription. Of course, it would be fair to have some hard limits relating to simple bandwidth use as well... as a separate issue from music titles.
Basically, in a nutshell, media delivery companies have to make paying them for the media more convenient than pirating it. They can either do that by exerting legal pressure (going to jail for pirating one song is not convenient).. but more realistically, they'll have to simply make more available the way we want it.
I used to worry about it more, but the more I think about it, the more I'm confident that every so-called "rights-management" scheme will be cracked or compromised. If not that, someone will reproduce the material in a non-protected form (imagine a group of 1000 people on the internet each re-typing pages out of e-books, for instance).
I was just reading again about some of the cracked e-book readers, like the one that XOR'd each byte with each letter of the string "encrypted". In other words, XOR each letter with the same single byte. A 7-bit key. That literally made me laugh out loud. To think that shit like that is covered by the DMCA! Why did they even waste the money writing it?
If it makes them feel good, fine, go ahead and put in the DRM stuff. I just won't buy it. If I really want it, I'll get a cracked copy of whatever it is, or hope that an un-crippled variation is sold from some other company. Though I MIGHT buy the occasional DRM stuff just to try and crack it (and then get rid of it on eBay if they'll still allow that).
It'll be just like the copy interference they used to do on computer software. I remember when I was in lower school, trying to crack Apple II copy limitations on the games that I bought (didn't need to crack them on the games I copied from friends, somebody else already did it). I just tried programs that worked with one of the many techniques they used, throw in a little knowledge of ProDOS and DOS (remember those?) directory structure, plus a disk editor, and no problem. It never occured to me then that this was actually something that was supposed to keep me out! I thought it was just the way things were, like the insides of the toaster happen to be held in with screws and I had to use the right screwdriver to take them out.
I can just imagine the young people of tomorrow playing with a copy-crippled CD, coming up with ways to get around it. Maybe it will even encourage more people to learn about hardware and software (Hey Mom! I made a couple LFSR's out of 74HC-series logic, connected it to the digital output and I decoded the CD! Listen! ... Oh that's nice dear. Have you finished your pre-algebra homework?)
So, bring on the DRM!
in order to have a truly "strong" DRM system, you have to tack on strong encryption
This is the most fundamental failing of DRM, and why (in it's current form,) it will never work.
At it's most basic level, encryption (weak or strong) is designed to allow person A to send something to person B without anyone else (person C) being able to view it.
It is not designed to allow person A to decide when and how person B can view it, or whether person B can send it to someone else.
These are two VERY different goals. In the first example, once person B has the data, s/he can view it any time they want, rewrite or mangle, or even send it to someone else (with or without encryption.)
If the goal of DRM is to prevent person B copying the content, then there is no technical way of doing it.
To quote Bruce Schneier, trying to make bits not copyable is like trying to make water not wet. Encrypting the data will not alter this fact.
The problem is, nobody has come up with a way to make bits uncopyable - and the people who believe that encryption will do this simply don't understand encryption.
Fast forward to the 80's and 90's through today. Hardly anybody plays an instrument. It is virtually impossible to make a living as a working musician. DJ's and CD's are vastly preferred to live bands. A small pool of incredibly-successful performers -- performance corporations, really -- dominate the airwaves and the music stores. A mere million-seller is a disappointment. Great musicians can't find work, and play their music as part-time hobbies.
What changed? A few things.
1. Powerful music publishers and distributors now control the industry more tightly than did the old Hollywood studio system.
2. Changes in IP laws have essentially eliminated the concept of 'public domain,' except for very old music, making some of the cornerstones of music illegal unless license fees are paid: theme-and-variations, quoting material from other songs (a fundamental jazz technique), quoting lyrics, and performing or adapting music written by others. It's hard and expensive to follow today's complex licensing and performance rules. Why bother? Buy Musak.
3. The industry's stranglehold on performance and publication has generated enough profits to allow manipulation of public taste. At this point, a public has been molded that doesn't want to hear a local band playing at a bar, but instead demands concerts with superstars, light shows, pyrotechnics and other special effects, performing exactly what was heard on MTV, preferably using lipsynching to ensure that no differences exist. This is *not* intrinsically the way public taste would have developed without guidance by the industry.
This is a complex issue, and obviously many other aspects of our lives and cultures have changed dramatically since WWII. However, the death of musicmaking as a core feature of USA life is a tragedy, and I'm convinced that neverending copyrights and powerful publishers take major responsibility. They claim to help performers, but instead they have contributed to the destruction of music as a profession and the elimination of all but mass-produced music in the lives of most of us.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
The entire point of economics is to manage the scarce resources of life. The entire point of technology is to beat that scarcity.
What happens when that scarcity is made a relic of the past?
Folks like R. Buckminster Fuller thought about that. As a matter of fact, he believed that we've already eliminated most of physical want through industry, and it's just a few folks who want to continue to reap the personal benefits of a hierarchical society that keep anyone poor. I don't entirely agree with him, but an alchemical nanotech future would certainly threaten the hierarchy of the simple protection of life.
Would hierarchy nod its head and vacate its throne? Who knows.
We don't know if this future is even possible- but past experience has shown that whatever we humans dream tends to happen. It just takes time.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Right now, public radio is (IMHO) by far the best thing on the radio. At this point it's pretty much self-funding. Public TV is perhaps further behind, but there are some things it does really well. Expanding similar models to new media and new audiences does not seem impossible at all.
It's hard -- an imagined Public Music wouldn't have Britney Spears no matter what. There's something monopolistic about celebrity. OTOH, in a more efficient production, the preferences of smaller number of people can still produce great stuff with the resources available.
If you imagine that just 2-3% of the population subscribed to some sort of Public Music, and payed about as much as they otherwise would have on music, how many musicians could they support? Since the music produces was unencumbered, there would be better grassroots marketing than the RIAA could do, even if Public Music didn't have the money to give radio stations kick backs.
There are two huge daunting problems with DRM, both technical and social in nature.
Technical Issues:
Most DRM suffer from a fatal flaw. They trust the client (hardware, software or individual) to manage rights properly. For example, CSS counts on the DVD player to keep both the CSS algorhithm and the encryption keys secret. Any such system will be cracked eventually. Once cracked, the only way to keep it from being worthless is to legally enforce totalitarian control over information distribution.
For DRM to function as advertised, there needs to be a server in place to handle authentication and authorization of clients. Few DRM systems are set up this way (Two examples: Automated Cable TV Pay-Per-View systems and Circuit City's Divx system being one example).
Social Issues:
People don't like to have rights taken away. If they've been able to do something before, and they're told they aren't allowed to anymore, they get upset. DRM systems will not be accepted if they're being used to remove rights.
Similarly, if there is are two competing systems, and one uses DRM to make things more restrictive than the other system, it will greatly hurt acceptance. For example, DVDs and Divx disks were in direct competition. Both use DRM, but DVD's DRM system is much less intrusive than Divx's was. The only advantage Divx offered was slightly better prices (at least when first introduced). Most people are willing to pay a little bit extra to not have to worry about making phone calls and expiration dates.
Let's look at a successful DRM system. Most cable companies allow you to purchase pay-per-view events through the cable box, this is a DRM system. You hit a couple of buttons, your cable box contacts the server, the server verifies that you are allowed to view pay-per-view, charges your next bill, and sends your cable box the key to access the particular show you requested.
While the system isn't perfect, it shows the halmarks of what I consider to be requirements for a successful DRM system:
* It allows you to do something you otherwise couldn't do (watch almost new movies or events without leaving your sofa).
* All critical security issues are handled on the server side (yes, except for channel lockout, I said it wasn't perfect)
* It's easy to use (12:00 flashers can even order pay-per-view)
* It makes use of an existing business arrangement, so there are not financial or contractual issues to iron out
* It makes use of an existing data connection, so there are no privacy issues to iron out (they already know who you are and what you're watching)
I think we are going to see more and more DRM systems in the near future. Assuming that most civil liberties stand in most countries (at least most of those with a consumer market), I think most DRM systems will fail, badly. The few that survive will have many of the same things going for it that pay-per-view has now.
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Open mind, insert foot.
The real future is in authenticity. Just look at the satire mp3s on the net that get attributed to Weird Al Yankovic, that he never wrote. How do you know that this song you downloaded is really by him? How do you know it's not? How do you know that it wasn't modified to delete an explative, delete a line one person didn't like, add in a new stanza in order to defame the artist, etc? You don't. There is no way to prove that the movie you're watching really is an unedited copy of The Godfather. You can't be sure that your copy of Eminem's latest CD isn't the Lovey-Dovey-Censorship-Agency's "modified for familes" edition.
What would you be willing to pay for a method to prove that yes, this song is the artist's original? Or that this movie has not been edited for television? $15 a CD, I doubt. But 50 cents a song? $1? I'll let the economists figure that one out.
What we need is to expand watermarking and key-based signatures (NOT encryption, signatures) to make it easier to confirm that a given piece of work is authentic. Instead of CDDB being a clearing house for stealing people's information about their CDs, make it (or something like it) into a low-cost subscription service with public keys. When you play an mp3, the track info for is is confirmed against the key (which you can download permanently) to check that the file has not been modified. If it passes, you know that this is a "genuine, authentic *insert work here*". If it fails, you know that chances are it is not. If you care, you'll go and find a real one. If you don't care, that's your perogative.
Notice that nowhere in there is there any copy-prevention mechanism. None. Copy prevention is alien to any digital system, and is inherently weak, defeatable, and in the end futile. Authentication, however, is a booming industry, and is of legitimate value to the society.
Protecting against lies is in EVERYONE's interest. Preventing copying is in no one's interest, not even copyright holders.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
To ban "political contributions / donations" (aka BRIBERY) altogether.
Why can't politicians run for elections without donations? If all politicians are stripped off their election donations, we still have a level playing field. They should be paid with TAXDOLLARS, not bribe money.
There is NO valid reason why corporations should contribute. How they're going to survive should be totally dependant on economics, not laws. Governments should not interfere how business is done, well, maybe except anticompetition laws. That's why we should let DRM have its own life, and do nothing with it legally.
How, then, can companies protect their works? Good question. More protections. But they shouldn't depend on laws. There had always been a competition between protectors and crackers. They were doing it purely technically. Which was all good - if you cracked my protection, I'll strengthen it. Only the sucker would want the laws to stand by them, to "outlaw" the crackers - even if they don't steal.
I mean, if you leave your door wide-open, how can you accuse somebody of entering your house to take some notes and then tell his friend what he saw in your house? It should be all legal.
And with corporate (minority) interest out of the question, majority interests will be served better.
I think that Col. Klink is actually confusing Xerxes with King Canute (or Knud).
Canute's courtiers, during their profuse brown-nosing, claimed that Canute was "So great, he could command the tides of the sea to go back". He made his point in return by having his throne carried to the seashore, and he sat on it as the tide came in, commanding the waves to advance no further. The point being that kings, while `great' in the minds of men, were nothing in the face of God's power. Were Canute an atheist, he would no doubt have done the same thing, only citing the "power of nature".
This reminds me of a headline from The Onion book: "World's Largest Metaphor Hit By Iceberg".
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