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Digital Rights Management Operating System
Anonymous Coward sent in a note about Microsoft being granted a patent on a "Digital Rights Management Operating System". Anything more to say? Nope, don't think so. After Windows XP will be Windows DRM.
This is news because the patent was granted.
The patent should not stand, though, since we already have prior art from the NSA. The Microsoft patent seems to be a subset of the development work done by the NSA. It focuses mainly on digital rights management whereas the NSA secure OS project would apply to all applications and data types, not just DRM.
Twoflower
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Twoflower
Yes, there was. The senator from south carolina who is not stom thurmund got put up to it. He backed down after it became aparent he didn't know what he was talking about. However, that's not to say that there won't be a similar, less broad legislation coming down the pipe (SSSCA could have applied to everything with a data input and a microprocessor).
SSSCA also said it would enforce a standard agreed-to or imposed upon by the commerce department... ol' senator hollings's staff didn't exactly do a patent search to check if a standard could get imposed upon the commerce department.
Apple would likely prefer to pay license fees to its minority owner, Microsoft anyway than leave the industry anyway.
... Must... Resist... Urge to flamebait...
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
One of the named inventors on the patent, Butler Lampson, is a famed CS person who is noted in the Jargon File. Microsoft Research has all kinds of famous computer folk working there, including the inventor of Qsort, the author of VMS, the author of Turbo Pascal (now C#), and others.
Of course, this rights-management is all useless (as any informed antivirus software user can tell you) as long as users have the right to execute whatever code they want on their PCs. No software is safe from attack from an emulator. They'd have to make VMWare and Virtual PC illegal, and make flashing your computer's BIOS to a different BIOS illegal to actually have this work and stop any but the most casual practitioners.
Of course the way the legal system is acting as of late, that may not be too unrealistic a scenario :-(
o/~ Join us now and share the software
And, if you take the trouble to read the description of how the whole thing works, it comes down to the fact that the CPU can authenticate itself over the network at runtime by using this private key that ONLY the CPU can access.
Now, I don't know about you, but I haven't heard anything about Intel or AMD building public key / private key pairs into their CPUs. In fact, the whole Intel processor ID fiasco has probably scared them away from this area. Don't forget that this patent was filed in 1998, and was probably designed long before the PIII was released.
I think the most interesting thing about this is that it shows where Microsoft wanted to go in 1998 - they probably were working with Intel on the processor ID thing, and the next step would have been public / private keys to enable the design shown in this patent.
But it won't be happening anytime real soon. Unless maybe all those Pentium 4's out there actually have this as an unannounced feature. Unlikely, but possible - the P4 hyperthreading stuff was like that...
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Uhm...there's no difference between analog and digital media here, except that digital media is way easier to copy.
No, incorrect. There IS a difference between the way digital media and analog media is treated in copyright law - hard to believe, but true. When you buy a book, you have total control over the physical content of that book, and can use the full pantheon of fair use rights with that book. When you buy software, or a DVD, you do not have control over the media in question - see the DMCA. That's what's so shocking about the DMCA and digital IP laws being bandied about - and what's so terrifying about this MS patent.
Check out Jessica Litman's book "Digital Copyright" for a much better, more in-depth discussion about how we (assuming "we == USA") treat copyright law differently when applied to digital and analog media. It's really compelling, and somewhat disturbing. Good luck!
But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.
Note that BoycottXP did a story a while back on MS violating another company's patents with DRM. Seems like this may be either a) A buy-out of that company or b) a way around that patent. As far as I can tell, the patents are the same thing.
Absoulutely. The reason we should be worried is that the "Right to Read" (see RMS's article somewhere on FSF. He's often a bit of a nutter, but that article is required reading IMHO. It was Required reading in my Journalistic Ethics class btw). The ability to fairly access literature and research is fundamental to the progress of the modern world. Everyone (where physically possible) should have access to books and literature to encourage technological, spiritual and economic growth
This is at odds with "DRM" tech and god forbid if this tech ever really takes off it's education for the rich and serfdom for the poor.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
I am sure that we can find some prior art that would invalidate the patent...
I for one have DRM on a chip tied to hardware in 1998
As well as a lot of work on DRM at the per play level of file access that communicates on a per play fee.
Just a thought
No no no. The media industry is after much more than simply limiting our ability to copy digital works. They want all sorts of other types of control. They want to put time limits on how long we can view/hear a certain work. They want to put restrictions on where and when we can view/hear a particular work. They want to remove our ability to make personal copies and our ability to loan a book/movie/album to a friend. Hell, even making a copy for a friend is legal under copyright law. They are taking away our ability to exercise our fair use rights in many ways. Without access to tools that can decrypt a DVD, how is someone supposed to show a clip for a review or a class? This isn't even everything. As the previous post suggested, read Jessica Litman's book. I would add Lawrence Lessig's book, "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" as well. Both are excellent for bringing oneself up to date on exactly what is going on here, and where it is leading us.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The government has sovereign immunity, which means that the government cannot be sued without its consent. The consent may be in the form of legislation that allows certain types of lawsuits.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I was under the impression that government work could never be patented at all since it is funded by tax payers.
Prior art does not have to refer to a prior patent. It can refer to any prior application of a process. Application of a new and useful process by the government before anybody applies for a patent on the process places the process in the public domain.
Government-funded research often produces patents that are auctioned off to the highest bidder. Sad but true.
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