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Content Control in Mobile Devices
BigJim.fr writes: "Mobile operators envision the handset as the ultimate closed platform providing an opportunity to regain end to end control over content distribution. Right to replay from Total Telecom provides insight into how they imagine user-hostile digital right management systems in the near future." Excellent article.
Kinda the reason I went with the Open Source Sharp PDA. Just a deveolper edition but well worth the $399 I paid for it!
Don't buy what you don't want. It is that simple.
This article is really nothing but a bunch of statements beginning "I believe ......"
Don't bother reading it. You will learn nothing. Unless , I suppose, you really want to know what Mr Duhl believes.
Does anyone actually want to watch videos on a mobile phone? There is a huge assumption being made by the proponents of 3G that people will actually pay to do this - whether they're paying for content or bandwidth or both they'll have to pay one way or another.
The devices are mobile - ie. small and light.
Therefore I won't mind carrying 2 of them. One proprietary one with which to phone my friends. And one open one, on which to play MP3s. We know the encryption will be broken with high-tech methods or low.
If there's a market for an open player, then there are millions of people with the skills to make them.
---
Oregon
if they send the data to you to be viewed, what prevents you from linking the cable that connects the handhelds motherboard to its screen to your computer and watch whatever you are only supposed to see once 2 million times? its simple, simply have your computer record whatever is send out to the screen...
same as with copy protected CD's, just hook up the audio out of your cd player to your PC... its that simple!
Sig you!
"By definition a standard drm is less secure than a proprietary one," says Gregg Makuch, senior product manager for mobile product and services at Seattle-based Realnetworks.
Yes, security by obscurity, that well known way to make your product more secure... anyone else scared by people with this sort of mindset potentially having so much control over what we will and won't be able to do?
This post will enter the public domain 70 years after my death, unless Disney buys another extension.
I work for a shall we say large company that is planning on realeasing 3G (No one likes them, including myself). So rather than get flamed for working for them Ill just tell you flat out.. I don't get all that many requests for this tech, and thats my function here... I would say roughly 1 out of 1000 customers are interested.
It would have to be priced accordingly, though
It's like going to see a movie: You know it will only be there once, at that time, in that theater for that price. If that's clear, nobody will ask to take a copy for use on any home theatre.
It would have to be priced accordingly, though. Overpricing will triger piracy.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
number (5380).
They may have to improve SMS maniability as it is far too uncomfortable.
The sms is answered immediately to validate the email address given in the sms and after a confirmation, the content is sent to the listener's mailbox.
Immediately ?
Are they sure ?
And why would somebody buy the right to play an MP3-like on a shitty phone loudspeaker when they actually hear it on a good radio at the same time? If they really like the song, then they may wait until its has ended to buy it, wouldn't they?
A micropayment of EUR2 is deducted from the phone bill, and the licence is sent separately
to the same mailbox, or as a present to a friend, all within seconds.
So:
When the listener opens his email he finds the track and licence in his mailbox and may play the
music.
So it'll take some time to actually hear what we wanted to hear when we were too busy purchasing it?
The content owner - in this case Radio 538 - has the choice to allow cd burning or not;
to listen for a week, a month, or forever - whatever they agree to with the artist can be set in the business model.
Content owner ?
What about public domain songs ? (see my
They will be thrown out of the media?
And why do the song "belong" to the radio (content owner)?
don't they mean the "distributor"?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
'"By definition a standard drm is less secure than a proprietary one," says Gregg Makuch, senior product manager for mobile product and services at Seattle-based Realnetworks.' I find this hard to accept. Certainly a standards-based drm is verifiably more secure than a proprietary one, and all too often proprietary standards rely on obscurity or a smug belief in the superiority of the technology, without it having stood up to peer review by experts (remember GSM encryption?).
"When the listener opens his email he finds the track and licence in his mailbox and may play the music. The content owner - in this case Radio 538 - has the choice to allow cd burning or not; to listen for a week, a month, or forever - whatever they agree to with the artist can be set in the business model."
Ok, so I pay for this track, probably can't burn it, move it to another device, I don't know how long I have it for, and they can take it from me at anytime? This is a good thing?
It's a good thing we are all sheep to be led blindly through the world. Technology like this scares the hell out of me. I pray people will wake up and say gosh damnit, we are tired of this shit and we ARE NOT going to take it anymore.
Sent from your iPad.
"By definition a standard drm is less secure than a proprietary one," says Gregg Makuch, senior product manager for mobile product and services at Seattle-based Realnetworks.
You cannot implement DRM without some form of encryption and time after time, closed proprietary encryption routine have proved to be flawed. Security through obscurity cannot be relied on to remain secure.
Examine three possible scenarios:
1) They develop a perfect, crack proof, implementation,either proprietary or open standard. Great (for them)! But how likely is this to happen?
2) They develop a flawed (crackable) implementation of an open standard. This is quickly broken and all media content released up to that point, which will be comparatibly little, becomes available. They patch the flaw and issue an automatic upgrade to the firmware. (This is likely to be possible - if they want to control content then they are likely to want to have control over the platform too - and if it isn't, well, people often upgrade their phones quite often anyway.) Then version 2 gets cracked, and so on until they get it right, probably at about version 5.
3) They develop a flawed implementation of an proprietary method. This gets cracked too of course, but probably takes a little longer. Hence, a greater volume of content is now available unprotected. The patch and recrack cycle continues until they get it right.
From the media owner point of view scenario 1 is preferable and they lose out the most with scenario 3. Scenario 2 is a workable compromise.
Which is most likely to happen?
This sig is a figment of your imagination.
Quote from the article:
Websites like Napster, which created the expectation that content should be free to download, copy and disseminate, caught the music industry off guard.
it's the second sentence and after 3 words the article lost my attention. AFAIK Napster does have a website but the system itself doesn't use it.
When people get kid-stuff like that wrong I really don't think they should be writing stuff like this. I had an aunt who used to disconnect after 'surfing the web', then dial back in to collect het E-mail...
The internet contains more than websites and not every service on the internet is a website...
Who the hell do they think will pay for media streamed to handhelds? I can only vaguely imagine such people (the types that leave their cell phones on in the opera house). I won't shed a tear if it turns out that MS milks them.
Besides, if portable devices are connected to the internet with decent bandwidth, I'm sure that computer-only services that provide media without DRM will make a mobile device frontend, and you'll be able to get the same media on the handheld. Still, I don't quite see the point, but maybe that's a sign I'm getting old.
They repeat the same erroneous statement "... a standard DRM is not as secure as a proprietary one..." Stupidity #1: security through obscurity.
The next stupidity is the assumption that I want to [watch movies|listen to music] on my cellphone. Until my phone becomes a general purpose PDA, I want to do one thing only on my phone - communicate.
The third stupidity is the assumption that, given that I want to "experience content" on my phone/PDA, that I am willing to pay over and over again to do so. DiVX died, get over it. I've paid for it, it's on my damn PDA, I want to enjoy it over and over again.
Oh well - their "proprietary" DRM will be like unto the cheese of the Swiss, and the righteous will properly manage their rights.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Just because it is technologically possible it does not mean it makes *sense*. The end effect of this behaviour is utter egoism, nothing else. I understand a musician needs a beer or a pizza from time to time. I also understand he/she does her stuff primarily for their own satisfaction. Making money off it is a welcome side effect. If we start to pervert this into its contrary, we better get prepared to have transponders implanted, and after an afternoon's walk through the park we're getting charged for 'services' we did not even dream of using.
Maybe those technocrats and lawyers should have their EQ checked. Good night when making a buck is the only or primary motivation for anything...
Use The Source, Luke!
It's interesting that no mention at all is made in the article of the fact that the success of any DRM scheme is utterly dependent upon the legal foundation of DMCA-like laws. The details of the various schemes are unimportant, and their currently escalating sophistication is simply a passing phase. Eventually it will become clear that all that matters is the threat of criminal punishment at the hands of compliant governments. All these fancy cryptosystems will devolve to the ROT-13 level of complexity.
This is not meant as a joke or a troll. Why, in the long run, should anybody invest in expensive complex technologies when simple cheap ones satisfying the letter of the law will suffice? As successive DRM implementations fall before the incessant pressure of educated people bent on their defeat, corporate interests whose profit stream rests on control of their "intellectual property" will throw up their hands and cry "terrorist!" to a Senate committee. Mark my words.
Ok, so I pay for this track, probably can't burn it, move it to another device, I don't know how long I have it for, and they can take it from me at anytime? This is a good thing?
Think of it as renting a track, just as you may rent DVDs now. As long as you are informed of the model and there are ways to purchase the track forever (i.e. by buying a CD) then there is no real issue there.
And they can't take it away at any time - this would be violation of licensing agreement.
e-mail: karol at tls-technologies.com
www: http://www.tls-technologies.com
sig: not found
I don't know a hellofa lot of users, which are willing to pay 1.50 through 3.50 Euros for one single track (which they can't do as they please, due to DRM).
Could it be, that it's this applied greed-freak scheme that prevented the breakthrough of those commercial online music offerings?
And no; I don't download my music from the net.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
You're guilty until you buy an expensive lawyer to prove your innocence.
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
What I am about to tell you is 100% legal under the DMCA (Not that that will prevent these companies from attempting to file lawsuits.) It is an absolutely effective method of defeating any content control, and it is your only hope of retaining any rights against the giant mega-corporations. It is so dangerous to them that I am really surprised that they have not yet attempted to pass a law to stop it forever.
What's this big secret (I hear you cry?) It is simply this: Don't consume their content. Do some research. Find that club that's playing that local band. Go see a live play. Find other ways to amuse yourself. Dropping those multiple billions of dollars a year that we collectively spend into the local economy rather than into the pockets of some mega-corporation would take its toll fairly quickly.
Someone's bound to reply "You could write your congressman" but come on -- Your congressman gets a letter from you and from Sony. The Sony letter has a nice fat check in it. Guess which letter he's going to open first. Guess which one he pays the most attention to. The Enron collapse demonstrates just how much power the corporations actually have in this country, and Congress may make mouth-flappy-noises about campaign finance reform but it is not going to happen. They'd never put any teeth into any laws they make even if they do pass some. Americans just didn't get pissed off enough about it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
When the listener opens his email he finds the track and licence in his mailbox and may play the
music.
Cool. They dare to ask the user to click on a flashy animation of e. g. Christina Aguilera in his inbox, while everyone else told him NOT to click on obscure attachments...
The only thing he'll get to hear is his w1nd0z3 box blowing the whistle(r)...
To me, "user-hostile" sounds too impersonal. I suggest "customer-hostile" instead. I think it better captures the contempt the industry feels for the people who buy their products.
It's also easier to say than, "I spent my hard-earned dollars on your over-priced, lowest-common-denominator tripe and now you're telling me I can't even play it how and when I want!?!"
None of this security will work as long as you can download files to a phone via a PC the. Take the Nokia 5510 for example, Nokia has put digital rights management in place (ala Sony Memory Stick).... this can now be circumnavigated quite easily. The cat is out of the bag, trying to stuff the blighter back in using a crowbar will never work!
And I'd pay money for these so-called services because ... ???
[Insert pithy quote here]
I am reminded of in"duh"viduals as seem in Dilbert.
just a mental image.
The pay services have not been doing well so well. But I suppose they will do as well as those soda machines out in the street selling 5 dollar sodas. Only the truly desperate will stoop to purchase the warm bottles, cans, whatever.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Until they manage to put decryptors in my eyes and descramblers in my ears copy protections is a load of bs no matter how much they spend on it. I will choose to honor a copyright or not, just like everyone else out there.
Let's stop waisting all our resources on this planet trying to protect that easy money tree of the 1900s and spend some time inventing new ones for the next centry.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Don't buy what you don't want. It is that simple.
I see this attitude a lot on Slashdot, and every time I do I think, "Could you bury your head a little further in the sand?"
Statements like "Don't buy it if you don't want it" really do nothing to address the fact that digital rights management *is* being rolled out, that many if not most people *will* buy into it, and that this will change the legitimate options left for others.
Think automobiles.
Once upon a time, if you didn't like the new-fangled horseless carriages, you could simply "not buy what you didn't want" and ride your trusty steed or horse-drawn carriage instead. How many horses do you see on the roads now?
* * *
When something become ubiquitous, it changes people's mindsets. Ideas that once seemed unconscionable begin to seem not only bearable but familiar and preferable.
Just not buying DRM yourself isn't enough. We all have to organize and work together to defeat strong DMR if we want to continue to enjoy free (as-in-liberty) information ourselves.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
A mobile phone is a device for social iteraction.
....
That's right boys and girls - the biggest use of mobile is to comunicate with other people.
Now comes 3G - brand new, lotsa bandwidth.
What's the first thing the so-called industry experts think about?
- Let's use mobile phones as a way to deliver content to people - basically a glorified pay-per-use portable televison and radio in one.
Immediatly followed by:
- Let's protect the content from being redistributed by the users - no sending of copyrighted music to your friends buddy.
Wake up!!!
If instead of all this bulls*it mobile phone companies would create an open architecture that allows costumers to send anything to other costumers ( the mother of all P2P services ) there could be loads of money to be made ( just charge by the KByte ).
Cheeesh
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The major reasoning why this doesn't catch on is signal degradation. Taking the data off of the leads is certainly doable (in some of my studio work, there have been musicians that liked the sound of a particular amp or stack so much that they'd rather park a quality mic in front of it or power-soak the sound from the speaker wires back to line level than use a modeling device) but for most users (who don't have access to high-grade gear), this represents a noticeable drop in signal quality.
Virg
Yeah, it all sounds very, very scary... Big old Telesaur Rex
gnatching his teeth, and growling at the top of this lungs...
except for the fact that 802.11 is still here and still not
monopolized by the telesaurs. Oh, by the way,
hotspotting with 802.11 to not chew up their precious
cellular spectrum is seen as very attractive too by the
telesaurs, hence you'll eventually see dual mode wireless
widgets even if nobody got the bright idea that hooking
up to a cheap 802.11 network -- maybe for free in various
places -- would be a cool thing to do with your cell
phones and wireless widgets.
But the real thing that makes the garden walls most
suspect as a business model is all it takes is for one the
telesaurs to blink and plug it into the Internet. AOL
thought they had the ultimate walled garden too,
but in the end they finally blinked because there was far
too much content elsewhere and people would have left.
This isn't exactly the same, but the prospect of lots of
cheap 802.11 coverage (ie, retail, business, airports...)
which will clearly just drop directly off onto the Internet
will make their garden walls a lot more like a tar pit than
a gold mine.
-- Mike
I've heard a lot of people say "I don't want content on my phone." I think you should wake up. It would be great to have a real wireless web browser on your phone. You stand in the middle of downtown Austin, TX and you google "Indian restaraunt and Austin" and "Austin Movie Theatres" to get the showtimes and decide if you have to time to eat before the show, or better yet after. I'm not talking about in your home town, I mean when you're outta town. Having the web in your palm makes everywhere seem more like home. This goes for content too. No briefcase---you've got the three condensed matter preprints you want to read in your phone in your hand, you're favorite tunes to jog to, and a movie to watch on the flight home. Put your lecture notes there as well. But what about your porn? I mean, at home you can just go into the adult bookstore and buy some DVDs and mags without identifying yourself. But with digital rights management, I find the most serious problem is that of remaining an anonymous consumer. Let's stipulate that you want content on your phone (you do, you do! trust me). Let's stipulate that you'll pay for it (why not? you pay for that shit now). Let's even say you're willing to pay to use it once (you go to concerts sometimes, or even movie theatres after all). But you DON'T want to identify yourself and you certainly don't want your phone company acting as a central broker with records of everything you do (except the meat stuff like eat). Most every other content for which you pay and only get to enjoy one time can be done anonymously: such as attend a concert, sit in a movie theatre, go to a lecture, read a book (ok, sometime people reread books, but not too many). I'm gay and I don't want to identify myself as buying gay erotic fiction to read on my phone while I stay in hotels during professional conferences. I want the content, but not the way that digital rights management software will deliver. Anyway, you get the point.
All DRM systems will be cracked. All media can be re-recorded. The content companies are stupid greedy thugs. The DMCA was bought and paid for with the dollars you spend on CDs and DVDs.
I hope the corps hurry up with these products so we can get started cracking them.
http://www.tls-technologies.com/competence.html
...
Dude, it looks like your company has expertise in just about everything under the sun.
Unices, Windows, VMS, compilers, cryptography, DBs, wireless, internet etc .
Fishy if you ask me
But the mouse is often faster than the cat, and gets away.
The DMCA makes it illegal for the mouse to run, and if it does, a big elephant (US Federal gov't) will stomp on it.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
An interesting read is content is *not* king
Bottom line the way to make profit is to encourage people to communicate!
Their broadband licences have prooven too expensive for quite a few and now they get another obstacle in the way of selling this service.
As soon as there is one Phone Company not using such a rights-management system (why should they??) they'll be the top of the crop overnight!
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Dude, it looks like your company has expertise in just about everything under the sun.
;)
It has expertise in everything that is mentioned on the web page. We either made projects using these technologies (the latest are i.e. WAN card drivers for BSD family or registration system for Warsaw University or a VOD system) or we teach our students how to use them. Does it count?
Oh, and we don't have "Invest now!" link
e-mail: karol at tls-technologies.com
www: http://www.tls-technologies.com
sig: not found
I think this will be great! Nothing like a complex puzzle to solve! It will be a good challenge for everyone involved. There is no such thing as "perfect encryption". If I can view it or hear it.... it CAN be cracked somehow!
I wonder if they have been watching Oracle and Larry Ellison? "Unbreakable" HA! There is no such thing. How long before we're swapping DivX and MP3s for free via our 3G phones??
This will go over big with the sheep out there. You know the ones that buy Britney Spears and the boy bands and all the other suck-ass pseudo musicians out there who are popular because the media machine says they are. Most of who get all their spending money from mommy and daddy. What do they care if it cost micro-cents to listen to the same damn song over and over again. Even if it is the same one they play on the radio over and over again. Screw 'em! I'm happy listening to my Hawkwind and Blue Cheer and MC5 LP's.
"Voting with your dollars" is a fallacy. It sounds good (democratic, even!) and paints critics of "free" markets as dictators, winning arguments in a sort of oblique ad hominem attack.
But a vote, in any meaningful democratic sense, is a share of power distributed equally among participants. Money isn't distributed equally, and literally can't be, without losing its worth. Hence it's not a vote.
To be a little more concrete:
Imagine we have a new presidential election tomorrow, but instead of ballots, people purchase their politician. Money as real votes! Would you still say this is a democratic election? Would you say it represents the "majority vote"? Why not?
We also shouldn't forget that Big Money works to eliminate choices and competition from the marketplace. A glance at the Microsoft antitrust documents should remind anyone of that. So Big Money can oftentimes "buy out" the choice you would've voted for.
This isn't to say we should vote for who gets a cellphone. Markets are good things. But it's important to remember that markets work best when smartly checked by a framework of democracy, and that money != votes. (God help us if it ever does!)
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
You can't buy what you aren't ALLOWED to buy. Soon everything will be illegal except what the MPAA and RIAA allow you to buy. This is why they call it a "monopoly". Dig?
Okay, firstly I must admit I'm not a musician. But I am an "artist". A writer, to be precise. So I feel I'm in a better position than most to tell you that this kind of thing has nothing to do with the artist. Well, barring all those greedy jerkoffs out there who are generally the ones spewing out second rate shit anyway, with little appreciation for the art they profess to create due to their own lack of any real talent.
Uh, where was I before the rant fever almost dragged me into the pits of madness? Someone who is genuinely good at creating original art, who has this old, mostly-forgotten thing called "talent" (not synonymous with "talent", a word touted a lot by cheesy music shows etc), actually gets a lot more from the act of creating than from the act of peddling their creations for magic fish (money). However, the fact that magic fish will allow them to live a comfortable life, and continue to create, is a useful wee fact and serves to propagate a cycle of sorts, where artist creates, gets magic fish, creates more art.
Now, maybe I'm completely off base because I have no experience in the musical arts and it's possible, I suppose, that somehow musicians are all a pack of narcissistic leeches, but I don't think that a true artist would support the selfish, gluttonous tactics being pushed into use by the industries. On the other hand, the number of true artists out there is questionable. I don't think that pop artists qualify, because they genuinely do not have talent (it waxes and wanes of course, but the average is close to zero)--they're chosen for their looks, to appeal to the shallow (screaming) teenyboppers with rich parents.
However, I have heard mutterings, both on Slashdot and elsewhere, of alternative and lesser-known musicians who really oppose DRM, the RIAA and whatever else. The fact that these musicians are "lesser known" and "alternative" leads me to suspect that they are the ones who actually care about what they do, and have real talent, and are mostly unrecognised for it because...well, the public doesn't generally seem interested in talent.
And now that I've said all that, I have realised that I have absolutely no idea what the point of this post is supposed to be. Perhaps it just got my goat that it is implied that artists are endorsing and profiting from the daylight robbery of previously unquestioned rights, to be replaced with openly audacious tokens that are heavily paid for. Even the artists with no talent don't benefit from that.
I fear the world we are heading towards if someone or something doesn't intervene. It's going to be a world ruled by several large, rich companies, with 1% of the global population earning 99% of the available money, with a few relatively prosperous countries, while everyone else suffers in poverty. And you may be right, I may well be a pessimistic melodramatist.