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.

Comments

House of cards

[pointym5]

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.

Unbeatable Method of Defeating Content Control

[Greyfox]

The big media companies keep talking about content control. The ultimate goals of content control are to charge every single person who partakes of the content every time they partake of the content and also to install such a formidable barrier of entry to the content generation business that the only way to publish your work on a large scale would be to enter into contracts unfavorable to you with some giant mega-corporation.

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.