Reason Magazine on DRM

swankypimp writes "The new issue of Reason magazine has an article entitled "Hollywood vs. the Internet: Why Entertainment Companies Want To Hack Your Computer." The author discusses the watermarking of digital television as a springboard to Digital Rights Management on all consumer electronics and computers (as in the recently proposed Hollings bill). While light on the tech speak, it is a good summary of the political agendas behind copyright protection intended for those of us who don't constantly check the "YRO" section."

Comments

Re:End of media as we know it....

[awol]

It is the end of "distribution" as we know it. The problem with record companies, is that they don't understand that they have two businesses, content creation and content distribution.

They have always thought that creation meant distribution and, therefore, by controlling distribution they controlled price (creating scarcity). But the internet has shown that distribution does not need them any more.

If they are to continue to create content. Think about it, the record companies _do_ pay for content to be created, record deals, producing records etc etc. By extension, the film and television companies are in the same boat. If they are to continue to create content then it must be in a more fiscally responsible way. It is not so easy to subsidies "CrapBand01" with the proceeds from U2's latest album. This is a good thing (TM) since it means that I, who does not like "CrapBand01", (nor U2 for that matter) do not have to pay for their shite content to be produced since the content creater will have to act as the agent of the artist to collect on their behalf and the artist will (might ?) receive a fiduciary relationship from the content commissioner to pay them the receipts they have collected on their behalf. Where is the profit??? well the collection of that money and the management services for which the bands are currently charged are _still_ as valuable as they ever were (how valuable is for the fair market to decide) and so are legitimate expenses to be deducted from the receipts.

Look over the horizon: DRM in MPEG-21

[philkerr]

Well, it's time to look to the future. Here's a snippet from the proposed MPEG-21 standard:

http://mpeg.telecomitalialab.com/standards/mpeg-21 / peg-21.htm

The seven key elements defined in MPEG-21 are:

1.Digital Item Declaration (a uniform and flexible abstraction and interoperable schema for declaring Digital Items);
2. Digital Item Identification and Description (a framework for identification and description of any entity regardless of its nature, type or granularity);
3. Content Handling and Usage (provide interfaces and protocols that enable creation, manipulation, search, access, storage, delivery, and (re)use of content across the content distribution and consumption value chain);
4. Intellectual Property Management and Protection ( the means to enable content to be persistently and reliably managed and protected across a wide range of networks and devices );
5. Terminals and Networks (the ability to provide interoperable and transparent access to content across networks and terminals);
6. Content Representation (how the media resources are represented);
7.Event Reporting (the metrics and interfaces that enable Users to understand precisely the performance of all reportable events within the framework);

Combine this with the proposed DRM legistaltion in US/EU contries and then think about the business relationship you have with media companies.

It will change.

Re:Why do these industries refuse to compete?

[richieb]

They are cheap to reproduce, but producing the first one is an expensive process: factor in the cost of studio time, equipment, a producer and an engineer, let alone living expenses for the weeks/months it takes... all that has to come from somewhere.

Actually studio costs have been declining dratically due to digital technology. For example, an artist like Moby produces his recordings in his own house.

In any case the recording costs are charged to the artist and are not payed by record companies. True, record companies gamble on several acts hoping that at least one can produce a million seller that will cover their investment. But is this a necessary way to promote music?

Not all musicians can tour or play live.

Well, then you have to figure out a way to make money from other sources than selling CDs. Horse coach drivers were also put out of business by new technology. You have to adapt...

But what if there isn't an alternative business model for some artists?

I'm sure there is. They just have to figure it out. Screwing your customers works only so long...

Ways to deduce a key

[yerricde]

How the hell do you crack a key?

I read "crack a key" as "deduce a key".

Easy. Simply try every possible key against the content, and take what looks like valid content (all high bits turned off for ASCII text; valid MPEG-2 headers for DVDs) . This works best with the shorter key lengths used in some popular ciphers. For example, CSS, a 40-bit cipher, should take about 13 days to crack at 1 million keys per second. However, many ciphers and systems have holes, and CSS's Achilles heel lies in the disk key system. Given only the hash of the disk key, the complexity of a brute-force attack reduces to 25-bit, which should take well under a minute on even a slow PIII.