Sneaking DRM Amendments Through the Back Door

SiChemist writes: "Senator Joseph Biden has revised the 'Anticounterfeiting Amendments of 2002' to make it a felony to bypass certain DRM technologies. The bill has very broad senate support and is expected to pass overwhelmingly. Call your congresscritter! ZDNET story is here."

Comments

Exerpt

[slakdrgn]

"It is possible, for example, that the bill allows criminal prosecutions as well as private suits against anyone who uses a black Magic Marker to disable copy protection features built into some recent music CDs," Baker says. "At $25,000 a CD, that could be a very expensive experiment."

Quick! Throw away all your markers!!

seriously tho, this is getting insane, soon you'll be forced to watermark your work, but inorder to watermark it you will be charged x amount of dollars, what would this do to the opensource community, expecially since opensource doesn't incorporate drm and I seriously doubt that it will be easy to come up with a standard to incorporate drm into linux without it being hacked to shreds.. We need to contact our senate, tell them this is a big no-no, and this really cound hurt innovation!!

~slak

Sneaky Sneaky

[Zephy]

Why Do they feel it's necessary to sneak in legislation? Surely you're bypassing due debate and democracy? Eventually you're going to get a government almost wholly controlled by these huge corporations with big pockets who just want to protect their own interests.

Consumer Support?

[Tall Rob Mc]

While it's unclear what Biden hopes to accomplish with his new bill, it is clear that it's forward-looking: Consumers soon will be offered more and more hardware devices that rely on electronic watermarks, digital signatures, or other cryptographic means to thwart piracy and improve security.

Just because consumers will be offered more and more copy-protection enabled hardware, this does not mean that consumers will buy more and more copy-protection enabled hardware. Why am I going to buy a new MP3 player that will only allow me to play mp3s with watermarks when my current 20 gig iPod will be sufficient enough for me to listen to music until it mechanically fails (which could be in 40 years)?

Re:Consumer Support?

[Just Another Perl Ha]

The biggest problem here is the mere use of the term consumer. I'd getting sick and tired of Congress Inc. forgetting that we are citizens first and consumers much later on down the list.

What he really meant

[Salsaman]

You have to learn to read between the lines. Undoubtedly what he really meant was:

"Every episode of "Seinfeld" is now available to download free (from commercials) to anyone with access to the Internet."

Re:It's not what you think.

[evilempireinc]

But what about the methods? Would they restrict you from distributing a program that could add watermarks to your own music collection? This could be construed as 'trafficking' in which case there is a problem here.

Re:It's not what you think.

[Just Another Perl Ha]

It's not just distribution but intent to distribute. For all we know, if you have a copy of a movie (of which you have legal purchased) sitting on your hard drive... the MPAA is convinced that you intend to distribute it.

Those bastards!

DRM advocates: the same silly analogies again

[JaredOfEuropa]

In the article, litigator Megan Gray compares forging watermarks to forging logos on T-shirts:

Gray believes that forging a digital watermark or signature should be just as unlawful as forging a physical watermark or signature. "It's like taking a T-shirt that you've put a design on and then attaching a Disney hologram or the NBA championship hologram, distributing it, and giving people the impression that it's an authorized apparel item from the NBA or Disney," Gray says. "That's a deceptive practice that we have a long history of banning."

They are putting a nice spin on the reasons people would try and circumvent DRM: note how they again portray such people as thieves, and they suggest that the reason they want DRM is to prevent theft. They have other motivations as well, of course.

Why would I circumvent DRM? To steal? Maybe not, and let's take the T-shirt analogy further... suppose I buy some Disney T-shirt in the US, but Disney does not want me to wear the T-shirt in Europe. (Perhaps they've recruited the fashion police to check, or the God of Corporations will smite me with lightning if I do wear the T-shirt). Yet, I want to wear it so I fake a European Disney label and sew it in the T-shirt in place of the US one.

Clearly a crime worthy of a stiff penalty and a jail term

Re:It's not what you think.

[Jason Levine]

The article gives the example of a garage band wanting to distribute their music via MP3 and having to fake a watermark to make it playable on certain MP3 players.

Suppose the RIAA actually got their act together with SDMI and forced hardware manufacturers to only allow SDMI-licensed material on their MP3 players (probably via more legislation knowing how the RIAA works). Now Garage Band #5 wants to distribute their songs, but they know they won't be able to be played if they aren't SDMI-licensed. Of course, doing this would cost a lot of $$$ (more than they can afford) but would be included in any standard record industry contract. So GB#5 now has three options:

1. Sign up with a major record label. Upside: Their MP3s can be played. Downside: They are now basically slaves to the RIAA.

2. "Fake" the licensing and distribute the MP3s on their own. Upside: Their MP3s can be played and they don't owe the RIAA money/songs. Downside: They can be arrested for illegally distributing their own music!

3. Forget about making music, split up the band, and do something else. Upside: They don't owe the RIAA anything and they stay out of jail. Downside: Another independent band squished by the RIAA.

If this passes, eventually it might be used by the RIAA (and other similar companies) to squash competition and independents.

Watermark? Share and share alike?

[Interrobang]

Forced watermarking could be a very bad idea for all of us who produce music/movies/literature in our basements (or reasonable hand-drawn facsimiles). Where am I, a piker who puts together stuff with a PC and freeware, going to get expensive watermarking equipment?

Likewise, what would be the impact on those of us who don't live in the US, but might want to export our created media there (I have a lot of US friends and I like to share)?

What about independent record labels etc. within the US who don't particularly mind people sharing their music? I seem to remember one of the original Dead Kennedys albums came on one side of a cassette tape, with an inscription in the liner notes something like "Home-recorded cassettes are killing the music industry. Go and do your part."

Even though one poster had the valid point that this bill seems to be aimed at direct copyright infringement, where the MP/RIAA and friends are concerned, the definition of "copyright infringement" seems to be "any media transaction where we don't take a cut." We (here in Canada) already have levies on blank media (yeah, the equivalent to the MP/RIAA gets paid for every CD-ROM backup I make) -- what more could they want? Our first-born children? Our souls?

Redundant Law

[Washizu]

If it is illegal to circumvent DRM technologies, then what are the DRM techs there for in the first place? To prevent accidental copyright infringement?

Problem of education ...

[too_bad]

This again has the same reasons as many other outrageous
copy-right laws that are being danced around. People simply
dont understand the technological details, and blind anologies
are made for the common public.

Take for instance:
> Gray believes that forging a digital watermark or signature
> should be just as unlawful as forging a physical watermark
> or signature. "It's like taking a T-shirt that you've put a
> design on and then attaching a Disney hologram or the NBA
> championship hologram, distributing it, and giving people
> the impression that it's an authorized apparel item from the
> NBA or Disney," Gray says. "That's a deceptive practice that
> we have a long history of banning."

But this is such a misleading statement. Consider the case where
you buy an expensive MP3 player from microsoft which plays only
digitally water-marked mp3 files. On the offset it may look like
this law is prohibiting me from playing a pirated song. But look
deeply. What its prohibiting is me playing _any_ songs which are
not water-marked by the some governing body. Which means that if
I make my own music (however cacofonic it might be) I will not
be able to play it unless I get it certified from this governing
body.

In light of this, it becomes clear that not only they are stopping
piracy,with this law, they are also giving themself absolute control
over what content can be played by people (even privately) and what
should not. How easy would it be for me to certify my own "music"
(or noise) by these governing bodies? Obviously I have to stand in
line along with the other members of RIAA and pay the prices that they
set. This is extremely dangerous situation, since the misleading phrasing
of the bill makes it impossible for ordinary senetors to understand the
ramifications and hence we could expect a wide spread floor-banging approval.
The very fact that this bill is set for fast track, scares me more
becasuse they precisely didnt want the time for people to let the real
meaning sink in.

You forget something

[JaredOfEuropa]

In order for these watermarks to have any effect, they need to convince or force hardmare manufacturers to make their hardware play only watermarked, approved media. They know this, and they are already actively trying to get the hardware manufacturers to do this. Without the requirement of a watermark to be present, i could simply strip the existing watermark out and play/redistribute as usual. I'm not creating a fake watermark and thus I am not breaking this law.

The result would be that older unwatermarked media you legally own, music produced by garage bands, and other legal but unwatermarked materials, will not play on a newer player that has DRM. This law makes it a felony to place fake or forged watermarks on such media, even if your sole intent is to allow the media to be played on newer DRM-enabled players.

This bill is a step towards forced DRM, and as such we should oppose it. The next step will be to require new hardware to support DRM.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:It's not what you think.

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

If the copy is not counterfeit or otherwise infringing of any copyright, as in, you own the copyright, then the watermark is genuine, and you havne't broken the law.

Assuming, of course, that you can even generate a watermark. But maybe the only legal watermarks will have to come from "approved" sources, and that the price to get one may be high. (We'll leave aside the issue of whether I should have to do anything special to display those digital pictures I snapped or to play that song I wrote and recorded...)

Note that we wouldn't need a new law to restrict the vendors of watermarks down to one or a handful of companies. If the DRM hardware or software requires a particular format, and if that format is protected by Big Company's copyright or -- more likely -- patent, then BigCo has a de facto monopoly on that media type. If hacking, faking, or reverse-engineering watermarks is made massively illegal, then that monopoly is cemented in place. And no law had to be passed specifically naming BigCo as the gateway through which creativity must pass.

Re:The rights of the many (us) vs the greedy.

[Silverhammer]

The Web has the potential to make a meaningful buzz but search engines don't friggin cut it. The web will have to be ORGANIZED, INDEXED and cross-referenced the same way that libraries have been since the Great Library of Alexandria. The days of "Cowboy Content Creation" are over. Creatrion of web content will have to be via XML with precise industry standard DTDs. Otherwise you just get lost in the noise.

That all depends on what you're trying to generate buzz for. If you're one of those same Big Media corporations trying harness the Internet to generate artificial buzz, then you're right.

However, if you're an independent creator who just throws his stuff out there for everyone to enjoy, with no obsessions about profit margins or ROI, then you're wrong. The buzz will happen all on it's own.

A perfect example is Sluggy Freelance. It does almost no appreciable advertising -- and certainly less than MegaTokyo or Penny Arcade -- yet it is arguably one of the most popular and longest running comics on the Web.

How did it happen? Strictly word of mouth.

I think the corporate-driven hyperconsumerism of the last few decades has perverted our fundamental notions of just how the free market is supposed to work. The Internet is simply restoring the universality and equality that we used to enjoy in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, when anyone could buy an old printing press and call themselves a newspaper.

However, the trade-off is that we're now facing some devastating economic contraction. The dot.com bust, the slump in the media and advertising industries, the current financial scandals... they're all just symptoms of a larger problem: as the artificiality of hyperconsumerism is increasingly exposed and rejected, many modern corporations are discovering that they have no real reason to exist. They don't fulfill any real human needs. Their only products are novelty and convenience. Without a captive and ignorant audience, they're doomed.

Re:It's not what you think.

[smnolde]

Requiring the watermark sounds more like the Stamp Act of 1765 which "[u]nder the Stamp Act, all printed materials are taxed, including; newspapers, pamphlets, bills, legal documents, licenses, almanacs, dice and playing cards." Sounds familiar, eh? Each of the items above were required to carry a seal....

All this stuff sounds more and more like a repeat of the American Revolution when a letter to Kinge George III was written in protest to the Stamp Act and others in which the Acts violated the colonists' civil rights.

Again, this all sounds like somebody wants control and have the little people pay the price. I'm not for it. I don't go to movies and I don't buy CDs. Any form of entertainment which relegates me to a simple consumer will not and has not receive any of my money.

BTW - the steps leading to the American Revolution can be found here.