Digital Restrictions Management for P2P Systems

Anonymous Coward writes "Digital restrictions management for an open-source peer-to-peer network. Researchers at the Georgia Tech Information Security Center have created a content protection system that is a plug-in for LimeWire/Gnutella. The paper argues that DRM is beneficial to everyone including independent musicians and end-users."

Comments

I wonder . . .

[acceleriter]

. . . how this so-called "restriction" manager will recognize the compression/encryption method du jour. But if it gives the "content industry" a false sense of security and takes some of the legislative heat off of P2P and the general purpose computer, I'm all for it.

Re:I wonder . . .

[splanky]

I find it so hypocritical that many of us obscure the real point of the 'content industry'. They don't want their IP stolen. We can avoid that label and talk about the ripoff prices of CDs, DVDs, and software but none of that makes theft right. I would be wicked pissed if my clients decided to not pay for code I wrote for them because they just stole it from me instead. Well that's why the content industry is annoyed. Rather than supporting another industry that makes it's living off of IP, some in our industry (software) have supported the theft of their IP. Almost everyone makes a living in one way or another off of their own IP. Theft is theft, pretty simple. And being proud of figuring out new ways to steal is shameful.

Re:I wonder . . .

[Angry White Guy]

Not to mention the dozens or more different copies. The only way these restrictions will work is if there is active monitoring.

If I rip a cd track and compare it to someone else's rip, it would be different based on algorithm used, filters used to reduce noise and normalize the track, and length of rip. You could profile the music and make a "Tolerance Level" where the song would just have to be close, but would that affect cover bands?

Re:I wonder . . .

[plague3106]

Copyright infringment is NOT theft. They are distinct things. Try picking up some law books (and perhaps the Constition).

I would be wicked pissed if my clients decided to not pay for code I wrote for them because they just stole it from me instead.

Code you wrote for them. That implies to me that there is not an off the shelf solution and that they are paying you to write something custom for thier particular problem. So its doubtful they could steal something from you short of hacking into your network. Also, in the end you'll probably be giving them the source code, especialy if you work for an internet company like I do where there isn't really any escaping that. Usually, once they have it they can do as they please with it, except resell it. But what they can and cannot do is decided BEFORE we do any work for the client, and is clearly spelled out in our contract.

And should they break the contract, well tahts breaking a contract. But even that would not be 'theft' even if they chose to resell it when we did not agree to it.

Re:I wonder . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Theft is theft, pretty simple. And being proud of figuring out new ways to steal is shameful.

If it were really that simple, would we still be discussing it?

Re:I wonder . . .

[Fig, formerly A.C.]

Theft is theft, but I feel no remorse about stealing from thieves: and I'd say the RIAA/MPAA qualify, given their pricing and practices.

Re:I wonder . . .

[splanky]

>Copyright infringment is NOT theft. They are distinct things. Try picking up some law books (and perhaps the Constition).

Thanks for the legal advice - but try searching on copyright infringement theft and you'll see that those law books you'd like me to read in fact disagree with your position. Finally, I don't think you'll find much mention of the IP issues in the 'Constition' or the Constitution.

Re:I wonder . . .

[Ravensfire]

No remores stealing from theives, or murdering murderers, etc etc etc.

So nice to see the morals and ethics of people.

Re:I wonder . . .

[splanky]

I think we're still discussing it because of the scale of it and the economic ramifications of it. Back in the 80s, the much loathed music companies were complaining that home taping was killing the music industry. Of course they were wrong. But now, because of scale, file sharing actually is putting a serious economic dent in the music biz. It is simple to say that it's theft, but if we can't as a society convince people that theft is wrong - even if it's from a horrible industry - then it has massive economic ramifications. No one argues that it's ok to break into a neighbors house if they're not nice people, and we should also easily be able to say that it's not ok to ripoff music even if the record biz are a bunch of thieves themselves. Our arguments that we use to defend our theft (as p2p users) are so self serving that it's embarassing. Information yearns to be free, the music biz are thieves themselves, yada yada yada. Theft is theft - that is simple - but the changing attitude towards direct theft or the sheer size of it has serious implications on our economic structure as a whole.

Re:I wonder . . .

[Fig, formerly A.C.]

That's true, I'd cheerfully execute a murderer... But I'd never harm an innocent. To go back to the original point, I don't find the RIAA/MPAA innocent. They have been ripping people off (artists _and_ consumers) for decades, and doing whatever they can (moral or not)to maintain a chokehold on distribution channels. I refuse to feel regret for any actions I might take against them, sorry.

Re:I wonder . . .

[splanky]

I'm glad that you've researched every single song you've ripped off to make sure you weren't actually hurting the band that released the song. And you've researched that every song you've ripped off was made by non 'innocent' people all the way down the line. You've made sure the recording engineer who will only continue to have a job if the music biz continues to make money - I'm glad you've made sure every single one of them aren't 'innocent'. Wow, you've done a lot of work to prove you can cheerfully execute a murderer. It's a good thing you're so sharp that you know who is right and who is wrong --- be honest, are you Santa? If you are, I really want a pony for Christmas.

Re:I wonder . . .

[medcalf]

Theft is theft. It deprives you of your natural right to use your property, by depriving you of possession of your property.

Copyright violation is not theft. It arguably deprives you of your ability to collect revenues from your property (or reduces your potential revenues), but it does not deprive you of the actual property, which you can still use since you still possess it.

The rhetoric of "copyright violation *is* theft" is simply wrong, and ignores the fact that the score-keeper here is not revenues generated from a given property, but the property itself.

Re:I wonder . . .

[Flowers_By_Irene]

Never mind the exact legal intricacies, since US federal law will vary from other countries with IP laws anyway. At issue is a moral question, and it is unlikely that a satisfactory answer is to be found by inspecting the statute books, since the law on these matters is more likely to track business interest and lobbying power rather than a commonsense notion of right and wrong on the subject. In my view IP rules generally do protect the interests of large organisations as opposed to the individual. Undoubtedly one must be able to profit preferentially from an idea for some period of time, but you have to draw a line. Suppose I reverse engineer some drug and sell it at cost to Africans who can't afford the patent-protected official product. I guess that's theft too, but I'm not sure how shameful that would be. So there's the question: I think that innovators should be able to profit from ideas (I work in software too) but how far should this be taken and do we take it further than that in this day and age?

Re:I wonder . . .

[Flowers_By_Irene]

Can we keep the tone respectful? This is an interesting issue that can be explored without heavy sarcasm...

Re:I wonder . . .

[Fig, formerly A.C.]

Does this mean that we shouldn't shut down companies illegally dumping industrial waste because of the "innocent" truck driver who is just doing a job? I think that your recording engineer is part of a system, just like that truck driver: and if you go work for an unethical company, you get the job security you deserve.

This is not to say that I don't support good artists, I actually have bought music legitimately that I found I liked after listening to the MP3. Heck, when I see a local performer, if they are any good I buy CD's right from them (if they are selling any). I know the ARTIST gets the $$$, and they generally charge a fair price for it. The same things cannot be said about the RIAA.

And I'm not bringing you a pony for Christmas, because I know what you want it for, you sicko. That's disgusting, and you need to get some therapy. :P

Re:I wonder . . .

[Flowers_By_Irene]

I would add something to that; I find that mp3 file sharing helps one to discover new music because it costs nothing to try stuff. Since getting into MP3s I've actually purchased more CDs and been more satisfied with the CDs that I've bought. I dare say I would have bought even more if they were a reasonable price (they are even more of a rip-off in the UK). I think that if the recording industry wasn't trying to force music consumers through a narrow business model that begins with some attractive person's jingle on commercial radio and ends with you buying a CD on the mistaken assumption that the other 11 songs will be worthwhile then I'd have more sympathy. "Try before you buy" hurts bad music but benefits good music.

Re:I wonder . . .

[splanky]

>Suppose I reverse engineer some drug and sell it at cost to Africans who can't afford the patent-protected official product. I guess that's theft too, but I'm not sure how shameful that would be.

Very, very good point - I never thought of it in those terms. It makes it even more important to separate the self-serving theft (no one will die if they don't get to hear the new Springsteen album without paying) from the 'theft' that promotes the greater good. Yet who would be the so-called moral authority to determine what is ok theft and not ok theft? I think the predominance of movie and music theft via p2p obscures those larger issues - and if we don't come up with reasonable ways to prevent economic damage to the music and movie industries, we'll get stuck with draconian laws that will block potentially socially important uses of p2p.

Re:I wonder . . .

[Dun Malg]

Our arguments that we use to defend our theft (as p2p users)...Theft is theft - that is simple

Copyright infringement is not theft, as it deprives no one of property. But this is only a side issue.

But now, because of scale, file sharing actually is putting a serious economic dent in the music biz.

so says the "music biz". I, however, would classify this as a straw man. The real cause of the downturn is the industry's overpricing. For a long time they were able to get away with it because there was no way around them. THey had a de-facto monopoly on distribution and are now upset that technology has weakened that control. The fact that people are abusing their fair-use rights does not, in my opinion, warrant revocation of those rights. Instead, the industry should review what they can do to encourage people to acquire music legitimately. Their complaint is along the lines of "We can't get $18 for a CD anymore"; the solution to said problem isn't "curtail the public's rights". Lower pricing is clearly indicated in this case. I'd wager that if the recording industry halved the price of music (and offered it for download even cheaper) it'd make up for the difference in volume. Well, perhaps not anymore. They may be too late. Their abuse of the power of distribution may have driven a great many customers away. I know it has me.

Re:I wonder . . .

[HanzoSan]

Every song that a person didnt buy, they werent planning on buying in the first place.

No band is hurt, if someone wants to buy their CD they will, if not they'll download it.

The band should not expect everyone to buy their music, they should only expect their fans to.

I never purchased CDs before napster existed, and I'm not going to start purchasing them because p2p is popular now.

Look, someone who didnt buy CDs then wont buy them now, and its that simple,

I cannot afford to waste money on a CD unless i know that every single song on it is good, If I dont, then I wont buy it.

Re:I wonder . . .

[Flowers_By_Irene]

I agree with some of that. I used a kind of extreme example as well... I guess what I would suggest would be primarily shorter exploitation times for ideas. I think what might be good would be to have IP pass into the public domain much faster. Obviously people need time to profit from their own creativity or gain the edge in their market, but I think such a system might rule out many of the extreme cases like the one I raise. With all this said, I'm afraid I'd be more sympathetic to these movie and music lobbies if they weren't so damn powerful and profitable. In the UK the major Hollywood Studios control every aspect of films playing in local cinems from casting to the price of the popcorn. Record pricing operates under cartel-like conditions. I feel that a lot of this legal thrashing is because the content industries have not been able to come to grips with these new uses of technology in an accommodating manner and have adopted an adversarial and highly combative stance. I think DRM for music will do more harm than good because it will involve greater interference with people's computers (witness the Palladium stuff at Redmond) for very little benefit. The question is are we buying less music than before; we certainly have more music on our hard drives, but to me this only matters if I would have bought the CD if I hadn't found the MP3. On anything other than PC speakers, MP3s are rubbish and I've discovered a lot of stuff I'd never have heard (and bought) otherwise. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers have set up their home page so you can stream one song from their new album every day. This might open them up to a few rip-offs but it's also good marketing, and I think this is more the direction the industry should be moving in.

Re:I wonder . . .

[plague3106]

Sorry for the typo. At any rate, yes the Constitution specifically talks about copyright. Have you ever read the damn thing? Doubtful, and its doubtful those law books you say disagree with me really do. I doubt you read those either. Idiot.

Re:I wonder . . .

[EllisDees]

Copyright is exactly that - the exclusive right to copy a work for a limited period of time. It does not confer any ownership rights.

Re:I wonder . . .

[HanzoSan]

Well if you'd execute a murderer you become what you hate.

Hate cannot be used to fight hate, the best way to handle a murderer is lock them away from society in a prison or place where other crazy people of their kind can live.

Re:I wonder . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a break guys, this is not about IP, content or copywrite. If it was, all the riaa would have to do is throw a couple of people in jail and the rest would jump the p2p ship like the rats they are. This is about control, they are pissed because of the internet their ability to play god over peoples lives is in jepardy, now when they say "you will never work in this industry again", it has no weight or if one of their artists isnt doing things "their way" they cant threaten to "take it all away" to get them back in line. If things keep going the way they are and the riaa isnt living up to their end of the deal, an artist would have many different options to distribute their music.

Re:I wonder . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

>Suppose I reverse engineer some drug and sell it at cost to Africans who can't afford the patent-protected official product. I guess that's theft too, but I'm not sure how shameful that would be.

Very, very good point - I never thought of it in those terms. It makes it even more important to separate the self-serving theft (no one will die if they don't get to hear the new Springsteen album without paying) from the 'theft' that promotes the greater good. Yet who would be the so-called moral authority to determine what is ok theft and not ok theft?

Whoever has the power. When African nations first asked for discounted prices, then threatened to go to India for cheap generic forms of drugs to save millions of people, the US backed up the pharma companies who held the patents. Then, after less than a handful of Americans died of anthrax, the US gov't. summoned the German producers of the needed medication over to the US where their arms were twisted to decrease price and up production dramatically or we'd otherwise break their patents. Can you think of anything more shameful or duplicitous in recent history?

Re:I wonder . . .

[Fig, formerly A.C.]

I disagree, in no way would that make me a murderer. By your logic, shooting a mad dog makes me a mad dog. To think that all killing is equal is very silly. To kill an innocent is bad, to kill a murderer is not.

Perhaps you could explain to me why someone who would take an innocent life deserves to have their own life? I think "tough but fair" works better than "holier than thou" as far as reality is concerned.

Re:I wonder . . .

[DarkZero]

But now, because of scale, file sharing actually is putting a serious economic dent in the music biz.

Actually, that's debatable. P2P File sharing, from the relatively sluggish viewpoint of solid economic data, has not been around very long. So far, there are only two real facts that have been gathered from the economic data on the two or three years that P2P file sharing has been around:

1) The music industry's sales rose at the time that Napster was around, in accordance with the trend of increased profits that the record industry had had going for years.

2) The music industry's sales dropped after September 11th, in accordance with every other entertainment/luxury industry in the United States.

So far, there hasn't been a time when the recording industry's data has been recorded solely in the context of P2P file sharing without some other larger issue (multi-year economic trends, terrorism, etc.) clouding the data, mostly because P2P file sharing hasn't been around that long. So whether or not P2P file sharing has been a boon or a burden to the recording industry is unknown. Then again, it might always be unknown, because the RIAA keeps pumping more and more money into anti-piracy measures, most likely because they know that they could always just blame the loss of revenue on piracy in front of a congressional committee if they fail.

Re:I wonder . . .

[global_diffusion]

"But now, because of scale, file sharing actually is putting a serious economic dent in the music biz."

so says the "music biz". I, however, would classify this as a straw man. The real cause of the downturn is the industry's overpricing.

You are 100% correct. Music sharing hasn't hurt music sales; music sales are up. What has been hurt is the sales of big name bands. People don't want to buy Britney after they've heard what music can be. The internet has allowed us to preview music before we buy and play the field, so that we can get the best music possible. What the music industry is finding is that people don't want their crappy generated music anymore. People want good music made by real people.

I also agree with you 100% about the pricing. I was talking to a friend about this the other day. Not coming from a rich backgrounds, we can't afford to pay $18 dollars per cd for all the music that we want to listen to. If they brought the price of music down, we could afford to buy cds. Not only that, if they brought the price of cds down, it would be less expensive for me to buy a cd than to download it. Right now the days of hunting for that one last song to complete the album costs me less that the $18 or so that a cd would.

Re:I wonder . . .

[nagora]

Copyright infringement is not theft, as it deprives no one of property.

It deprives them of payment for work done; the question of whether it deprives them of something physical as well is not relevant; it's still theft.

TWW

Re:I wonder . . .

[Dun Malg]

Copyright infringement is not theft, as it deprives no one of property. It deprives them of payment for work done; the question of whether it deprives them of something physical as well is not relevant; it's still theft.

Not relevant? The definition of theft is "The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same". The legally granted right to payment does not qualify as property. Property must be physical, i.e. if I take your property, you no longer have it. Copying media deprives no one of physical property, which by definition means that it is not theft. It is indeed illegal, but calling it "theft" is a straight-up propaganda move on the part of the industry. Copyright infringement is a crime on the same moral level as sneaking into a movie without paying.

Re:I wonder . . .

[nagora]

You can hide behind legal definitions if you like but if you deprive me of payment for my work you are stealing from me regardless of what some jackass shyster/politician says.

What do you call it if someone removes money from your bank account? Say they just took the interest you were due. Nothing physical has been taken from you, not even the notional cash that you gave the bank to hold for you. Being deprived of something you were rightfully due is theft, physicallity and media have nothing to do with it unless you are a scumbag lawyer looking for new ways to cheat people out of their money.

Copyright infringement is a crime on the same moral level as sneaking into a movie without paying.

Exactly.

TWW

I still dont understand why

[JeanBaptiste]

they do this. They will have this out for about 20 minutes before someone figures out how to bypass it. Sure, some of the non savvy people will be restricted, but this is just another case of keeping the honest people honest. I think.

Re:I still dont understand why

[gazbo]

It's a plugin

Here is my guide to bypassing the system:

1. Don't install the plugin.
2. Err...
3. That's it.

There is no need to bypass anything until it's installed mandatorily.

Re:I still dont understand why

[Angry White Guy]

From what I understand of the article, it is a way to provide secure media over an insecure network. Unless it is implemented at every node, it will fail in the fact that insecure content will be available, but will still succeed in allowing a content provider to release information available only to their clients.
What happens when a client receives the content and turns around and puts it online unprotected? I don't think that they figured that out yet. Maybe encoded key encryption (like satellite), but even then... If it's playable, it's copyable!

Re:I still dont understand why

[anthony_dipierro]

If it's playable, it's copyable!

There goes that argument that the DMCA removes our ability to make fair use.

Re:I still dont understand why

[Angry White Guy]

No, it removes my argument that the DMCA removes our ability to make fair use. Just because I have access to hundreds of thousands of dollars of recording equipment (a friend works at a radio station) does not mean everyone does.

Re:I still dont understand why

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens when a client receives the content and turns around and puts it online unprotected?

The same thing that happens to him when he rips a CD to MP3 and puts it online. It requires an additional, intentional step-one that may not be obvious to everyone. In it's best form DRM allows music producers to distribute over the internet with the same level of security as they currently enjoy with physical CDs. Not that it be completely impossible, under all circumstances, to generate unencrypted content from encrypted files, just that doing so requires clear intent and effort on the part of the individual.

Re:I still dont understand why

[anthony_dipierro]

And that's the whole purpose of DRM. Not to remove every single possibility of copying, but to make it hard for those without access to hundreds of thousands of dollars of recording equipment.

YES! I've been looking for one of these!

[syd02]

"Build a better mousetrap and the world will
beat a path to your door." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Awesome!

[grub]

As soon as I remove all the spyware/adware from my gnutella clients, this will be the first thing I'll install!

WTF ?

[Salsaman]

...a content protection system that is a plug-in for LimeWire/Gnutella

Do they really expect that people are going to download this plugin and install it ? Why would anyone want to do that ?

Re:WTF ?

[GigsVT]

Why would anyone want to do that ?

If you havn't installed the plugin, or any DRM plugins, you must be a thief!

If you aren't doing anything wrong, then why don't you install it?

(Maybe now all the people that made that idiotic argument in the past in regards to every sapping of our rights will wake up a little)

Re:WTF ?

[MindStalker]

This type of DRM doesn't so much restrict you as it adds extra abilities. Basically an "artist" releases a song with DRM controls (proprietary encrypted format) so if you just have plain old limewire, sure you can trade the file. But its going to do you no good (of course someone can convert the file to mp3 and start trading that, but it takes a bit of work) While if you have DRM you can listen to this file, under certain restrictions. The advantage of hooking it straight into limewire is that limewire will now be able to read the headers from the file, and possibily even as as a registration/buying carrier. So you can use limewire to pay to open up the songs. DRM in itself isn't bad, because if the artist wishes to release their song in that format, that is their right. Its the attempts at mandating DRM and having players that won't play songs that other non DRM players will play.

Re:WTF ?

[SirSlud]

>DRM in itself isn't bad, because if the artist wishes to release their song in that format, that is their right.

Sorry, can you explain to me what exactly the rights of artists are? And why those rights are relevant to the artist given that 98% of the copyright in the western world is owned by corperations?

The artist is obligated to ensure that, upon claiming protection via copyright, his work is freely accessible 20 years after his death. Should he DRM-ize all his songs to expire after 6 months, and never publish them again, it is the artist that is breaking copyright law (by not making his work available to the commons after his copyright protection has expired.)

Re:WTF ?

[joshsisk]

I believe this may be what some people refer to as a 'proof-of-concept'.

Re:WTF ?

[SirSlud]

Er rather, maybe its 70 years or 90 years now, shit, I can't keep up with Disney's lawyers .. I forget how insane it is right now. Somebody care to clarify?

Re:WTF ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to wonder why Disney's lawyers keeps doing this (pushing the copyright expiry limit). After all, Disney is technically not dead, only "temporarily" deep-frozen, thus he wouldn't need any extension to protect his rights, now would he?

Re:WTF ?

[MindStalker]

Well actually there is no obligation coded into law. They could continue to release DRM after the copywrite expires, its just that your not going to get into trouble for spreading the non DRM version around. NOW here is the problem. the DMCA (BOOO!) makes it illigal for you to convert out of DRM to standard format even after copywrite expires. But there is some working on getting that changed. But seriously an artist can use whatever means of distribution that artist wants to in my opinion. Obviously nowadays its the record company making that decision and that is pretty sickening. But just as a painter has his/her right of the medium of their painting so does a musical artist. I'm not going to be the one to tell them that their music has to be released in format X with tempo Y or any of that.

Re:WTF ?

[SirSlud]

>you're not going to get into trouble for spreading the non DRM version around.

If copyright was introduced in order to break the publishers' monopoly on printing (1622, I think) .. ie, to force work back into the public domain, then what is the point of the entire law if I can release my music *only* in a DRM'd format?

DRM is not a musical format. It is a technology that, while its bits might sit beside my musical bits, is not technically part of the 'format' that I present my song in ...

It's not a medium. It's the package _around_ the art. So, doesn't the law of copyright become useless (toothless, worthless, etc) as soon as I'm legally allowed to distribute my work in a package that nullifies any intent set forth by copyright law?

Re:WTF ?

[MindStalker]

Copywrite introduced to break publishers monopoly on printing!!! please explain???

Re:WTF ?

[SirSlud]

Prior to 1622, there was a law that said you could only print works' if you were a licenced publisher. This became like today's equiv. of Hollywood - the monarchy's publishing cronies got dibs on printing culture, and make a whack load of money on it (granted, very little of that money made its way back to the author.)

The Statute of St Anne, 1622, the first copyright law, said that the publishers had to pay the author (ie, that the author actually *owned* the work) but also that the work had to go back into the public domain 20 years after publication in order to ensure that there was no monopoly on distribution and publication.

400 years later, the publishers own 98% of the copyrights again, and dont have to reqliquish control until 70 years after the death of the company.

When its all said and done, today is much more like pre-copyright law than post-copyright law. (This is even reflected in the authors slice ... musicians make little to nothing over the publication and distribution of their works these days, more money is made from performing, freelancing, or, in the form of most record contracts, ***selling their copyright*** to the publisher.)

Re:WTF ?

[RickHunter]

Not only that, but upon actually reading it, the copyright code tries to obfuscate as much as possible the actual rights of authors and the commons. The sections specifying exceptions to basic copyright law are filled with "legal spam" about cable licenses, wireless spectrum licenses, and other sorts of licenses that have nothing at all to do with copyright. (Other than that copyrighted material is transmitted over them)

And the law prevents you from creating and enjoying a derived work in the privacy of your own home. I don't know about you, but this seems awfully draconian to me. (And could be used to argue that works inspired by other works are illegal, depending on the definition of "derived".) This seems actively contrary to the "progress of science and the useful arts".

Applying copyrights to encodings of songs (say) and compiled programs is also ludicrous. What exactly is copyrighted? The patterns of bits? (What if I've got a program that interprets them some other way?) The output? (That seems to make even less sense) Some abstract "song" or "program" that is encoding independant?

It makes a bit more sense for source code and writings, as they have an obvious and well-defined existance separate from the digital representation. But still, if I write code in a different language (say, C++ and Smalltalk) that does exactly the same thing in exactly the same way, am I violating your copyright? What about if I write a program that presents exactly the same interface and does the same operations, but does so differently internally?

We need some way of insuring that artists (writers and programmers included) recieved adequate compensation for the use of their work. But we also need to preserve the commons, and avoid crippling the power of generic computing devices in favour of preserving the way things have "always been".

Re:WTF ?

[kalidasa]

400 years later, the publishers own 98% of the copyrights again, and dont have to reqliquish control until 70 years after the death of the company

Nope. It's 70 years after the death of the human author, in whom copyright resides unless it is a work for hire (though the copyright can be assigned to an agent, i.e., a publisher). If it is a work for hire, anonymous, etc. - e.g., if the "author" is a corporation - the rules are different - 120 years from creation, or 95 years from publication, whichever expires first.

Re:WTF ?

[SirSlud]

Fair enough, but 'assigned to an agent' .. it is my impression that copyrights are transferred in most cases with label contracts. From the link you provided (great link, could never find an easy reference):

> Any of the exclusive rights comprised in a copyright, including any subdivision of any of the rights specified by section 106, may be transferred as provided by clause (1) and owned separately. The owner of any particular exclusive right is entitled, to the extent of that right, to all of the protection and remedies accorded to the copyright owner by this title.

If this is the case in the majority of contracts between musicians and labels, then, to me, it is much like the publishing industry is the sole recipiant of the protections and compensations afforded by copyright law?

Re:WTF ?

[StillAnonymous]

You have to understand that laws are vague and difficult to understand because they (the lawyers) WANT them to be. If everything were cut and dry, they'd be out of a job.

This way, the law can be interpreted differently by different judges, it can be argued by attorneys, and two nearly identical cases can have completely different outcomes. The system is deliberately broken and it favours those with the money since those people are the ones who are lining the lawyers' pockets.

Copyright and other big-business-oriented laws are especially convoluted since that's where there's the most money to be gained!

Nice game they've got us playing, huh?

Re:WTF ?

[Anonymous Coward]

orry, can you explain to me what exactly the rights of artists are? And why those rights are relevant to the artist given that 98% of the copyright in the western world is owned by corperations

One of the rights of the artist is to sell the copyright to a corporation. This is, in fact, how corporations acquire copyrights in the first place.

Re:WTF ?

[RickHunter]

From what I understand, the publishing industry doesn't directly take the copyright. That'd make the expiry much shorter. They do, however, reserve pretty much all of the rights provided by copyright law. Same goes for record companies. And thanks to the consolidation of bookstores and record outlets, its hard for smaller publishing houses to start up.

Re:WTF ?

[RickHunter]

Oh, truly wonderful. I'd noticed this a while back, and concluded that the problem was the people passing laws. Our entire government is composed mostly of lawyers or people advised by them. What's the most probable result of this going to be? A system that insures the perpetual need for and prosperity of lawyers.

Shakespear had the right idea. Now we just need to implement it.

Re:WTF ?

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

So you won't be able to play these songs in anything but Limewire? Whether a particular DRM program gives me more abilities or not, it certainly seems like the world that contains DRM programs and content (and no ability to move songs to my mp3 player) is a less happy world than the one that contains none. I will boycott all DRM-including products, in order to discourage development of DRM-restricted content, and I encourage everyone who wishes to take the cooperative strategy in this prisoner's dilemna we call a marketplace to do the same.

PS did anyone happen to mirror this article? I'd be really interested in reading more about what they're planning to do.

Re:WTF ?

[kalidasa]

From what I understand, the publishing industry doesn't directly take the copyright. That'd make the expiry much shorter. They do, however, reserve pretty much all of the rights provided by copyright law. Same goes for record companies. And thanks to the consolidation of bookstores and record outlets, its hard for smaller publishing houses to start up.

The artists aren't in the employ of the record companies, therefore the works are not works for hire. So the rights are assigned, but the terms assigned are defined by the artist's life, not the corporations.

The moment that the "author" of the work is a corporation, the copyright drops from death+70 (which for a 25 year old recording artist would be something on the order of 130 years!) to 95 years after publication. So the "author" has to be the artist. This may also have effects on compensation (for instance, IIRC, don't artists have to put out the outlays for their studio time, out of their earnings on royalties? That might be because they are not employees. But IANAL, IANA Musician, and IANA Record Executive).

Re:WTF ?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is illegal to sell yourself into slavery.

I bet you didn't know that.

I also bet you think that it's a bad analogy to relate selling your copyright to a media cartel.

(hmm... guess I'll post anonymous.)

Control of the uncontrollable?

[PaSTE]

Seems to be that the industry accepts defeat at the hands of Gnutella and is looking for some way to keep control. Perhaps they are tipping their hand a bit too far with this one. Just pray Microsoft doesn't make the plug-in hard-coded into Palladium.

Re:Control of the uncontrollable?

[Windcatcher]

Who cares if MS does? For myself, I'm running Win2kPro, and I loved XP Home SO MUCH that I wiped the HD and put WIn2k on instead. I ordered Lycoris last night and already have Mandrake...One way or the other, Win2k is the LAST MS OS I'll buy.

Yeah right

[PhysicsGenius]

In the land of Congress and PHB's, "management" is usually synonymous with "telling you what you can and cannot do". That makes "rights management" an oxymoron and people who subscribe to them regularmorons. That it is digital is just sickening.

The Real Life world has a lot of problems, problems that were specifically engineered out of the online world. Things such as anonymity, file downloading, and HTTP were all designed expressly for the purpose of doing morally good things that were inexplicably illegal--like looking at porn. Now those jackbooted thugs are cyberstomping us and we need to fight back! Boycott!

finally

[tps12]

I'm always getting my digital rights all messed up. Especially when stealing movies on LimeWire, my time shifting tends to get tangled in my fair use, and since information wants to be free I end up with data all over the floor. This plugin will help me manage my digital rights, so I can finally focus on what matters: ripping off starving artists.

Re:finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember: he who sacrifices paradigm to gain a little temporary decentralization deserves, and will get, neither.

Tentatively earns my approval...

[Sheetrock]

I'm apprehensive to any sort of restrictions (particularly mandatory restrictions) being put on my P2P activities. This sort of thing needs to be approached with some degree of common sense and respect for the system that has been in place for decades. Fortunately, it sounds like we're on the threshold of implementing a technological solution that won't unfairly impact all computer users.

It's all about the balance of our rights against the rights of content owners to protect their investment and realize their returns in the open market. Building in DRM where it's needed most as opposed to just dumping it into every piece of consumer electronics on the market seems quite sensible and reasonable. I'm certain people who have been getting a free ride off of the artists won't appreciate it, but I believe that besides cutting off an avenue of exploitation this will also help return the Internet to a responsive state as well as encourage the media giants to finally embrace this medium without hesitation.

It's got to end sometime, folks -- otherwise, we're gonna kill the golden goose.

Re:Tentatively earns my approval...

[Jerf]

It's got to end sometime, folks -- otherwise, we're gonna kill the golden goose.

The golden goose is already on its last gasp, and DRM is the cage for the rest of us that will make sure that not only does it stay dead, but that nobody finds an alternative source of gold, 'cause we'll all be locked in the RIAA cage.

DRM is not about protecting artists, it's about protecting music companies. At least that's the way it's working now. Rest assured were it just about the artists that the RIAA would not bother buying laws that makes DRM impossible to crack.

Follow the money.

Re:Tentatively earns my approval...

[liquidsin]

The only way the "media giants" will ever embrace the internet is when they can do it in the same fashion that Microsoft "embraces". They want to extinguish it. You think media companies want to give up their current distribution model? If that was the case, why the hell would they be spending so much effort and money to copy-protect cds? They want nothing to do with internet business. For the most part, DRM has nothing to do with the rights of the artist, it's only about protecting the dollars of the corporations. How does DVD region coding protect the artist? Thanks, but no thanks. I don't think I need the U.S. gov't managing MY digital rights - I'm doing a fine job on my own.

Re:Tentatively earns my approval...

[dyfet]

There is a fundimental error in the statement "balance of our rights against the rights of content owners" which often are used to justify things like digital restriction management.

First, there is NO SUCH RIGHTS by so called "content owners" to be balanced against the very real rights of individuals. The constitution offers an optional privilege in article I that can be granted or revoked at the whim of congress, so long as it serves the public interest. Priviledges have no "owner" the way real property does.

One cannot balance off this limited privledge with the very real rights enumerated in the first and fourth ammendments that are given to individuals, and their very real application under fair use, as if they are equals.

Just because we currently have laws that treat ideas as property does not in fact make it property. At one time in this country we also had laws that claimed people could be legally treated as property, but this did not make that any more ethically right to do or true either. Fortunately back then we had people of good sense and concous to protest and overturn that lunacy, and hopefully we will be able to do the same against those that try to treat ideas as if it were property as well. Intellectual slavery is also abhorent and unnatural.

the paper misses a point

[Anonymous Coward]

They say that it will all be good if everyone plays by the rules. But will RIAA play by the rules? They will just hire another "Overpeer Inc" to break the network.

Benefits fro the end-users?

[NorthDude]

Do someone has understood what would be the benefits for the end-user?

From what I read, it would benefit the user only because "content providers" would be more willing to provide stuff over P2P network.
i don't think this is "benificial" at all to the end user.
It's like if they were telling me: Hey! If you accept to loose control over what you have, can do, their will be so much more content distributed!
Yeah, and so what? I don't give a dam what COULD be distributed online which is not right now!
I already can go out and buy what I need or want.
And If I'm a "bad" guy, I can download movies and MP3's anyway.

I don't want anybody having the control over what information I make available on a network. If this information ever is copywrited, come on home and arrest me.
If not, go away.

Re:Benefits fro the end-users?

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I read, it would benefit the user only because "content providers" would be more willing to provide stuff over P2P network.

So...

1) Install plugin

2) Wait for 'content providers' to provide content

3) Remove plugin

4) PROFIT !!!

I wonder...

[RexRuther]

...where the funding for the 'research' came from?

Frankly, I agree.

[torpor]

On one condition: as long as the protocols for implementing the restrictions remain *OPEN*, *DOCUMENTED*, and *WELL DEFINED*.

So, what? It's not easy to do it and still actually engineer a restriction plan? Yeah?

Bugger it, who said it has to be easy to do this properly, and not end up with the complete social nightmare like what the good ol' U$ofA is currently happily building?

As an independent musician, as a technology freak (I work for Access Music, I make synthesizers for a living, and I use Linux extensively), and as a renegade from the New World Odor, I think it's good to have a system like this that works so that *ANYONE* - any musician, signed or not, represented by RIAA or not - can actually make their work available and get rewarded for doing so.

But it's gotta stay open, folks. Secrecy behind a corporate stigma is not the way this is going to be done ...

Re:Frankly, I agree.

[Sheetrock]

No crappy system is going to be made effective by simply hiding the implementation. The best system would be open and unencumbered by patent so that acceptance is more likely across the board.

I'm not personally for preventing Fair Use, mind you, but for stopping the unchecked spread of other peoples' property across the Internet merely because it's convenient and made of electrical impulses. An effective DRM system, in my mind, would not impede the easy transfer and playback we've gotten used to with dumping CDs to tape and MP3 or the like locally but would prevent (the convenient) bulk network transfer of content. I'm positive this would be possible if the major companies would sit down and work this out together rather than trying to figure out how to weasel cash from the whole scheme.

Re:Frankly, I agree.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that you misspelt Odour

Re:Frankly, I agree.

[smiff]

On one condition: as long as the protocols for implementing the restrictions remain *OPEN*, *DOCUMENTED*, and *WELL DEFINED*.

That could actually be done. Using the system layed out by the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, you could construct a system that would only work if the code is authenticated by the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). All of the code could be open sourced, but only certain implementations would be signed. If your code isn't signed, the computer will refuse to run it.

The protocol could encrypt all communications so no one can 'sniff' the contents. The protocol could also require you to cryptographically authenticate that you are running trusted code before it lets you access content.

I have a problem with this. It means that you have to get permission from whoever holds the master key(s) in order to create a compatible client. The key holder will dictate the terms under which you may develop your client. It's kind of like the british government deciding who may or may not use a printing press.

Re:Frankly, I agree.

[SirSlud]

>It's kind of like the british government deciding who may or may not use a printing press.

Ironically, copyright law was enacted to *combat* that problem .. in order to make sure other folks could print cultural works after the monarchy's publishing industry cronies had the chance to make a crud load of $$ off the backs of artists.

Re:Frankly, I agree.

[Anonymous Coward]

>It's kind of like the british government deciding who may or may not use a printing press.

Ironically, copyright law was enacted to *combat* that problem.. in order to make sure other folks could print cultural works after the monarchy's publishing industry cronies had the chance to make a crud load of $$ off the backs of artists.

No. Copyright law was originally enacted to censor people that the british monarchy disagreed with. The monarchy granted 'copyrights' to certain trusted publishing houses. No one else had the right to use a printing press. The U.S. Constitution was carefully worded to combat that problem.

Re:Frankly, I agree.

[SirSlud]

You are talking pre-Statue of Queen Anne, because the Statue, was the first true copyright law (since everybody seems to associate copyright with the right of the author to determine the fate of the work) that allowed the author to own the copyright to their work. I'll grant you that the Act you describe did indeed use the term 'copyright', but in so far as the word is used today to champion the well-being and right of an author, it was the Statute of Anne that was the first true copyright law with the welfare of the author in mind.

You'll notice that today, 98% of copyrights are owned by the publishers again, and that most authors have to sell thier copyright in order to be published anyway .. effectively making today much like pre-Statue of Queen Anne times. Artists are *allowed* today, to own their copyrights, but those seeking publication usually have to sell it. For all intents and purposes, (save that it is the publisher, not the government, who censors in this day and age), we are in pre-Statute of Queen Anne times, when copyrights were mainly only in the hands of publishers and authors received little or no compensation outside of selling the *original* work (or the copyright, today).

I'm not aware of how the U.S.Constitution prevents the scenario as described above, save for that your government can't *force* the situation on the people. That really doesn't prevent the private sector from effectively influencing public perception and dominating the market enough to duplicate the effects of the Licencing Act you refer to.

Add 'content protection', change P2P software

[krinsh]

There are going to be legitimate file-sharers, and illegal ones (unless they stop passing 'rips' around and become 'legit'). I'm not going to stir up arguments on the legitimacy of P2P; and don't want to.

However, I do believe that every time you implement 'content protection' you'll have a few sets of people that will just move on to the next system: folks that value their privacy and will equate DRM/copy protection with personal data mining; people that get tired of going through another string of 'keys' and 'registration' when they swap material with others; and finally those that are 'pirating' (whether it is because MPAA/RIAA groups or other people claim they are, or they are bootlegging stuff deliberately.)

before there was gnutella, limewire, and napster

[locutus2k]

It makes me smile when I think of what was used before all of the gui based p2p networks... good old IRC and of course newsgroups. These things were here before, and the RIAA didn't really do anything about them (at least in comparison to what they are doing now). I really think they got mad only after this stuff became popular with the average LUSER.

It was sure nice when the average home user wasn't out mucking up a good thing. Granted, it's nice they are getting on the bandwagon, but I for one am sticking with what I know works. Besides, I've had no problems with viruses, poisioned files, and junk data.

Remember IRC welcomes you...

I guess I don't understand

[AAAWalrus]

Okay, I started writing this post after only having read the abstract for the article, and I was confused about what the researcher was actually trying to accomplish. I read a little into the actual article and read this:

"The introduction of content protection systems for peer-to-peer networks will allow content providers to safely take advantage of the numerous benefits of the peer-to-peer distribution paradigm. This will lead to the availability of more content, richer content, new applications, and traditional content distribution business models in peer-to-peer systems."

I guess I just don't see this as a reality. The nature of peer-to-peer networks (as I see it) is that content is provided by peers, not businesses. In other words, it's the users that determine the content, not the RIAA or Microsoft or the government, or anyone else for that matter. And that is exactly people like the RIAA are against. As long as users are providing "illegal" content, content protection systems won't work.

Could someone who's read and understands the whole article pipe in? I have a feeling I'm missing some key point, but I just don't buy into what these researchers are claiming.

P2P is really hard to stop.

[miffo.swe]

P2P cant be stopped, its not possible on an open internet. If they do, what prevents me from using other routes to get free music? Tunneling, encryption and so forth are possible routes P2P will take that will make it very hard to stop. Closed rings of P2P sharing with just friends is another.

The main reason that people seems so unwilling to pay is perhaps that much of todays music is no-risc-involved mainstream crap. Maybe if the music had some valye and if they stopped cramming two good songs in with 12 really crappy ones and call it an album. The fact that people seems to enjoy the ripping itself indicates that the industry has lost all contact with its customers.

Another thing is the lack of places to buy music online, whats up with that? Risk of content copying isnt an issue since it looks like thats very easy right now.

Stating the obvious...

[Dr.Seuss]

As an employee of GT College of Computing, I'd like to reiterate that Paul's opinions don't reflect those of many of us here.
Just like many other places in the world, we have dissenting opinions running around the office, too.

Censorship is never beneficial

[kenp2002]

Censorship is never beneficial. I warned that the DMCA could be used to prohibit access to free material (i.e. Adobe published Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" in a DRM format. Project Gutenberg is now violating the circumvention clause regardless of who came first. See the Analog section of the DMCA for details.) This is the second step in the progression to a new dark age... My suggestion is fight fire with fire. Use an encryption format on the next P2P application then, in the EULA state that you cannot use the software unless you are a Non-Corporate, Non-Government agency. If a company uses the app to spy the contents, they are in voliation of the EULA and you sue. If the hack the client they violate the DMCA by circumventing the encryption.

My 2 cents

(I spell crappy... I know... Shashdot needs a spell checker... ispell plugin anyone?)

Re:Censorship is never beneficial

[AntiNorm]

If a company uses the app to spy the contents, they are in voliation of the EULA and you sue

But then you'll set an EULAs-are-good legal precedent that M$ would just love to exploit...

Re:Censorship is never beneficial

[smiff]

in the EULA state that you cannot use the software unless you are a Non-Corporate, Non-Government agency.

That will stop the RIAA and MPAA for sure! Oh wait, they're both non-profit organizations.

Re:Censorship is never beneficial

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm hello. thats already set.

microsoft is now cramming their shady eula stuff into their hotfixes and not the os...

spend 500 bux on the shelf for a product that has a decent license get it home and have a whole bunch more restrictions tacked on when you goto update.

People should really return windows 2000 because thats within your legal right to do. The product promises updates and bugfix'es as a selling point. If you dont accept that eula in the update then you have a right to return the software. In fact its recommended.

So all those who bought xp and want their FULL cash back for 2k go ahead. That'll teach the ms upgrade whores.

Re:Censorship is never beneficial

[mobets]

Your kidding right? There is no way a group w/ enough money to buy congress is "non-profit."

Re:Censorship is never beneficial

[Baki]

At least it is beneficial to the 'researcher'. It is an interesting and challenging research topic, one must admit. And it gives good chance for generous grants from certain industries.

Every Time I read "Content" in this article

[dfenstrate]

I want to vomit a little more.

Maybe I'm young and naive, but it seems to me that the entire notion of "content" is offensive. Like the music or pr0n videos or what have you was simply items in a box, with no regard for what's inside.
Though I suppose you could fairly call Britney Spheres, Backdoor Boys, and We'Stync to be nothing more than worthless coporate content, I cannot equally call the 405 short, Mudhens, Indigo Girls, or a great number of other independant, thoughtful works "content."
It's their blood & sweat, not a packaged good.

The notion of content is what allows them to call copyright infringement "piracy", what makes them want to license every listening. The music/videos/whatever are cheap, taiwan-made products to be whored around as much as possible for the greatest profit.

What they're really exchanging is ideas, peoples feelings, and as Jefferson once said (paraphrasing) 'When I give an idea to you, I am not deprived of it's possesion, but we are both richer for it'

I'm not saying anything about the entire legality of it, or what I think of this paper (Gee, I didn't know academics were whoring themselves to the entertainment industry lately) but this talk of 'content' is cheapening to the work serious musicians, directors, and artists perform.

Just venting. thank you for yer time.

Re:Every Time I read "Content" in this article

[SteveX]

Once a musician signs with a label and agrees to have their stuff recorded and sold on little shiny plastic things, it becomes content. Musicians are never forced to do so, and you're never forced to buy it.

The record companies find musicians, pay for the production of their stuff, and then get it into stores worldwide. Unless the musicians were filthy stinking rich already, that probably wouldn't happen without the record companies. Many artists don't get rich off their music but it does pay the bills or supplement other income. Getting paid to play music and go on tour is a dream for a lot of people.

Yes, any musician can put their stuff on mp3.com and go play in local bars.. but unless your stuff is really, really good nobody's going to hear it. Really, who's going to notice yet another mp3. So you sign your rights over to the record company, they send you on tour, promote your music, get it on the radio, lots of people hear your music, and maybe you succeed and maybe you don't - but it's a chance you wouldn't have without them.

- Steve

Re:Every Time I read "Content" in this article

[Coriolis]

While I agree in general:

It's their blood & sweat, not a packaged good.

Oh, please, people. It's music. Communication in sonic form. It requires a degree of effort, and the best examples of it require serious effort and a thoughtful mind. It is not, however, the sodding Trail of Tears. These people are not heroes, not deities, and most of them, I challenge, are as deep as a rain puddle, along with the rest of humanity. Just because they can put average poetry to music, it doesn't make them a great philosopher.

A little perspective on both sides, please.

Re:Every Time I read "Content" in this article

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'm young and naive

There's no maybe about it.

Re:Every Time I read "Content" in this article

[Ooblek]

and most of them, I challenge, are as deep as a rain puddle

And as thick as a mud puddle.

Actually, the artists do the least amount of work of the whole process. I wouldn't exactly call sitting around in a green room watching TV, ordering all the sushi you can eat, and chain smoking joints work. This is what the majority of their time in the studio is. They sing into the mic for a bit, and then sit around while the producer and engineer mix it together. Then you can go into the whole marketing and distribution effort if you want. Point is, the artist doesn't exactly starve.

Re:Every Time I read "Content" in this article

[Saeger]

'When I give an idea to you, I am not deprived of it's possesion, but we are both richer for it'

<Devil's Advocate>
Some "ideas" cost over 100 million to produce, which is what the enforced legal fiction of a limited copyright is supposed to help incentivize.

But if that legal fiction isn't recognized by society (it doesn't seem to be), and it can't be enforced (*laugh*), then what? Well then artists will still create, but giants won't be able to produce "Oops!..I did it again", or The Lord of the Rings, or Waterworld... (unless a new form of compensation emerges like variations of Bruce Schneir's street performer protocol, or "communist" peer-production).

What a tragedy.
</Devil's Advocate>

--

I think it's a good idea... Think of shareware.

[javatips]

The problem with DRM that people see right now is that the big media cie want to use it to restrict the ability of the consumer to use the content he pay for.

However, DRM can be use in way not to restrict restict the consumer but to make him know that someone took time to create the content and may want to be rewarded for it's work.

Picture this. I create a song or a nice little movie. I want to distribute it but also it would be great that if people want it, that they can send me money.

So I put it on the DRMuttela network (a p2p network that implement some form of DRM). Now a consumer find the content I created. When (or while) he download the content, a small window appear with asking him to send me some $$$ if he likes it. Also whenever the file is played, the player check if the content has been payed for. If not and the nag threshold has been reached, then the small window appear again.

If the user decide to pay me some $$$ then I send him a key or whatever that will tell the DRM system not to nag the consumer anymore.

Note that the DRM system should allow the user to actually transfer the file to another format. (I know this can probably allow the user to bypass the DRM altogether. But transfered file can be stamped in some way so the author can know retrace the key that was used to transert the file to the other format - this will be a deterent to user that want to share the transfered file)

If the system is not too annoying, then most people will not try to bypass it.

This will be like most shareware we have today. You can download them freely and some will nag you from time to time so you buy the software if you use it.

I know that big media cie will not like a system like this because there is not enough control but the small label or independent artist will see great advantage in such system.

Re:I think it's a good idea... Think of shareware.

[Lumpy]

and that is the problem with most shareware today.

I have at least 5-10 apps that I paid for that are MINE and I cannot use because the moron-over-greedy programmer wrote it for a special key that changes each time. well now he is long-gone and I haveto scour warez and crack sites looking for either a keygen or a crack for that program.

Many many of us got burned by shareware and the overzealous control of the programmers. and those of us that got burned made sure we told many many others that we got burned. and Thus... shareware dies... It is nothing like it was in the 80's only a faded shadow of it's former self. because of their damned DRM they wrote into it.

Microsoft is doing the same now (Funny how shareware programmers were ahead of microsoft in this innovation) and starting to annoy their customers..

Now you want me to have to track you down every time I buy a new computer, reload the OS (if I'm a windows user... that's required almost yearly) or have to deal with hard drive failures? No thank you.

I will be one of them that will happily download a crack to completely defeat your protection so that my purchase stay's exactly that... a purchase and not the rental that many want it to be. I bought your song "balls on fire" and I demand the right to still have and play that song in 30 years.

Re:I think it's a good idea... Think of shareware.

[SN74S181]

I have a variety of shareware for some of my machines. Some of it is 'unlocked' by keys provided by the vendor. None of it, that I am aware of, has 'expiration' built into the keys.

When I register the shareware, I take care to keep ahold of the key, and burn it all onto a CD that has all my 'Registered shareware' on it.

Maybe you're using some other kinds of shareware than I am, but from my point of view, you're spreading FUD, because I've never had the problem you describe.

Re:I think it's a good idea... Think of shareware.

[kz45]

I have at least 5-10 apps that I paid for that are MINE and I cannot use because the moron-over-greedy programmer wrote it for a special key that changes each time. well now he is long-gone and I haveto scour warez and crack sites looking for either a keygen or a crack for that program.

programmers build keys like this into their programs, so they don't get fucked out of the hard earned money, that they deserve. Many companies hire programmers to do a job, and after they have the program in their possession, decide to pay only half the original amount, or none at all. This ensures that if the programmer doesn't get paid, the company doesn't use his program.

Re:I think it's a good idea... Think of shareware.

[Anonymous Coward]

so it's all right for the programmer to FUCK the end users then?

Hey, if you feel that way, let me encrypt your entire hard drive and then I'll send you the key. and every time you change something in your hardware or copy a file to another machine or burn a CD you have to ask me for another KEY.

would you like that? you sound like it would be heaven to you.

Re:I think it's a good idea... Think of shareware.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not talking about timed keys. take your install. get your Key for proFTP.

buy a new computer and try to install proFTP with that key you got.... Oh look it dont work... you have to call for a new key.

that is what I am talking about.

what do I do in 5 years when they are gone?
Like my copy of CeDOS... the developer disappeared.. and I cannot re-install without getting a new key generated.

Re:I think it's a good idea... Think of shareware.

[SN74S181]

I categorically refuse to register shareware that has fingerprinted keys like that. If it requires me to email back a bit of binary info about my equipment for them to generate the key, I look elsewhere.

I favor shareware that generates it's key from my name or email address. And there's a lot of it out there. Good stuff, like TextPad and Cool Edit.

Re:I think it's a good idea... Think of shareware.

[Anonymous Coward]

so it's all right for the programmer to FUCK the end users then?

No. You are fighting straw men. If you don't want to address his argument, by all means, lock yourself in a closet and debunk your own lame strawman arguments.

Re:I think it's a good idea... Think of shareware.

[kz45]

so it's all right for the programmer to FUCK the end users then?

you dumbshit, you really don't get it, do you?

Hey, if you feel that way, let me encrypt your entire hard drive and then I'll send you the key. and every time you change something in your hardware or copy a file to another machine or burn a CD you have to ask me for another KEY.

this is totally off-topic. Sounds like you don't know wht the fuck you are even talking about

would you like that? you sound like it would be heaven to you

heaven to me is getting paid for the hard work I have performed.

Here comes the /. effect...

[tuxedo-steve]

... have created a content protection system that is a plug-in for LimeWire/Gnutella...

Gee, I bet P2P users have been really hanging out for that one. Somebody post a list of mirrors, 'coz I bet the main site's going to get hammered.

Shhyeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt. :)

Re:YES! I've been looking for one of these!

[mccalli]

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door

Well, unless you happen to be a mouse of course. The mice will run the other way.

I leave it to the reader to decide if they are inventor or mouse in a DRM situation.

Cheers,
Ian

peeves and rants

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys publish something on the web, and they use a pdf instead of html, and I'm supposed to think they know what they're talking about?

The web is not paper. Preformatting the text (especially the stupid two-column thing) instead of letting the browser format it, can only make it less convenient to read.

So now, before I've even started reading their explanations, I'm already biased against them, because they've already shown major cluelessness in issues of technology, convenience, flexibility, and user-friendliness -- exactly the issues that come up within the context DRM. Before I even start reading, they have already taken a hardline pro-DRM stand, but without putting force any actual arguments, just pure grunting and assertion. Way to convince people, guys.

These people use the word "utilize" instead of "use." "Utilize" is a pretty reliable indicator of blowhards who have nothing to say but want to look sophisticated.

Oh, look... One of their arguments in favor of DRM is that Napster won't be allowed to reopen until they implement DRM. Therefore, DRM is good. Clever of you to leave out the other half of the story, which would expose that this is actually a circular argument. (DRM is good because DRM is good.)

Is the rest of the paper this bad? I have to admit I stopped reading after a while.

I'm unimpressed

[HerbieStone]

It's an interesting read if you want to know how to build a DRM on top of an existing P2P Network. But the author doesn't go into the problems of what happens after the transmission is done.

I'm unimpressed.

Until now, it's either:

• Big Brother on our computer or,
• fighting back protection systems and be your own judge was is good and fair.

I don't see how the current power mongers with their lobby-money will ever create a system with is ok for everyone.

"We argue... we argue... we argue..."

[dpbsmith]

Go ahead, argue all you like. White is still white, black is still black, two and two still make four.

"We argue that the lack of content protection is currently hindering the introduction of richer content systems." Yeah, right... and here I thought the INTRODUCTION of Napster and AudioGalaxy had been VERY successful.

"Content owners will not make content available in the variety, quantity, and format that users want until adequate protection measures are in place." Bullpuckey. I own a Rocket eBook (= REB1100) which has hardware-based DRM locked to a serial number in the device. When I go on a trip I like to load it up with nice easy-reading current mainstream books. And, you know what? They're mostly not available. Never have been, even before the whole eBook scene died. I recently did a check--of about 44 titles on Oprah's book club, which I think is a good test since they're good books, widely distributed, have been out long enough to give plenty of time for conversion, etc.

In eBook format, with good DRM, about 6 titles are available.

In audiobook (cassette tape) format--with no DRM, and a much more expensive production process, about 35 titles are available.

So don't tell me that DRM will increase the choices available to me. It exists, and it doesn't.

Indeed, one of the whole premises behind the Rocket eBook/REB1100 was good hardware-based DRM. Why did it fail? It was (and is) a pretty good device from a techical, UI, and product point of view. The screen is a lot more pleasant to read than a Palm; it's a lot more portable than a laptop; I can settle in and have a fine "immersive" reading experience with it.

It failed BECAUSE of a) lack of content--I have more choice in the average airport bookstore than I do in the online "bookstore" for my device; b) overpriced content; and, c) BECAUSE of DRM.

Re:"We argue... we argue... we argue..."

[Intrinsic]

Yep, you are correct, I read ebooks on my pocket pc and the only ebook sites that seem to be making good money are the ones that sell ebooks with no restrictions.
Like Fictionwize, ext.

The media industry is living in a dream world, and there about to realize their death in a few short years I think.

Did anybody mirror the paper?

[hargettp]

Just hit the link and it's gone. Only a page indicating that the paper was not yet ready for public consumption.

Even though I suspect I would disagree with the argument that DRM can be beneficial for the end-user, I liked that someone wanted to "play nicely" by using open source.

Judging by the tone of most postings so far, I'm guessing nobody else read it either. Pity, because there could have been an intelligent discussion about this paper.

Re:Did anybody mirror the paper?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I mirrored the paper on my LimeWire.

Re:Did anybody mirror the paper?

[leuk_he]

(Me too.)

Although it seems quite risky to mirror something that was meant to be about right management.

I would be interrested in a system that would in a way distribute content and restrict it at the same time.

Re:Frankly, I don't give a damn.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm able to manage my own data thanks. I do not need restrictions on my own PC to do this for me.

What if its against my religious beliefs?

[HanzoSan]

What if my religion or my spirtual beliefs say that we should share all information?

There is a law, which specifically says that your religious beliefs come first.

Even if it werent an openGNU religious kinda thing as it might be for me, Its still very difficult to prove to anyone who has any morals, that sharing is bad.

People who want to buy a CD to support a musician, thats just fine, they will do that even if they own the Mp3s, to support the musician, The musician could sell mp3s and or CDs at their concerts and everyone would buy them.

The RIAA and MPAA however want to continue to be th e middleman. I'm not going to pay the middleman, I want to pay directly to a musician, Musicians should sell their own Mp3s directly to their fans via the web, peer to peer, and at concerts.

I agree peer to peer should allow us to pay if we CHOOSE to pay, If i listen to a song I like i should be able to push a button, and 25 cents should go DIRECTLY to the musician who made that song, no RIAA, no middleman, DIRECT payment via paypal or some other system not built yet.

We should choose what Music should be paid for, and what shouldnt. If Musicians dont want us listening to their music, they shouldnt release it to the public. If they release it to the public, its not their RIGHT as a musician to get us to buy every single thing they release, we should buy only what we want.

Thats how alot of other industries work, you try it, and then you buy it, or you pay the creator for the service and then they release their songs.

Re:What if its against my religious beliefs?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if my religion or my spirtual beliefs say that we should share all information?

There is a law, which specifically says that your religious beliefs come first.

And my religion says I should kill every third person I see on the street.

I don't think it takes a whole lot of thought to realize that there are restrictions here.

Re:What if its against my religious beliefs?

[American AC in Paris]

I agree peer to peer should allow us to pay if we CHOOSE to pay, If i listen to a song I like i should be able to push a button, and 25 cents should go DIRECTLY to the musician who made that song, no RIAA, no middleman, DIRECT payment via paypal or some other system not built yet.

Umm...dude? Paypal is -- wait for it -- a third party. Some Other System Not Built Yet, unless either you or the artist in question ran it personally, would also be a third party system.

Since you want your push-button system that can deliver twenty-five cents on demand to whichever artist you choose, you'll probably want to build and maintain it yourself. You may want to consider using a Very Large Quarter Catapult, a Good Pair of Running Shoes, or even possibly an Envelope Bearing The Artist's Name And Address With Proper Postage And A Check Enclosed Which You Then Carry All The Way To A Mailbox, You Lazy Cretin.

Wait, no, that last one would go through a third party. My bad.

Re:What if its against my religious beliefs?

[Winterblink]

I agree peer to peer should allow us to pay if we CHOOSE to pay, If i listen to a song I like i should be able to push a button, and 25 cents should go DIRECTLY to the musician who made that song, no RIAA, no middleman, DIRECT payment via paypal or some other system not built yet.

And why hasn't that been built yet? Because it costs time and money to build things, and a company is not going to do it for free. Are you? Who's going to pay for the bandwidth required to handle all those little transactions, since none of that 25 cents is going to pay for it and SOMEONE has to host the transaction service you're connecting to? You're asking for someone to BE a middleman, but to get nothing out of it except feeling good about itself, and that's not the way the world works.

I agree with the principle of what you're saying, but it doesn't apply to the peer-to-peer world, in my opinion. I also like the idea of paying money direct to the musician for say downloads of MP3s from their site. If I knew my money would be going straight into their pockets I'd definitely jump on that bandwagon. The problem is, the system and its infrastructure is not built yet, and to do that takes time and money as I've said before. People normally don't like to work for free. :)

Re:What if its against my religious beliefs?

[sithlord2]

What if my religion or my spirtual beliefs say that we should share all information?
There is a law, which specifically says that your religious beliefs come first.

What if my religion says that I don't have to go to school or do my homework ?
What if my religion considers math as an "instrument of the devil" ?
What if my religion says that I must kill all people that I don't like ??

nonetheless, nice try... ;-)

Re:What if its against my religious beliefs?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Musicians dont want us listening to their music, they shouldnt release it to the public. If they release it to the public, its not their RIGHT as a musician to get us to buy every single thing they release, we should buy only what we want.

An interesting point that has apparently not occurred to you: few musicians release their work to the public. Look at your CDs...you'll see they're essentially licenses for you to listen to the music and that they restrict you from duplicating. Radio/TV broadcasts carries the same restrictions. Just because you have a physical piece of, or even just a digital representation of that music does not necessarily mean you own it to do with as you please. Do you own a rental car?

Musicians have, generally, realized that voluntary payments equate to no payments. They are forced by the natural limitation of resources to hold their music hostage in exchange for a few dollars from their fans. The media companies take a big chunk of that ransom, but so would any similarly large distribution system capable of returning a living wage to the artist.

Re:What if its against my religious beliefs?

[yerricde]

What if my religion says that I don't have to go to school or do my homework ?

In most US states, the Amish can drop out of school after finishing eighth grade.

Re:What if its against my religious beliefs?

[HanzoSan]

IF people can build gnutella they can build this, its only a matter of time. Currently the Gnutella builders are too busy fighting the RIAA and MPAA to build something like this. I think Mp3.com was a nice effort.

Re:What if its against my religious beliefs?

[HanzoSan]

So how do artists get paid?

How do concerts end up sold out?

Re:What if its against my religious beliefs?

[br0ken by design]

What if my religion says that I must kill all people that I don't like ??

You fly airplanes into buildings, of course.

:wq

Re:What if its against my religious beliefs?

[elflord]

So how do artists get paid? How do concerts end up sold out?

I don't understand your point, but you didn't address his. The fact that you can buy a musicians CD is NOT the same as the music being "released to the public". If your religion requires you to break the law, then you're welcome to say your prayers in the comfort of your countries prison system (-;

Good faith effort

[rushiferu]

Maybe it's just an attempt to create "secure" file sharing networks to help keep the government from mucking around in the situation. I don't think anyone believes a plug-in will be the end all solution, but if people can show they are trying in good faith to fix the "problem" (whatever the problem may be) then it will be easier to keep poorly constructed DRM bills from being shat out by Congress.

P2P for the enterprise

[asv108]

Whether you like it or not, DRM is the first step for implementing P2P in commercial and academic environments. At the university I work for, we are working on a P2P network for faculty and students to share ACADEMIC materials. To prevent unauthorized uses such as pr0n and mp3 sharing we decided just to have the userids of the original poster and all the sharers travel with the file throughout the network. As far as rights management is concerned, we decided that a very basic form which uses kerb to check if a userid is a student, faculty, or department member.

I realize there are a lot of posts here like "WTF, who would install such a plugin?" People need to look past P2P as just Internet file sharing. There are many uses for P2P in office networks, academic networks, and with wireless pdas, laptops, tablets, etc..

Re:P2P for the enterprise

[shnarez]

Here's how you have people share ACADEMIC materials: if it's papers, then start an OFFICIAL publications page. For each department. See as an example any "tech reports" section of any CS website of any research-oriented university.

If it's project files, then each project should have a website and enough webspace to provide that content to all interested people with a WEB BROWSER, not more unnecessary software.

Finally, if you just use a distributed file system such as AFS which is in use at MANY universities, people can just say: read /afs/uni/~user/public/file.pdf and it's that simple!

No need for P2P, V2Z, or any other buzzwords. No need to restrict porn, mp3, people post it under their accounts, and not anonymously!! They're responsible for what appears under their account.

useless plugin.

[Lumpy]

What is this going to do? stop gnutella clients from downloading a file tagged as "evil to download" so fricking what.. I have the source and I create a plugin that will "say yes to everything" and completely bypass this.

If it is going to do decryption so you can recieve a good file from an allowed source I dont see the point. All it will take is one person to get a good file and re-share it.

If they want to do DRM they HAVE to do it at the player and that will only annoy people not stop them. The best examples are the "protected CD's" defeated with a 95 cent magic marker.. it stopped nobody from ripping that CD and was easily defeated for all to enjoy.

they need to give up as the people that want the music/media will always win.

Re:useless plugin.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this going to do? stop gnutella clients from downloading a file tagged as "evil to download"

No. It will permit you to decode an encrypted file you could have downloaded anyway.

Protect me from myself, GTIS

[no_choice]

You know, I had some doubts, but after taking a look at their Steering Committee, I have all the confidence in the world that these people should control what I watch and listen to on my computer.

On the same note

[dfenstrate]

It seems as though Sony's Pressplay service has been smacked with a clue bat.
Not to say they have everything right, but "THE NEW VERSION, set to launch Thursday, will add to the flexibility of the subscription service by allowing unlimited song listening, as well as more compact-disc burning and permanent downloads that consumers can keep even after their subscriptions run out."

They're offering different levels of service depending on how much you pay (makes sense), but it looks like a step in the logical direction.
Company Website

Absolutely nothing new here.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is equivalent to distributing encrypted files and using a dedicated player which checks access control rights. Of course you can distribute such files via P2P.

Of course, it also has all the drawbacks of previous systems in that tokens and keys must be either tied to the hardware to prevent copying, OR the application must query a remote site each time for verification and obtain an unlock key.

Finally the app must be tied to a "trusted" OS (non-free), or the digital content is easily snatched via pseudo-drivers.

No thanks. I like my general purpose computer.

File Sharing and Religion

[HanzoSan]

What if sharing is a central part of my religious beliefs? Lets look at what the constitution says

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that everyone in the United States has the right to practice his or her own religion, or no religion at all.

Oh so I have the right to practice my religious beliefs, which say I should share whenever it doesnt remove anything from me or anyone else. So why the hell shouldnt I share my files? Its not taking anything away from me or anyone else, its giving to someone who didnt have before

Our country's founders -- who were of different religious backgrounds themselves -- knew the best way to protect religious liberty was to keep the government out of religion. So they created the First Amendment -- to guarantee the separation of church and state. This fundamental freedom is a major reason why the U.S. has managed to avoid a lot of the religious conflicts that have torn so many other nations apart.

This should mean, that the government has no right to create laws which restrict our freedom to decide for ourselves if we want to share or not. We should NOT have a SSSCA or any kinda law like this preventing us from sharing, it should be our choice, and the constitution says so.


The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits government from encouraging or promoting ("establishing") religion in any way. That's why we don't have an official religion of the United States. This means that the government may not give financial support to any religion. That's why many school voucher programs violate the Establishment Clause -- because they give taxpayers' money to schools that promote religion.


This means the government CANNOT claim file sharing is wrong, and that I am stealing, because its promoting the beliefs of big media companies, who is the government supposed to be representing here? Them or Me? Instead the government should allow the people to decide, and tell the media companies to stop complaining and spend their money to fix their problem instead of trying to use our tax dollars without us even agreeing to it.


The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment gives you the right to worship or not as you choose. The government can't penalize you because of your religious beliefs.


This says that I cannot be locked up in jail for sharing information, because if my religion beliefs that the whole purpose of life is to share information, it kinda goes against my whole belief system to be forced to not share.

Look I understand some information cannot be shared, information which directly harms other people should not be shared, such as some top secret government information where millions of lives might be in danger.

However, sharing music isnt harming anyone, in fact its helping many people, music makes people happy, why am I not allowed to share happiness with others?

Its a nice try for them to call it stealing, but stealing is only wrong when it harms other people, if stealing helps everyone and harms no one, calling me a theif is just like calling me a hero.

Re:File Sharing and Religion

[Jonsey]

The First Amendment does not allow absoloute freedom of religion, what is does grant is that provided your excercize of the First Amendment does not infringe on other's abilities to excercize the First Amendment, the government is not supposed to stop you.

Take human sacrifices for an example, replace stealing with killing in your arguement. The government will run you up the flagpole for it, because it too is illegal. Or, to view it by my method, your killing of that person infringes on their First Amendment rights.

It's the same view I have on many things, including sexual practices. People should be allowed to do what they want, provided it doesn't infringe on or impair someone else's ability to do so. I don't wanna be tied up, so don't tie me up.

Nice try on the arguement, but it really doesn't hold that much water

- Jones

Re:File Sharing and Religion

[kalidasa]

What if sharing is a central part of my religious beliefs? Lets look at what the constitution says ... [snip]
However, sharing music isnt harming anyone, in fact its helping many people, music makes people happy, why am I not allowed to share happiness with others?
Its a nice try for them to call it stealing, but stealing is only wrong when it harms other people, if stealing helps everyone and harms no one, calling me a theif is just like calling me a hero.

This is nonsense.

1. Stealing content does, theoretically, hurt people. Now, usually that "hurt" involves a giant nameless, faceless corporation, but it is, technically, still financial harm. And sometimes the owner of content is a little guy. Let's look at it this way: suppose you had a small band, and you made 2,000 cds of your work. Now, imagine that somebody from Warner Brothers sees you at a club and likes your stuff, wants to sell copies of your record. Would it be ok by you if he took one of those 2,000 cds, made 1,000,000 copies of it, slapped a Warner Bros. label on it and sold them all without giving you a dime? Obviously not. That's stealing from you (we'll ignore for a moment the issue of whether or not many of the record labels give the artists so little compensation that they might as well be stealing, since that's not quite but almost stealing). You'd be harmed. Your only recourse is to sue, under the copyright law.

2. The establishment cause doesn't cover the situation you describe. If your religious practice includes a behavior that is not necessarily part of your religious practice (i.e., that could be engaged in by others for other reasons) and is illegal under a US law which was passed to cover the behavior as such, rather than in the context of religious observance, the law is not in violation of the establishment clause. That's what stops you from just saying "hey, killing people is part of my religion, so it must be ok for me to kill people.

IANAL, but God knows the quoted poster sure as hell isn't one either.

Re:File Sharing and Religion

[Dun Malg]

What if sharing is a central part of my religious beliefs?

Unfortunately, this line of argument won't fly. The right to freely practice one's religion is generally interpretted as meaning "free to practice, so long as the rights of others are not infringed". This is why things such as female circumcision, slaying infidels, and burning witches are currently prohibitted whether they are part of your religious beliefs or not. Copyright law is-- as the name implies-- law, and the Feds don't freely grant exceptions based on religious beliefs. Heck, just look at the fit the DEA threw over a bunch of native americans using peyote in religious ceremonies; they weren't infringing upon others' rights and they had to fight like the dickens in order to get the Feds off their backs. No, I'm afraid the "religious practice" angle will never work for anything other than actually practicing religions-- which is as it should be. Finding loopholes isn't the answer. Reforming the law is.

Re:File Sharing and Religion

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a typical American double standard at work here.

This is why things such as female circumcision, slaying infidels, and burning witches are currently prohibitted whether they are part of your religious beliefs or not.

And yet male circumcision (aka genital mutilation) is legal, despite the known health problems but polygamy (which hurts nobody) is illegal. Go figure.

Show Me The Money

[limekiller4]

First, let me say that what I'm about to show might be entirely common among colleges, not just the Georgia Institute of Technology. But whenever I see some academic group pushing something that is inexorably linked to commercial interests, I start looking for a money trail.

EPICS, Georgia Tech Receives Software Grant to Improve Retention For Minority Students (2000)
This year, they'll have even more to celebrate, as Microsoft Research's University Relations Group announces a grant that will put "bundles" of its latest software and publications in the hands of 1,000 underrepresented students over the next two years.

EPICS, Microsoft Partnership Donates Software to Hands On Atlanta (date unknown)
"Thanks to the partnership of the nationally based Engineering Projects In Community Service (EPICS) and Microsoft Corporation, a generous software gift was recently donated to HOA. This software, Microsoft Project 2000, will allow the organization to implement a system to improve its special events planning. "

Microsoft Exec to Address Georgia Tech Grads (1999)
Deborah Willingham, vice president of Microsoft Corporation's Business and Enterprise Division Marketing, will address Georgia Institute of Technology's 205th Commencement ceremony on Saturday, December 18.

Microsoft grant gives OMED another reason to celebrate at Tower Awards(date unknown)
This year, adding to the excitement, Microsoft Research's University Relations Group announced a grant that will put "bundles" of its latest software and publications in the hands of 1,000 underrepresented [Georgia Tech] students over the next two years.

This was just a quick check on Google.

Again, there might not be a cookie jar that Microsoft doesn't have their fist in, but it might be nice to know.

Re:Show Me The Money

[Rayonic]

So that's Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft, and... Microsoft. But Microsoft has nothing to do with this article, IIRC.

Sure, they're also mucking around with DRM, but that's it. Oh, and there is a Limewire port for Windows. Ah-ha! Now I see their sinister claws in this matter.

Re:Show Me The Money

[limekiller4]

I would have done a far more exhaustive search on the entertainment industry, probably Seagram in particular since they tend to be politically active, but I have to get this code out tha door, the girlfriend is coming over and I have my own project to deal with (if I'm lucky).

So I guess what I'm saying is you're right, I just figured they would be the most obvious marker of monetary influence that I could track down in 10 minutes.

Re:Show Me The Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft gives its software to just about any student who will take it. There's nothing particularly ominous going on here, at least by GIT. It's just that MS can take a whopping tax write-off by donating $2k/copy software packages to people who would never buy them, at a cost to themselves of maybe $10/copy, mostly budgeted for press releases and filling in the tax forms.

Re:Show Me The Money

[limekiller4]

My question, and it's not one I've come to a conclusion on (for lack of facts all-around) is "does this buy them influence with the academics."

That's all.

Re:Show Me The Money

[ProtonMotiveForce]

Umm, what? Why would you think Microsoft would be interested in this technology? They've got their own effort going.

Is it some primitive minded linking of what you consider an evil entitity and an evil idea (the right of artists to make money from their work).

Commie.

Re:Show Me The Money

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a student from Georgia Tech and what I don't think you realize is corporations *donate* much of the money we use to do research. However, they don't really restrict us one what we research with it giving it to one of our research institutes. Coca-cola donates us money and it's not like they tell us to research into why coke is better than pepsi. The Georgia Tech Information Security Center was established a long time ago to research exactly what it describes in it's name. There should be no suprise it comes out with a paper like this. Ultimately, if Microsoft wanted something like this, they wouldn't need to donate money to a university to find it. They have plenty of developers in Redmond. You also act like Georgia Tech supports Microsoft software because of this. Georgia Tech officially does not support any platform. Hell, in my CS class they wanted us all to learn emacs and even devoted lab time for us to learn it. The only people who use Microsoft software that they give out are the liberal arts majors because there's no way a CS or engineering student here could pass a class using only microsoft software.

Re:Show Me The Money

[limekiller4]

ProtonMotiveForce writes:
Umm, what? Why would you think Microsoft would be interested in this technology? They've got their own effort going.

Agreed, but Microsoft has a very big interest in shifting public opinion against fair use, regardless of whose implementation is being presented. By this you're suggesting that Microsoft would feel threatened by opposition, but they're quite capable of embracing and extending whatever market/technology they'd like to dominate.

Is it some primitive minded linking of what you consider an evil entitity and an evil idea (the right of artists to make money from their work).

Clearly, not a lot of thought or depth was put into it -- it wasn't intended to draw a conclusion, my apologies if it was presented that way. My motive was more to have people consider what may or may not be behind the conclusion the academics came to. For all I know it's sincere and didn't have an ounce of coersion behind it. That's why we look.

I'm a programmer myself, and while I used to take the hardline, "information wants to be free," stance, reality has sorta stepped in and slapped me around a bit. My opinion now is a bit closer to the idea of immenent domain -- if the idea you have is of significant public good, the government should have the ability to offer you a fair market value for that idea. But this has all sorts of problems and I'm quite aware of it. Thorny situation. I'd just hate to have someone come up with a super new formula for rubber that could cleanse 3rd world water supplies effortlessly, negate gravity and yes, you could beowulf it, but some schmed is charging $2B/oz.

Commie.

Why, thank you. =)

Re:Show Me The Money

[limekiller4]

Rather than repeat myself (most of your points I agree with), check out this reply.

Re:Frankly, I don't give a damn.

[JoeBlows]

ummmm...I don't think that to the copyright holder, you can be considered responsable.

people like you have some odd thought that you have a moral right to this stuff.....you don't.

if you buy a copy, then you have the right to have an unencumbered MP3 or any other format or media that you wish to shift it to. however, folks on lime wire are stealing......I think this is a good balence between the government taking away all my rights and stoping illegal activities.

Publicity, not technology

[joeljkp]

This problem of piracy and copyright infringement is going to need a publicity solution, not a technological one. We don't stop murders by trying to make it technically impossible to kill somebody. We promote values that lead people to believe that it's a wrong thing to do, and we punish severely those that do it.

It won't be until the majority of the public feels that copyright infringement is wrong that it will be reduced. Either that, or actual enforcement of laws regarding it.

Trying to technically prevent it is just not going to work. There will always be a way around it, and those who support such measures will become terribly unpopular.

Re:Publicity, not technology

[SirSlud]

You are absolutely right.

The corralary is when you place values, responsibility and accountability in the hands of technology, you free up people (or the collective social conciousness) from having to adhere to said behaviour.

There is a subconcious belief these days that *if* you can do (get away with) something, it must be OK .. I mean, if somebody *really* cared, they'd find a way of preventing your action(s) technologically, right?

Copyright Really Is Against Some Religious Beliefs

[FreeUser]

What if my religion or my spirtual beliefs say that we should share all information?

That isn't as far fetched as it sounds. Islam believes all knowledge comes from God, and apparently the most respected, leading islamic intellectuals believe that the entire concept of intellectual property is against islam and against God. Not the government appointed lackey in Saudi Arabia, mind you, who will echo whatever values and opinions the government tells him to, but the leadership to whom the rest of the population listens.

Personally, I'm an athiest and find religions of pretty much every bent (Buddhism perhaps excepted) obsolete in the extreme, but this goes to show you that politics can make for strange bedfellows, and that if freedom of speech AND freedom of religion truly are paramount, then Copy Restrictions and Intellectual Property must lose.

Unfortunately, I think the reality is quite different. We can pay lipservice to the constitution, to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, etc. ... just so long as it doesn't get in the way of the entrenched oligarchs collecting and hoarding even more of our hard earned dollars.

Hell, they just got done pilfering the life savings of the entire middle class of this country, and aside from a few sacrificial, symbolic arrests nothing fundamental is being changed or repaired. In any other country, where the populace isn't as well trained and conditioned into submission, this would be the stuff of revolutions. Not here in the US, though...gotta worry about them nasty terrorists instead (who have killed less than 1/10th as many people as common car accidents have within the last year).

Removed

[Winterblink]

Apparently the paper's been removed, so the link's invalid now. I'd ask for a mirror, but the message that came back from the link states that the paper's not meant to be distributed. :( Sounded like it might have been a good read.

Georgia Tech...

[Anonymous Coward]

Paper taken down because people were reading and criticizing it?

The University of Wisconsin has a brass plaque that says "Whatever else may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the Great State University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found."

Other state universities might do well do emulate this.

Re:Georgia Tech...

[Anonymous Coward]

univ of wisconsin is ........ cheesy

for the smart and the stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm a phd student at Univ of Cal. so let me offer some insight. first of all, the paper was probably under copyright from some journal so the author is not supposed to distribute it. it looks like someone mistakingly submitted this.

second of all, i read the paper before it was removed. it is one of the freshest breaths of thought that i've seen in academic research. it seems that the authors are saying that you shouldn't think about p2p as file-swapping but as a new superdistribution platform. now if you give everyone in the world the ability to use this platform and control how their content is accessed, then you can harness the true potential of p2p. some of you can't see this because you're too scared you're going to have to spend $15 to buy your music from now on. basically, you can get the future because you're clinging on to the past. its like people that didn't want dvds because they were complaining that they couldn't record movies anymore. think about it.

Some Possible Danger Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Using the existence of this new p2p DRM technology as a stepping stone, the industry lobbies United States Congress to mandate its use in all p2p applications. The industry sends special test files across the system to detrmine who has a valid p2p applications running. If your system does not respond correctly by being able to download a DRM marked file your ISP must ban you for violating federal law. Easy to do easy to test.

Re:I dont'

[Anonymous Coward]

thats far more annoying then anything the drm whores want.

nagware doesnt work. its as simple as that. If you're gonna release a fully functional trial you're simply not going to sell it.

Personally I release limited functionality compiles of my applications and sell the more-complex versions.

My stuff is not mainstream enough to make it onto the 0-day etc sites and I can shut down anyone who reposts it online if it gets index by a major search engine.

drm for music isnt needed. online mp3s SELL good cd's. the drm screwballs just want to be able to peddle their shitty sugar-pop crap to the masses and its stupid. What self respecting person would go in and buy a britney spears cd. Not I.

On the other hand if you find good bands like vertical horizon/rhcp (in the mainstream stuff) that actually put a cd together that you can listen from start to finnish and not have to skip over tracks due to sheer disgust at some of the crap.

Then there's the issue of DSP. Britney spears sounds like a horse yet shes the most popular single female singer...all you need is 4 things to be popular in the mainstream now.

fake tits
acting slutty to capture the male pin-up audience
a ton of DSP's (like the ones from ivl)
and MONEY to buy you billboard/chart spots!

if you have those you will be a hit guaranteed.

Give me some non-enhanced real music with real vocals and i'll buy your cd if you actually have talent.

What happened to everclear, u2(joshua tree era), verve pipe etc. Real freakin music.

and rap and r&b is just as bad these days. Sean combs and bad boy and the others are all computer-enhanced sellouts while they call themselves legit n shit. Forshame.

then theres the business side.

britney spears is manufactured even tho they tryed to hide that a bit. But now its popular to be out and in the open as a manufactured band. I mean we all know bsb was but least their not out there sayin look how horrible we are just making music to be famous and make a shitload of money.

making the band and popstars and now american idol. That crap makes me sick.

Bands like swolen members (while i dont like their music much) at least have their business together... they'd be making music if they werent gettin paid. They visit small towns and do 'real' performances. Self-marketed and laughin all the way. What happened to this. I dont see these guys bitchin about needin drm or worrying about cd sales.

MONEY IS NOT THE REASON TO BE AN ARTIST!

every great artist has been poor. and that goes as far back as several millenia.

so long as they do what they like and make money in the order of the rest of us working stiffs i think thats more than fair and i'd be plenty willing to buy a cd i liked from a group like that. I wont buy the mainstream stuff EVEN if i like it. I dont feel for the companies and Im not about to give sean combs or whoever the president of sony music is any more freakin money.

Affecting cover bands is beneficial

[yerricde]

You could profile the music and make a "Tolerance Level" where the song would just have to be close

And this is what commercially available audio fingerprinting solutions do.

but would that affect cover bands?

Why would that be a bad thing? When a fellow pirates a song, he breaks two copyrights: the copyright on the recording and the copyright on the underlying song. The original recording and a recording by a cover band are covered under the same copyright on the same musical work by the same songwriter.

BUT:

Pretty soon, songwriters will have the entire space of Western music covered with copyright. There exist only a limited number of notes in a chromatic scale (namely twelve) and a limited number of possible melodies of a finite length, and sooner or later, they'll all be used up. This is why you must petition your legislators to repeal copyright term extensions.

Copyrights and patents in the US Constitution

[yerricde]

Finally, I don't think you'll find much mention of the IP issues in the [U.S.] Constitution.

From Article 1, Section 8: "The Congress shall have power ... to promote the progress of science [i.e. literature] and useful arts [i.e. technology], by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their writings and discoveries."

From Amendment 1: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

Interpret these as you will.

Re:Copyrights and patents in the US Constitution

[splanky]

>Interpret these as you will. Pretty easy interpretation - I was totally wrong! Too bad those consitutional writers aren't still around to help us with a reasonable solution to the IP problems of today.

Re:Copyrights and patents in the US Constitution

[HanzoSan]

Exclusive right to SELL.

Not right to control distribution.

MOD PARENT UP!!! (+1, Funny)

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, guys... look at the damn page.

Not on my pc..

[nurb432]

Watch that EULA too and what rights you just gave the people that you get the DRM module from..

Regardless of 'pirating','terrorism', 'hacker protection', 'homeland security' or what ever other excuse they use to invade my privacy and reduce my GOD given rights ( ever read the bill of rights people? ), its MY pc and they are not welcome to my data. Period.

Pry it from my cold .....

I'd add one other condition...

[dpilot]

All DRM-enabled systems must be able to play non-DRM content. ee: The Public Domain must not be excluded!

One more thing, and I need to understand TCPA better to know if this is the case, or not. In content creation and modification tools, there must be general recognition that the tool producer is not the copyright owner. The copyright owner must always be able to:
1 - Remove the copyright/DRM from the data and place it in the Public Domain.
2 - Extract the content from the tool, in order to exercise the Free Market right to select a different tool.

Still one more thing that's missing from any DRM I've ever heard of - Copyright expiration. Even with the perversion of the Constitution known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, the copyright expires. A quick google of "trusted time service" shows that there is indeed a supply that could be used as a trustworthy means of copyright expiration. Lest we be tempted to say, "This media won't last long enough for the copyright to expire," remember the two-digit date fields that gave us Y2K.

Yet one more thing is posterity. We're taking an important slice of history and locking it away. IMHO every piece of DRM media should include a clear-text description of how it may be cracked in the future. Sounds silly, but I mean something like "brute-force factor these 2048-bit keys" that we can't do readily today, but future archaeologists who can read the CD/DVD should.

Insightful???

[DragonMagic]

Why is this insightful? Geez, it's saddening to keep seeing people on slashdot get karma from saying that copyright infringement and copyright violations are *NOT* theft.

Well, then, what is theft? Do you assume that theft can only be of physical items? Therefore, if someone steals your credit card and charges up a long list of sales, that it is not theft simply because he only shifted numbers in your account?

Or is it not theft because someone has taken your social security number to use it for himself. After all, he hasn't removed your ability to use your SS#, and he certainly never took it all for himself, you still have it. Therefore, by your definition, it's not theft, so it shouldn't be considered theft.

Copyright infringement and copyright violations *ARE* theft, because by definition they meet the criteria. Theft is the taking of personal property without permissions, or the possession and removal of said property, or otherwise larceny. See those ors? You don't have to meet all three to be constituted as theft.

And the first definition is met with the above examples, and certainly meets the first definition. Just because you still have your copyright, doesn't meant that it wasn't a theft.

It's the taking of personal property without permission, and copyright laws have specific definitions of what permission you automatically receive. If you take a DVD, rip it, encode it with DivX, then place it on a public FTP server, you've infringed on that copyright, obviously, and you've commited theft of copyright. The owner still has it, but you had no permission to put it on the FTP server from its owner.

So stop fooling yourself with these generalizations that infringement != theft, to somehow justify that infringement is just something copyright owners made up to make it seem more justifiable to prosecute. Just like your SS# or bank account, it's not something physical but it can be stolen just the same.

Re:Insightful???

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the examples you cite are all of finite resources (actual physical money in a bank account is consumed when "shifting numbers," for example).

Nothing that can be infinitely copied can be "stolen" unless you're participating in the skewing of the language in favor of the content "industry."

Re:Insightful???

[Tackhead]

> Do you assume that theft can only be of physical items? Therefore, if someone steals your credit card and charges up a long list of sales, that it is not theft simply because he only shifted numbers in your account?

The numbers representing my account's cash balance have a one-to-one relationship with "money", and "money" is the principal means by which I acquire property. When he decrements that number, he acquires property and deprives me of my ability to acquire property. Copying my CC# isn't theft, but use of my CC# to purchase things without authorization is.

> Or is it not theft because someone has taken your social security number to use it for himself. After all, he hasn't removed your ability to use your SS#, and he certainly never took it all for himself, you still have it. Therefore, by your definition, it's not theft, so it shouldn't be considered theft.

Wrong again. If he copies my SS#, there's no problem. If he assumes my identity and presents my SS# as his own while he goes on a spending spree, he deprives me of property because I'm the one who has to pay for lawyers to clear up the charges against me.

Actually, I take that back -- identity "theft" is a form of fraud, not theft per se. If he uses my SS#, it's fraud with an individual victim. If he uses my dead great-grandmother's SS# to obtain benefits or credit cards, it's fraud against the government, with costs passed to the taxpayers, or fraud against the credit card issuer, with costs passed on to other credit card holders.)

But neither of these things are like copyright infringment. With copyright infringement, each unauthorized download of copyrighted material constitutes an instance of copyright infringment, but economic harm is done to the copyright holder only when the downloader is copying items for which they would otherwise have paid the copyright holder money.

To summarize: Copyright infringement is not theft. Some instances of copyright infringement cause some economic harm to rightsholders. Some do not.

The current debate is that the law does not provide a way to treat those two types of infringement differently.

The fundamental problem is that the law may not be able to distinguish between the two types of infringement; whether economic harm has been done relies entirely on the mindset of the infringer. (Current law errs on the side of presuming guilt - a law giving carte blance to file sharers would err on the side of presuming innocence. Both laws would likely fail to capture the problem.)

Re:Insightful???

[Ig0r]

Taking other people's identification numbers (CC, PIN, SS#) and using them as if you were that person is known as fraud, not theft. If someone tries to buy things with my credit card, without my consent, is called credit card fraud, not number theft.

The act of taking that person's money to buy goods for you deprives that person of the money you used, so that is theft.

Re:Insightful???

[ortholattice]

To summarize: Copyright infringement is not theft. Some instances of copyright infringement cause some economic harm to rightsholders. Some do not.

And some instances of copyright infringement cause some economic benefit to rightsholders, by exposing the material to a wider audience who may decide to purchase it (e.g. myself when I purchased many more obscure CDs during the brief heyday of Napster than before or after).

Re:Insightful???

[EllisDees]

Well, then, what is theft? Do you assume that theft can only be of physical items? Therefore, if someone steals your credit card and charges up a long list of sales, that it is not theft simply because he only shifted numbers in your account?

Of course it is theft. Those numbers directly represent dollar bills. If you are taking dollars out of my account, you are stealing from me. If I build a business on the hopes that some dollars will someday appear in my account but they never do, I should have picked a better business plan.

Or is it not theft because someone has taken your social security number to use it for himself. After all, he hasn't removed your ability to use your SS#, and he certainly never took it all for himself, you still have it. Therefore, by your definition, it's not theft, so it shouldn't be considered theft.

It's not theft. It's fraud. Two things that are just as different as theft and copyight violation.

Theft is the taking of personal property without permissions, or the possession and removal of said property, or otherwise larceny.

If I copy an album from a friend or download a few songs, I have not taken any personal property. Nor have I removed or possessed anyone's property. All I have done is make a copy of some information. If nothing is missing, nothing is stolen.

If you take a DVD, rip it, encode it with DivX, then place it on a public FTP server, you've infringed on that copyright, obviously, and you've commited theft of copyright.

There is no 'theft of copyright' law. There is 'violation of copyright', but even the law knows that it is not theft.

So stop fooling yourself with these generalizations that infringement != theft

Stop fooling ourselves with the truth? How silly.

Re:Insightful???

[HanzoSan]

If you take a DVD, rip it, encode it with DivX, then place it on a public FTP server, you've infringed on that copyright, obviously, and you've commited theft of copyright.

*ROTFLMAO* What the hell is theft of copyright?! I'm going to be laughing at this for a long long time, in fact i should make it my sig just to make that guy who posted that msg see how stupid he actually is.

Re:Insightful???

[DarkZero]

If you take a DVD, rip it, encode it with DivX, then place it on a public FTP server, you've infringed on that copyright, obviously, and you've commited theft of copyright. (emphasis mine)

I have a general rule about discussions like this (discussions on semantics and definitions, that is): If the original word requires both a long explanation and a qualifier (of copyright, in this case), then the situation being talked about does not fit under the definition of that word.

What you're describing is a lot like calling censorship "murder", because it's the "murder of ideas". After a long, drawn out explanation, you might be able to convince some idiot that censorship is murder, because it "murders the idea" that's being censored by effectively making it as null and pointless as a human being is after they've been murdered. However, that doesn't mean that censorship is murder. It means that you're somewhat good with persuasive writing.

But anyway, here's a quick debunking of your ridiculous examples:

Bank accounts: When someone takes the money from my bank account, it's gone. Even though it was just data to begin with, the system is designed so that once someone has taken the money out of the account, it is no longer accessible by anyone else, even the original owner. This is not analogous to movies, books, DVDs, or any sort of ideas or creative works at all. Once someone "steals" a DVD by ripping it and saving it on their hard drive, that DVD still exists. Once someone else "steals" that DVD by downloading it from a P2P network, the file from the DVD is still on the uploader's computer. At no point in this process is anyone deprived of the goods that they own. Rather, an example copy of those goods is made and then given to the person that requested the copy. Bank accounts don't work like this at all. They work much more like physical property and thus should be governed as such.

Social Security Numbers: DVDs are put on sale in stores. They are not unique, they are not kept secret by their owners, they are not used as personal identifiers, and they are not sold to anyone, let alone to millions of people across the planet. Comparing a unique identifier for a human being to a creative work that is copied millions of times and sold worldwide by its creators is like comparing apples to automobiles.

Re:Insightful???

[Anonymous Coward]

Copying my CC# isn't theft, but use of my CC# to purchase things without authorization is.

Legally, it is fraud, not theft, if you want to nitpick.

You cant steal something which cannot be owned

[HanzoSan]

Next you will say we all stole math from the egyptians because they invented forms of math.

Information cannot have owners. You should only have the right to exclusively profit from your information, not the right to "OWN" it.

Why must be answered. Why not is easy.

[iainl]

"If you aren't doing anything wrong, then why don't you install it?"

Because I'm lazy? I've not installed the latest DRM-enabling patch for Windows Media Player either, but its only because I can't be bothered to download several megabytes of information over a 42kb/s connection when it doesn't actually do me much in the way of good.

Sure I'll do it if I'm legally required to. Sure I'll do it if the benefits outweigh the problems by enough. But I won't spend my own time, effort and money to install something that only helps a business I've no particularly good feelings about.

Re:Why must be answered. Why not is easy.

[GigsVT]

Sure I'll do it if I'm legally required to.

I'm kind of shocked that you would let it get to this point, and then if it does, to roll over so easily.

Mandatory DRM will be somewhat like banning guns in the US. If it ever happens, there will be hell to pay.

Re:Why must be answered. Why not is easy.

[iainl]

"I'm kind of shocked that you would let it get to this point, and then if it does, to roll over so easily."

Call me a wuss, but while I'd oppose the idea of making something like DRM-enforcement a law, if it gets passed I'd probably obey it. Federal ass-pounding institutions look like rather less fun than downloading and installing a patch that stops me doing something I don't want to anyway.

Piracy and artists

[little1973]

It may be offtopic and you may call it rant, but...

IMHO, piracy is good. It is the only weapon against the big corporations. The RIAA and the MPAA are whining about how much profit they loose. The truth is the they are very profitable. The "piracy" commited by home users just levels the playing field. It makes the system a little bit more balanced. What I mean is that these corporations are very rich. Without "piracy", they will be mega-rich. You may even call it civil disobidience.

This "artist" conception makes me sick, too. Slashdot readers always refer to the "poor" artists as the slaves of the RIAA. And that the RIAA really wants control over distribution. The truth is that they are not artists, they are employees. An artist is such a person who makes himself distinguished by his own. Which means he does not do what he does for money but for self-expression. And if people like the artist's self-expression he will get money for it. So, IMHO today's "artists" are employees. I think the RIAA call this "work for hire" which is quite true. An artist has to be something more. I'm quite sure Picasso did not paint anything for money. He just painted something and people liked it and gave a lof of $$$ for it. So, there was no "work for hire" which, from my point of view, qualifies Picasso as an artist.

Re:Piracy and artists

[kz45]

IMHO, piracy is good. It is the only weapon against the big corporations. The RIAA and the MPAA are whining about how much profit they loose. The truth is the they are very profitable. The "piracy" commited by home users just levels the playing field. It makes the system a little bit more balanced. What I mean is that these corporations are very rich. Without "piracy", they will be mega-rich. You may even call it civil disobidience

so just because they are "mega-rich", means we should take their rights away. What is too rich? Is it really for YOU to decide?

Information is not property.

[HanzoSan]

Theres no law saying intellectual property is a right.

The constitution says free speech is a right.

What should we follow?

So basically its saying, if you listen to the music without buying the CD you are "stealing" the music.

Stealing it from who? The music has no owners, its just a sound wave. 1s and 0s have no owners.

So unless you believe ideas have owners this cant work.

I do agree a person should have exclusive rights to profit off of an idea they discover first, however, people who download mp3s just to listen to it, arent selling it, so its not taking anythinng away from the creator.

Re:Information is not property.

[VertigoAce]

The music has no owners, its just a sound wave. 1s and 0s have no owners.

Just like you can't own a car or a computer because they're simply arrangements of protons, neutrons, and electrons.

If someone can own a particular arrangement of atoms, then someone can own a particular arrangement of sound waves.

Re:Information is not property.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Constitution does not contain the phrase "Intellectual Property". In fact it doesn't mention Copyright directly and only mentions patent in the context of patents of nobility.

Article 1, Section 8 (enumeration of the powers of Congress) contains the short paragraph upon which Copyright and Patent law are based, and that paragraph says " by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;". This is a monopoly grant, not a recognition of a property right. If it were a property right, it wouldn't need special mention, and it certainly wouldn't be justified by stating a public policy goal ("To promote the progress of science and useful arts"). Nor would it be listed in an enumaration of what Congress may do.

Re:Information is not property.

[Anonymous Coward]

Protons, neutrons, and electrons all have mass. They are matter and they can be posessed. Sound waves have no mass. They are not tangible. You can not pick them up and move them around.

If you make a copy of someone else's car, you have not stolen their car, you have copied it. They still have their car, and now you have a new car. If you copy a car, you are not stealing from the dealership any more than their competitors down the street.

If you copy a CD, you are not stealing it, you are making your own. The fact that it is the intangible aspects that have value and not the CD itself is immaterial (literally).

Copyright is a monopoly right granted by congress. The authors of our constitution were careful not to use the word property when writing the intellectual rights clause of the constitution. They very specifically referred to rights and not property. How can you steal a right?

DMCA is toothless without the Bono Act

[yerricde]

the DMCA (BOOO!) makes it illigal for you to convert out of DRM to standard format even after copywrite expires.

Bullshit.

The DMCA's circumvention ban (17 USC 1201) states: " No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title" (my emphasis). A work that has fallen out of copyright is no longer "protected under this title", where "this title" refers to Title 17, United States Code, which contains U.S. copyright law, mask work law, and protections for ships' hulls.

Likewise, the (a)(2) and (b)(1) bans on circumvention devices apply only to devices designed or marketed to circumvent measures that control access to or enforce monopolies on works protected under Title 17. Thus, without copyright term extensions, anybody could say "DeCSS: Watch your Charlie Chaplin and early Mickey Mouse DVDs on Linux" and get away with releasing DeCSS source code into the wild. The DMCA is toothless without the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.

I'm not going to be the one to tell them that their music has to be released in format X with tempo Y or any of that.

That is, until you write your own song, and another songwriter claims, "You stole my melody!"

Theft is taking something away from its owner

[HanzoSan]

Lets take it directly from the dictionary.

: the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it

Music is not personal property, its public property.
When you release Music, it now belongs to the public.
The Musician only has the exclusive rights to profit from his creation, this means a person cant claim they created it, and they cant sell it illegally. This doesnt mean when a person buys your music that they dont own it and that you actually own it, if thats the case what the hell ARE they buying, and why are you allowed to fool them into thinking they are buying music when in reality they are just paying rent fees to have the right to listen to music.

Its bullshit, music is a right thats not exclusive, you should not be able to control what a person listens to and cannot, and you cant enforce it if you tried so why bother?

You cannot control distribution, you can only profit from it.

Re:Theft is taking something away from its owner

[DragonMagic]

And I took my definition from the dictionary. You posted ONE definition, I posted several that it listed. Yours makes mine look wrong, however, when you look at all three you can argue the rest of your statement.

Money is intangible except in bearer format. That is, unless you have bonds, stocks, cash, etc., money is a number for you. So if someone rings up charges on your credit card, it's not theft by your definition because he hasn't stolen anything physical. It's just math, after all. Your credit account and your bank balance are intangible numbers until they become something physical, thus, your argument that it's theft by your own definition is false.

However, when you state that the balance is property and by charging up your card is theft, how can copyright infringement not be theft? Someone has stolen your ability to determine distribution, and possibly given you money for a service, and yet it's not theft?

Weird way to argue, to say one thing meaning another.

Re:Theft is taking something away from its owner

[kz45]

Music is not personal property, its public property.
When you release Music, it now belongs to the public.

if this had any truth to it at all, the GNU would not exist (after all, code belongs to the pubic after it is released).

You cannot control distribution, you can only profit from it
really? as usually you are full of complete shit.

why did many gnu supporters on slashdot think this was theft

Re:Theft is taking something away from its owner

[HanzoSan]

Code does belong to the public after released, the information is free for all to see under GNU. However I do not mind if the creator of the code wants exclusive rights to SELL the software package, I just have a problem with them trying to sell the code itself.

Sell the binary, but the code must be free. The code is an expression, its art. Anyone can compile a binary, but not anyone can write good code, this is why we must share good code so more people can write better code.

Re:Theft is taking something away from its owner

[awol]

Ok, lets start with your "premises".

"Music is not personal property, it is public property"

Well, actually there is confusion here. There is a legal doctrine called private property, I am willing to concede that is what was meant with "personal property", but what is public property? Regardless, it is still property and the problem with music requires us to think about the meaning of "necessary" and "sufficient" conditions. I choose not to decide what is sufficient for something to be property. That is a quite complex issue. However, one of the necessary conditions for the existence of property is the ability to "exclude" another from the enjoyment of the property. The problem with "media" based property is that by duplication (be it a paper book, or a recording or whatever) one does not exlcude the "owner" of the original. Hence the necessary condition is not met hence there is no property.

It is that simple. Just like other general issues, one does not need to worry about all the complex tests to prove sufficiency when one of the simple necessary conditions is not present.

Yes, but they have a ways to go. Here's why:

[Artifice_Eternity]

They want $10 from me just so I can listen -- without burning or keeping anything. That's like paying for radio. (And no, I'm not an XM subscriber and am not planning to be.)

They want $18 from me if I want to burn and keep 10 songs a month. That's like paying full price for a CD, except that I have to supply the CD and make it myself, and don't get any liner notes, cover art, etc.

Conclusion: it's still overpriced.

Artists should not control distribution

[HanzoSan]

We the public who artists release music to should control distribution.

This is all about control, not making money, Artists can make money with or without p2p, but p2p gives the control to us, and not the record companies or the artists.

Now the fans are in control, we decide what to pay for, artists now will need actual talent to sell their music and they bitch and moan because they know they sell their music on their image.

I dont want to hear manson, or metallica saying they hate peer to peer, people who cant make good music hate peer to peer, peopel who make good music will sell better due to better distribution.

IF I like what you have to say in your songs, or how your music sounds, I will buy it in diffrent formats, i'll buy your DVD, your CD, your vinyl, even your special unreleased tracks that you sell directly to me.

Look, I'm not going to argue in favor of DRM, it takes away my right to choose what I want to buy.

Re:Artists should not control distribution

[kz45]

I dont want to hear manson, or metallica saying they hate peer to peer, people who cant make good music hate peer to peer

Their triple or quadruple platinum albums MUST be due to their shitty music...

Now the fans are in control, we decide what to pay for

before P2P, you always have had the choice of choosing "what to pay for". (you still do now) It's not like the RIAA had a gun to your head..

Re:Artists should not control distribution

[HanzoSan]

No you never did, what music was on the radio? Oh yeah the music record companies want to make you buy not the music thats best.

What music videos do you see? britney spears and people selling on image.

Whats on MTV? All young musicians, you dont see old 60-70 year old classical music composers on MTV.

P2P allows a person to access the music of real musicians, not the musicians choosen by record companies because of their image and their ability to sell.

Re:Artists should not control distribution

[elflord]

No you never did, what music was on the radio? Oh yeah the music record companies want to make you buy not the music thats best.

As usual, you're talking rubbish. Support your local community radio station, and send in a donation, Mr Freeloader. These music stations do play what is "best", and aren't lackeys of the music business. I listened to and purchased alternative music long before the P2P freeloaders came along, and I heard it all on the radio first.

Re:Artists should not control distribution

[kz45]

P2P allows a person to access the music of real musicians, not the musicians choosen by record companies because of their image and their ability to sell.

and what type of music are people sharing? britney spears, N'sync,backstreet boys, and creed to name a few (otherwise, why would the record companies be so pissed, and why would you fight so hard for your "freedom to share").

these "real" musicians you are talking about will never be found, because you have to know their name first.

The only music p2p is good for, is popular, promoted music produced by the recording industry.

Re:Artists should not control distribution

[HanzoSan]

not true

just name your song britney spears. let everyone download it and find out its not.

Re:Artists should not control distribution

[kz45]

not true

if it wasn't true, the RIAA would not have taken every popular p2p application down through litigation.

Re:Artists should not control distribution

[HanzoSan]

yes they would, because the RIAA wants to control what you listen to.

Re:Artists should not control distribution

[kz45]

yes they would, because the RIAA wants to control what you listen to

this may be true, but just look at what people are sharing sometime, and you will be slapped in the face with reality.

if p2p just had independent artists, there would be nothing the RIAA could do, and they would lose control.

What the hell does a musician lose?

[HanzoSan]

I'm not harming anyone by sharing.

What? The Musician loses control of distribution which they never had in the first place?

Yeah ok.

so the real people who lose are the RIAA and MPAA.

Look, If someone makes good music I'll go to their concerts and I'll pay them not because I have to but because I think they deserve it, because they EARNED it.

If a good movie is made, I will go to theaters to see it, I will still pay for cable or satelite to access it, these guys DO NOT need to sell movies or CDs. They make money off of live events, concerts, theaters, and by charging for distribution.

Musicians dont have any control so I'm not taking anything from them, they dont even make alot of money, the middleman does, what I'd do is help them make more money, by directly sellinng to me.

Imagine Musicians releasing new songs by playing them at concerts for their fans, then selling the music through MP3 vending machines at the concerts for 25 cents a song, money goes DIRECTLY to the musician in cash form.

The listener gets to listen to the music on their way home and upload it into their computers, then share it with all their friends causing more people to go to concerts.

You see? This would help Musicians as much as it would help me.

IF i like a band, I'll want to go see them live, I'll pay 25 cents for every song I like, its not like being forced to pay 15 bucks for a few good songs.

We should be able to choose what we want to buy, when you walk into a store, you can look at a toy, and decide if you want to buy it. With music or information they dont even want you to LOOK at it, this harms me, taking away my freedom to choose.
I'm forced to buy something i dont even know what it is, because the dont allow people to share?!

This isnt about money, its about control. Sharing isnt harming them financially, its removing the RIAAs control of our access to music.

We should be able to do what we want with our music, even share it, because music truely has no owners, you can try to own it but its not physical, its impossible to own in the real world, the musicians dont even own their music record companies do, so dont even try to use them saying they are harmed.

Record companies might be harmed but they dont help either side.

Killing removes a person from the earth forever.

Whats lost when I share?

Re:What the hell does a musician lose?

[Jonsey]

I don't refute your point, I have shared music, but your means for justifying your standing are without sound foundation. Music sharing of other's works is in no way protected by the First Amendment. That is my single point. Justify it how you will, but justify it in some way that has merit, not by trying to make a parallel to your granted rights.

- Jones

Re:What the hell does a musician lose?

[HanzoSan]

Well the best way to justify it, is the fact that is part of our freedom to have the ability to share.

YOU KNOW what freedom of speech is, the DMCA destroys freedom of speech, intellectual property restricts it.

Computers and ping packets, are 1s and 0s, extentions of our speech, the computer is no diffrent than the telephone.

Freedom of speech is actually freedom of expression. Why should we lose this freedom in exchange for profit? Its selling your freedom to choose what you want to buy, to share what you buy etc, if they dont want us to share it they should make it copy proof, i wont get mad if i cant copy something because thats fair, but to tell me I cant have the freedom to copy something thats copyable, and then tell me that If I copy it I cant share it.

This begins to take away my freedom, what do they have to justify this?

Re:What the hell does a musician lose?

[Jonsey]

I won't copy something if it's not copyable, because that's fair? No respect in the young, it's true.

The DMCA is a bunch of crap, it's very poorly written, and needs a major overhaul, but about copying... just because you can doesn't mean you should.

If it's theirs, as in, their intellectual property (in this case, their music, which is their soul and dream if it's any good) then out of respect for their wishes, once you own the CD, you should no freely distribute their work. You'll note that even though you own the CD, you don't own the rights to do that, and you shouldn't. A backup copy? Sure. That's cool, even lend it to a friend, get them hooked on it, to support the artist making money, especially if they're not part of that gorgon of stupidity and wealth that the RIAA is.

Get some morals, call me back in the morning.

Music that I like, I buy, but the music is still the artists, and it is not yours, the CD is yours, and it has a performance of the music that you can use to listen to, not treat as your own music.

- Jones

Re:What the hell does a musician lose?

[HanzoSan]

If they make something thats information into a physical object, thats fair. I cannot copy it, so its now no longer information, it becomes a physical object.

But thats impossible, Music will always be copyable as long as its playable. Their efforts to try to turn music into a physical object is useless.

You tell me to get morals? I have morals, sharing music helps more people than making some CEO richer helps.

Why do I want to help a rich CEO buy a new mansion, when I can make millions of people smile and be happier in general, people who dont have a mansion, and who dont have much in life and who actually NEED this music.

Re:What the hell does a musician lose?

[Jonsey]

Why only support the big labels then?

Support yout local indiemusic scene, if musicians find that they can be profitable w/o a giant conglomerate, they'll do that instead... Fighting a conglomerate by trying to kill their profts (the only thing that keeps them together visavis enron visavis worldcom visavis..etc..) as a single man won't help, making a viable alternative for musicians to release their music in just might.

You've proven yourself incapable of rational thought or discussion on this topic, good day sir, I hope some other day you have an open mind.

- Jones

Re:What the hell does a musician lose?

[HanzoSan]

I dont support big labels but its big labels who make most of their money off CDs.

The other smaller indies make alot of money from the net and selling directly to their fans,

A viable alternative? Thats what Gnutella is trying to provide, but as long as the big record companies keep fighting people who try to build up alternatives it will never happen.

The day a company makes a p2p system, RIAA attacks it, they dont understand p2p companies want to make money too and eventually they would put in a system to allow artists to make money so they can make money.

Re:What the hell does a musician lose?

[Jonsey]

Cancel my statement about rational, now you're starting to speak sense. What needs to be done by a p2p though, is they need to get the big names in on it from the get-go, because once you understand something, you generally can fear it a whole lot less.

Re:What the hell does a musician lose?

[elflord]

I'm not harming anyone by sharing.

This lying demagoguery of yours is disgusting. The use of the word "sharing" is extremely misleading, because the term "share" implies that you are selflessly giving away your own resources, while the truth is that you are in fact selfishly groping at ebody elses resources without their permission. Sharing ? Nahh. Fraud, theft, etc.

Look, If someone makes good music I'll go to their concerts and I'll pay them not because I have to but because I think they deserve it, because they EARNED it.

No one is forcing you to buy CDs. If you don't like the music, don't buy it. It's that simple. Paying someone for their work is not an option. You can't sort of hire someone to do a job for you, then pay them if you decide they did a good job. Can you see the problems with such a model ?

Make all the lame rationalisations you like, but the fact is that musicians do have control by default. They choose to yield that control, and choose the best compensation package the market offers.

Your imaginary business models are interesting, and I'm sure they have a lot of appeal for the free riders. That is why they are bad business models. Appealing to freeloaders is not a good business strategy, because (drum roll ... ) freeloaders freeload.

We should be able to choose what we want to buy, when you walk into a store, you can look at a toy, and decide if you want to buy it. With music or information they dont even want you to LOOK at it, this harms me, taking away my freedom to choose.

Nonsense. There are radio stations, and several music shops let you listen before you buy,. Some music shops have systems set up where you can swipe any CD and listen to excerpts.

We should be able to do what we want with our music, even share it, because music truely has no owners,

The problem is, how do you compensate the authors of creative works ? "User pays" is a good model, and one that is facilitated by copyright. Voluntary systems don't work-- you have a prisoners dilemma where no-one wants to release music because there's no incentive, and no one wants to pay for music that they can get for free anyway.

Re:What the hell does a musician lose?

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy San, you are a complete moron. Thanks for playing.

How is the RIAA any better than Caesars Palace?

[yerricde]

So you sign your rights over to the record company, they send you on tour, promote your music, get it on the radio, lots of people hear your music, and maybe you succeed and maybe you don't - but it's a chance you wouldn't have without them.

So in other words, selling your soul to the RIAA is no better than playing your music in a local venue and then blowing the proceeds at a Vegas casino.

lack of content

[Glog]

DRM or not, the fact of life is that paid "content" providers will not take off until they can actually offer something better than the mainstream pimpled-teen crapola that is out there. Yah I have checked Pressplay and they have precisely 2% of the over 100 bands that I like to listen to. Yes, I am willing to pay to download MP3's but I want unlimited download for a set monthly fee and no, I don't want the MP3's to expire after 3 months so I can't play them any more, thank you very much.

Must be tough to be a RIAA/MPAA/Label Exec - loosen those ties, dudes, they're restricting the oxygen supply to your brains!

I am even willing to pay the full price of CDs if I knew the money was going in the hands of the artist and not in some phat exec's pockets. Cut out the middle-man, yeah - cry me a river because technology is making you obsolete.

Hurts who? Hilary?

[HanzoSan]

1. Stealing content does, theoretically, hurt people. Now, usually that "hurt" involves a giant nameless, faceless corporation, but it is, technically, still financial harm. And sometimes the owner of content is a little guy. Let's look at it this way: suppose you had a small band, and you made 2,000 cds of your work. Now, imagine that somebody from Warner Brothers sees you at a club and likes your stuff, wants to sell copies of your record. Would it be ok by you if he took one of those 2,000 cds, made 1,000,000 copies of it, slapped a Warner Bros. label on it and sold them all without giving you a dime? Obviously not. That's stealing from you (we'll ignore for a moment the issue of whether or not many of the record labels give the artists so little compensation that they might as well be stealing, since that's not quite but almost stealing). You'd be harmed. Your only recourse is to sue, under the copyright law.


First, if you have a small band, stop selling CDs, put some mp3 vending machines at your concert, play new music live at the concert so your fans have to go to your concert to see what new stuff you've released. After the concert, people can download the mp3s from the vending machines then go online and share it. Musicians just need to stop expecting people to just buy their CD without hearing it first.

Also what you are saying is something totally diffrent from sharing, because Time Warner is profiting. Its wrong to "PROFIT" off of something which someone else has exclusive rights to "PROFIT" on, however when you share something for free, no one is losing "PROFIT" you are giving music away to people who normally dont buy music to begin with, if they did buy music they would buy it directly from you.

2. The establishment cause doesn't cover the situation you describe. If your religious practice includes a behavior that is not necessarily part of your religious practice (i.e., that could be engaged in by others for other reasons) and is illegal under a US law which was passed to cover the behavior as such, rather than in the context of religious observance, the law is not in violation of the establishment clause. That's what stops you from just saying "hey, killing people is part of my religion, so it must be ok for me to kill people.

Killing people removes a life forever, What does sharing remove? I proved it does not remove profits. Sharing has nothing to do with copying and then selling at someone elses expense because nothing is being sold when you share. To assume every peice of musle is automatically a sale is to treat all music as if its stock or something, as if every single song or CD would have sold to every single person who wants to listen to it. Cds only sell to the fans, its the fans who buy cds, the majority of people just listen to music for free. Just like only fans will go to the concerts.

To compare sharing, with killing, is to say sharing removes something from someone else. So what exactly would be removed from Michael Jackon, if I share his invincible CD with you?

Does this mean that suddenly Michael Jackon has lost a sale? No it doesnt, because you wouldnt buy anything from Michael Jackon if you just walked into a store and saw a weird looking guy named Michael Jackson, never heard any of his music before, and hes expecting you to just buy his CD?

Fans buy CDs, people who use p2p to share music, its the fans who own the CDs, people who arent fans just want to listen to some nice music and Michael Jackson is just another song to them, they werent going to buy the CD, they just want to hear some music.

For you to assume everyone whos sharing is removing a sale, is just like me to assume everyone who looks at my painting on display, wont buy it because by looking at it, its removing the possible sales, so what do I do? Hide my painting, then no one will buy it and again I can complain that my sales are bad. But I'd think more people would buy it, if they actually were exposed to it, than if it was under a cover and I'm just trying to tell people to buy my painting and they dont know what my abilities are.

This is about freedom vs control, not profit. If I'm going to buy a CD, every song on their CD must be good. In order for me to know this I have to have heard every song. This is why I own so few CDs, before p2p, I didnt have a clue who made good music and who didnt, now I know who makes good music and I buy more music now than I ever did.

That's not the cookie jar...

[No Such Agency]

That's not the _cookie jar_ that Microsoft has its fist in...

Ouch!

Are they wrong, or do they lie?

[HiThere]

I don't believe them. I went to read their paper, but adobe acrobat kept telling me "file does not begin with %-pdf%" (or some such), so I don't know their argument in detail. But I don't need to.

They may be wrong. Or they may be lying. I do not see a third alternative. DRM is being used to cut people off from their cultural history. This is not just bad, this is evil. Companies that either use or support it deserve to be destroyed. Taken to pieces and auctioned off to the lowest bidder. And the results used to pay for the management's pensions, golden parachute, etc. I'll bid 2 cents, who'll bid less?

I can conceive that under some set of circumstances, with some conceivable implementation and in some environment there might be an advantage to DRM. But I cannot believe that it would ever be to the benefit of the end-users. And I can't see it being used to the benefit of independant artists. That's just too improbable.

What about my rights?

[HanzoSan]

Theres no right in the constitution saying a Musician has control of distribution of their work!

It only says they have the right to exclusive profit.

Re:What about my rights?

[kalidasa]

Theres no right in the constitution saying a Musician has control of distribution of their work!

You've obviously never read the damned thing, have you? See the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;
To establish post offices and post roads;
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

What part of exclusive right do you not understand?

Paranoia...

[DJK]

Citizen, why haven't you installed the WhizBang4500X IP Protector Software?

Loyal, Happy Citizens installed it before it was released.

Only a Commie Mutant Traitor wouldn't install it.

You must be a Commie Mutant Traitor.

Please report to the Summary Execution Chamber immediatly.

Thank you for your Happy Cooperation.

Trust the Computer.
The Computer is Your Friend.

are you stupid or dumb?

[Anonymous Coward]

what kind of browser do you have? stupid 6.0?? the pdf is replaced with an html document. read it. ok, i'll help you. 1. click the link 2. read the text on your screen.

if you're using stupid 7.0 beta, you may have to click "view source"

you're welcome. this message was brought to you by the stupid society service.(we are a service organization that helps stupid people all over the world. some of our famous clients include george w. bush and britney spears.)

Re:are you stupid or dumb?

[HiThere]

I has, indeed, been replaced by an html file. The html file says "We don't want you to read this. Go away." (Loosely paraphrased.)

I don't feel that this strengthens his argument.

Are you a moron or a shill?..

[alizard]

Your post is what happens when you eat MPAA/RIAA sh3t as food for thought.

Free ride? Make that a free promotional tool for independent artists. I'm working on promoting one right now, and my biggest headache is that most of the places I had planned on uploading our promo MP3s to no longer exist thanks to the suits at the major record labels whose rights you are trying to protect. If you really believe DRM is about protecting artists, you belong in an AOL chatroom with the other tards, not here.

If the only MP3s you download are N'Sync and Britney Spears, I really don't give a shit about your "free ride". MY rights are worth protecting. Yours aren't. DRM is about control of your computer by content industry suits and Micro$hit. If you want your computer 0wn3d by those scumbags, maybe if you sit on Jack Valenti's lap and beg him, one of his tame "black hats" will write you a Trojan. Of course, there's no guarantee your computer will work any better than your brain does afterwards.

Personally, I don't download MP3s much, particularly from the brain-dead crop of what passes for entertainment your buddies at the RIAA spew forth for the public.

I'm not going to argue with you about how DRM directly conflicts with the traditional concepts of "fair usage" and the intentional tradeoff built into copyright law between the rights of end users and creators of material, those arguments have been made over and over here and in other places and often, by artists you think want DRM protection. The only reasons why anyone would argue pro-DRM/pro-RIAA at this point are:
1. You work for RIAA/MPAA/PR firm
2. You're too fucking stupid to understand the fair usage arguments you've seen so far. Perhaps you'll get what Janis Ian has to say about it. Presumably, you can point and click, can't you?

I believe you to be in the second category.

Yeah.... I'll install that right now.

[GuNgA-DiN]

I'll install is while I'm waiting for my 3 Gigs of movies to finish downloading. :)

The meaning of life is to die?

[Webmoth]

This very thing, this Internet, which brought about the discussion of Digital Rights, is also the very thing which enables the discussion to take place.

Will it be: this machine builds itself for the sole purpose of destroying itself?

We need Digital Payment Encouragement, not DRM

[epeus]

We were just discussing this on the mediAgora weblog:

Howard Greenstein thinks Janis's idea will only work with DRM, and puts up an outline of requirements for an Open Source DRM implementation.

The trouble with DRM is that it is trying to solve the wrong problem. The problem is not people copying digital works, it is creators not being paid.
We don't need 'Digital Rights Management', we need 'Digital Payment Encouragement'. If I liked three letter acronyms, I'd call it DPE, but I prefer mangled classical phrases with internal capitalisation, so I call it 'mediAgora'.

Let's take this point by point.

1. Enables purchasing, anonymously.

OK so far.

2. Contains or works with business rules that allow the content owner to designate a package of rights, including "fair use" rights. How would this be done? Allow users to certify that the current play/viewing/use is a 'fair use' one. (Oh, you're saying, people will just abuse this. Fine. They're already doing it. Come up with a better idea. That's the intent of this writing...)

Now this is silly. How does this work? Every time you try to copy it you get an EULA-style popup accusing you of being a thief and asking you to assert that you aren't? What purpose does this serve? Is it just to annoy me and encourage me to hack the message out?

3. Enables resale or transfer of rights
4. Enables copying to some devices for one fee, copying to additional devices for another, etc.

These don't take any enabling - they are possible by default. It is attempting to disable them that makes DRM systems annoying, offensive and value destroying

5. Makes sure money flows back to the correct parties, lowers friction.

This should be number 1, not number 5. I agree absolutely, but I think that you need to think through who the correct parties are. By rewarding those who copy the work in a way that leads to a sale, you align their incentives with the Creators of the work. Being able to be paid for Promoting like this does imply giving up anonymity to the extent that payments can be tracked.

6. Is open so people who wish know how the system works, can correct and improve it. It can work on whatever platforms can attract dev resources.

Good idea.

7. Is STABLE - the protocols and formats can't change all the time because keys are written into hardware.

Where did that come from? The protocols needn't change but I expect formats to continue to evolve; as long as they have a way of attaching a short metadata reference to an ID, I think mediAgora can work with any format. By being based on consent and trust rather than coercion and restriction, the technical prerequisites are far more relaxed, and unlike a 'lock it up' DRM model, you don't need to be able to repudiate the whole thing and abandon the content when it is (inevitably) compromised.

Theres a big diffrence

[HanzoSan]

A car is not a thought, its physical, protons neutrons and electrons are actually physically there so you can say you own this set combination of atoms protons etc.

However a thought cannot be owned. Music is a thought, information is a collection of thoughts which produces and creates knowledge.

Knowledge should be shared for free to everyone. The whole purpose of living is to gather and then share knowledge. The only thing the brain does is gather, create, and share knowledge.

To tell a person they cannot share knowledge, is restricting your ability of expression. And for what? So a rich CEO can keep his business running?

I agree with you

[Anonymous Coward]

I Like the idea that if the corporations get too big for their pants, we just ignore them.

I buy my stuff, but if they get ridiculous on pricing for something, I just download it.

I don't apologize for that either. Artificial scarcity? Not as long as there are PC's around.

Try before you buy is a motto we can all live with.

Ha ha ha..check this guy's picture out

[Anonymous Coward]

http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:Dxc_yoz5BUAC: www.cc.gatech.edu/people/home/judge/+Paul+Q.+Judge &hl=en&ie=UTF-8

That is not the face of a "computer scientist".

HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

The paper argues DRM is beneficial to everyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

And in other news, War is Peace, and Freedom is Slavery.

Anyone who cares to disagree can report to Room 101 for a nice face-to-snout encounter with a cage full of vicious, ravenous, starving rats.

Your friend, Big Brother

Re:Hurts who?

[kalidasa]

After the concert, people can download the mp3s from the vending machines then go online and share it.

So I'll make, what, 50 cents while thousands of people get copies of the song that I worked on for months? Screw that business.

There's a difference between "sharing" an MP3 file and "sharing" a painting on display. If you are "sharing" a painting on display, do you make a copy of it for everyone to take home with you? If I play a CD for a friend, I'm sharing it. If I rip the whole thing, then burn a copy for my friend, I'm not sharing it anymore, I'm duplicating it. Maybe you're doing it for no reason, or maybe you're doing it for something intangible - the good feelings you'll get from your friend for providing him with something he didn't already have.

At any rate, the real argument here regards fair use. If I put mp3s of three songs from an album on Napster, am I violating fair use or not? That's a VERY good question, and the answer may be no. If I put a bunch of ripped and burned songs on my doorstep with a sign that says "take these," am I violating fair use? Probably. If I put a directory with mp3s of ALL the songs from an album on Napster, am I violating fair use? We need case law on that one. I'd say probably yes. We also need for RIAA and MPAA to stop trying to eliminate the whole concept of fair use.

You also have to understand that there's a moral difference between sharing things with the creator's permission (e.g., the GPL) and sharing things without the creator's permission. If you want to come down on a software vendor, or an artist, or a publisher, or whatever for not sharing their work for free, go ahead. I'd be all in favor of an economy that could support musicians only on their concert revenues (though we'd have to get rid of the promoters first), with the margin after studio time, promotion, touring, etc. being enough for the artists to live on without having to charge anything for the music itself. I'd be all in favor of an economy that could support writers purely with government grants and public readings. I'd be all in favor of an economy that could support programmers purely on serivce. But you have to create this system from the ground up, not by going on Slashdot complaining about how mean the RIAA is because they won't let you get the new Metallica album for free (why anyone would want to listen to Metallica in the first place is beyond me). Don't go around spouting nonsense about how DRM violates your right to religious expression - noone will take you seriously.

IANAL

Today they offer it Tomorrow they offer less

[NigelJohnstone]

Thats the problem, this stuff is licensed, the licenses dictates what the terms are.

So they could offer music for free today, get the technology in place, then charge arm+leg tomorrow once all the suckers have their DRM in place.

Why the hell should we allow them to put DRM in place at all!

DRM means the death of the independant author.

[Quixadhal]

From this point forwards, any author will be forced to accept one of the established DRM schemes as an integrated part of any work they create, or their work will be prohibited from distribution by law.

Think I'm overreacting? Well, how is the validity of a DRM certificate/watermark/whatever going to be established? Sure, *I* can go generate a PGP key and claim it's mine... but unless I'm an already-established presence -- or have the backing of one -- how are YOU going to know which of two different keys with my name is the "real" me? More importantly, how is any DRM mechanism going to know?

When in doubt, industry always takes the simpler, more expensive route. An open, public system to try and do this will rely on exactly the kind of freedom that these DRM laws suppress... which points us back towards a small set of corporate DRM Key Vendors who will gladly sell you a key, for a price. It might be an upfront "pay $5 per key" kind of price, or it may be a "we now own your work" kind of price, but you will pay something for it!

So, given that climate, anyone who refuses to buy into the DRM key system (whatever form it takes) will not be able to digitally sign their work in a way that the DRM hardware/software can validate, which would mark it as illegal to copy.

See what happens when politics and science meet?

This post is probably in violation of the DMCA or Homeland Security in some way. Since it is NOT signed by a valid DRM mechanism, everyone of you who has this in your browser cache is also in violation. Enjoy!