"Squishy" DRM?

lhouk281 writes "There's an article on Wired about squishy DRM. Apparently some companies are trying to find a happy medium in implementing DRM between the consumer and the RIAA. Good luck..."

Comments

simple

[geekoid]

Forget DRM, let market forces dictate the business model for business.

the consumers is happy, and the business that can adapt are happy.

the rest will die.

It'll work.

[purduephotog]

Because people will find the restrictions easier to swallow. They'll accept it since its, say, 20% painful instead of 100% painful.

And then in another year, after our collective memory has faded.... it'll be 40% painful.... then 60%... then soon you'll find a coin slot next to your 3 gig floppy drive to pay for copywritten letters that make up the emails you are reading.

Once down the slippery slope, the only way to stop is to either dig in or hit the bottom.

Good.. we need Ideas, not just complaints

[Feanor1]

I'm glad that a company is thinking of the customer at all. Its about time.

What needs to be done is more people seriously thinking of DRM models that are good but flexable on a Personal level.

Its going to come, one way or another, so the best course of action is to attempt to develope one that is "Fair". If it means that you cant send your DVD you ripped over the net, Fine, you cant do it, but maybe it can be written so that you can Fairly RIP your DVD to a Video Disk that you can view on your LAPtop that for some reason doesnt have a DVD player.

Are there any Open Source projects thinking about DRM? I dont know how it would work but it must be possible. Plus, with so many companies looking towards Linux for embedded players and such, if an Open Source alternative for DRM came out that at least satisfied whatever stupid laws may eventually get passed, then its just another victory for community software evolution and a loss to Microsoft's plans rule the media future

Crack to stop all this...

[HaeMaker]

All it will take, and I am sure it is inevitable, is for someone to write a virus/worm/trojan that will make all data on the victims computer DRM controlled and expired.

Trillions of dollars in damage to protect a billion dollar industry.

I find it appropriate

[yerricde]

There ARE other ways to stop piracy, like prosecuting those who break the laws.

This "squishy DRM" system, which puts a unique identifier in each record ("record" in copyright law refers to a copy of a recording) but doesn't restrict fair uses, allows copyright holders to identify those who break the laws so that prosecution can begin. I find it an appropriate compromise, as long as there's a way for any individual copyright owner to mark a record for free redistribution.

Two Evils

[Target Drone]

Kind of seems like they're trying to get us to choose between the lesser of two evils.

1. Palladium style DRM - The hardware/software prevents you from making copies even if they would be legitimate ones.
2. Squishy DRM - No restrictions on copying but copies can be traced back to the source so that people who make illegal copies can be prosecuted.

So we basically have

1. Palladium - More privacy less fair use
2. Squishy - Less privacy more fair use

Re:Two Evils

[aronc]

And really, you don't lose privacy unless you're "sharing" with 50,000 of your best friends via Gnutella or something. I could live with a system like this; it seems to be one of the few cases where "if you're not guilty, you have nothing to fear" is actually true.

Sorry, but this is incorrect. I'll use the same example I did earlier:

I give my pal bob a single copy of one of the fingerprinted mp3s in a mix CD. This is legal through a couple of ways (ARHA primarily). Then, without my knowledge, he shares that SuperMP3 with the world. I did nothing illegal but the RIAA & their FBI pals just kicked in my door and are dragging me off.

And would you like to take bets as to how long it will take a utility to change that fingerprint to come out? Sounds like a darn tootin' way to frame somebody.

This is not really a good system once you dig into the possibilities. It's nice on the surface, but (as with my rights issues) the larger implications are not good at all.

3...2...1... Cracked!

[Andy Dodd]

And shortly afterwards, statistics show that the #1 and #2 producers of illicit MP3s in the United States based on the fingerprints of MP3s found on the net are...

1) Hilary Rosen
2) Jack Valenti

With William Gates coming in close with the #3 spot

Watermarking...

[Junta]

Is probably the most fair method, so long as it in no way impacts audio quality. It won't be effective (once known, removing, or at least making a watermark uselsess through distortion is likely trivial), but if it was, it would have the potential to be most fair.

I mean, nothing stops a user from doing anything with the music. You can play and copy as much as you like.

As companies scan P2P networks and use the watermarks to identify huge distributers, those would be cracked down on.

This is the ideal, but the reality probably wouldn't work within those bounds.

Of course, there are privacy concerns, but if it is distributed, the law is broken. However, the music industries would likely use this as a foot in the door, producing players that required that Watermarks match the current system. If lack of the correct watermark becomes 'wrong', then the system loses the fairness...

Ultimately, there is no practical and fair solution. Nothing will be bullet proof. Somehow books have gotten by without strange measures to protect them from scanning.... Amazing, isn't it?

Re:Too late. The cat is out of the bag.

[rknop]

Mozart died nearly penniless, without even the money for a private grave. (He was buried in a mass grave, so we don't know exactly where to go to pay respects.) Yeah, that's a great incentive.

Myth.

http://europeanhistory.about.com/library/bldyk11 .htm

-Rob

Good luck...?

[nochops]

Good luck?

When are we going to realize that we are most definitely a minority. Call us nerds, geeks, techno-savvy, educated...call us whatever you want, but the general public, en masse has no idea about any of this.

Ask you average AOL using grandma/grandpa to define DRM, DMCA, GPL, OSS, etc., and all you'll get is a puzzled look of bewilderment. These people have no idea what's brewing beneath the shiny exterior of their favorite programs. All they know, and all they care about is the latest, greates features in those programs. Do you really think grandma is going to read that EULA, start to finish, and understand the implications involved in it? In fact, I'm willing to bet that grandma doesn't even know what an EULA is, so you can add that to the list of acronyms above.

So you see, there will most likely not be any luck involved in this at all. The developers just have to give the users the features they want, and the users will buy into it. Nobody is going to hear us, the minority screaming about fair use, privacy, or any of that.

I'm not saying that we're wrong, just that luck is hardly a factor when the average computer user has no idea why this type of stuff is bad.

Re:Good luck...?

[gsfprez]

No - you're just not explaining to them like a human.

"You know, Grandma, how i used to send you pictures on the internet that i made with my camera? Well, i won't be able to do that any more unless i pay someone some money to make sure that it can't be stolen..."

"Mom, i used to send you DVD's full of video that we'd make of the new baby... we'd use our video camera and iMovie and then use iDVD and make those for you? Well, now that Apple is gone because they tried to survive the legal assaults on them for iMovie 3 - i have a Windows computer now since computers that could copy DVD's without protection were made illegal - and the DVD's i burn in that machine won't work in your Microsoft Media Center/HDTV setup unless i pay a license fee to Microsoft..."

"Aunt Mary, why are you calling me that your computer won't start up? Did you pay your computer-use bill to Microsoft this month? You did? Well.. hm.... Oh - i see, you installed a new hard drive because the old one went bad, and the 800 number has had you on hold for an hour?...."

"The new Michael Bolton CD won't play in your old CD walkman i got you a few years ago, cousin Sally. you're going to have to buy a new CD player that only plays only the new CDs. No, i know you're not a studio artist, so they won't sound any better.. but you're going to just have to keep 2 players around until next year unless you pay to migrate your old CD's to the new protected format..."

"I know, dad, you like to record Matlock when its on during the day - but unless you pay $5 a month for the right to record the show, you're just going to have to come up with something else..."

give them real examples of what's going to happen - then point out to them that its already happened with their new Windows computer at home.

Did you know that you've already given Microsoft the right to access your computer and modify your system without letting you know? And that they may pick and choose which software you can run on it?

this isn't hard - you fscking nerds just don't can't explain shimple shit.

Conflict

[Lysander Luddite]

Even the IP industry admits that DRM methods restrict access that otherwise may be legal. The consumer electronics industry is right when it says you can't encode intent and all possible uses into software.

So who's going to win? The IP industry getting the legal defintion of Fair Use restricted even more or the electronics industry who can't give the majority of its customers what they truly want? There can't be any compromise or solution until the legal defintions of acceptable legal use are able to be encoded in software.

Nothing new; DRM is still destined to failure.

[mesozoic]

No matter how much you pad a wall, people still stop when they run into it. Consumer backlash against these products hasn't hit full force yet, but it will.

Consumers define a market, not the other way around. When people start getting crippled hardware that doesn't do what they want it to, companies will pay the price.

Moreover, once media companies lose legislative support for DRM enforcement (and this will happen, although it may take the judicial system a while), tech companies won't have any more reason to implement this sort of consumer-unfriendly crap.

We need to remember that the judicial branch of the government is always slow to react, but that it does react -- and more often than not, it will favor the rights of the consumer over the rights of industry. A very convincing argument could be made (and will be, in the next couple years) to the Supreme Court challenging something as unconstitutional as the DMCA, or mandatory DRM. When Hollywood does get slapped in the face by the courts -- and I'm confident they will -- all of this nonsense will fade into the past, and a new wave of technological innovation will be allowed to continue.

This sort of situation has come up in the past, and the American system has resolved it. If this weren't the case, we would have no VCRs, no cassette tapes, and certainly no MP3 players. But we do. It's only a matter of time before we can continue the developmental trend uninhibited.

Re:Piracy Police

[Sylver Dragon]

"If the MP3 file that Brad King encodes shows up on a system, we will know where it comes from. We call it lightweight DRM, but it won't prevent you from doing anything." And then what? If one of my MP3's shows up on somebody else's system, is sombody going to make me justify the exchange? Err... No officer I never gave cooldude76 any MP3 files, he must've stolen it!

Moreover, this system will have to have a way of collecting information, and storing it as part of the DRMP3 (Suggestion for an acronym for SuperMP3's). Do they think that no one is going to figure out how to modify them to change the owner? So suddenly someone who dislikes me manufactures a bunch of Britney Spears DRMP3's with my name attached and dumps them on the web. Now, not only do I have to prove that I'm not the one releasing them, worse, I have to try and prove that I really never bought one of her CDs, to the world at large, to rebuild my little bit of reputation.

Re:Too late. The cat is out of the bag.

[Ctrl-Z]

Obligatory Slashdot reply:

1. Release music under GPL license.
2. ???
3. Profit!

Okay...

[DeltaSigma]

This idea has acquired a, somewhat, more positive reception than most other DRM methodologies. However you must keep something in mind: Consumers aren't behind the wheel on this bus.

We all know the RIAA has been getting what they want when it comes to anything related to intellectual property.

So how will it be recieved amongst them? Well I'll let you decide for yourself. However, allow me a chance to display the facts.

The Recording Industry Association of America is an interesting animal. It deviates from our usual assumptions in the way that most corporations work. It is usually assumed that a large corporation wants money, that money is the bottom line. This is not the case with the RIAA. The RIAA wants control. The end result is still money but control is the most effective means to get money.

I've explained this situation before, but for the sake of clarity I'll explain it again. They don't want control just because they're the multinational, multibillion-dollar, multi-million employing incarnation of pure satanic force. They want control because in the entertainment industry, more than any other, this is how you make the most money.

The (literally) billion dollar question is "why?" The answer is simple. Cost and risk. More than any other industry there's more money spent at a higher risk in entertainment (save, possibly, stock trading). Unlike other industries with development processes, the entertainment industry does not gaurantee that a large amount of time and money will produce large profits. So what must they do? They must assure that they are the only sources for their product. They must make it as difficult as possible for users to get music other than theirs.

That's half the reason the RIAA exists, to remove competition between high profiting companies and instead force it upon the rest of the world, including start-ups and independant businesses. I'm getting ahead of myself, however.

So what do they do with this control? They bring on a finite number of artists, have them produce as many CDs as possible, while diluding the mainstream public with as much related advertising as possible.

So you say, "why not hire more artists and make more CDs? Then you'll make more profit!" That's the traditional way of looking at it, but it's altogether untrue. They'll make more money, yes, but they certainly will not make more profit. Albums sold would increase but the cost of developing this music, signing the band, advertising for the band, buying radio play, and everything else associated with music production would increase at a higher rate than their sales.

So you see, keeping a small number of artists (a full CD store doesn't appear to be a small number of artists but when you consider that the RIAA only signs approximately 1000 artists annually you begin to see the situation with clarity) is quite beneficial to them. Making sure that these are the only artists you ever see, hear, or talk about is even more beneficial to them. It's the real reason P2P is under attack.

Given this super short, abridged, and summarized synopsis of the situation let's look at this DRM approach again. This "Squishy DRM" would allow P2P to continue. It would assure that people could not illegally acquire music. Yet, it would also allow consumers to venture with their music taste, and try smaller, less advertised artists/bands/genres. This DRM method would still compromise their control, and thus, their profits. How do you think they will recieve this idea?

Not True. Stop Spreading Microsoft Hype.

[FreeUser]

Except that the virus, by definition, cannot run on a DRM machine, so fat chance getting it propagated.

You are echoing Microsoft marketing hype which is simply untrue. Palladium will only allow "signed" or authorized software to run, which sounds good until you realize that many worms and viruses run as a subprocess of an authorized process. That is one of the reasons wbhy ActiveX was such a dismal failure at preventing malicious code from being executed.

Palladium will do nothing to stop viruses or worms from spreading or running on systems, as the worms and viruses will simply insinuate themselves into authorized code and run anyway. Microsoft's claim to the contrary is simply untrue and deceitful (what else is new?), designed to leverage their incompetently designed systems and their notorious reputation for being unable to design a secure system into a selling point for a new product designed to kill the commercial viability of free software, not viruses.

DRM isn't the same thing as Palladium, though the two are certainly akin to one another in some respects, and doesn't address authorization of software at all, merely of access to data, something that is also orthogonal to virus and worm prevention.

Losing money...

[TFloore]

The industry isn't worried about "losing money" because they mostly know that they aren't really losing sales right now.

They are thinking about DRM in terms of increasing future revenue.

If you look at enough of these studies, music file trading doesn't generally cause fewer music cd sales. People with disposable income get exposed to more music, and buy more music. People without disposable income get access to music they wouldn't have paid for anyway. And, yes, some people with poor ethics take music they could pay for but just don't want to.

But this isn't about current sales, and the known-to-be-false belief that the record industry is losing sales. It isn't, really, even about preventing loss of revenue in the future.

This is about future control, and increasing revenue in the future.

As to workable forms of DRM... Loaning a physical music CD to a friend is perfectly acceptable and completely legal. The digital equivalent would be to "loan" a copy of a computer audio file to your friend, where your friend gets a copy of the music and you lose the ability to play that music until your friend returns or deletes his copy, or buys/licenses his own copy.

Now, this introduces a few problems.

If your music license server doesn't allow loaning, then, personally, you have a broken system, and I won't use it. But this is really a minor thing.

I have a larger issue with this. How do you support loaning in a digital environment? I backup my computer, "loan" a computer audio file to my friend, my local license is disabled until it is "returned" from my friend... and then I restore from my backup... I just got my license back, and my friend has it too.

To get around this, you either need an OS that doesn't let you backup/restore licenses, or a central server that controls and validates license backup/restores, or simply a central license server that you have to connect to periodically.

None of these are good solutions for the consumer, for a number of reasons. My OS on my computer should do what I say. If it doesn't do what I say, then the person/company that does control it should pay for my computer, because it obviously isn't mine.

But further than that... No central server, and no company, has any right no know what I'm listening to, or how often I'm listening to it. This is a privacy concern. This is one of the major reasons I hated Divx. (Circuit City's Divx, not the codec.)

DRM has major problems working in a way that supports privacy rights. This is *one* of the reasons why I don't now, and probably never will, support it.