Slashdot Mirror
DRM: How To Boil A Frog
symbolic writes "This article on the Register explains their experience with Creative's first attempt at supporting DRM, and also reviews a sneaky little technique for 'easing' DRM into peoples' lives via a free Costello preview CD. Two of the tracks are free from any DRM, but for the two that are DRM-enabled, you have to activate the right to listen to them (up to four times), by accessing a central server via the net. For those in the know, the doublespeak used to inform users of any actions they need to take to enable their DRM rights might be quite amusing. To wit: 'The content you are accessing requires an additional level of security. In order to play it, you will need to update your Digital Rights Management Installation.' Others, however, will think they're getting something, when they're actually having something taken away from them. It's a matter of time to see if consumers will flat-out reject this new 'enabling' technology, or let it seep into and infect their lives like the disease that it is."
the person whose CD didn't play at all, because everyone threw it out rather than go through all the hassle of playing the WMA files.
sulli
RTFJ.
I guess it won't be too long before that mega-hit CD has a data track with an unreleased track that requires DRM in order to be played, enabling both the RIAA to get their control over hardware/software and MS to get Windows Media Player more entrenched.
I'd say who the losers are in this case, but we already know that by now.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
If you do, then you'll (most likely) end up with the beta of Microsoft's latest DRM player (which youn can't easily get off XP), and you'll also have your settings changed so that your installation facilitates DRM, WMA format and pay per play. But don't worry, it didn't cost you anything.*
Doesn't this violate the Microsoft agreement? There has to be a way to take Windows Media Player off your computer. If I am correct, there should be a program to illimate the presence of Microsoft products (IE, and that sorts) from desktop/startup menu. The program should also illimate WMP from these areas as well. Does anyone know for sure if this breaks the Microsoft agreement?
UK Sunday Times newspaper unleashed a neat little trojan that'll upgrade you to Windows Media Player 9
I always thought trojans are bad. This is no exception. I wonder how long it will take McAfee and Norton to come out with a fix for this.
So, i have to boot up a windows box and connect to the net to play this cd through my 20 dollar speakers and my 10 dollar sound card?
I can't put it in my cd player and listen to it through real speakers? I can't listen to it in my car?
Ok, well. I dunno what that is, but its not an audio cd, and I don't know how much it costs, but even if its free, its useless to me. Thanks, but no thanks.
--sean
Don't use DRM files
Don't hack DRM files
Don't pay for DRM files
Don't do anything with DRM files
As soon as it's known that DRM content doesn't make money it will tank faster than advertising CPMs.
Divx A few more words... You can read a book written hundreds of years ago, and listen to a record pressed decades ago, because they used simple, open technologies. My single biggest grip about any sort of protection mechanism (aside from inconvenience to me) is that the technologies are so short-lived. If DRM does catch on, how long do you think companies are going to keep the activation mechanisms around? If they want to protect their investment by building mechanisms to prevent illegal copying, they better hang onto them to protect *my* investment so I can listen to my DRM-protected music 40 years from now.
This is what really is funny about this whole nonsense. And what I think dooms any of these strategies to failure.
For two generations at least the music industry has been selling rebellion. Throw off any restraint with regard to authority, parents, morality. They have been in a small way part of what has made North american society what it is.Rebellious, indifferent -- hostile towards authority.
Now they have to somehow try to live within the society they have created.
Very very funny.
Derek
The title of this story actually makes sense. To boil a frog you can't just throw a live frog into a hot pot of water (it'll jump out). What you do is put a frog in a cold pot of water and slowly turn up the heat, the frog never leaps out because the change is too slowly, then when the water's too hot the frog can't jump out because it's dead (PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, I HAVE NEVER DONE THIS BUT I READ ABOUT IT!)
Anyway what the story title is suggesting is that we're like the frogs, DRM is like hot water. To get us used to DRM (and eventually "killed" by it) they (yeah it's always them) have to introduce DRM slowly so you get used to it, then they add more DRM, then you get used to that, it's a cycle that ends only after it's too late and DRM is everywhere.
By the way, check google for "How to boil a frog" and you'll find where I got my information from (should be the first result.)
The law is slow, deliberate and generally fails the consumer. However, with the marketplace, consumer demand could easily spell the demise of DRM without having to grease one legislator's palms. Fast. Look at DiVX. If no one buys it, no one will want to make it.
Maybe I am hopeful, but I don't think the generic consumer is going to think, "Hey! Great! The DVDs and CDs I am buying are protected by DRM. They only work at my house so my pesky friends can't steal them!". Nothing that DRM does benefits the consumer except for the pesky friend problem. Consumers want better, bigger, faster. Not complicated, rigid and limited.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
at), I had to go online and pick up a license file for each track (and fill in a form on a pop-up window for the first one, giving them a BS name and address).
I think you are missing the point of the article, as the Slashdot title implies...
"How to boil a frog"...
You turn up the heat slowly.... of course. This time you had to do some annoying stuff, and fill in some bogus info on some forms. It's the "next time" we are worried about.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I think this language is very deceptive. By claiming to "protect you" and by claiming they are enabling "additional security", they're implying that you will receive some sort of benefit. What benefit is that, exactly?
This giant PITA scenario illustrates why DRM without force of law is destined to fail: Any solution that requires an end user to think along the lines of an IT department in order to work will not be acecpted by Joe Blow or his family.
Joe isn't going to get the concept of "digital certificates" that allow him to play his media files, and won't remember to backup his licenses.
Instead of starting over, re-ripping everything again (hopefully not in WMA) they're going to look for a way around it, and his 10 year old will know where to download the player software that breaks it, and the port to block to keep it from tattling to Microsoft.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that this does suck but it isn't the end of the world. What we need to concentrate on is defeating the laws that will ban non DRM media players.
As long as we can access non-DRM media players, we are still free. I for one think we should continue to fight like hell to stay that way.
Who did what now?
Actually, your father and colleagues were correct - Palladium would enable such a thing as stopping people from forwarding and copying e-mail. Possibly good - possibly.
;-]) as would other un-savoury factions of society. It would make it harder to obtain and gather evidence against purveyours of child-porn, for instance, since they could protect thier communications as well as thier illicit files. Want to forward the hate-mail you got from the KKK member in the office to your boss or the cops? Nope, sorry, too bad, it's Pd protected. Nope, can't print it either! Now what?
You really should remind these people that there is no free lunch - they will get, they'll also give. Palladium all on it's own will not discriminate who can use the technology to protect whatever digital things they want. Criminals would have thier e-mails protected just like any upstanding citizen, (Hope Dad's not a Soprano type
If they then counter "Well the government/FBI/SomeAuthority will have the keys...", you can explain that Pd isn't much good to begin with then. This isn't FUD, it's truth. It's also a way to show that Pd isn't "good", it's just technology which can only be alligned to the purpose of it's user - which is where the good or evil truly lies.
Sometimes file copying is good. Where and when this is true takes good, running wetware to figure out properly.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
It is my artwork.
No, it's not. Many people had a hand in getting you where you are today. You would know nothing of music if it weren't for people who came before and paved the path. You'd know nothing of musical theory or composition if it weren't for you instructors, who got their knowledge from someone else. The sheet music you study, the instrument you play, and the songs you cover when you're learning, were all made by someone else. If it were illegal to cover a song without written permission, if it were illegal to "reverse engineer" a song, and play the melody on your guitar just by listening to it, just how far do you think you would have made it composing that 40 hour song? What you did was pull together all the knowledge you've gained from others' work, and with that knowledge, you were able to craft something of your own style. The song you made is not your creation, but rather the culmination of knowledge that came before you, guided by your hand. You don't live in vacuum. Physical property belongs to you, but ideas do not.
No sig for you.
An interesting side of this DRM technology is, the Artists could now sell their records in DRM format from their own servers. That means record companies may now retire. The end-user may now pay through credit-card / paypal, download the song and press the play button. No CDs to press, no record company is needed.