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."

Comments

Or, in this case

[sulli]

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.

Where have I seen this before?

[rworne]

Sneaking software onto unsuspecting users' PC's. Adding or removing functions. It seems that the DRM crowd has taken a page off of the crapware/spyware vendors and are encouraging people to install this stuff on their computers.

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.

cd?

[dizco]

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 Do Anything

[PaulQuinn]

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.

One word on DRM and restricting use of multimedia

[danc256]

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.

You get what you pay for...

[toupsie]

As long as consumers spend their money on "DRM enhanced" products, they will be viable in the marketplace. So far, that has not happened...yet! The example of the DiVX(?) format was telling. The DVD won out because average consumer was thinking, "Dang it, I bought it, I want to watch the movie as many times as I want, and if my buddy has a movie I want to watch and I got one they want to watch, we trade." With DiVX, they couldn't do it and cost nearly the same as a DVD. Right now, the consumer feels if they are going to the trouble of buying a movie in a tangible medium, it should be able to play anytime and anywhere they want. Once the consumer loses that desire, DRM is in.

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.

Re:WMP8 and TotalRecorder

[GigsVT]

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.

Tricking people into enabling DRM

[Karl Cocknozzle]

Two points:

"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.

"When you click OK, Windows Media Player sends a unique identifier for your computer to a Microsoft service on the Internet. Click learn more to find out how the Microsoft service protects your licenses, files, and your privacy."

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?

Say you've recorded bought CDs using WMP, and you decide before upgrading to XP you'll do a clean install, so you back up your music files, vape the disk and then do the install. You did back up your licences as well, didn't you? Oh dear...

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.

Re:if the protection is reasonable, where's the pr

[blank_coil]

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.