Apple Shuns DRM Efforts So Far

Graff writes "This was found on SiliconValley.com. In an article for the Mercury News, Dan Gillmor talks about how Apple is still standing firm against the Digital Rights Management (DRM) efforts which the entertainment industry is trying to force on the public. There's also another article on the fight for our digital rights in Congress."

Comments

Re:Apple knows which side their bread is buttered

[tshak]

Remember that Microsoft is the one that A) voted AGAINST legislation for DRM and B) has opted to make it a consumer choice as to whethor or not you want Windows to boot in "DRM" mode or not. If you're not in DRM mode, you simply can't play purchased digial music. Big deal - I'm not buying crippled music. However, you can still play all of your "insecure" MP3's and WMA's.

Re:What about Pixar?

[Nutcase]

Pixar is /not/ owned by Disney. Pixar has a 5 film distribution deal with Disney. But it is it's own production company.

I need to try this

[HughsOnFirst]

In Dan Gillmor's column he says

"I recently discovered that Apple's DVD Player software, which came with my Powerbook G4 laptop, gives me flexibility in a way I hadn't expected. Sometimes I like to watch a movie while I'm on a plane, but the DVD drive in my machine drains my battery too quickly. So before I leave home, I copy a movie -- note to Hollywood: I do not do this with rental DVDs, only ones I own -- to my hard disk. The DVD Player software reads it from the disk, which uses less power than the DVD drive."

That is pretty interesting. I wish it would fast forward over the ads

Pixar is a public company

[AtariKee]

Pixar is publically traded, and Jobs is the chairman and CEO. I'm not sure if Disney has any investment in the company other than a contract to distribute movies made by Pixar. And it's a great contract, too. Jobs got them to split everything 50/50, an UNHEARD of deal. Steve is widely praised in the Hollywood machine for getting Disney to go along with this deal.

Re:Digital wRongs Management?

[intermodal]

DRM is not a person. DRM does not stop you from archiving your CDs to mp3. DRM is not a law. DRM merely allows companies to protect technologically that which they can already protect legally. That's a good thing, because it encourages people to release content in formats they otherwise would be forced to avoid.

FUD if i ever saw it. DRM makes it a pain in the ass to archive your CDs to MP3 and to play them on other boxes, and to reinstall your OS, and oh yeah...it also makes it a pain in the ass to run what you want to. It also makes it pointless because I don't want a vapor copy of something that I could have hardcopy of. Why would I purchase an MP3 or MPEG4 when I could just buy a DVD or CD and then make it myself, making it less suceptible to loss? DRM is nothing more than a system of control that they want to implement to make it a pain in the ass to use your fair use. you can't resell a digital file of a song, but you can resell a CD. It's pure marketing evil. Look beyond the surface...theres a lot more to it than just protecting their works

Re:This is bigger than MP3's on iPod

[funwithstuff]

If you read the article, you would notice that the OS cheerfully lets you rip, image, and mount whole DVD's to your hard drive, so you can watch them on battery power without the added electrical drain of the disk player.

Not quite true. If you just copy the DVD by drag-and-drop, you'll probably have playback problems. (CSS and the disc name disagreeing?) Image the thing with Disk Copy and you should be fine.

Alternatively, use a program like DVD Backup to rip, DeCSS, de-region, and you're golden. Apple's DVD player will play it back just fine.

Apple actually enabled this feature (in the last six months or so) so that their DVD Player app could play back DVDs that had just been created with their DVD Studio Pro package: pre-imaging, pre-burn, just sitting there loose on the hard drive. Apple is trying to make things easier for content creators, their traditional market, and a handy side-effect for everyone else is a non-DRM solution on the table.

Re:This is bigger than MP3's on iPod

[Graff]

If you just copy the DVD by drag-and-drop, you'll probably have playback problems. (CSS and the disc name disagreeing?)

Not true. You can play DVD video from just about any media with the built-in DVD player in MacOS X. To see how take a look at this AppleCare Knowledge Base document, #42647. The important instructions are here:

To open your DVD movie:

1. Open DVD Player 3.1 (Requires Mac OS 10.1.3 or later)
2. Choose Open VIDEO_TS Folder from the File menu.
3. Locate and select the VIDEO_TS folder and click Choose.
4. To start playing the movie, click the Play button.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Further examples of Apple corporate Schizophren

[Tokerat]

Just because Apple doesn't actively support altering of Aqua doesn't mean you can't, or for that matter, that it's not allowed.

Duality

Apple has pursued those who create an Aqua style theme for other computers because the LOOK and FEEL does belong to them. They paid artists and graphic designers to come up with it. Using it elsewhere is like using the Apple logo elsewhere, and Apple has the right to keep what's theirs theirs.

X11 already runs on Mac OS X, in the same screen space as Aqua (if your turn the option on), and personally I feel as though it's a Good Thing(TM) to have X11 not look like Aqua. After all, it ISN'T Aqua and thus I am made aware of the enviromental differences simply by observing what kind of window it is. If I'm the type of person who can't handle that, why am I running X11 in the first place?

XDarwin

If you're talking about doing screen drawing, Aqua is meerly the look and feel (interface philosophy, if you will), it doesn't HAVE an API. You may be thinking of Quartz, QuickDraw, and QuickTime, which are pretty extensively documented, as they always have been. For free, too. If you're intrested in what Aqua actually is, read the Aqua Human Interface Guidelines.

As for Aqua, anything you need to do to make Aqua windows/widgets when coding are there. Check out the Window Manger documentation, or the Cocoa flavor, if you liek that sort of thing ;-)

There are no "hidden APIs" (unlike M$ Windoze). There are however, system internal functions for performing tasks that need to be done (Window widgets, double buffering, etc), for which there is no need of programmer intervention.

Claiming those functions are a "hidden API" is like being pissed you can't call functions in a library because they where only implemented to assist the programmers while writing the library. In fact, that's exactly the same thing, isn't it? Hmmmmmm.....

This is one of the ways Apple is achieving greater system stability, through abstraction of the OS and hardware to the programmer. MacOS 9 (er..."Classic") was hacked to shreds by anyone and everyone, and there where all kinds of problems with INITs and CDEVs and such running amok on everyone's system. I have no less than 175 INITs and CDEVs on this machine right now (yes, a Classic box, 8600/250) and I use most of that functionality. The OS sometimes gets slow, sometimes crashes. A clean install of MacOS 9 will be damn quick and DAMN stable. Throw all this crazy hack-job business in the mix and it's easy to hose your whole system in no time. With Mac OS X, Apple has abstracted many things and it keeps programmers from being naughty and say, writing directly to WindowDef structures, which reside in system memory space. So should it be allowed? Imagine a loop with a bug which, under certian conditions, will write forever to that WindowPtr. Now remember it's in the system heap. Oops.

I can put it better with a quote from Super Troopers: "The less you knew, the less you could fuck up."

Re:All kinds of forces

[jbolden]

Actually no; the original poster is correct. During boot the system will either be in "trusted" or "untrusted" mode. Thus a Palladium OS will be able to tell the difference between running in an emulator (where data could then be pulled out with a dubugger) and running against native hardware. Once the Palladium capable OS has linked with the hardware it will take over responsibility for applications.

Re:This is bigger than MP3's on iPod

[SmittyTheBold]

This works, but only for movies that do not have CSS encryption. The DVD keys do not show up in the normal filesystem; they are part of a special data area of the disc. Copying all the files (namely the VIDEO_TS files) to another media will get you the content, but it's still encrypted. You have to decrypt it to play, and the Apple DVD Player does not have code in it to dodge CSS - it can just play encrypted content off the original media easily, or play files that are NOT encrypted on any media just as easily.