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Report from the ACM DRM Workshop
Anonymous Coward writes "There's open skepticism from researchers about the ability of DRM to solve Hollywood's copy protection problems. Read Edward Felten's review here... Papers from the workshop are available online as well."
DRM is threatening now. We don't know what sort of gimmick they're going to come out with to defeat piracy. Once it's out, it'll stop piracy for a short term. At least untill someone whips out a, "sharpie pen exploit."
The pirates and anyone interested in defeating DRM have one advantage over the RIAA/MPAA - We do it for free. They have development costs. We don't. We contrive functionality not merely due to a desire to pirate, but because it is fun.
I'm a geek. I get bored.
There's open skepticism from researchers about the ability of DRM to solve Hollywood's copy protection problems
In May I attended a meeting on amending Canada's copyright laws to include DRM protection.. one of the guys there owns a company that does encryption research.. his statement basically said "the application of encryption technology to prevent copying is fundamentally flawed"
Indeed, someone who makes his living doing what the entertainment industry wants, and he says it can't be done.
I'm glad that researchers are finally speaking up about this.
What do you mean a matter of time?
...
Weren't you paying attention when they told you that the accounts and descriptions of the game are the property of Major League
As long as we can get the encoded version (on the disc) and decoded version (out the speaker or monitor) of media (music, movies) then copy protection is doomed.
You misunderstand. RIAA doesn't need to make copying impossible--they just need to raise sufficient barriers so that an equal-copy version is harder to get than walking to the store and buying one.
They don't even have to worry about price right now--they just need to make the most convenient method of getting a copy of re-listenable (as opposed to broadcast) music to get it from them.
(Yeah, and online delivery would be the best way to get it--but that sorta requires DRM at the moment...)
I think the real problem with DRM as Hollywood types are trying to implement it is that they're so unimaginative they can't envision a scenario in which online offerings are accessed with anything besides a general-purpose computer. Basically, it's the same old Hollywood problem all over again: they can't picture anything new themselves, so they keep rehashing existing things ad nauseum.
Instead of trying to wreck or cripple personal computers, why aren't they trying to build a new special-purpose media device with the decryption method in hardware and the case sealed? Doing this would let them implement DRM in any way they chose without interfering with anyone's work, it would give them a new product to sell, and it would probably leave everyone happy. Not just happy; probably delighted.
Some other benefits of such a product would be that they could control what connectors are installed, they could play with the way the screen is painted so it wouldn't appear well on videotape (remember how old CRTs wouldn't show up well on videotape because of how the scan lines were generated?) and they could build in a temporary storage function which would let you time-shift or do any other thing you wanted.
Think about it: this would give them everything they want. They could put A/V content on the web in a proprietary encrypted format, so they wouldn't have to worry about all us Linux guys downloading their precious files, people would have access to the content as part of their cable service, they'd get either a cheapo low-end model free or buy the premium system (the cell phone model)... And, everyone is happy. I can browse the non-DRM web with my Red Hat box, or turn on my content system when I want to do something requiring DRM. It's totally win-win.
Sometimes I think the MPAA and RIAA are asleep at the switch. None of these legal maneuverings are necessary! Build the little custom media system, stop producing videotapes, switch over to encrypted online streams and DVDs, and freakin' relax. Drop the idea that everything has to run on a PC, for Christ's sake.
Of course, this is just my opinion and they're not going to listen. But, wouldn't it be nice if they did?
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Consumers in both Europe and Japan currently purchase such content with minimal complaint
What are you talking about? What copy protected content do European consumers purchase? DVDs maybe but I heard they were available in the US too.
America will actually desire the copy protection if they are told it will lead to better sound and picture quality
So everyone will believe what they are told? Clearly there is no technical relation between better sound and picture quality and DRM.
Granted, he was working within the industry
And you believed what you were told.
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
Digital copy protection schemes are usesless because it only take a good capture of the presentation of the material to defeat. Examples:
analog recording of stereo audio output from a
CD player; video camera in the movie theater. So long as the capture device can reproduce good enough quality of the presentation, it's a moot
point trying to protect the source.
The solution is not to lock up the source, but to
produce new content with quality that far outpaces the ability of capture devices to reproduce/re-transmit it.
Come on! Bring out the HDTV, HD-DVD, SACD, and holographic video and change people's definition
of "good-enough". It's still gonna be years before
the bandwidth is there to mass re-distribute contents of such high quality. If people are accustomed to watching color TV, would they revert to swapping tapes of black and white? The music/movie industries need to invest in their next big thing, and give consumer a reason to spend their money on something of extra value. Their old chicken that lays golden eggs is dead.
Eventually, there will come a point where technology would outpace human's ability to perceive any increase in quality. (Who needs
128bit color depth, when 32bit is more than quite
sufficient?). But it'll be a long time before the average joe gets a holodeck it his livingroom.
I wish people would give up on this encryption thing, it's only a matter of time when they come out with some type of code, that someone will come up with a way of defeating it. Meanwhile we suffer because we can't read each other's juicy e-mails.
</facetious>
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
One very prominent researcher asked the entire audience to consider whether or not they really believe that DRM marking will ever be a possibility, and to consider the consequences of publishing Yet Another Copyright Marking Scheme. A similar frank comment appears in the preface to the 3rd IHW proceedings, 3 years earlier, which had a lot of watermarking papers.
What is new is a sense of the conference being part of the overall policy machine. When people publish YACMS, vulnerable to the same collection of attacks, they contribute to this mass of research which Jack Valenti et al perceive as proof that maybe it is possible after all, despite the insistence from the tech sector that it is not.
Xcottt
The paper "Implementing Copyright Limitations in Rights Expression
Languages
" is the one I found most interesting. Mulligan and Burstein talk about how to implement the copyright act using a "Rights Expressions Language". They use XrML as a starting point, and go on to describe a whole bunch of issues.
I've often said the most complicated part of making a "fair" DRM (as opposed to one that just simply allows the copyright holder to do whatever they want) is to accomidate fair-use. After all, if the definition of fair-use requires lots of supplemental information and is hard to define even for a judge, what chance does a computer system have of making the right decision? This paper takes the bull by the horns, and starts trying to figure it out.
I wish we could get all of congressman to read the first two sections of this document! It does very through job of explaining how many existing checks-and-balances the DMCA removed, all in favor of the copyright holders! I know of few other examples where so much law has been invalidated with so little thought.
I had a look at the "Darknet" paper written by Peter Biddle, Paul England, Marcus Peinado, and Bryan Willman all of Microsoft Corporation.
It's really strange. Some aspects of it seem to pander very crudely to the MSFT bias towards single-user computers - the authors miss out on usenet as a "darknet" completely and they date "Internet" darknet activities to 1998. I can recall FTP'ing scanned playboy centerfolds from wustl.edu as early as 1989 - it was almost a year to the day after the Morris internet worm struck. At the same time the conclusions are very anti-MSFT-corporate-worldview: the authors conclude that some form of "darknet" will always exist for various reasons. This collides directly with MSFT's TCPA and Palladium and general piracy-crackdown viewpoint.
I can only conclude that some faction inside MSFT doesn't like or believe in the MSFT-corporate direction to include copy protection (a.k.a. DRM) in the OS and this paper is a sort of sermon in the void to warn the CEO/COO/C?? against putting all the MSFT eggs in one basket.
Or perhaps the authors are trying to run the plot of their latest cyber-thriller up the flagpole to see who salutes it.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
If they only allow exchanges, I would take another one, come back and ask for a replacement. Wash, rinse, repeat, repeat.... Go through their entire collection of CDs. It only takes 4 or 5 customers to do that before the store policy changes to accept returns.
As an alternative, if you pay with a credit card, you can claim that you were sold defective goods.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
So what you're saying is:
.gov agents buying their bus tickets and carrying their buckets of water...
1. Hollywood wants DRM and wants the US.gov to add some laws to make it mandatory.
2. MS is saying that for DRM to work, everyone needs to have the latest version of Windows.
3. DoJ (a subsidary of US.gov) has proved in a court of law that MS is a monopoly and that is a no-no.
Conclusion: The US.gov has said that MS is not allowed to be a monopoly, yet is being paid by Hollywood to make sure that it becomes even more of a monopoly.
I can see the
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
Most windows developer documentation is a mixture of lies and statements that are either no longer true or statements that are only true in a mysterious parallel universe where things get designed. Whole books about windows are outright lies, like Inside Windows NT, that has whole chapters about things (like the memory manager and how it expands its swap space dynamically) that are blatantly untrue to anyone who has used up their memory space.
Welcome ot the worlds of windows programming.
Yes and no.
First off, the percieved quality has to have additional value. If this doesn't happen, then everything else is doomed. Case in point is audio: MP3 is "good enough" for most things, and offers benefits (physically small devices that can hold a catalog of music) beyond the traditional media. Better quality audio is nice, but the most ubiquitous use of music is background: people wouldn't pay 10x as much for things that they appreciate more 10% of the time.
The second, and possibly more important issue is that the content cartel wants new distribution means; they want to be able to rent movies to people over their internet connection. The problem is that this will never provide the level of security they feel is necessary.
I hate to break you the bad news, because I like loving slashdotters, but you're part of the problem. I don't blame you, because the job market sucks right now, but nevertheless there we are. You see, ??AA only succeed because they can hire bright guys to code them stuff. The best way to kill them is to go after their braintrust. If this means refusing a job on moral grounds, so be it. Easy to say, hard to do, especially in this environment, but I personally have done it, and I'm not exactly swimming in cash. I have a mortgage payment due the first of every month, and I may have to sell my house soon to cover expenses. But I won't work for the MPAA or RIAA. I'd sooner put my college degree to good use flinging burgers at a local grease joint.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.