Slashdot Mirror
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."
I just wish they would give it up, its only a matter of time when they come out with some type of copy protection, that someone will come up with a way of defeating it. Meanwhile we (the consumer) suffer because we get things like cd's we can't play in our computer.
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.
It worked for this post...
Bar, Qrpelcg QEZ cebgrpgrq zrqvn
Gjb, Dhrfgvba Znex, Dhrfgvba Znex, Dhrfgvba Znex
Guerr, Cebsvg Rkpynzngvba Znex, Rkpynzngvba Znex, Rkpynzngvba Znex
they should watermark paper. That way noone could copy it!
Oh wait...
If DRM could be implemented without restricting access to memory in my own computer I probably wouldn't mind it so much. The problem is that DRM cannot be implemented without this restriction. Any encrypted file will have to be decrypted, and that means that I can dump memory and get the unencrypted value. DRM will never work without taking away certain things about a computer that make it the extremely useful tool that it is.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
The text from the article says:
Proposals for systems involving mandatory watermark detection in rendering devices try to impact the effectiveness of [file sharing systems].... In addition to severe commercial and social problems, these schemes suffer from several technical deficiencies, which, in the presence of an effective [file sharing system], lead to their complete collapse. We conclude that such schemes are doomed to failure.
Note, the article actually says that the watermarking is doomed to failure... not p2p. I've got no idea where on earth you got that text, but its not correct.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
I'd be interested in knowing how many people _didn't_ appear or present papers at this workshop due to the DMCA.
no one wins, but the rich get richer.
I think one could just use that reply for every article ever posted on Slashdot.
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.
While I agree with one person's comment, that this level of response won't make any difference *policy wise*, it strikes me as an important step that engineers *in the industry* have started saying quite blunty, "this won't work".
;-)
Having a million random geeks say "we can break anything you throw at us" carries little weight - the non-techies coming up with these crackpot schemes just assure themselves that *their* idea will make fools of the collected geeks of the world.
OTOH, having the very geeks PAID to design and implement these ideas say "uh, well, no, it really won't work all that well" means quite a lot more. Obviously, mr. clueless exec's first response would consist of firing any naysayers. After the 10th or 20th person to say "no, really, this won't work, it doesn't matter if you threaten to fire me", they *might* start to get the idea that they have at least a somewhat difficult goal.
This might mark a turning point. Not necessarily for the better, since I expect the next set of ideas to involve a lot of annoying-as-hell hardware-level DRM, but since even that will unavoidably fail, we have taken a step toward the road back to sanity.
I hope. The RIAA and MPAA could always try to get the death penalty for music pirates.
"Whad'ja do, man?"
"Downloaded an MP3 of Brandenberg Concerto #3"
"Uh, I thought that would have gone PD by now"
"Nah, when Disney discovered a 14th century precedent for Mickey, they had copyrights retroactively extended back for a full millenium."
"Bummer"
"Yeah. But at least I only *downloaded* a copy, I just get flogged plus the standard 20 year sentence. A buddy of mine made Mozart's 19th string quartet available on a file sharing network. Poor bastard, they dragged his wife and kids out into the street and shot them all, then at the actual hearing sentenced him to death by impalement in front of RIAA HQ."
It should be noted that the game industry has managed it. Consoles exist to some degree because console games can be made sufficiently difficult to copy that most people can't be bothered. And with some games costing upwards of $10 M to develop this couldn't happen sooner.
The current music industry is another story. They are dead. In 1970 the only way a record could be made and distributed was with a recording studio that cost thousands, perhaps millions, and expensive duplication equipment along with an expensive distribution chain. These days you can by a digital 8 track recorder and a PC for less than a grand and do it all yourself and then distribute it over the net. Mp3s and file sharing will change the economics of music and kill the RIAA but they will never kill it, with films it's different, digital technology offers the possibility of wrecking Hollywood.
Think about it for a sec, before putting up your slashdotisms.
has nothing to do with the machinery, technologies, protocols, etc. It has everything to do with people. Even if the DRM technologies were perfected right now, people would still find a way around it. Why? Because they want to. IMHO we all need to remember that a system isn't just the hardware, software, and logical bits. The system also includes the people; people who create the hardware and software; people who manage and use it; people who create content, etc. People who give it all a purpose. I've never seen any hardware or software that has a purpose by itself; people give it that purpose, and it is reflected in the design. If someone's purpose is to crack DRM schemes, they will probably do so.
C|N>K
I had the opportunity to engage a luminary in the field in friendly discussion at a September DRM luncheon in Prague. He made it clear that despite the feelings of a vocal minority (us), copy protection will be accepted if not welcomed by the general population. Consumers in both Europe and Japan currently purchase such content with minimal complaint, and it seems even more likely in field testing that America will actually desire the copy protection if they are told it will lead to better sound and picture quality.
Granted, he was working within the industry, but the devastating piracy figures in a recent poll conducted among computer users made it clear that DRM will save the industry a lot of money. The poll, performed by blind surveying at three recent trade shows across the U.S., showed a staggering amount of pirated content; broken down by operating system of preference (to see what kind of effect DeCSS has had) apparently Windows users 'only' pirate about a quarter of their movie content, against Linux users' 67% and Macintosh 30%.
In the wake of this information, and the lackluster performance of the music industry in recent years, it is little wonder that they're adopting a 'Chicken Little' approach -- for them, the sky truly is falling. Hopefully, a reasonable compromise between our rights to do with our hardware as we will and the rights of copyright holders to be renumerated for their efforts will be struck; however, I am assured that if one will give, it will be the continuance of Open Source media decoders.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I do occassionally only to ensure I can get a nice sounding rip out of it. It pains me to see how many songs are out there encoded at a crappy 128kbps. At one time I thought that was sufficient until I started listening to them at 192kbps. At that rate it sounds MUCH better crisper. I can't tell the difference between 192kbps and any higher though and it's a good compromise on file size. With many relatives I have hundreds of CDs available to swap. Since it's all for personal use and I'm just trading amongst relatives and friends that's alright right? No? But Metallica said it was alright! They just don't want people using P2P and putting it out there for millions to download. We can still swap tapes right? Oh no? Why not? When did this happen?
Ah, yes, that's the problem alright, no one ever taught the people using Kazaa that stealing is wrong. It's all so clear now. Of course moral virtue is acquired by a good education!
...
--
And interesting sig. So a religion is a small, unpopular, large, popular, small
--
People can just rip those CDs to MP3. Most car sterios play CD-Rom's full of MP3s these days.
:P
Nevermind that this is exactly what the technology is supposed to prevent. It certanly dosn't
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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!
Nonsense. If Hollywood really can't protect it's works the film industry will die. It's an economic question. A reasonably large budgeted feature film costs $100 M to make and involves at a very rough estimate around 100 person years of labour. If the money cannot be recouped reasonably it's all over. No more "Good Burger", "Dude, Where's My Car", "The Cable Guy"... The world would not come to a hault if the $100,000,000.00 (it seems bigger when you type it out) movie became an impossble business decision. Yeah, a lot of actors, cameramen, and production assistants would lose their jobs, but hey, they can all go back to waiting tables, doing a job that society still considers productive enough to merit pay. We don't need to protect industries that have served their purpose in the past, but are now no longer worth what they used to be.
How typical of Microsoft.
.pdf (somewhat more Linux friendly) and the .doc (save the
paper from the Law paper) .pdf
Notice that everyone else uses
two representatives of MS posted
as if they were accentuating the fact that they were from Microsoft and too
good for
I am developing a DRM solution for a major record label. I am a loving slashdot poster and feel the same as all of you. But the client wanted it and I had to oblige or not get the contratc.
.wma files. I had the same opinions of the recording industry as many of you. Like "they are dumb, they should be doing..." What you (and I) don't realize, is that they have access to much more information than we do. They DO know everything. They DO have their reasons for their implementation.s They have thought it out.
I had to implement Windows DRM on Windows Audio files. The Windows DRM server is a mess. With no support, incomplete and documentation that flat out LIES. They LIE repeatedly through the documentation, or they simply make statements in one instance that directly conflict with others. FYI, the windows development community is outstanding. There are tons of free apps and sample code. This is the first time I've ever had to rely soley on MS for support as there is no community for DRM. It was a horrible experience.
With all of that aside, I did get it built. The record companies know how well DRM works, especially on
They don't care if DRM only partially works. That is all it needs to do. With the low costs of distribution, they can model the risk/reward, profit/loss easily. Volume is the key in the recording industry.
Many people WILL buy the albums/songs regardless if the technology can be circumvented. ANY technology on any platform has their open flaws, this is just another. As we all do, they play the %'s.
My $.02, it may not mean much, but I have seen it all in a new light.
Actually, I think it is possible to create a DRM-Happy world. Just put PKI on everything and encrypt everything with it. Use decently sized keys, etc. If you manage figure out how to get the private key out of a device, the bad guys just need to refuse to re-certify that device and give it a new private key (all of these devices will need some kind of network connection. Could be a big boon to pervasive wifi...)
Of course, all of the information will be able to be 'downgraded' to old formats by redigitizing the analog signal. But with legislation like SSSCA/CDPTPA (or whatever) anything that can do that is illegal. illegal doesn't mean inaccessible, but it's probably good enough for the RIAA/MPAA/Microsoft.
It won't be perfict, but you can't have perfectly secure communication either (what with keyboard sniffers and the like). That doesn't mean you can't get very, very close.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Given that the last couple of big movies, the pirate copy was made with a cam-corder.
Given that having people distribute home made movies is legal, and in fact, something that should be encouraged.
Making said movie in a movie theater while a film is showing, THAT isn't legal, but I don't see a technological solution to where people point their cameras
You seem to be assuming that, a priori, the only movies made require Hollywood-level expense and infrastructure... Not so, with the advent of digital video and prosumer level video editing decks. (Is a $1000 video editing card cheap? A $3000 dv cam? $2000 a/v raid? hell no. but they're a damn sight cheaper than the big-studio level stuff.) I think the coming digital age will herald the end of the Hollywood blockbuster and the dawn of a new era of smaller independent filmmaking. Because now not only the tool but the distribution media are in place to make a good movie for less than 50 grand. If you can sell digital downloads of your film for $5 and get 10,000(*) people to look at it, you've broken even. Coupled with a strengthening of film festivals and online movie-consumer websites (think the Amazon book recommendation system applied to indie films), this could turn filmmaking from a hundreds-of-people-and-millions-of-dollars effort to a tens-of-people-and-thousands-of-dollars effort with a real chance of being a profitable enterprise... I think that this would allow a purer artistic vision to shine through in most of the resulting films because with lower financial risk and fewer participants there would be less of a "design by commitee" aspect.
(*)That seems like a lot of folks, but given the scale factor of the internet... (How many of us have laughed at one point or another at the "All Your Base" or "Gonads and Strife" clips?)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
1) Politicians only care about rich people because you need a lot of money to get elected.
2) The mass transit analogy doesn't hold because mass transit costs a fortune to build and operate, while copy protection can be broken by someone who's still living in his parents basement.
3) The disease isn't capitalism, the disease is campaign finance. It can be cured.
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggy" until you find a rock.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Very true. As it happens, there are plenty of engineers who are quite willing to work on things that Don't Really Matter (DRM) as long as someone is willing to pay Really Indecent Amounts of Acmids (RIAA) for it. It puts bread on the table. Telling them what they don't want to hear doesn't.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
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.
How many people actually pirated these movies Vs those who watched/bought them. Harry Potty 2 was sold out before opening night, even though the plot was quite weak in comparison to the first. I may pirate HP3 before seeing it, just to avoid shelling out for a yawner.
Meanwhilst, both of the new Star Wars movies were pretty cool (ignoring JarJar)... Yoda with a lightsaber in SW2 kicked butt. Guess which one I'm more likely to pay to see.
Good movies=good profit. If a movie is worth seeing on the big screen and DVD, then it will sell. I know a lot of consistant pirates who still have very large DVD collections, albeit of very good movies... hell, some of them even get the DVD for stuff they've already pirated.
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.
Me, for example. I find mp3s from musicians I've never heard of (sometimes I have, doesn't matter), I like them, I go find & buy their CDs. Lather, rinse, repeat.
... I rarely listen to the radio any more ... )
Damn free music is costing me a fortune!
( Funny thing I've noticed tho
that I got out of the papers so far, is that if I want to rip copy protected audio CDs, I'll get a plextor drive and use CD Paranoia (see this paper for more information).
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
I see three specific areas of work that are key adoption blockers today and ripe for further academic and commercial research. The lack of widely-available trustworthy computing devices, robust trust management engines and a general-purpose rights expression/authorization language all hamper industrial development and deployment of DRM systems for digital content.
Translation:
1: For DRM to work, everyone in the content must be running a secure OS (presumably Windows) on specially designed hardware AND
2: A system in place on the client (presumably the .NET CLR trust management engine) must authenticate every executable on the client before execution AND
3: All content providers must use a language (presumably MS's XRML - eXtensible Rights Management Language) to 'encode' documents and executables for number 2, above.
Basically, MS is saying: if you want DRM, OSS and 'general purpose' computing devices must go away. And of course, you must serve your media using Windows.NET Media Server.
(Score:1, Redundant)
I'm sorry. Usually I just let moderation slide by like the stench from a dumpster. But sometimes the smell is just so offensive, I have to take issue. The whole freaking STORY is REDUNDANT. Moderation is a privilege (Ask me, I lost it in the great bitchslapping for moderating one of the editors), not something you forward your opinions with. The article is saying something WE ALL ALREADY KNOW, namely, that DRM won't work. To moderate someone redundant for pointing this out is ASININE. (Look that one up, broaden your vocabulary. Do it online though so you don't get drool on the big book)
Ahh, I feel better now. I hope you have some mod points left so you can mod this post accordingly.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
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
...will kill any attempt for DRM. DRM stops being effective at the component output level. But at the point where it has to pass a digital signal, DRM loses. So my computer won't let me access the section of memory with the "movie," fine. I'll just use two computers. One has a "movie" I can't touch, but ultimately I can get my hands on the digital video feed from my vid card and the digital sound feed from my sound card. How hard is it to then have a second computer, with the sound feed going into the "line in" and the digital video feed going into a video capture card? Then just splice the sound and video together. And since the pirating scene depends on really a few groups, soon after release on DVD a big MPEG will go up, DRM or no, in near-DVD quality. So I don't know who they're fooling.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
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.
Lord of the Rings, from hollywood??
That movie would have had car explosions and Arnold Shwarzenegger as Frodo if shot in hollywood.
Lord of the Rings was not in any way a hollywood crap'o'movie.
Hollywoods biggest enemy is their scripts. Why the hell do they throw hundreds of millions on a terrible script like Lethal Weapon 3 ?? Most people watch the good movies in the theater and the sloppy ones at home when out of things to do.
With few exception hollywood has again and again made safe bets and delivers only variations on the same script the last 10 years.
The good stuff is made by pixar, dreamworks and other smaller players that has the gut to take some chances.
HTTP/1.1 400
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.
Let see here....
1. Produce multi-million dollar movies and distribute them
2. ???
3. No profit due to Step 2
Revise:
1. Produce multi-million dollar movies and distribute them DRM
2. ???
3. NO PROFIT! Who-hoo!
Sounds like the same-ol'-same-ol' to me....
If DRM worked they wouldn't need laws to protect it. You wouldn't need laws to make it illigal to break the protection because you wouldn't be able to break it.
Hollywood knows it doesn't work, that's why they need the laws.
Darwin O'Connor
Dude, this is perhaps the most insightful comment I've read all week! I wish I had mod points right now.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
... having a conversation with a pretty sharp friend of mine at school about all this crap about four years ago. It seemed to me as though all of these efforts to create copy-protection (the old name for DRM) were totally useless because you /can't/ protect the data. There's always a way around it. This is not encryption people. This is like saying "I want to give you something and not give you something at the same time." How the hell do you do that? You don't, that's how.
/somewhere/ ... so the best thing any programmers can do is just try to hide it through obfuscation. Since there is no REAL way to actually protect the data, instead we're going to be deluged with hare-brained schemes that just make it harder and harder for us to do what we want with our data.
... sure that might work, hypothetically. But I hope and pray that the public won't take it.
Consider watermarking. If I know there's a watermark in the data, I can fiddle it until I understand the watermark and remove it. Like other people have said, any decryption key has to be in memory
So, DRM == copy protection. Anyone else remember where copy-protection went with games and everything for the first 15 years of commercial software? More and more annoying, until finally the companies gave up. Same thing will happen with DRM unless the antagonists can learn from history.
As far as legislation, and "secure" platforms go
simon
home page
Come on. Jack Valenti testified under oath in the eighties that the VCR would be "the Boston Strangler" to the movie industry.
And you know what? People copied movies off the air and the movie industry is still there and making billions.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
If Hollywood really can't protect it's works the film industry will die
Yes, and if Sony is allowed to sell the Betamax, then the film industry will die,
and before that...
if Panasonic is allowed to sell audio cassette players, the music industry will die
and before that...
if tv stations are allowed to broadcast movies, the film industry will die
and before that...
if radio is allowed to broadcast music then the live music industry will die.
These have all failed to pass. In each case, the new technology not only didn't cause the 'death' of the old, but it provided a huge new revenue stream. "Protecting works" is just the latest catch-phrase, Jack.
"If Hollywood really can't protect it's works the film industry will die. It's an economic question"
Its an economic question, but not one of life or death.
Content providers have been trying since the days of shee music and music rolls to get some form of "Rights Management" and laws to protect them, always couched exactly how you put it.
But right now, the movie industry has no real way to protect its works today...and yet, they have record profits.
So one of two things is false: (1) the film industry is dying today or (2) we don't need DRM of any sort on mass media.
Oh, and by the way, if the Music Industry is dead, then why are they yet again turning record profits? Ever since Phillips Compact Cassette, music has been easy and cheap to copy. Yet they survive.
The idea that the entertainment industry is in trouble is a myth started by the "Wired" crowd back in 1998 and is demonstrably false.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
"Many people WILL buy the albums/songs regardless if the technology can be circumvented. ANY technology on any platform has their open flaws, this is just another. As we all do, they play the %'s."
I don't think so. Look at Divx. It failed very quickly and it had all those "smart guys that know everything" looking at it.
I think if content is locked down so well that average people could never copy it, then it will be ignored. People will simply gravitate to some other form of entertainment.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Yes, they have made it clear that they will go after component manufacturers, but there are a few problems. First, industry standards are non-DRM. For a sound card manufacturer to be Dolby compliant, I don't know how they will accomplish this without crippling hardware. Second, component hardware manufacturers have been a lot less willing than Intel. Assuming that they will ALL go along is questionable - and your link didn't have a firm commitment from Creative.
I do think that it's a long way from assuming this is dead. I don't think it's at all clear, yet, that they will get output-level protection - though they do want it.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
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.
Excellent point.
Yes, degradation will occur in any analog capture of a digital presentation. This degradation will not be a sufficient motive to stop most people from making copies. Once the analog capture is itself digititized, it will not degrade further.
If care is taken to get a quality analog capture, the degradation may not even be apparent. I believe acceptable rips can be made by filming LCD screens. Darken the room. Toy with the settings on a large quality monitor and quality camera until the result looks as good as you can get it. It wouldn't look that bad at all.
Even if the result is somewhat degraded, it will be traded anyway. Many of us use lame presets to make the best quality VBR mp3s possible while not wasting disk unecessarily. Most people aren't that careful. The most common type of file on the p2p networks are 128kb MP3s. The quality of those isn't much better than the songs I used to tape off the radio when I was a kid. And the RIAA gets excited about that? Sheesh!
The ??AAs are smoking crack again. Slight degradation from analog ripping isn't stopping anybody.
We are less than 5 years away from creating a Shrek or a Toy Story in our basements with our desktop PCs.
Those who make movies at home still need to write a good script, make good models, textures, and animations, choose the proper camera angles, find voice actors, etc. Cinematography will not become trivial.
Will I retire or break 10K?
More to the point would be independent auditing of **AA bookkeeping (which given the new regulations restricting auditors from being insiders, may now become practical). Why aren't the shareholders clamouring for this? Surely these "never made a profit" movies aren't doing the dividends any good. Same for other content with questionable balance sheets.
[Disclaimer: I didn't actually go look up the price/earnings ratios, if any, for **AA stocks. But if a company is known to juggle things to avoid showing a profit, it seems reasonable that this has to impact stock value at some point.]
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Dunno about your ears, but mine can sure as hell tell 192kbit from 360kbit -- in fact there's no comparison. (But I can also tell 96 from 110 from 128, and CD-rips from vinyl-rips.)
Personally, I buy CDs as high-quality backups of music I downloaded and found worth keeping.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
.. is that software-only solutions are doomed. It seems that, e.g., research on removing watermarks is far more advanced than on creating them. I especially liked the work by Darko Kirovsky and Fabian Petitcolas. They basically replaced short passages of music with other passages from the same pice by correlating them. Introduces a little noise but kills wathermarks.
They claim the same works with video and I have every reason to believe this.
I hope that hardware-DRM is also doomed because customers do not have a readon to buy it. After all it does not offer them any advantage at all.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted and ignored otherwise.
The description says it all. How much would you pay for the hardware. Think the Circuit City Divix, the Data Play CD, Sony MD, DAT, and other high priced limited function devices. General purpose devices like CDR took the market and left the other devices to the mercy of the free marketplace economics.
The truth shall set you free!
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