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BSA To Join Battle Against DRM
Dunark writes "It appears that two of our favorite enemies are now at loggerheads with each other: According to The Inquirer, the Business Software Alliance has joined the fight against the Hollywood-backed attempt to legislate required DRM (the Hollings bill). Read about it in The Inquirer and also at Mercury News"
Talk about mixed feelings. Well, I suppose there is the old "the enemy of my enemy" idea....but I much prefer the idea of Tsu Sen, and that of getting your enemies to fight each other...
Seriously, though, I'm suprised to see Microsoft take this position, since they had the most to gain if this scheme takes off. After all, if you can only watch future movies on "approved" OS's, guess which ones will be approved and which ones won't!
They both want the same thing. Control your desktop.
The difference is the business model.
**IA wants to control the media of distribution to protect their business model.
BSA wants you to "break the law" with their software watching to charge you after the fact.
You know penalities are "free" money.
This is like an American version of Godzilla vs. Mothra, 2 monsters in suits battling eachother in the courtroom, you're not quite sure who'll win, you're not quite sure you care, but you have to watch it and cheer them on.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
Microsoft is a member of the BSA, is it not?
But doesn't Microsoft *want* to cram all this DRM shit down our throats, so they can achieve greater lock-in over their customer base (i.e. "Switch to another OS and your DRMed MP3's stop working... and you won't be able to use MovieLink!)
First, what the BSA wants is NOT less DRM, it is
Market-Enforced DRM. You can only get your software,
movies, music and what have you THROUGH their
blessed Palladium.
The reason they don't want Hollings bill is
that it forces them to consider things that they
otherwise wouldn't for economic reasons, for
example fair use and expiration of copyrights, which
would come into play IF the DRM solution was
part of a law.
So -- Remember. They are NOT anti-DRM, they just
want to CONTROL the DRM. And it is a LOT more
difficult for government to interfere with
the private choices of individuals (you bought
this hardware knowing it had DRM -- but you
can't connect to your online banking otherwise and
the $10/teller visit fees added up!)
1) Earnings Management: The first and most important tool Microsoft (see also: va.msn.net, ticker symbol: (VAST) uses is the manipulation of earnings to ensure analysts' expectations are met. According to an ABC News 1/22/99 article by Michael Martinez, Microsoft's own internal auditor, a respected 30 year veteran and former partner of Deloitte and Touche, was fired in 1996 after informing management that their earnings manipulations were illegal and violations of the SEC and FASB laws. He was given the option to resign or be fired and later settled for $4 million after suing under the Federal Whistle Blowers Act.
2) Speculating on Their Own Stock: Microsoft issues a massive amount of put options. During the same quarter ended 3/31/99, Microsoft sold put contracts on their own stock for $400 million, basically betting that the stock will not decline. They need not worry because they are allowed to "cook the books." Of Microsoft's significant cash balance, it is also a financial fact that more than 65 percent of that cash did not originate from product sales but rather from tax benefits associated with the exercise of stock options, employees prepaying their own wages, and the sale of put contracts on its own stock. Microsoft's financial innovation is making a mockery of financial integrity, ethics, and the securities laws, just as Insull did in the 1920's.
3) Convincing Employees to Take Less Real Wages: Microsoft aggressively markets stock options to new employees in an effort to take wage expenses off the books. They also know that they can pocket the exercise price employees will be required to pay to take ownership of the stock. What also seems clear is that Microsoft is still aggressively marketing its stock option program to new recruits. To quote an email received, "I am about to begin employment at Microsoft and the stock option was the selling factor. Does your article overall state that it will be bad for me and will fail me in my retirement planning?" Is Microsoft fulfilling its disclosure obligations to its own employees, especially those that have put their entire 401K balance in Microsoft stock? This explains how 22 percent of Microsoft's massive cash balance has actually come from its own employees in the form of them prepaying their own wages through stock option exercise prices.
4) Publicly touting the stock: In a recent earnings release, CFO Greg Maffei jokingly cited 10 reasons why Microsoft is a $1 trillion company. A common strategy here is to have top executives issue conflicting statements, one talking up the stock and the other talking it down and then within a few days financial analysts all come out with buy recommendations on the stock due to a small decline. They are making a mockery of financial integrity, ethics, and the securities laws.
5) Controlling the media. After issuing several press releases on PR Newswire, Microsoft told the service to stop issuing my press releases. Microsoft is PR Newswire's largest client. PR Newswire is owned by Miller Freeman of the UK, a large media company that publishes many computer related publications including Information Week in addition to Microsoft focused journals such as the Windows System Developer. Miller Freeman does indeed function as if it were a department of Microsoft itself.
6) Stock Option Accounting: It is important to note that any discussion of stock option accounting must address two completely different and independent situations. The first is to analyze the impact of options exercised and already retired and the second is to analyze the remaining options debt outstanding. This study focused on both whereas most media coverage only focuses on the remaining options debt outstanding.
Very good on noticing this. The Hollings bill mandanted (as I recall) that the DRM solution be OPEN to the point that any manufacturer can implement it (usually, government chosen specs are patent-licensed to all, such as the Digital Signature Algorithm). RIAA wants cheap players so more people can watch movies. The BSA wants the PER-SALE fee to use their DRM solution (each DRM protected movie file you download a small amount goes into Microsoft's coffers).
I noticed that the Mercury News article was very optimistic about the future of consumers' rights in the 108th Congress. Is this a realistic forecast, or is it still going to be an uphill battle against the ??AA to ensure that consumers' rights remain unabridged by the legislature?
It's even more effective than establishing control over the radio playlists, something Tom Petty voiced in the lyrics to "The Last DJ".
The biggest friends of business are business men and women. The biggest enemies of business are
The law in the U.S. has become corrupt, as this July 2002 article, linked at the bottom of the Inquirer article, says: Political contribution watch.
I've done some research about how law is made in Oregon: Airplanes are safe, but laws often crash. (For those who live outside the U.S.: Oregon is a U.S. state.)
Basically, it appears that the law in the U.S. is being driven by those who have a financial interest, not people who have the best interests of the country in mind.
No, it isn't.
Compliance is easy. Don't use war3z, don't use Windows even if legal, and avoid any proprietary software when possible. The BSA tactics are beutifully counterproductive, and just the fist-in-the-face approach we need from the bad guys.
The BSA serves a legitimate purpose... I just wish their tactics were less severe. I wish they would invest in teaching software producers how to value and price their products as much as the enforcement of license compliance.
Incidentally, I've been a part of BSA enforcements before... and they treat the consumer much more fairly then they have to. At the end of the day, I'm just glad open source is gaining some momentum and the BSA will be unnecessary.
$G
-- $G
MS is the majority member, founding member and has the most control of, over and in the BSA. If you look at their neat figures and understand them, you will see that 90% of their "successes" battling piracy are MS related, and most instituted by MS.
Of course MS will not endorse a bill that puts into question their (stolen) DRM technology, much less one that legislates how DRM will be implemented (regardless of who implements what).
Rob
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