Slashdot Mirror
Real DRM
Cinematique writes "C|Net is reporting that RealNetworks has released a format-independent Digital Rights Management software called Helix DRM. Real states that MP3, AAC, and even OGG can now be released with a DRM wrapper. And this is groundbreaking how? More importantly, do they expect content producers and consumers alike to really adopt this?"
Real has been moving toward this sort of thing for a long time. I don't know why anone sticks with them: their player is crap, they're just an obnoxious company, and they make it _really_ hard to download the free player.
"Real states that MP3, AAC, and even OGG can now be released with a DRM wrapper." Candy-bars have wrappers too, and they are typically removed, then the candy-bar is consumed.
Does anyone else have the feeling that Real has really gone downhill over the years? I mean, the Linux client seems unstable at best... But the Windows client, now I have sworn that thing was a virus of some sort at times, your system just doesn't seem right after you install it. Yes, they had a great idea, but I feel other formats have surpassed Real's 'quality'.
This whole idea is completely unnecessary, I am sure it is just another way for you to send them your email address many more times than you already do for Real One...
I've successfully kept any and all Real software of my machine for two years now, and not felt the least bit sad about it.
At least on Windows machines, installing their software means you've installed a LOT of registry keys everywhere, plus you get several programs that default to starting with Windows.
Even uninstalling it leaves crap everywhere. And their ad-ridden players are massively annoying.
Quicktime is getting worse in the same way, but I'm more likely to download a Quicktime video than a Real one anyday.
So do whatever you want, Real. I'll be happily counting the days until your extinction.
It's not about what's good for the customer -- It's about what is good for the competitor. Something like: "Who cares if the little guy wants this or not, Microsoft will make their DRM work and we need to have something even more DRM-ish to compete!"
Zech Harvey, MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA
Seriously, does this respond to any consumer demand ? Or does RealNetworks' Marketting department just runs a net bot that crawls on the front page of slashdot ?
1. give out free player and charge for server
2. lose market share to every other game in town
3. come up with proprietary protection that no one will use.
4. ???
5. no profit
6. bankruptcy!
Trolling is a art,
Cool!.. if you are into S/M.. ;)
At least this is being made by a company with a history of providing some linux clients. If their DRM tools are more popular than Microsofts stuff we might be able to actually buy online media with anyones OS of choice. I do realize that Microsoft is making efforts in that field, but I don't like there stuff on my box. Just a personal rule.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
More importantly, do they expect content producers and consumers alike to really adopt this?
At some point, it will begin.
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
Helix 2 or "Double Helix" as it becomes known.
The year after they patent "double helix" as a term in the scientific community. Then the sue everyone who dares to publish double helix material.
Twelve months on they go bust.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Real had a great idea? Why didn't they do a press release or something?
Damn! Why do I always miss on on these things that everyone else seems to know?
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
"That this can support MP3 and MPEG-4 is significant because up until now you haven't seen adoption of these formats by major content providers because they lacked digital rights management,"
It's not significant in the slightest. The reason MP3 and such formats are popular is because they're open. Just because Real are adopting open standards and making them closed doesn't mean that consumers will benefit from it.
However, the PHBs will love it, because it contains both MP3 (popular with consumers, but see above) and DRM (popular with the accounts department).
(I know that MP3 isn't totally open as there are patent issues, but I think my point remains.)
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
To push anything that will get all producers and all consumers using their product, its a desperate grasp to finally get market share. After you download the most recent real player, you have to download a pre-release patch to view the DRM demo, Im sure that to use the DRM, the content producers will have to use Real producer, forcing the consumers to (for now) at very least use the free player...
If Real can convince enough content producers to switch to protect their interests (people stealing their content), they will force consumers to switch, and then they have both sides paying whatever ransom they want.. and when someone trys to make another player that supports the format, they run screaming DMCA! DMCA!... its garbage...
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
How can they do this to OGG? I'm sure the GPL will then force them to disclose any information about whatever wrapping they do, which will leave them open so all other formats can be 'unwrapped'. I can't see them doing this, but maybe we should be a bit quiet about it, let it happen, then make them uncover everything.
It is my personal opinion that Real Network doesnt choose to listen what the consumers want in a media client. This is why they are loosing in the market. Personally, I gave up using Real Player during 7.0 and it was tedious using their client back then. Now they have added DRM to their bloated clients. Real Media is heading in the opposite direction, if they intend to grab some of their market share back. I hope this aint going off topic, but I read on Reuters that Microsoft intends to release their DRM software on the Linux Platform, providing the Linux Community does steal the code for their own benefits. Would this mean just the DRM component or will we see Media Player 9 for Linux Distributions? Time will only tell..... Nevertheless I am really enjoying using Mplayer, since it can play any formats imaginable.
-----
"I cant teach..... Im a Professor!"
The main benefit of this (if DRM can have a benefit) appears to be that it would simplify things for hardware makers who want to support multiple formats.
Of course, consumers don't seem to want anything but the MP3 format, and they don't want DRM at all... it's just a press release. If there was any real consumer demand for it we'd be hearing about it from its supporters before the official press release...
For what it's worth, here's Real's Technical Details about Helix DRM. It's a bit light on the specifics, though.
It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
Fake DRM.
There's a reason Apple Computers has yet to enter the DRM market on a serious level, and it's because their CEO knows a bit about programming and realizes that, aside from NP complete-type problems, there's nothing a computer can't solve in a short amount of time with enough hardware thrown at it.
Apple knows that DRM is futile, so they don't waste billions of dollars making some half-assed version of content management. Yet they still continue to profit.
I advise M$ and Real to both "get real" and stop trying to convince the content makers that there actually is DRM code that works.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
DRM is only meant to maintain the rights of the RIAA and MPAA and nothing else. The digital formats for music have been under attack simply because the mguls had not figured out any way to successfully squeeze every dollar out of the digital scene. DRM is a non-starter, but unless we stop governance by the body corporate, we may have no other choice to obtain music other than enlightened artists who want to reach a different auidence.
Make a difference - support EFF, or write your Congress jerk. Ask them to stand up for the rights of citizens over the rights of the corporations for a change.
DRM and corporate greed. It's all about selling out to tell you what entertainment should be. This announcement brought to you by the good folks at the RIAA who remind you that you don't own music when you buy a CD - didn't you read your EULA.
Where can you listen tomorrow?
All Ad hominem replies happily ignored as the sender shall be deemed to lack the faculties to comprehend the equation.
Aren't you?
:)
It means we'll be able to pay twice the amount for the same old shit
it'll easy for them to enforce their DRM, since they've made a couple million computers their bitches after having installed RealPlayer...
:P
:P
i guess we now know what those 94 "helper" processes that Real products always run on startup were, and what all those hidden registry keys were for
and you figure that they've collected your e-mail address at least 66 times on installation.
i wish they'd at least be honest with me and change their tray icon to a picture of Satan ramming me in the ass.
(AND NO, I DON'T WANT TO AUTOMATICALLY FUCKING CHECK FOR UPDATES! CHRIST!)
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
I finished building a Windows machine for my brother the other day, and he uses AOL. So I installed the AOL 8.0 CD (you can imagine how hard it was for me to run that setup program deliberately), and to my surprise, one of the hundred Real pieces of software were installed (Real Player? Real One? I don't remember).
So I uninstalled it ASAFP, and then AOL bitched that it wasn't present so I reinstalled it.
That along with the MANY directories full of shite sofware AOL put on the machine (without my permission), makes me hate AOL all the more.
And now they've screwed up Winamp, by releasing the 3.0 bloatware version that takes a good 5 seconds to load on a 933MHz PIII. That's inexcusable. They've screwed up everything they've touched.
I admit I'm no expert on Open Source licensing but can't DRM be restricted on the OGG format. I mean this format is *ours. Can't the licence be used to enusre DRM is not used on the format. I know this may turn away many content providers but who cares, those that stay will have proved themselves.
Isn't it's licence supposed to keep it wide open?
Or is it so liberal that it lets anyone do anything they want with it?
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
"And this is groundbreaking how?"
So you submitted this why?
"And this is groundbreaking how?"
And this is "Stuff that matters" how? If you're saying yourself that's it's pretty much not important, then why are you posting it?
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
For software maybe this is adequate, after a few months most packages are relegated to the bargain shelves, but for audio or video it really accomplishes nothing. People routinely watch movies or listen to music that are decades old.
A better investment would be to spend some time determining how to get the most people to pay for their product. This might be reducing the costs and charging less per piece (good old economics: supply and demand) or just admitting that a certain number of people will not pay for it, but hey, we're still wildly profitable.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
This isn't a great post but it is NOT trolling.
The player is CRAP. I use on my windows xp box an older version of Real Player because I got tired of the RealONE player hijacking my system. You turn the fscking thing off and reboot and back it came asking to FIX my associated files.
And the free player is buried about 4 to 5 webpages deep. Real pain in the butt to find for a install on a new system.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
If you check out Helix DRM's Specs, you find this gem:
"We recommend that you upgrade to the latest stable Linux 2.2.x kernel, which is available at kernel.org. We do not recommend using any Linux 2.3 or 2.4 kernels, because RealNetworks License Server has not been thoroughly tested with these newer kernels."
So we can expect 2.4 support around the time 2.8 comes out?
"Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither!"
Supports multiple usage rights -- Content owners have the ability to issue licenses for playback of a specific duration, playback during a specific window of time, and to limit the number of plays for each media file distributed.
Supports multiple ways to screw the consumer, how many times will companies try Divx before they realize this IS NOT WHAT WE WANT. People like unlimited use almost as much as free stuff, if you give them a decent product at an even somewhat fair price with unlimited use they like it, but even hint that they will lose their ability to enjoy something they bought and they quickly become unhappy. Think of the ISP market in the US, many many people could get by on one of the lower cost X hour/month plans but almost no one uses them because it's easier to budget for a somewhat larger amount than to pay for a smaller more reasonable piece and pay for overflow once in a while.
Helix DRM enables a wide range of Consumer Electronics (CE) devices to support multiple secure formats by offering two models for integration: native support or transfer to secure memory.
You either need a device that already has some DRM built in that Real blesses as secure or you need a new player probably with an expensive "works with Real" liscense. Got an iPod? Too bad go away you can't view our content, mp3 cd player, too bad, etc.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
A few posters seem confused about the ogg format with this DRM...
.zip is a compression wrapper. The original format is not changed once de-compressed/de-crypted, so yes, they can do it to ogg files :(
The DRM is a wrapper, much like
Real salesman: Okay, we are going to sell you the software to produce secure content using our digital rights management for 2 hoojillion dollars, BUT!, you will make 3 hoojillion dollars more knowing that nobodoy is pirating your content. AND! We will provide the consumers with a free player to make things easier for you.
Content Producer: But what happens when all the consumers give you the finger and nobody looks at my content..what happens when you try to sell me "patches" and "upgrades" to realproducer once im stuck using the format..what happens when people get tired of your crappy "client"...
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Helix only intended for use with RealPlayer? I've been avoiding their content and cleitn like the plague anyway these past few years....... why would anybody opt to use RealPlayer to play MP3 and OGG to play music, when there are plenty of other unfettered options out there to use?
Just look at Winamp -- support for multiple OS's, native support for OGG and MP3, and now with support for video. I've even dumped Windows Media Player for it....... Winamp may not be as robust yet (3.0 does have some bugs, lacks some features), but it definitely isn't saddled with as much DRM baggage, either.
This is exactly what Liquid Audio always has been: some stupid closed-source wrapper around AAC files. Has anyone seen Liquid innovating on top of that? But they are supported by the content industry. As a result, they have even more cash than they'll ever make themselves! If I were Real, I would be stupid if I didn't want to compete with them this way - money is always welcome...
Money, money Monaey!!!
Currently MS has their DRM solution for providers, and the major records and film producers. Why Money of course...
Open DRM would be a less costly solution to them, but the fact that it's "Open" probably doesn't make them a real contender for business... no Money
Real is looking at the long term, and is producing software to compete in a new video/audio world where folks will want to rent movies or whatever over the line (cable/dsl)
It's a good thing to Real's investors to see that they are not left behind in the dust by MS, and would like the fact that they are competeing for the same Entertainment dollars now... 'mo Money!
Remember money makes the world go around, otherwise we would lose our sense of reality...
Mabidex
I'd like to be able to copy my cd's, make mp3 (or ogg) out of them, give a cd of good songs to my father and stuff like that.
If DRM can let me keep those rights and still be accepted by the media companies, I'd accept it too.
Atleast if the other option is that I lose all these rights through legislation and copy protected cd's that won't let me make mp3 or copy them.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
every time a story involving Real comes up, i can't help but visualize jesus in the big lebowski:
"laughable, man - haha! i was gonna fuck you in the ass saturday. i fuck you in the ass next wednesday instead. wooo! you got a date wednesday, baby!"
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
Of course Real expects people to adopt this or they wouldn't have developed it. We should all just be happy that there's finally an alternative to the Microsoft DRM.
Think about it: one DRM for a ton of formats (indeed, this sounds like any file). Tons of people putting this on MP3, Real, WMA, AC3, etc.
;)
This is a GOOD THING.
Break one scheme and get tons of formats for free!
...for modding down. He circles over his own stories like some kind of hypocritical badger-vulture, modding down anything that seems vaguely trollish or critical of him.
That seems very hypocritical of a person who talks so much about how bad censorship is, doesn't it?
read more .
It's too bad the GPL doesn't say something like to prevent wrapping, since wrapping does not change the format REAL can get away with it. Of course then I guess you couldn't archive it either.
Maybe the GPL should have a provision that anything wrapping the content should also be open.
Weeks? Months? More like minutes or hours - most PC games using things like Safedisk (which costs $$$$ to the publisher, but most have to use it for insurance purposes) are cracked and No-Cd patches made available before the game has even hit the shelves.
All copy protection and DRM are is a pointless waste of time and effort.
That's why the penpushers *love* them.
I must agree with your opinion that wrappers are easy to remove. I am amazed that companies continue to attempt to do this. It seems to me that for media to be usable, at some point is must be in a format that my sound card or graphics card can process. At this time I can grab the bit stream and the DRM wrapper is violated. For something like DRM to really work, you would need to go in and make custom hardware so that users are unable to pull information that is headed in its direction. But this would be a bit of an engineering feat, and hard to sell to the public. So why do this companies keep trying?
Yes.
Otherwise they wouldn't have invested the time, effort and money into producing such a thing.
(Come on, you don't need an MBA to figure this one out)
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
<sarcasm>
WOW! A wrapper that adds no value for me, and limits what I can do with the content. Gee sign me up!
</sarcasm>
-ted
how about michael@slashdot.org ?
Do you guys know what it is about? It proves that DRM (encryption of a communication channel whereby one of the partners is NOT interested in keeping the secret) is impossible under a set of reasonable assumptions. As a demonstration, he broke eBook protection (in a very systematic way!), and the rest is history.
Dima Sklyarov will haunt the info-monopolists until the end of their days!
By which i mean to say, not a technical description at all. Anyone else click those links? Read like marketing materials -- can't imagine why. God forbit they should expose the slightest bit of their architechture.
Maybe i'm missing something but using the phrases 'secure container technology' and 'encryption algorithms' doesn't seem like a tech doc to me.
Really, fuck Real anyway. It's been a long time since i used their product and even then it was mostly for wasting time with humor clips.
I'll change my mind (maybe) when i see some details.
...as opposed to that nasty fake artificial DRM.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
this the one place where its good not to have a standard? drm fragmentation is good.
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
Real Has been dead to me since they released Realplayer G2. Realplayer 5 was reliable, simple, small, and unintrusive. Since they released G2, it's been a downward spiral of overbloat, Adware and Spyware.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
> and they make it _really_ hard to download the free player.
"RealNetworks, we put the real in really hard to download the free player!"
I've been waiting patiently for Real to die for so long now. I absolutely HATE them, and desperately want to dance and spit on their grave. Why are we waiting? Who are these IDIOTS that continue to install RealPlayer/RealOne and engage discussions like this one by defending Real. Who are these FOOLS that continue to stream content via Real from their sites. Ever heard of Quicktime Streaming Server? It's free, FOOLS! ARGHHHHHHHH!!!!
The GPL has "thurbage," the hassle factor. Hyperkinetic 40 year-olds still stuck on campus with ultra-left ideas.
I use open source despite the GPL. The BSD license makes the most sense, it says, "do what you want."
If any little GPL weasel came by and told me what to do, I'd beat him up.
more like a strap-on. Bend over.
I wonder how long it takes until someone gets the idea of grabbing the sound and storing it again without any restrictions.
This is just what consumers have been waiting for. DRM is going to take off like hotcakes now!
Now, how are they going to distribute DRM'd media? Oh, that's still a problem.. then why not figure that part out first?!
I remember reading about them in "Architects of the Web". They were originally founded as Progressive Networks, and their stated mission was to be good citizens first and then good businessmen. They moved - proudly - into a low-rent neighborhood with the goal of helping to clean it up, and sought to provide useful tools with interesting applications. Then they had an IPO.
According to their website they still donate five percent of their income to charity. Rob Glaser is still their CEO (he founded it in 1994). But the President and Cheif Operating Officer is Larry Jacobson former President and COO of Ticketmaster (see here).
Personally I think that they have a right to develop the technology in the same way that we have a right to avoid it like the plague that it is. I'm curious to see how long it takes before they invoke the DMCA.
Whether they do or not, it seems that things have changed since they had that IPO.
A DRM is supposed to manage copy-rights. Precedent has established that those rights (to copy the stuff) can be owned, but not the content itself.
That's why we have fair use; because when you buy a copy of a book, CD, or video, you own that copy. You can enjoy it as many times as you wish. You can lend it to whomever you wish, as many times as you wish, as long as you don't ask for money in return. You can sell it too, if you delete or destroy any fair-use copies you may have... because you own it.
Is this idea of "content ownership" a DMCA thing?
I'd like to see them explain to us why we should not be allowed to loan out our favorite music CD or play a recorded Simpsons episode during a party.
And how does "content ownership" apply to broadcast media like TV and radio, whose audience doesn't pay and isn't accountable to the broadcaster in any way? I expect these DRM supporters will be trying to plug that hole real soon now.
-Rick
Anyway, everything else is LGPL, and given the fact that they can wrap the file however they like without violating any licenses, I'm sure it's not a problem.
...the free player is the blue link in the middle of the page saying "Free RealOne Player".
Fair enough, it's not the most obvious thing on the page, but it's not exactly hard to find, and you can't blame them for pushing the pay version.
Warning: May contain nuts
...I hate Real more. So what if they were less neglectful of Linux than MS? Are you seriously arguing that Real is something other than the lesser of two evils?
No and no.
Real annoying practices made me uninstall their player ages ago. Whatever product will come from them I will refuse to use it.
I went to Real's DRM page and click the button for the demo. It asked me to download the latest player and provided this link which I clicked, and Galeon asked me if I wanted to save it or open it with something. I copied and paster the URL into my RealPlayer and it said it was loading. Absolutely nothing happens. If this is the quality I've to expect from them, I don't think I'll be bothering to try their new products. I'll stick with Real Player (Unix) 8.0.
Follow me
Do you people think DRM is inherently a bad thing - artists and companies can't manage how their property is used?? You seem to automatically knock any type of DRM.
You all just like your free stuff, huh? Microsoft can't sell their own software the way they like, but you all can copy your porn and MP3's with impunity. What hypocrits.
And no, Virginia, you don't have a God-given right to "fair-use" as defined "anything I want to do", though DRM isn't mutually exclusive with the concept. DRM schemes that would allow a single backup are possible (e.g. a counter that says how removed this copy of something is from the parent copy, and when it hits 0 you can't copy).
So quit your crybabying.
Fortune magazine has an article in their most recent issue covering Vincent Shear, InterTrust, and the recent DRM patents lawsuits with Microsoft. I wonder if RealNetworks' DRM suite relies on similar technology...
Apple doesn't abide by this policy because they are nice people, Apple is a hardware company. The #1 job of a hardware company is to sell hardware. All those cool OS innovations, easy to use applications, and over-dramatized keynotes have one purpose, to sell hardware. Putting DRM in to your OS and/or hardware will not sell.
I agree with this 100%. The answer for "content owners" is to adopt an economic model which folks accept and go along with. This doesn't mean I get everything for free (proponents are not dealing with reality)... however the process of aquisition and use of "content" needs to be reasonable.
My wife just paid $18 for a CD soundtrack for one song (she likes Paul Simon, not the rest of the disk including P.Diddy and Bow Wow). This is outrageous and has the consumer subsidizing crap for the opportunity to listen to what they enjoy.
When I pointed out she could have dl'd just the one song her response was that this would deprive PS from his share of the royalties as well. I think most folks are like her, willing to compensate the artists they choose but upset at providing welfare for the rest of the dross.
Being an optimist I believe that eventually "DRM" will evolve into a system which allows folks to be fairly compensated for the work they do. The situation now is that there is a huge incentive for the middlemen to do anything to protect their margins.
jrp
Click here to download!!!
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
The simple problem with DRM and all the related topics is "Who's rights are more important?" Obviously, someone's has to be slightly decreased in order for anothers to be allowed to roam free. Consumers can't have free riegn of fair-use without copyright holders dealing with some losses. Likewise, copyright holders can't protect all their rights without causing the consumers to throw away or severely limit many of their own rights.
Can we and should we find a balence, or simple a winner? Where are we headed right now?
Question
http://www.ironfroggy.com/
I don't download the player from real anymore, I just let netscape install the one that ships with it. IIRC, when I installed Netscape 7.01 the other day, it installed a non-RealOne version of their player. I do agree with the grandPARENT though: Real is getting annoying as hell. Plus, I just love when it goes out on it's own to the web. I just re-installed my system a couple weeks ago and this morning both real and google toolbar got busted by ZoneAlarm for looking for a net connection. At least WMP has the decency to only do it when it's running...
Spread the RC luvin'
...doesn't mean it isn't obnoxious to nearly everyone else. I like how you said you have had no such problems, and then went on to describe the hassle of reconfiguring Real's default install. I don't care how patient you are (or how much of an apologist you are), there is NO DOUBT that Real employs tactics that treat their users like idiots. The fact that you are willing (and happy) to be treated in that manner is something you really have to wonder about.
Of if it will ruin our lives but its a question of will anyone adopt it. A lot of people know that Real is crap, and a lot of musicians depend on freely downloadable music for maybe getting a contract. Since Real is such crap people will obviously know that any product they make can be hacked, cracked and removed.
Couldn't you just do
/dev/dsp > my_non_drm_media.wav
$ cat
?
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Windows Media was the first DRM format to really catch on. It comes along with Windows and it's the default media format for anything produced by Microsoft software. (Ever try digital ripping through Media Player? Only wma, not even wave output!)
Anyone wonder why, after years of pressure and usually successful MS pushing of their formats, it still loses to good old MP3 by a ridiculously large margin in user preference? Three letters: DRM.
When you download a DRM-enabled wma file, it's far from obvious to the regular user. So when the file expires or the user upgrades his computer and tries to listen to his files burned onto an old CD-R, that'll be his last experience with the format. And voilá, another wma hater.
Not to mention wmv's and their 'features', such as popping up web links embedded into the media file. Irritating, to say the least!
And that's what DRM is all about. Even if Big Media backs it up, and even if it'll be the only way to get 'hot new content' (whatever that is), users will always revert to the best free media alternative when they have a choice.
Why the heck would I want some Digital Rights Management "wrapper" to tell me what I can do with my data? It's my data, leave it alone!
5i9|\|3d, 5|\|ip3ri|\|di59ui53
>Real states that MP3, AAC, and even OGG can now be released with a DRM wrapper.
Filthy, tricksy hobbitses!
It seems to me that all the people complaining must be windows users.
I've used RealPlayer on Linux, and aside from asking me to register, it doesn't do anything obnoxious. It plays BBC News, streaming, and the quality is great and I don't get any dropouts.
Maybe the problems related to the windows version has to do with the "windows" in there. Doesn't Media Player 8/9 do all sorts of obnoxious stuff. As someone who uses an XP laptop at work, I know WMP does all sorts of annoying things. Come to think of it, so does that horrible Winamp3. Ashampoo (or whatever that other semi-popular media player is) also does these things.
You're screaming at real because they do what all the other applications do. Maybe you need to scream about changing the rules that govern the way apps play together on windows.
I don't think anything you do to an applications output has anything to do with the applications license.
...but I seem to remember Microsoft adding some rather obnoxious terms about not being able to create GPL or LGPL programs using their software, which is the output.
And I'm sure there's limitations on any content you create on Windows Media Center too. Just check page 39, paragragh 61, subsection 2 under item 46 of the licence. Legalese to English translators is only $$$/hr, and I'm sure you'll have hundred "translators" from Microsoft disagreeing with your one.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
> do they expect content producers and consumers alike to really adopt this? It's amazing what your average consumer will do. I can't even begin to count the number of machines I've seen with BonziBuddy(tm), Gator(tm), and any number of other spyware/spamming packages... all because the user clicked "yes" when asked if he wanted to install such-and-such. The beautiful (and ugly) thing about the browser plug-in market is the Field Of Dreams approach: "If you write it, they will install." Real only needs to release a "new version" of their player to suddenly make a bunch of users switch over. Hey, it's been working for Microsoft for years now. On the content provider side, it takes a little more incentive to make the switch. As programmer for a web development firm, I can attest to unreasonable licensing schemes on Real's part.
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Actually, boyz, ogg is a stream format. The compression is vorbis, or one of their others. Tremor, at least, is BSD-style, so it completely without any restrictions, unlike GPL which is very heavily restricted on use.
Suppose I'm a big business and I have people all over the world. I want to distribute training videos to my employees. These videos are TOP-SECRET because they show how to build widgets in this awesome new way I invented.
My new widget manufacturing technique is going to let me sell my widgets for half what the competition charges. If this video gets out on the net I'm going to lose millions.
DRM wrappers would allow me to authorize certain employees to access the videos AND I'll be able to revoke access if they quit.
I realize no encryption scheme is going to be perfect so I want something that's pretty good and has open source so I can be sure that Micro$oft/Real/GWBush dont' have magic universal keys.
http://forms.real.com/real/player/blackjack.html
Download version 7, or version 8, but stop at 8.
Don't download G2, or RealOne or anything that isn't a number.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
People here always focus on the use of DRM by companies to prevent you from sharing/stealing/borrowing/whatever their copyrighted media. But that is just one small application area.
A significant use of DRM in the future is going to be in controlling the access and distribution of personal media (such as family photos that are on a public web site). DRM can prevent people from going to Yahoo! and grabbing those pictures of your kids in the bathtub and adding them to their "naked pictures of children" web site/CD/etc. These scenarios are much more important than those around protecting major media content. If the big media companies want to pay for this stuff to be developed, that is fine by me.
"That this can support MP3 and MPEG-4 is significant because up until now you haven't seen adoption of these formats by major content providers because they lacked digital rights management," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research.
Ok... How can MP3's be played back in industry standard devices (such as the Archos Jukebox), and yet remain protected? Am I missing something large, or isn't the point of wrapping an MP3 in such a layer to prevent it from being understood?
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
If we have to go to DRM (and unfortunately it looks as if we are heading that way) wouldn't you rather have Real make a DRM that can wrap any media file instead of being locked into an MS DRM that only works on Windows and with WMA files?
As a content producer, I cannot understand why anyone would choose to use a Real codec to distribute work. The quality is so poor that studio-produced material ends up looking like the work of half a dozen chimpanzees after a ten-day heroin binge. Thank you, no.
Just as important: if I'm producing content for distribution, my client has to be able to view it, which means they need a player, right? Burying the free version of the Real player in some obscure corner of a badly-designed web page has to be the most astonishingly suicidal move I've ever seen a company make. Whether Real chooses to believe it or not, Real Player is competing for the same market segment as Windows Media Player, and WMP is both effectively free and transparently available as far as Windows users are concerned.
Encasing poorly-encoded media in a DRM wrapper is just one more significant barrier between users and their ability to view content.
That just doesn't make much business sense to me.
Karma
3b. Sue people who create software that lets you convert RealMedia files to standard formats like mp3
Well, if I'm using my "Gameloader98-GUI from Redmond" this way it works for me with Realaudio and Winamp(2.8):
1. Use the Tara Audio/Video Plugin to play the Real stream.
2. Write it to disk using your favorite output plugin.
I can also recommend Dietmar's Output stacker to use several output plugins at the same time, i.e. to listen to the stream and write it to HD.
Works pretty well for audio, but I have never tested whether playing videos works also, because I only use this setup to save some streamed audio to disc.
Back then capaital was king and we all know the sad tales of many dot-bombs who couldn't raise enough or bought one too many ping-pong tables. So one level, I'm glad that the realmedia format hung around, is for no other reason than to keep MS mildly "honest" (ha). But it took gobs and gobs of money to do that.
So now, what RealNetworks must answer to and the price we all must pay, is creating enough "value" for all those speculators who sunk their money into what was then a risky venture. I truly wish it wasn't the case, but "Shareholder value" does not consist of hawking the free player as obviously as before. It does however involve signing as many "exclusive content distribution rights" as possible. That's just the way capitalism works sometimes, heinously ugly tho it may be.
(For the record, I'm not a shareholder in RN or any other company)
~~~
"The slave thinks he is released from bondage, only to find a stronger set of chains" - NIN
In fact, since there are no patents involved and the spec is public, I'm pretty sure there is no legal way to enforce limitations on how you use the spec, thankfully.
I'm pretty sure Ogg and the related words would be considered trademarks (not sure if they're registered tho). It's like with Linux, noone can stop MS from making their own embrace-and-crippled version of it (still GPL'd though), but Linus would probably refuse to let them call it Linux.
Likewise, the company behind Ogg could probably keep them from calling it Ogg. But as long as they pick some other name, they can do whatever they want.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'll take off my RealNetworks hat for a sec. I'm not a big fan of DRM solutions. I've seen the days of hardware dongles and other silly solutions that don't seem to go anywhere, and have not had a personal interest in being involved in that sort of thing. Many DRM systems are intrusive, and as I sit here on my Linux box without the ability to play back our DRM content, I understand why the community gets frustrated.
That said, you'll notice that I still work at RealNetworks. I feel that, as a whole, the company wants to do the right thing, and I'm hoping I can enlist the community's help in that.
As for the criticism of "ooo, DRM is bad bad bad, and anything associated with it is bad bad bad", here's my response to that:
- I think what RealNetworks is doing with open source in the Helix Community could really change the landscape for the better.
- As for DRM; I'm not personally involved in our DRM efforts, and don't plan to be, but I see it as a necessary evil. To really be in our business these day, one has to provide a solution (mind you, our business is not only software production, but content distribution through our RealOne SuperPass service). And I don't see it as immoral (as some do), just silly.
- As for the legislative efforts relative to DRM, I'm told we are on record as opposing the broadcast flag provisions (still investigating). At any rate, I think we've been pretty good citizens when it comes to our positions on legislation.
- This is a win for open formats. Transcoding is an ugly process, and DRM systems need to get their content from somewhere. If the input (and output) of a DRM system is an open format (e.g. Ogg Vorbis), then content providers can decide to go with that format, confident that should they ever need to protect that content with a DRM system down the road, there's a solution for them.
As for the other criticisms here, see my earlier posts. We realize we're not perfect, but we're hoping the community will still give us a shot.Rob Lanphier
Helix Community Coordinator
They have? I still have my free music in your scenario. People download amateur recordings of live shows all the time - this wouldn't be any different.
I still download my music without paying, so they are still "losing" and I still win.
All we have to do is not buy any new hardware and use pre-drm technology and Linux. For a breif moment in history we will be slowed down but can stop DRM in it tracks.
is that you can take them off real easy, but if you don't pay for the candy bar first, the store manager gets extraordinarily argumentative.
If you can hear it, you can copy it. End of story.
The RIAA can do what ever they want, but if it runs down cables to a set of headphones, it can be copied, and copied well.
There's a few problems here, and they are all with the grey areas. DRM is about more than stopping free music distribution, its about tracking, new distribution models and giving some contols / rights to manage the rights of those that work - skilfully - to create the content. It's as much about giving rights to people, as taking them away. If I compose music, i want the rights to stop others stealing it...whatever MY definition of stealing might be. If i'm to be famous and make money, i know i have to be commercial and provide a product people will want: good content worth paying for...and which people would want to steal. There are problems with big music companies being v short sighted and trying to keep all the money to themselves. They are slow, and tend to be reactionary instead of proactive. Let's face it, if i DRM an MP3...very few people will have a player compatible to play it back. I can't make a business out of that: poor user experience. REAL's solution looks poor compared with M$'s, which is one of their best products.
Is the fact that, if your running windows, it inserts itself into the windows registry under /Software/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run, so that it starts up whenever you start your computer.
And not just when it installs, but every time you run the player. I mean, I don't need this start-center crap, and every time I want to view a realplayer stream, I need to open up the registry and remove the damn key.
br. Thank god regedit remembers the your place in the registry...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
FYI, here is the link to real.com's site where you can download any previous version. I recommend using RealPlayer (v8), it was the last one before RealOne. Yes, you have to disable some things during the install and in the settings dialog. But it's not that hard and once you've done that, it will not take over any file associations, nor will it load any helpers at startup. Most of the complaints that I've seen about Real's crap is related to RealOne player. If you must use their junk, use RealPlayer. Heck, you could even download RealPlayer v4 if you wanted a pre-evil version.
Once one person figures out how to strip out the DRM, they can release a tool like DeCSS and anyone can go and decrypt their stuff (maybe just to play on an older player/linux box..)
It's probably annoying ot set up and FServ, too, but people still do it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
ln -sf /tmp/foo.au /dev/dsp
Why would it ever evolve? If they're going for the jugular now, and they ever succeed, what would ever cause them to want to release their stranglehold?
Ultimately they won't succeed. They have created an atmosphere whereby there is huge incentives to crack the DRM schemes and provide alternate (quasi-legal) distribution of copyrighted content. This has the effect of an arms escalation between the RIAA (or whoever) and the "hackers" with a no win situation for the copyright holders.
Currently this makes a lot of people into "criminals" who would be happier to have a reliable method of obtaining content for a reasonable cost. The trick is to find out the threshold below which people will click through Paypal to obtain a high quality MP3.
For the current middlemen, they need to add value to the process by brokering deals so that the users are presented with an aggregated view of possible choices (such as PPV does for movies). It is a non-starter to have single studio or company offerings; again, this provides incentive for "Napster" type systems to step in and provide the aggregated view.
jrp
They stopped broadcasting it!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"Federal-pound-me-in-the-ass prison"!
/. geek (which is an oxymoron - although the moron part does fit most /.'ers...)
Say "STATE-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison"!
Jeez.... How many times do I hafta tell ya it don't happen like that in the Feds! (Unless you're a pretty boy
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Thus spake the master programmer:
"Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to
be maintained."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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