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Tech Firms Fight Copy Protection Laws
buulu writes "CNET is running an article about Alliance For Digital Progress going on the offensive against Hollywood over digital copy protection. The alliance consists of some of the big names: Apple, Cisco Systems, Dell, Hewlett-Packard,
Information Technology Association of America,
IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, etc."
Microsoft on that list?
It's good to see so many heavyweights lined up against technology mandates. As Lessig has said, while we often don't like what some of these companies do, we need to support them when they do something right--and going up against Hollywood's lobbying effort is definitely a good thing.
The alliance consists of some of the big names: Apple, Cisco Systems, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Information Technology Association of America, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, etc.
Yeah right. Microsoft, they are surely concerned about user rights. So are HP (please buy original cartridge, and oh, it's only filled to half capacity). Motorola, hahaha.
The only reason these companies are "fighting" for user rights is because they don't want Hollywood/Media moguls to dictate them technology.
On the other hand, they are themselves perfectly willing to incorporate "features" so as to protect the "rights" of their users. Pot. Kettle. Black.
The alliance is fighting government involvement, not copy protection. This might look good at first, but could easily hurt us in the end, as I'd expect lots of Microsoft-style copy protection to emerge as a "compromise".
We could end up with coalition of groups who'll own the only means to access your CDs and DVDs, while other hardware and software companies are left out in the cold with the nerds.
GL
Maybe they want a non standard drm that only they own and fear if the industry got together and created their own that they would lose the multimedia market. Only microsoft can be the gatekeeper I guess. Isn't this what pallidium was designed for. To enhance security my ass. ITs about hardware level product activation with security marketed as an afterthought after it has been proved that it could provide this function as well.
http://saveie6.com/
... Another group has stepped up in the fight against the MPAA and DCMA copy protection. Members include Gateway, Commodore Business Machines, Data General, Sun Microsystems, the Church of Latter Day Saints General Motors, Verizon Wireless, the Dhali Llama, the Vatican, and unlikliest of all the MPAA, according to their web site. Based on the MPAA's use of Microsoft Internet Information Server, their entry into this group is unconfirmed. Still on the fence is the Church of Scientology, who have yet to decide if it's in their best interests to side with the DCMA, or with the anti-copy protection group.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Looking at what they stand for it looks as if these companies are just wanting to implement their own DRM solution (or more likely, solutionS), not have a standard imposed from above by the law or Hollywood.
"OK, OK, we'll cave in and put DRM chips in every device we sell, just please, pretty please, don't tell Congress on us!"
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
I know, that's not part of the SAW (Slashdot Accepted Wisdom). We all know Slashdotters are far more intelligent than any of these suits, but maybe some of the folks whose companies provide us with technology we can't live without are actually not brain-dead.
Is their composite track record on DRM really long enough for us to make any sort of valid assumptions about what this consortium will do? They may see the hopelessly backwards media tycoons as an impediment to the continued progression of computer technology.
While conspiracy theories are well and good on the X-Files and Fox News Specials, I'm inclined to give the technology companies the benefit of the doubt until their actions indicate their true intentions.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
for me, as a day-to-day linux user for several years now. I don't dual-boot, nor do I have any other type of system around. I don't want any other type of system.
/. crowd has reacted to DRM, the DMCA, etc.
The irony is this: I've noticed that Hollywood seems to have no problems with using open systems (such as linux) for editing and special effects, and then locking down everything in sight after doing their production. This is regardless of the fact that some popular movies are drawn directly from the public domain of some very old children's stories.
I've noticed that certain tech companies have no problem making sales (even linux-based sales) to various Hollywood companies. I've noticed how tech companies spend a lot of PR on this novel concept of "Open-ness".
I've noticed how the
And I've noticed that the core developers for any major sub-system and application don't really seem to give a damn about any of the above-mentioned flak; they just keep coding, de-bugging, and doing what they think is right.
My personal reaction to this percieved irony (hypocrisy?) is this:
Will they all please sit down and STFU ?!
I'm not gonna have the least bit of respect, nor will I open my wallet ($$$), until I start seeing people and companies practice what they preach and scream so loudly about. After all, the core developers have been practicing what they've preached for years now. This last fact is evident in the working, day-to-day code.
C|N>K
Well I think that's the whole point of this group. They aren't advocating piracy, they want people to be able to use their own CDs and DVDs how they see fit.
Hewlett-Packard?
"You guys don't want people to copy your content, cutting you out of money. Tough luck with that."
Maybe Hollywood should return with, "You guys don't want people refilling their ink cartridges, cutting you out of money. Tough luck with that."
*snort*
I note with interest that Caldera, Red Hat,
Slackware, Debian, BSDI, and other Linux and
BSD companies are not on this list. Why? Am
I missing something obvious?
MCP
Cleara
They are specifically part of this because they do NOT want government regulation of this sort of control of digital content. Because they care about their users rights? Of course not! Because if the government is setting the agenda on digital content protection, then Microsoft isn't. Microsoft is all for DRM (WMP9,TCPA,Palladium, etc.). Just on their terms exclusively. They do not want to have to answer to Washington. Only Bill. Always Bill.
Everyone seems so suprised and worried about names like 'Apple', 'Micro$oft' and 'Intel' on this list.
I'm not surprised at all. As others have said this is about the difference between government mandated digital copyright protection and digital copyright protection coming out of the private sector.
Consider that the DMCA says that you can't backwards engineer any copyprotection code for any reason or risk jail time. If this is the law, then what is the incentive for stronger encryption and better code?
All this stuff filters down. Look at the contests to do things like break encryption. Remember when they said we would never break 128 bit encryption?
Where would we be if it was illegal to try?
If the government mandates copy protection and passes laws then we end up in that end-game.
However if we let capitalism and the private sector do the work then we end up somewhere just a little bit more fun. We walk away with new technology, new ideas, a new bread of hackers pressing technology to its limits.
That is what got us to where we are today.
And besides if we let the private sector take charge then we are still left with a choice. We will be able to choose not to purchase Palidium enabled hardware/software.
What is going to happen the first time a motherboard manufacturer has a non-palidium board outsell a Palidium enabled board?
These are all scenerios that cannot happen if we allow the government to mandate this stuff.
I know it is like bad medicine, but I support Micro$oft, Intel and Apple and anyone else that opposes the government in this.
Heck, with the point of view that copy protection is here to say, I say bring on Palidium. At least it is a known evil.
Which isn't a lot and isn't exactly consumer rights.
From the mission statement:
ADP strongly opposes efforts to make the government design and mandate copy-protection technologies
But notice they don't say anything about stopping the government from "enforcing" said technologies once the industry has adopted them. They aren't anti-DMCA, they aren't about copyright and patent reform.
Heck read what they stand for:
The Alliance for Digital Progress (ADP) strongly supports the protection of intellectual property, including digital content such as movies, music, and software.
ADP believes that private-sector collaboration among the technology, consumer electronics, and content industries creates the most effective tools to combat digital piracy. These tools provide innovative and concrete solutions that:
Meet the needs of consumers;
Succeed in the marketplace; and
Foster a thriving digital economy.
ADP believes the proper role of Government is to enforce existing laws against illegal copying.
Are you a member of one of the industries listed above? I'm not. This is simply a self-serving coalition to try and get the government to stay out of the way and let *them* make the rules.
- Dell
- Hewlett-Packard
- IBM
- Intel
- Microsoft
- Motorola
Does this seem strange to anyone else?"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
"Hi, I'm Fred McClure. You may remember brother Troy from such films as 'Election: For Purchase' and 'The House: Con Games', and me from such policy positions as 'Herbert Walker's Right Hand' and 'The Winston Policy Group'. I'm here to tell you about protecting your rights with the new and improved 'Alliance for Digital Progress'. Act now and buy one CD burner and get all the music you want for free!"
paintball
nevershower wrote:
0 4.jobs.p hp
> I think it really odd that Apple is on that list.
Apple is the first company I would expect to be on that list. Since the 2002 Grammies, Apple has taken this stand:
- Intellectual property owners and consumers both have rights that should be upheld.
- The consumers have a right to manage and listen to their legally acquired music on whatever devices they own.
- Copyrights should not be violated.
- Copyright violations (piracy) is a behavioral problem that cannot be solved by DRM.
- DRM will always be hackable, and is therefore useless.
The above is taken from various speeches by Steve Jobs and other Apple execs, especially from Steve Jobs' acceptance speech at the 2002 Grammies.
The companies in the Alliance For Digital Progress represent a broad spectrum with Apple on the end upholding fair use rights and Microsoft on the extreme proDRM end. They are interested in keeping the government out of DRM, so they can resolve the issue between themselves. (With Apple no doubt hoping that many will run screaming from Palladium right to the DRM free Mac.)
Actually, I'm a bit surprised to see Microsoft there. For a time, they were taking out DRMOS patents and acting like they were going to embrace and extend CBDTPA into a 100% government mandated monopoly for themselves. Looks like either the government or the MPAA wised up and started mumbling something about open standards. When it started looking like Microsoft wasn't going to be ordained the official DRM provider to the US, Microsoft started speaking up against the CBDTPA. It just wouldn't do to have somebody else come up with a standard that Microsoft would have to abide by.
> They have been going after Holywood and TV studio
> business for the past couple of years. I.e. the Purchase of
> Final Cut Pro, Tremor, Shake, etc.
Apple has sworn to democratize the tools of music and movie making like they once did desktop publishing. The intended audience isn't just privileged members of a movie making or music recording cartel. The intended audience is anybody who wants to make a movie or record a song. That's why they just released a $299 trimmed down version of Final Cut Pro called Final Cut Express. Now even a wedding videographer can use a less expensive version of the program that was used to edit "When Dinosaurs Roamed America".
"If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own."
Steve Jobs, 2002 Grammy Awards
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0203/
"We are not the enemy. We are not at war with the IT community. We are hoping that (future) meetings will produce amiable results..."
Valenti said, then rotated his head 180 degree, mummered in someone else's voice:
"If you only knew the power of the darkside..."
Apple has sworn to democratize the tools of music and movie making like they once did desktop publishing. The intended audience isn't just privileged members of a movie making or music recording cartel. The intended audience is anybody who wants to make a movie or record a song.
Which puts Apple (and the rest of the computer industry) in direct opposition to the media conglomerates. The computer industry has some new "killer apps" to sell - along with new boxes to run them. And it's the audio and video publishing empires on the receiving end of the killing. Or else the empires can hang on by getting the new tech crippled or banned by government intervention. But then the apps - and the computer industry - get killed.
And government is in the position of picking sides. The media empires got it to pick THEIR side in the first couple battles, and the computer industry has finally woken up and JUST STARTED to strike back.
But what I'm waiting for is the Republican Party to wake up and see which side the bread is buttered on. Hi tek tends both to avoid politics and contribute at least some to both major parties. The media are almost totally and rabidly on the Democrats' side - both with money and with more-expensive-than-money free propaganda that isn't touched by "campaign finance reform" laws.
So when the government choses sides, in a battle where the winner becomes richer and the loser broke, which side would a self-interested Republican-party-controlled government pick?
Of course the Republicans have repeatedly shown themselves to be clueless about such things. So let's see if they rent a couple on this issue.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
To me Palladium is three things; secure computing, authorized computing, and available computing.
You are either astroturfing or you don't understand Palladium. A lot of people are missinformed about what Palladium is and does. Microsoft and the TCPA alliance have done an increadible job of spreading false and missleading information. They have decieved many intelligent people. Unfortunately you practicly have to be a programmer to fully understand what it is and does. And I am a programmer.
There is absolutely NOTHING you can do with Palladium that you can't do without it except take away control of someone's own machine.
Palladium is a crypographic system and digital signature system. You can do all of that in any "normal" program. The ONLY thing special about Palladium is that it does not allow the owner to see his ownAGAINST it's owner. Anything that increases the security FOR the owner can be done without Palladium. Period.
Palladium "trust" means one thing and one thing only - that "they" do not trust the legitimate and authorized owner/user of the machine. Anything that improves the OWNER'S trust in the machine can be done without Palladium. Period.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
So sure, Microsoft is pushing Palladium. It can be everything to everyone. Don't forget that you can use DRM goes both ways. If you create something for free distribution with DRM, you can ensure that no one can use it for commercial purposes. DRM is a weapon of choice - you can oppress, or you can set free.
This is the worst kind of apologist propaganda imaginable. TCPA and Palladium serve one purpose and one purpose only: taking away the root control of our own machines from us. It is that simple, and it is indeed true that once our freedom of informational self determination has been taking from us, there are many applications, good and evil, for those to whoom we grant it: that is the nature of having power over people. You are absolutely right that this power can be used in fair ways, just like any power over us, but once we have given up control of our computers this is no longer for us to decide. If we accept hardware DRM, we are giving up all our freedoms on the promise that if we are nice they'll give most back. Such power is evil in and of itself, regardless of whether it is used for evil or not.
Defending user hostile computers on the grounds that they can be used for fair applications is like defending totalitarian regimes because they can stop crime and corruption. Both statements are true - a totalitarian regime can indeed protect us in a way an open society cannot, and many intellectually honest thinkers have argued that it is necessary and preferable (Plato, Hobbes, Marx etc.) But history has shown us again and again that open societies prosper, where as those that wish to concentrate power, no matter how convincing the utilitarian argument, lead us down a path of insanity and darkness.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends - for this is not a new battle, what we are seeing with those who would promise us gold riches for the small price of our freedom in cyberspace are the same devils, if with different faces, that have offered this deal since time immemorial. Choose your side, and remember that history will be our judge.
To be fair, the astroturfer's (I'll give him the benefit of the doubt) argument regarding corporate computers should be addressed. His assertion that many company's would like the concept of having their employees on user hostile machines where they can control the employees ability to communicate the information he has access to is very correct - in fact, many (most?) corporations already deprive most employees of root accounts on their workstations, so short of a software application running as root decrypting documents only when it pleases, they have already achieved this.
So what does TCPA/palladium provide beyond this? The only thing really is that it designed to make it harder for a person with physical access to machine to break root - on a normal PC is it typically no harder than breaking the case lock and setting a jumper to reset the BIOS - with TCPA, barring software attacks it will take serious hardware reverse engineering (though I doubt software attacks should be barred - nobody has made an OS with privilege escaltion exploits yet - do we really believe MS will this time?) The former is certainly enough for in-office PCs - but I guess corporations would like to retain control of laptops and machines that leave their property.
For this purpose one could imagine a class of corporate user hostile laptops - built so that employees could take home machines that are still loyal to the employer rather than the user - but trying to justify the entire TCPA/Palladium technology on that is naked lie. Firstly, a niche market for such technology hardly makes it a necessity in every computer sold, yet that is pretty clearly where we are headed, and secondly, in this case it would be the employing corporation that should control the keys that give ultimate control of the computers - but under TCPA it is the vendor.
The purpose is clear - TCPA is aimed not at corporate computers that need to be controlled by there owners, but at privately owned computers that "need" not to be controlled by their owners. Thus the vendor controls the keys, and magically the users are turned into consumers, subjects of the technology companies who are ready to trade their power over them to the media industry.
Among their clients, Dittus Commuications counts BSA (Business Software Alliance), Intel and Microsoft.
These simple facts are revealed by Dittus' press release, about yesterday's event and the actual press release from the event.
So, how does Dittus work? Go to dittus.com to find out. Clicking on "services", then "coalitions & grassroots" gives you this:
Now, click on "clients" on the main menu to the left, then "case studies". Read through a couple of the studies, for example "Americans for Computer Privacy" (text mirrored below). Interestingly, you'll find that Dittus was behind the strategy and campaign that in the end lifted U.S. export limitations on strong encryption. Now of course, the current DRM campaign they are running on behalf of their clients, is pretty much the opposite of the goals of "Americans for Computer Privacy". This campaign is no more than a call for unregulated, oligopoly-controlled implementation of TCPA / Palladium, but of course they never mention TCPA/Palladium. I am not surprised to find all of the TCPA founding members in this so called "Alliance for Digital Progress".
This is a fight were it is in the public interest that both parties fail.
Here's Dittus' own case study on how they helped relax U.S. encryption regulations:
Ah, the joys of money.Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
Sometimes we are passing around emails that contain trade secrets to employees and/or partners. Every once in a while, someone fowards one out (usually to someone trustworthy), and we have to go talk to them to protect it. If I could send an email marked "may not foward," that could be enforced, that problem would go away.
Trusted computing as an idea predated the digital media issues. The government uses it. In "primitive" Unix permission, a file has an owner and group with permissions, plus default permissions. ACLs allow you to go a step further and assign different rights to different groups, something that the Unix style doesn't allow. Government certified systems are different.
With a basic trusted system, you start with layers (normal, secret, top secret, for example), and based upon your clearance, you can or cannot access it. But it goes beyond files. If I am reading a secret file, I shouldn't be able to write to a normal file, otherwise I could copy and paste the information out.
The system can enforce these sorts of requirements, but only in a trusted environment. The problem with Microsoft's solution isn't the introduction of trusted environments, its the business policy of forbidding non-trusted environments.
For example, my non-forwarding email. If I sent it trusted do not forward, non trusted environments shouldn't be able to access it at all. If you move all data to trusted, then non-trusted individuals can't access the data.
This may or may not be a bad idea. If I want a home user to be able to VPN in and check email, I have a problem. If they don't have (and don't want) a trusted client at home, i need to provide them with one. That means that they have two machines, trusted and non-trusted. And none of the trusted data should be able to enter the non-trusted machine.
The problem is that corporate users in certain environments would like trusted machines. The government would like trusted machines (for employees, not all citizens). The media empires saw trusted machines as a solution to their problem. They saw that their watermarking and other absurdity was doomed to fail, although they spent years looking for an impossible solution. Trusting computing research has a solution, but it was never intended for the consumer market (who had no demand).
The content companies concluded that if they moved their content into a trusted environment and only let people play in a trusted environment, they might be able to save their business models. Trusted computing was NOT developed to prevent MP3 swapping.
Alex