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UCB Researchers Critique DRM, Compulsory Licensing
An anonymous reader writes "
In this
paper, Berkeley researchers critique a host of cockamamie DRM schemes, and
they also question the compulsory
licensing approach recently being promoted by the EFF. They get into some
of the practical details about compulsory licensing that no one else seems to
be talking about like technical feasibility, incentives to cheat, monitoring for compliance, efficiency of collection and distribution of funds,
privacy, fair use, feasibility of legal enforcement... Anyway, it's worth
a read and is a useful contribution to the debate, whatever side you're on.
"
As in Upright Citizens Brigade?
Damn, I missed that show.
You have no rights online!
...worked well for 30+ years.
UNIX File Permissions.
That's what I thought at first. I was like "What are they researching?" At least Amy Poehler is on SNL, and she's fun to look at. I'm just happy a bunch of people from The State will soon be on Comedy Central in Reno 911.
All DRM is inherently unbeneficial. Systems such as Pallidum only collude the issue by pertorting to offer benefits to the end user. Want to protect your files? Run PGP. Want to prevent other people from reading them? Don't give them to people you don't trust. It's simple.
As for the RIAA, I strongly disagree with their methods and their tactics. But, in the end, they are protecting the companies who fund them. And quests such as not buying CDs in order to protest the RIAA only result in more justification for the RIAA to encourage cracking down.
In my opinion, the only legitimate option that the RIAA is pursuing is litigation. Litigation is where the Copywrite battle is fought, and it should have remained in the first place.
Because I refuse to use proprietry file formats. So, I shall refrain from passing uninformed comment on this senseless drivel. Please don't let that stop anyone else though.
The Upright Citizens Brigade?
That makes sense.
I'll laugh at you before you laugh at me because your pennies have been in my ass!
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
like totally man
Dude, this thing is like 5 and a half pages before the bibliography, and all of that is actually well-considered and thought out, which means it takes a long time to read. As an average slashdotter, being asked to read the article before trying to express my ill-thought-out-opinions seems unreasonable. That involves actual thinking and effort. Couldn't you give us, like, a sound bite in the story blurb next time that we could misinterpret and fight about? Has Microsoft said anything stupid on this subject lately?
doesnt matter your belief
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
but is that UCB full speed or high speed?
As someone who hates that disgusting Adobe PDF format (why people can't publish in HTML after all this is the web right ?) here is the text of the pdf..
A Framework for Evaluating Digital Rights Management Proposals
Rachna Dhamija
UC Berkeley, SIMS
rachna@ sims. berkeley. edu
Fredrik Wallenberg
UC Berkeley, SIMS
fredrik@ sims. berkeley. edu
Abstract
In this paper, we analyze the strengths and weaknesses
of the various solutions to compensate intellectual property
rights holders. Specifically we look at digital rights manage-ment
(DRM) based systems, extensions to DRM to support
fair uses, monitor-and-charge schemes, compulsory licens-ing
schemes and alternative business models.
Our main contribution is to provide a framework from
which current and future proposals may be evaluated. In
order to realistically evaluate any compensation scheme, we
suggest that the following questions are important to ask:
Is the proposal technically feasible? What are the incentives to circumvent legal and techni-cal protections for all parties in the transaction?
What is the burden of monitoring for compliance in the system, and on which parties does this burden fall?
What is the efficiency of the collection and distribution of funds from consumers to rights holders?
What are the impacts on user privacy and fair use? What is the feasibility of legal enforcement, both do-mestically and internationally?
1. Introduction
Over the last few years the debate over protection, or lack
thereof, of copyrighted works has flourished. Proposals on
how to reimburse the creators of these works range from
strict proprietary encryption locks to new business mod-els
that rely on revenue streams from ancillary products.
Each new proposal points out the shortcomings of previ-ous
schemes and highlights the benefits of its own solution.
However, no consistent framework exists for analyzing the
different solutions.
In this paper, we analyze the strengths and weaknesses of
the various solutions. Specifically, we look at DRM based
systems, extensions to DRM to support fair uses, monitor-and-
charge schemes, compulsory licensing schemes and al-ternative
business models. From this comparison, we extract
important dimensions such as technical feasibility, incen-tives
to cheat, burden of monitoring, privacy, and the feasi-
bility of legal enforcement. Our main contribution is to pro-vide
a framework from which current and future proposal
may be evaluated.
Digital Information as a "Public Good" Economists
sometimes refer to certain goods as public. This does not
imply that they are in the public domain as defined by intel-lectual
property law. Rather, a public good is a product or
service that has two properties. First, it is non-rival, which
simply means that consumption by one person doesn't limit
consumption of the next. Second, it is non-excludable, im-plying
that once the product exists, the benefit cannot be
limited to those that have paid for it.
Ideas and information captured in physical media tradi-tionally
fall into some middle ground. While the informa-tion
itself certainly has the characteristics of a public good,
the physical media that it is tied to is rival and exclud-able.
This gives rise to business models involving the sale
of physical artifacts whose only value is the embedded in-formation
such as books, CDs and DVDs. These business
models have taken a serious blow with the introduction of
information in digital form combined with communications
media such as the Internet. The question at hand is whether
or not it is possible to devise a scheme under which money
can be transferred from those consuming information goods
to the providers of the same.
We use the characteristics of a public good to distinguish
between the following classes of proposals to compensate
intellectual property rights holders:
but im going to be the better man and not respond to that.
mumble...mumble stupid bitch..mumble
The bathwater should be carefully checked to make sure no baby is contained therein before throwing it out. DRM often being overly restrictive, easily bypassed, or otherwise inneficient does not mean that there should not be some _Rasonable_ system in place that prevents misuse, and only mis-use. In the slashdot crowd-- and I find myself, as part of it, falling victim to this at times-- DRM is often spoken of in a context of its being inherently bad and undesireable. Truthfully, and effective and fair DRM system just might be what is truly needed.
Interesting comments wanted; trolls need not reply
it's a good idea to point out the flaws early, so it can be fixed rather than if they do a massive deployment of shitty tech.
Companies are serious about DRM. It's not going away.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
No proposed technical protection measures are strong enough to sustain a determined attack. Only in combination with models where the incentives to circumvent are limited, can technical solutions succeed.
Odd how companies are spending so many resources in hopes that they'll score a home run. What I find strange is, that when other technologies which where hip where introduced (eg. cassettes, vhs tapes, etc), I don't recall the same effort as the 400lb gorillas running around with an attache of lawyer goons. Why not just go back to the basics and protest against those technologies, they're still being used... Odd...
What is the feasibility of legal enforcement, both domestically and internationally? It is easy for researchers and market actors to forget that a solution that requires significant government intervention and enforcement is inherently bound to the confines of country boundaries and international treaties.
Comments such as these rather scare me into thinking that at some point companies will come together and force their own private hell with a one world order rule on the net. Sure it would be a difficult task, but money talks, and I'm sure if the top ten companies in every country got together and lobbied for something like this, they might actually get it going.
What are the impacts on user privacy and fair use?
Privacy concerns frequently run counter to desires for economic efficiency. Therefore, any proposed solutions must acknowledge that there is a trade-off to be made. Fair use is important on its social merits alone, however, a broader adoption of fair and private uses will also serve to reduce user incentives to circumvent.
Situations such as these make some purposely circumvent policies and rules. Especially when they're (rules and policies) shoved down someone's throat.
Want Root?
I didn't realize the Upright Citizen's Brigade was so well respected. har har har.
I bet he used some password cracking thingee to post this intellectual property of the citizens of California. Fucker.
Perporting? You should take your own advice and get a dictionary for yourself.
r po rting
You sir, are also a tard.
Thank you.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=pu
Other EFF board members include John Perry Barlow [also associated w/the Grateful Dead] and John Gilmore, neither of whom would endorse systems that require DRM. Beyond that, the EFF's general vibe of promoting online privacy and the right to anonymity would make the EFF incompatible with DRM systems.
I think that this bad meme (that the EFF wants C.L.) got into Slashdot a few months ago when an article covered the talk an EFF staff member gave on compulsory licencing. Talking about it or listing it as one method of compensating artists != endorsing it, but that confusion was made.
Go Bears!
I don't actively boycott them, rather I just actively look for good metal that isn't affiliated with them. Century Media is clean according to the RIAA Radar. They've got lot's of good stuff like Novembre, The Gathering, Lacuna Coil, Lullacry, Strapping Young Lad, Sentenced, Moonspell and some others. If you're into non-metal goth stuff, Projekt seems to be RIAA-clean too.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
You don't have the option to sell your song on KaZaA for a price of your choosing. DRM is easily worked around since it only takes one person to buy the file and record it as an mp3 and make it available on Gnutella. You are advocating for control (so you can set the price) which doesn't exist.
I can provide you the raw LaTeX if you'd like that better (or a PS or DVI file for that matter).
Fredrik Wallenberg
Yeah? That's fucking fantastic! But, before you comment about the made up word, ask yourself if the comment actually:
(1) Has anything of value
(2) Says anything that hasn't been said before
and
(3) has been moderated up, WAY UP, because the moderation system sucks.
First of all, let us observe that it is very rare that hitting your customers with a massive hammer (filing lawsuits against them and treating them as criminals) ends up helping your business. And it's quite uncommon if you make someone's life a living hell (with Microsoft style Palladium DRM) that they are going to buy more product from you, much less have any positive opinion of you.
Secondly, let us look at what is really going on with music today, not what the music industry likes to say is going on.
1. Most people like music.
2. Most people buy music.
3. There is an amazing amout of music available on many labels from many geographic regions.
4. There is no easy way to a consumer to listen via radio to all the music that is available.
5. Outside of radio, the ability to listen to music before purchase in a commercial environment is even more limited. Some few music stores offer listening stations, but many times the equipment is broken or dirty.
6. In reality, most people listen to much of the music they end up purchasing via their friends. In fact, many friendships are made because people have common tastes in music.
7. The music industry's method of retailing is incredibly anti-customer and does not respect local laws and customs (try before buy, returns).
8. The music industry has made very little effort to revamp their sales system.
9. The existing online music stores all require that you register to
I wouldn't trust any research done by the Upright Citizen's Brigade. This stuff isn't nearly as entertaining as their other works, anyway...
Roll on you Bears!
It really comes down to how much it will cost to do DRM and the cost of getting around it. The costs are not just monetary - but may include a complex tradeoff of penalties and benefits in many areas - including culture, the legal system, personal privacy, fundamental human rights and so on.
Since corporations and hence their hired thugs in government don't much care about things like human rights, personal privacy or culture (realisticly, things are not set up to encourage them to do so, so why would we expect it), they will always make their decisions on the basis of corporate self interest - which is usually short term profit these days.
There is almost certainly a place for DRM on some level - it encourages and rewards creative artists of all sorts (though the best artists seem to do their thing anyway). The problem is that as soon as we allow any serious IP protections (as DRM or whatever), there's no control on what the people who want to make profits can do with it.
I worked for a company whose game plan was to sell a product for less than $100 - the product was in large part IP of one sort or another. Once the marketers got hold of it, the price was inflated to the $1500 range. Not because it was worth that - but they thought they could charge that much and get away with it. I had figured out how to do a cheap DRM scheme that would be just hard enough to break to make it cheaper to just buy the product (at the $100 mark). Shortly thereafter I left the company - with the DRM scheme still unimplemented.
That kind of thinking "We can get away with charging that much" is pervasive. But its also problematic - just by charging that kind of inflated price, the marketers are providing higher motivation for people to find ways around paying the prices. Monopolistic practices (even in the small - one company holds the contract for the current top musical sensation) tend to exacerbate the problem. Now they want to impose DRM - worse yet they want to do it with the government's legal system - which means that they get the benefits (ability to raise prices, impose conditions...) but everyone else gets to pay the price.
If there were no serious DRM, but downloading a permanent copy of a song cost (say) a dime, there'd be no incentive to break DRM - and most people (I suspect) would go along with it and its not hard to believe that the music industry would be the better and with smaller distribution costs, the artists would probably be better off. But when we allow and legally support DRM it is both an incentive to the industry to charge as much as it can, and an incentive to consumers to find ways to break it.
Worse yet, we now have corporations that seem to have determined that they are owed a certain amount of money every year - and who are willing to pass laws to ensure that they get it. Essentially they want to tax us to ensure that their incomes stay where they'd like them to be.
Given all this, I see no reasonable alternative but to ban DRM completely - but I suspect the corporations will have their own way and we'll end up spending $10 to listen to a single song three or four times. The interesting thing is going to be the underground that springs up to counter them - who knows what that will result in? I do quite love the law of unintended consequences.
Is it just me or is reading a two-column, page-by-page layout PDF on the web a huge pain in the ass? Why did they chose this formatting? Ugh.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
There's a mirror here that you can check out in case this gets slashdotted.
You should just ignore trolls like this. If it's any consolation to you, I thought your original post was not only Funny, but also Interesting and Insightful. (I wouldn't go as far as to call it Informative, though.)
the EFF's general vibe of promoting online privacy and the right to anonymity would make the EFF incompatible with DRM systems
Compulsory licensing is not DRM, so your comment doesn't make sense. Compulsory licensing means that license holders (the "evil" record companies) are compelled to license their material - and compensated for it, of course. It is basically what makes radio possible.
How it would work in P2P is that there would be some measure of which songs are being shared, a sort of Nielsen Ratings for P2P. Then the license holders for those songs would get paid in proportion to how popular they were.
What would fund them? Possibly the good old modem tax, or some similar measure that charges people who do a lot of file sharing more than people who do less. Read this article by EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann to hear it from the horse's mouth.
You are totally off base in thinking that the EFF does not support compulsory licensing. They have been pushing that "solution" for quite a while now.
Personally, I think it is a terrible idea, and I'm glad to see someone has finally given it a good public roasting. Hopefully the concept will die a quiet death and the EFF can get back to protecting people's privacy instead of forcing them to pay a modem tax and putting the government in charge of paying artists.
First of all, let us observe that it is very rare that hitting your customers with a massive hammer (filing lawsuits against them and treating them as criminals) ends up helping your business.
Hey, it's working for SCO, you insensitive clod!
yours litigiously,
Darl McBride
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
I don't care, I use Win2K and Adobe Products, but I just thought I'd tweak the usual crowd here a bit.
In 100 years, it won't matter what OS you used or what computer language you authored software in... hell in my career none of those have mattered more than 4 years!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
WTF? PDF is a format that renders the same regardless of the program used to view it, and can be generated by open-source linux software. HTML is a format that is viewed differently depending on the program and settings used, especially since the majority of people use IE (not exactly standards compliant). Moreover, PDF files can be easily saved and viewed later without worrying about saving every single image in the same path - which is often useful for research papers with charts and graphs all over the place (ejournals often have PDF files which, when printed out, are identical to the articles in the paper-based journal...try doing that with HTML.
Dear Darl,
We've been over this many times. Just because something is working in your head, doesn't mean it's working in the real world.
If you want to be able to clearly see the consequences of your actions in the real world, you must take your medicine.
Please take your medicine, Darl! These crazy lawsuits and criminal charges are not a healthy way to ask for attention.
Sincerely,
Your Shrink
you're still a hypocritical tard :)
In response to those that (for good reasons) do not like PDF files we made a quick and dirty conversion into HTML. The HTML version is avalable here.
Sorry, wrong tard. I thought you were making fun of the use of "pertorted." Didn't see the -1 post you were replying to. Much obliged.
Second of all, it can be both transitive and intransitive. Yes, so you were both wrong in what you said, and wrong in what you meant to say if you hadn't been quite so ignorant as to not know the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb. YOU FAIL IT AGAIN!!
p.s. If your dictionary doesn't have both senses, I suggest you get a decent dictionary. The OED has both.
I'm getting pretty tired of giving you this ass whiping, but I thought I'd point out just one or two more failures. To wit: 1) "Buy a dictionary, why don't ya!" FAILS IT. This is known as a comma splice; and 2) "You sir, are a tard" sort of FAILS IT, as it would be better with another comma before 'sir' (it is clearly parenthetical).
Don't worry about thanking me for the grammar lesson. It's been my pleasure. I do this as a public service.
Why don't we just cut the shit and agree to be impregnated by a hairy ape, last name Wadd, with a genetically altered genome with the following genetic content which is sponsored in part by the RIAA and MPAA...
.net platform and .gif.exe, & .pdf.vbs languages of which are the most secure and impenetrable as demonstrated IRL especially when using dual extensions.
Here's what's included with the DNA which is actually RNA but hey you don't need no stinkin' virus protection...but if you do Symantec has a new cyberoranistic based anti-virii protection available in subscription form with no pop-ups...
Ok the list
Chromosomes with anti-hackable, DRM enhanced, 128 bit encrypted, user-imprinted mac address.
(Helps to track you to each bit of legal and illegal content you download)
Nuclei with embedded GPS technology of which you can be tracked in case you violate any MDC (multi-death corporation('s) (TM)) DRM schemes.
MS passport login access to your DNA w/ hotmail email account
Cell based DRM punishment devices with MS WinX86 based cytoplasm which, if you are found to be in possesion of copyrighted music, Nsync, etc., will start a downward spiral on a cellular level. This CLE (cellular level event (TM)) will render your muscles useless until a DRM agent is dispatched to your house, found via the nuclei embedded GPS and swipes his/her keycard down your ass. After the agent has cleaned his/her keycard and you have been B-Swiped (TM) the agent will unlock your CLE (TM) event in progress and send you off to jail.
All of this of course is done in the end user's best interest to better serve the end user's experience.
The enhanced DNA and all other parts of said DNA are built on the
Remember as we continue to innovate and create the best user experience we will need to constantly patch the underlying system with updates that will make it all better.
DRM is for the user, by the user, and it is the future. Accept it and live a long productive life. There is no spoon....
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
To put it bluntly: yes, there is a need for pixel-perfect rendering in a research paper, just like there's a need for pixel-perfect rendering in books, magazines, or any other published material.
What do you think a chart, or a graph, or a table is? Just an arbitrary collection of pixels?
Good spatial organization is an important part of presenting scientific and/or research data accurately and aesthetically.
Would you really trust the published results of years of research to, say, a non-portable CSS/HTML document, and hope for the best when your peers around the world try to print it?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
"...The problem is that there is no adequate system in place that allows music lovers access to their favorite music while compensating artists and copyright holders. It's time to start addressing this problem head on. In the past, we've used a system called "compulsory licensing" to reconcile copyright law with the benefits of new technologies like cable television and webcasting. This approach has drawbacks, but it's certainly better than the direction that the recording industry is taking us today.
Many innovative payment models have been proposed (with or without a compulsory license), and we have highlighted some of them here,..." (emphasis added)
Fred's April article (which according to the EFF "explores a possible alternative": this doesn't read like strong support by the EFF to me) is talking about how to compensate artists. Fred writes that there are many ways to compensate them, of which one could be compulsory licensing, and that one way to do c.l. is ISP fees. Again, this doesn't read like a policy endorsement but instead an exploration of alternatives: ISP fees/modem taxes are a subset of a subset of ways to compensate artists. And talking about it != endorsing it.
HTML was never "originally" designed for pixel-perfect accuracy, standardized "look", or standardized spatial relationships. Why do you think absolute positioning via CSS and XML extensions exist these days? Because HTML works so damn well for that sort of thing?
What happens when you resize a browser window? What happens when you resize a PDF or PS reader window? In a browser, the document's layout changes drastically. In a PDF or PS reader, it doesn't.
The original design intention was for easy markup and emphasis, not absolute *anything*. Everything to make that sort of thing happen has been an addition or a hack.
Not layout.
You're wrong. Just accept that and move on.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
You're wrong. Just accept that and move on.
You're a asshole, just accept that and move on. :)
I re-read my post, however, and realized that my first point came out totally incorrect. I was saying that HTML was originally designed for providing a cross-platform way to publish scientific and academic documents that could be read on any machine. That was its original purpose, and the world wide web is just a big bastard child of that purpose.
I could go into detail, but you're too much a asshole to be worth my time.
Like what I said? You might like my music
Make the [MP|RI]AA sell non-discriminatory licenses for content that's already out there, rather than allowing them to throttle the channels of distribution. That's in the spirit of copyright law, because the intent of copyright law is to put content into the public domain... pause, think... and the mechanism for doing it is to reward rights owners. So by having Joe Public distribute the content, then reward the rights owner, everybody wins, right?
Well, sure, but there's a tiny problem. It's that nobody remembers that. The publishers have a vested interest in not remembering it. In fact, they've paid huge sums of money to Congress to forget it. The DMCA, and DMCA case law explicitely refutes it. The "exclusive rights" have become paramount, trumping the intent to make the content available.
So, you make the [MP|RI]AA license content. Fine. Does that mean they have to make it available without DRM? Nope. Does it mean that you get the right to break the DRM to use it? Well, technically, if you can do it yourself without obtaining or making available a tool to do it, so, de facto, no. DMCA case law has already made this clear. Congress said that it's not legal to obtain tools even for use on content that you licensed, and the courts have (astonishingly) upheld that.
So what good does licensing do, when you can only get crippleware content, and devices that will play crippleware content, and when you can't legally obtain tools that let you uncripple it?
I applaud the EFF's intent, but defeating rampant DRM is a pre-requisite to any shake up in licensing, not an afterthought.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Could someone help me by explaining when and how the noun 'critique' became a verb?
I've said this often enough that I'm competing with RMS for trotting out tired old lines, but it never stopped him, so I'll say it again:
/dev/dsp simply by hacking the module which implements it.
/dev/dsp, you can still grab the data being sent to the sound card over the bus {ISA, PCI or USB}. You can buy prototyping kits from specialist electronics suppliers with some of the hardware ready made {basically a PCB to fit the slot with some TTL or a gate array for address decoding and the rest composed of breadboard-style copper strips}. The source for the sound card driver will give you all you need to know about how to interpret the data as it comes through. You can then repackage it how you like - wav, mp3 or ogg vorbis.
ANY ATTEMPT TO COPY-PROTECT MUSIC IS FATALLY FLAWED.
First, you can hijack
Secondly, even if you can't hijack
Thirdly, even if you can't grab the data from the bus, you can grab the analogue signal coming out of the jack socket on the back of the sound card and convert that back to digital. You will have to do some filtering and, to avoid creating artefacts, it will have to be done in the analogue domain. Processing through analogue also should destroy any inaudible "watermarking".
Fourthly, even if someone has permanently soldered a steel-armoured cable feeding a pair of headphones directly to the sound card, which has been potted in several layers of chemically-different resins with sharp springy bits that will fly out and cut you to ribbons if you try to interfere with it, you can still point a mic at each of the headphones and get a signal that way. This is the least pretty option, but nothing can ever make it go away.
The success of any analogue ripping scheme is dependent upon the equipment used and widely-available consumer tat is possibly going to pollute the filesharing market with inferior copies of songs. This may well be what the RIAA wants - effectively, in terms of reproduction quality, a return to the tape days. On the other hand, there will always be a group of people who are fastidious about quality, and all the necessary equipment already exists. So who knows? Maybed we'll see a new elite audiophile network. The only thing I don't like is the word "audiophile", which sounds too much like the sort of thing News of the World readers might not like.
The RIAA's methods are never going to work because they are trying to achieve a fundamental impossibility along the lines of perpetual motion or lead-into-gold. Either they will realise they have to give up, or they will kill themselves with the effort. What the RIAA should ask themselves is this: if photocopiers, scanners and printers are so cheap and readily available, then why do people buy newspapers and magazines instead of just making photocopies of them or scanning them and uploading them onto the internet?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Copyright means you must publish, an in some countries lodge a copy in the central library; in return copyright protection with fair rights exceptions may be granted..
A real agument can be made that licencing does not constitute publishing - therefore not copyrightable, and therefore zero public protection. DRM attempts to sidestep this issue; but an analog recording may cause issues.
In all of this claptrap. I see nothing that helps the blind or sight impaired which does seem a tad antisocial. DRM is but a delaying tactic, because of the lofy conclusion that there is no such thing as the perfect mousetrap.
As for compulsory, nonsense. The next generation of legal minors will demonstrate possession is 9/10ths law.
Decent pun too.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Next thing, RIAA will implant a DRM chip in our brains, so the signal is decoded there and injected there directly into your hearing part of the brain... But still, you could hack that... The best thing about DMCA is since you can't break the encriptin, the methods will became ever more simpler (i.e. simpler than rot13... maybe rot1) making it easy to break...
how long until
Yes, but not true research papers. Real research papers need well formatted images, in proper locations, and really do need a locked layout.
This *is* possible in HTML, and was a possibility for it's use. However, IE won't render it, and well, IE's dominating the market still. (Though go read the browser wars post from yesterday, I kinda liked it).
Anyway, Physics here is a troll, don't feed him.
While I agree with most of your post, I'd like to add a comment to this one point:
internet radio is hard to find
One neat feature of iTunes is its radio menu. Click on the "Radio" label and you get a list of hundreds of internet radio stations, grouped by genre. iTunes lists the station's name, a blurb about the kind of music it plays, and its bandwidth. Just click on the station and voila, it's streaming through the iTunes interface.
It's thanks to this feature of iTunes that I've discovered a lot of small, specialized internet radio stations. Windows Media Player 9 has the same thing. So, internet radio stations are easier to find than you'd think.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
I dunno why I'm posting this seeing as I've missed the "prime time" for this story as it were, but arguing that DRM is inherently evil is a bit like arguing that DSL inherently sucks because your IP is dynamic and you pay by the megabyte (ok I have an enlightened provider where neither is true but then I'm a Brit) -- just because the current implementation is greedy doesn't mean the idea itself is useless.
I see a future that works along these sorts of lines: Firstly, record companies will be a lot smaller and less wealthy. This is of course the real reason why they oppose internet distribution but I think we all realise that however hard they fight this will eventually be the case. Secondly, I see them providing a two-level service from their website. A modest, flat subscription fee lets you download your favourite music from their own well connected server network, in whatever format (OGG, FLAC, MP3, AAC...) you want, capped at, say, 1GB of downloads per month. I've got a dedicated server where I get 200GB for $100/mo, so a $10/mo subscription fee would cut them a handsome profit of about $9.50, by that pricing scale. These files would be encrypted.
The second layer service is free to all comers; no email address required, no ad profiling information, just a username and password registration. This level doesn't supply any music, just keys for each song. You go on Kazaa or whatever, download whatever form is available (keys are issued on a per-song basis, not per-encoding), then decrypt it with a key that your player acquires by means of a web service API.
This depends on copyright law being made more sane; specifically, that it is illegal to redistribute copyrighted content FOR PROFIT. Also, the other big problem is that most of the record companies' revenue comes from teenagers, and you have to be over 18 to have a credit card and hence participate in transactions over the internet (I'm not quite 18 yet and I can attest that running said dedicated server is a real pain in the ass at present). Though if it's a subscription service I suppose they could get their parents to pay for it, the important thing is this has to be straightforward and easy to pay for above all else.
Given this scenario though, I think that artists and labels could continue to turn quite a handsome profit. People resent being bullied and ripped off, so music companies probably are losing out on a lot of revenue to the filesharing networks at the moment. However, stack these two options against each other. What would you rather have; an unreliable, hard to use filesharing network with its associated boat load of scumware? Or a clean ad-free page where you can download an entire album in just the format you like it at the click of a button and at maximum speed? Heck I'd pay more than $10/mo for that. I still buy CDs because I like stuff in 64kbit OGG (I'm not an audiophile and I can cram an immense amount of stuff onto my 128MB P800 mobile phone at that bitrate)
Or, if you do want to download something off Kazaa, then the act of getting a song key tells the record company that someone is listening to this song, and that will help them reimburse the artists accordingly. Yes of course this DRM can be broken, and yes some people will break it by stream hijacking or whatever but then _there is no point in doing so anymore_. The downloader contacts a record company server to get the key and by doing so they establish that this is the correct file, that it is of good quality and that the artist benefits from their download, and the recording company can build a good profile of just who's popular at the moment, and maybe the media player can discreetly ask where you got the file from so they can see which distribution channels work best. Go up to a friend of yours, tell them about this great new band you just heard and give them a crypted disk of some of their best tracks. Legal and beneficial to all, same spirit as the open source systems everyone's so enamoured of over here.
And, if you acknowledge that pe
User: What happen ? ....
Error message: Somebody set up us the DRM
Clippy: We get signal
Captain: What !
Clippy: Main screen turn on
User: It's You !!
RIAA: How are you gentlemen !!
RIAA: All your right are belong to us
RIAA: You are on the way to destruction
User: What you say !!
RIAA: You have no chance to survive make your time
RIAA: HA HA HA HA
User: Take off every 'zig'
User: You know what you doing
User: Move 'zig'
User: For great justice
I just couldn't help myself...
But no mention of Iced Earth? What's wrong with you, man?
This *is* possible in HTML, and was a possibility for it's use. However, IE won't render it, and well, IE's dominating the market still. (Though go read the browser wars post from yesterday, I kinda liked it).
Give me a link, I'm interested.
I'd like to point out, even though you're Anonymous Coward and you're not listening, that it's very possible to provide images in precise locations in html and still allow the page to shrink and expand for different browser sizes and different screen resolutions. In my professional opinion, web developers who don't account for this are lazy. :)
Like what I said? You might like my music
Not necessarily. If you buy CDs from independent artists instead, the word will get around and the message that it isn't that people object to buying music, it's just that we won't buy it from scum.
Shifting our buying will give the music industry and the politicians the message we want to send. You are right that simply refusing to buy won't do it, this gives the labels the excuse to scream PIRACY!!! even louder and buy more restrictive laws from politicians.
If the RIAA labels lose even a few percent of their sales to independent musicians (which will probably double their earnings), the music press will notice. RIAA label musicians will start looking for ways out of their contracts, people who labels want to sign up will hear of the boycott and say "No thanks", and major labels will have a choice:
Loudly disassociate themselves from the RIAA and their attacks on the music community.
or
Go out of business. Even a few percentage points drop in sales will be enough to reduce the value of the major labels far enough that their parent companies will dump them, especially if it's clear the boycott isn't going away until the labels are ready to do honest business with the public and their musicians.
Basically, a boycott of the RIAA major labels with shifting entertainment dollars to their competitors is win-win for all of us, whether musicians or consumers (though of course, most musicians are music consumers, too).
Except for a minority of greedy fuckheads at the major record labels.
So if a RIAA label boycott picks up steam, make a point of buying a few CDs from non-RIAA artists (lots of indie musicians on the Web with sites where you can buy music). In fact, if you want to fuck over the major labels, you should do this even if you can't find an indie band you like.
In the event of a serious public RIAA label boycott, every dollar you spend on indie musician products is another nail in the coffin of the major labels.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Google is your friend, I don't know which OS you run.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Compulsory licensing is socialism.
If it wasn't for compulsory broadcast licensing, the RIAA, either as the people paying the PR firm that signs your paychecks, or the people whose propaganda you're mindlessly parroting would not have a multibillion dollar record industry to represent.
If the record industry had been able to charge the original AM stations playing the "Tin Pan Alley" stuff in the 20s-40s 50 cents per play, there wouldn't be radio stations in every town today to accept major label payola to advertise whatever crap the major labels think they can unload on the music-oriented public. Nobody would have put that kind of money into serving an unknown market. So... no content, no millions of kids making crystal sets, no market for the first consumer electronics products (radio, not phonograph, the audio amp came out of vacuum tube technology invented for radio)...
In the purist Libertarian universe, government action is never a good idea. In the real world, we got a broadcast radio, a consumer electronics industry and later a television industry out of it and the DARPA research project that later became the Internet you're using to unload your latest droolings on.
It's a good thing that the record industry in the 1920s didn't have any political power, otherwise 21st century technology would look a lot like that found in the 1940s.
It looks now like now that the record industry has some political power, it's trying to use a combination of DRM and bad law bought from corrupt legislators to make future consumer technological development possible.
Well, you can buy a Palladium box and a Microshit OS to go with it if you want. When your box gets h4xx0rd and you can't fix it because you can't access the part of computer memory your friendly neighborhood script kiddies are using to serve up pr0n and tracks ripped off the band that's the latest new, hot teen sensation of the sort that have the Feds breathing down your neck, you probably won't be able to whine to us even if we were inclined to listen. Tour ISP will have unplugged you for filesharing. Perhaps WebTV will still be around by then which will give you a "computer" that fits your needs and an ISP who'll have you.
Make flamebait, you're going to get flamed.
Tech Public Policy stuff
The paper ignores the fact that, at least in the U.S., there is no such thing as Intellectual Property -- except for a very limited form granted under Patent Law.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.