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. "

Comments

Text of the PDF paper

[Anonymous Coward]

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:

Well, So What?

[iamatlas]

Yes, current and as yet forseable DRM systems are of laughable or at best questionable quality and even legality (consumers do have have rights to purchased material)But....

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

Re:(un)Fair

[poptones]

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.

You don't recall that because you weren't a radio station in the 70's and 80's being sued by the RIAA for playing whole sides of LPs instead of talking over single tracks. You weren't Philips, trying to grow your new compact cassette format while the RIAA tried to get it banned in the US market.

The reason it's different now is purely because of the technology. Unlike those other battles - over physical technologies like the LP, the compact cassette, the reel to reel, DAT, Elcassette and so forth - or with established businesses that could be held economically accountable for breach of contract - this time the RIAA is forced to deal with a technology that is available to everyone and travels at the speed of light. This battle is purely a game of whack-a-mole, which the old order can never hope to win.

Compulsory licensing is a copout. It's also inevitable. My guess is the EFF is just hoping this "olive branch" will help them to build a dialougue with the industry. That could help build credibility for the EFF in established circles, but I suspect it still may be too early to play this card without alienating the hard liners (like myself). The music industry may be on the ropes, but it has a very long way to fall and I don't want to see anyone catch them before they hit the mat.

(BTW I was going to link you to a story about the RIAA and the LP, but trying to connect to RIAA.ORG returns me http://"""....""""" - it would appear they are, yet again, succumbing to a DNS attack...)

when the problem is out of hand, check assumptions

[vnv]

The customer is sitting here in the middle of a great struggle. The music industry is trying their best to come up with a one-sided application of police technology, laws, and law enforcement to squeeze more money out people they think are cheating them by sharing music with others.

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.

Today for radio we have:

- very little variety left in big radio

- in the US, big corporations dominate most of radio, further reducing choice and variety

- very hard to find little radio stations

- very few internet radio stations

- internet radio is hard to find

- internet radio is hard to use for many

- radio stations of any sort cost money to run

- commercial radio has many ads, reducing the desire of someone to listen for very long

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).

Imagine you have a product that sells wrapped in a tough plastic wrapper with an additional sticky plastic security wrapper and often all that itself inside a hard plastic shell. This product obviously cannot be inspected. Whatever is inside the wrapper is unknown to the consumer.

Now let's say you want to come up with a successful way of selling your wrappy product in stores and you come up with the following strategy:

a. You don't sell your product uninformly in all stores so the consumer has to guess what store your product is available in.

b. You don't provide a way for consumers to check if your product is in a local store.

c. You always charge your customer full price, often over list price, if they buy it in a local store.

d. You don't let your customer have any way to try (or even inspect) their merchandise before purchase.

e. You don't allow your customer to return the merchandise if they don't like it. Or even if you do allow returns, it is for a fraction of the purchase price.

8. The music industry has made very little effort to revamp their sales system.

a. There are few record stores with vast libraries of music that you can listen to via your own headphones or speakers.

b. There is usually no volume discount.

c. There are almost never special deals on the music you want -- only the music the retailer wants to move/dump/promote.

d. Most music stores have hours that are incompatible with work. As more people have to work longer hours, music stores should take this into account.

e. Many music stores are hostile to customers that spend a long time there.

f. Most music stores do not offer comforts such as nice chairs, coffee, or things to eat.

9. The existing online music stores all require that you register to

Re:As if..

[TephX]

Compulsory licensing is socialism.

Intellectual property is fascism.

Now, I'm sure we both realize that the previous statement was roughly meaningless and designed only to incite emotion. The point is that yours is the same. Copyright is a legal construct in the first place. It does not exist independent of the government's creating it.

But moreover, I don't see how it is socialism in any case. Socialism implies that the means of production are owned by the government. Umm, in this case I guess that would mean that the content producers were owned by the government? Or their equipment, perhaps? Nope, none of this is making any sense.

I'll take DRM over it any day of the week. I'd rather not be able to look at certain memory locations in my computer for data that Im not supposed to have free access to anyway (except for fair use purposes, which can be accomodated) than not be able to write a song and sell it at a price of my choosing.

Well, you've made it quite clear what your opinion is, but you haven't really given any reason for anyone else to accept it. My point of view is that compulsory licensing has at least this benefit: it stops the "arms race" between file sharers / traders / copyright infringers (however you want to look at it) and the RIAA / MPAA. While I think the technological aspect of this "arms race" may actually produce technologies which are interesting and useful in their own respects, the legal "arms race" is much more troubling, as very questionable law is being enacted at the request of the side that evidently donates more money to political campaigns.

Compulsory licensing does mean that you can't "write a song and sell it at a price of [your] choosing", but the way I look at it, you didn't have a right to do that anyway. You currently have the ability, yes, but that ability is only justified (in the USA, by the Constitution) to be granted to you to "promote the progress of science and useful arts".

And yes, I realize you were probably just trying to get a rise out of me and the many Slashdotters who think as I do, but the point is that there are real, legitimate issues here. Most people accept copyright law because it's what they're used to, but the fact is that when you look carefully, the foundations for it--especially in its present form--are pretty shaky.

One interesting point raised by the linked-to article, which you did not address, is that in a compulsory-licensing system, the producers have an incentive to try to fake the system. That honestly hadn't occurred to me. I think this can be solved, say by having rankings signed with a public-key system, and I think the solution would be simpler and less Draconian in implementation than trying to get DRM on everything, but it is worth thinking about.