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UK Government Advised to Promote and Adopt DRM
aking137 writes "From ZDNet, the UK Broadband Stakeholders Group (BSG) are recommending '...actively promoting the development and spread of global DRM-related standards' on the grounds that 'The UK's broadband boom is likely to falter unless more progress is made towards combating digital piracy'. Also in the article: 'The massive popularity of peer-to-peer networks also needs to be urgently addressed, the BSG said.'" The report (pdf) is online.
oh yeah, that's the most pressing issue with broadband.. that people aren't interested in the ways they wish to exploit it. egads!
I'm not here. This isn't happening.
Didn't anyone tell them porn and piracy are the main reasons for broadband?
At least they left the good stuff ;)
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Because the general populace HATES getting entertainment in a medium of their choice for free. What they REALLY want is a lot of constraints on using their entertainment purchases, and really aggressive copyright holders to sue them when they think they might have stepped out of line.
Oh yeah, need DRM in there quick or this "internet" thing will never catch on.
So making it harder for people to help themselves to media files over the Internet is supposed to encourage people to switch to broadband?
"The upcoming boom in automobiles is likely to fail unless we install governors on all cars to enforce speed limits."
Reading this, does anyone else go, hunh?
It's a fair point to assume the more access to high-capacity connections then the easier it is to download large-volume copyrighted material.
... but I agree broadband in the UK has more pressing issues at the moment, like when are we all going to get access to it?
From this viewpoint I would argue the report is at least far-sighted.
"Digital Rights Management and micro-payments are becoming 'make or break' issues for the whole of the broadband value chain," said Antony Walker, chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, in a statement.
The value of broadband isn't determined by which businesses deign to offer pay services requiring a high speed pipe. The value of broadband is based entirely on what the end user is willing to pay for a high-speed pipe to their house. I'm sick of these rat-bastard marketroids who keep trying to redefine the utility of internet connectivity based on their [TV/radio/other mass-media] mindset: "we talk, you listen (and buy)". Broadband is doomed unless they can sell stuff to us? Broadband is doomed unless they can force us to pay-per-[view/listen/read] for the media we "buy"? Broadband is doomed unless they get to keep our credit card number on file to make paying them [easy/automatic/mandatory]? Please...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
should read
'The UK's broadband boom is likely to falter if more progress is made towards combating digital piracy'.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
This is probably true. I work in an organisation that requires content from the people that Slashdot love and then hate on an almost daily basis.
They have made it abundantly clear that if we don't support DRM, they will not give us any content. There is no room for negotiation.
As much as I hate DRM and some of the ideas behind it, I realise that when companies make that kind of demand there is nothing we can do about it. Sure, we could say "push off, we don't want you" but then that would be a monumentally dumb move and in the end, if we kept that stance up, we'd have nothing to sell. Plus, before you start - we are a big company. This is not a case of us verses the big guys.
When every single company you work with is starting to make those demands, you have no chance but to comply.
So in that sense, I think they're probably right. If content providers see that the UK is making no effort towards adopting DRM, then they simply won't sell there. Again, there is no room for negotiation - like it, or lump it.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Water, electricity... bandwidth?
Water and electricity are commonly billed on a usage basis -- you pay $X per gallon of water, you pay $Y per megawatt of electricity. This causes certain actions, such as conservation of water and electricity, which are beneficial as these are limited resources.
Bandwidth is also a limited resource, and as it is being more and more dependent upon by business and government...
If people were paying for bandwidth like they do for many other utilies, conservation of bandwidth would be achieved and much of this piracy would be limited. When Danny's father gets the internet bill for $200, Danny's P2P software is getting uninstalled. If Danny leaves all the lights on in the house, or leaves all the faucets running water all day every day, we can easily see that his water and electricity bills would skyrocket and he would pay for his usage, as well as shortening the supply of these two shared resources for others especially in times of limited resources.
The days of flat-rate internet usage (should be) numbered. If I download a 650 MB ISO image of RedHat, or a 650 MB ISO of a pirated version of MS Office XP, it doesn't matter, similarly it doesn't matter if Danny is taking 30-minute showers or is just running the shower into the drain for 30 minutes.
Maybe that's what the UK should be looking at instead of all this DRM nonsense. The primary reason people download music is because they can get it "for free" since they are already paying their flat rate for internet access. If it actually costs them (in terms of $Z per MB) perhaps they will think twice about both downloading and potentially more expensive uploading of these files.
And maybe that will help some of these god-awful websites clean up their massively over-imaged websites.
MORTAR COMBAT!
AOL Time Warner
British Music Rights
Universal Studios
Panasonic
And my favorite: "The Work Foundation" (a fully owned subsidiary of The Human Fund) Source: Broadband Stakeholder Group's Website
And remember, never attribute to studpidity that which can more accurately be attributed to a global conspiracy.
companies can take over the world
You know, I've come to wonder what issues people really honestly have with DRM.
My primary reason for disliking it is really an engineering one -- it's really, really hard to do DRM, at least on plain ol' audio and video. I'd put it on the same level as antispam legislation -- I'm pretty sure that it isn't going to work, and there's a lot of irritating legislation that indirectly impacts me (like ability to grab information from ISPs by copyright holders...privacy issue that I'm sure will be abused in the long run) and money wasted on lawyers in the meantime.
Most folks on Slashdot are the technorati. They were, in a much higher percentage than other groups, using MP3s and other forms of audio trading well before anyone else. They caught the "sweet spot", where they could pirate music without everyone doing it, so that those that pay subsidized the development of popular music. Piracy hadn't yet hit the point of moving music towards the public good dillemma (where nobody wants to pay for it because it's easier to pirate). Now, though, it's easy for anyone to download music, and the subsidization of the folks that used to download music from FTP servers isn't there.
DRM as a concept isn't all that "neat feeling", but neither is copyright or other forms of IP. What is the actual, practical impact on you of DRM? In this case, Apple was unable to obtain non-US rights. To my way of thinking, that's a fairly minor issue for people. The biggest drawback is that a US citizen might become comfortable buying music in the US from Apple, then move, and not be able to use the route he has come to prefer.
How about cost? To most teens, cost of music is a pretty legitimate issue. I don't really care much any more, now that I'm out in the work force -- the effort of getting an album in the format I want with the quality I want really isn't worth it. I go to work all day, and when I come home I'd rather just spend a little money and get the thing in full quality. So if DRM prevents piracy, it doesn't really impact me much.
What about inability to trade music around? I guess this could be an issue for some (I know some people that lend CDs out left and right), but I don't. At least for me, this really doesn't affect me.
What about limited-time ownership of music? This I *do* find unacceptable -- I won't buy music that expires. The point's kind of moot, though, since attempts to commercialize expiring music and video haven't really gone anywhere.
What about inability to move from place to place with a music collection? Well, I'm biased -- I live in a first world nation so forms of region coding tend to screw me over by letting media companies charge me more. While I've never moved out of the US, I'd like the ability to do so, so I consider region coding sufficiently irritating that I would be happy to break 'em. Incidently, I don't believe I've yet seen a DRM lawsuit over violating region coding -- the media companies aren't willing to test it, and I suspect it might fall over in court.
May we never see th
The massive popularity of peer-to-peer networks also needs to be urgently addressed
Yeah, because if people massively use peer-to-peer, then they probably want their representatives to put an end to that. Or perhaps they don't?
File sharing technologies which facilitate the direct infringement of copyright have the potential to destroy important areas of creative, cultural activity: shrinking rosters of creative talent in the music industry bear compelling witness to this fact.
Notice that last line there: shrinking rosters of creative talent in the music industry bear compelling witness to this fact. - This is the only 'fact' it seems in the document which isn't backed up by various statistics. Its worrying how government documents can make hard statements like this with no presented evidence (I'll be contacting them on Monday to ask for some).
Notable the evidence involving statistics is geared up to attack the file-sharing networks ie: Kazaa currently running at 2.5m downloads/week.
I believe that the BSG is a Government advisory group started by Patricia Hewitt, I'm worndering, being as they 'advise', what gives this group so much expertise in the matter?
The report is Authored by Nick Garnett of the Simkins Partnership (Media&Entertainment Lawyers) - He reveales few if any sources of information in the document so we have to assume that he is the oracle of all things P2P and Internet.
I dislike the way our govenment tries to 'Blind with statistics' especially when only the statistics of convenience are shown. Clearly the government is attempting to scare the UK broadband stakeholders into co-operation.
They have scheduled September 2003 for initial talks; I'm yet to discover if any discussions will be public. I would suggest that if there are public talks, members of the general UK IT community should be in attendance before we get our legs cut out from under us by DRM side-effects.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
If you want to know what the problem with DRM is then you should read this story by one of the leading minds of the GPL/GNU, Richard Stallman:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
It's an article in which reading is outlawed, made possible by Microsoft's DRM, and corporations' ideas of what copyright should be.
He also has many other essays too.