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DRM From the Viewpoint of the Electronic Industry
mike449 writes "The cover story of the Oct.16 issue of EDN magazine is about the recent trends in DRM. It is not just a technical article. The author tries to convey what people who are supposed to design and implement access restriction measures think about their feasibility and associated economic, legal and moral issues. 'Of course, you can always try charging a reasonable price and trusting people to be honest. Just think of all the money you'll save not having to implement DRM'."
D R M only inconveniences those of us who pay for our music. The pirates will go on using uncrippled formats. DRM is precisely as effective for anti-piracy as the Evil Bit is for security.
It's not even about copy protection. It's about keeping us on the "new format treadmill", and locking us in to specific playback hardware/software.
Don't be fooled. Take a stand!
I wonder just how many people actually *do* a cost-benefit analysis these days, or is it just a 'tick-box' item ?
The world might be a better place, if people would actually *think* more, it's not hard... "Actions" => "consequences". "Actions" => "Consequences". Repeat as necessary...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
It is interesting, because when it all comes down to it, the "good guys" are hurt due to restrictions, and the "bad guys" always end up pirating, etc. I am not sure there really is an answer as to how to protect information 100% without it both hurting the consumer and being crackable by a cracker. Of course, the governments can keep passing laws that make reverse engineering illegal, etc, but again, that's just going to scare the average Joe much more than it would scare someone who really wants to crack a DRM transmission. Only time will tell where the DRM issue ends up.
Google Toolbar is SPYWARE!
I think that protecting the IP rights of the owner of apiece of software is very important. For example, the recent SCO case shopws us very clearly what a muddled IP landscape can do to a company or an organization - it lends itself to a mess of litigation where the only true winners are the lawyers.
Charging a reasonable price and trusting people to be honest?!
Where has that ever gotten anyone?
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
The only "content" that is worth anything is the content that hasn't been developed yet. If it's already been made, it's valueless.
Which leaves lots of room for money making endeavors, as lots remains to be made. Of course, if you can't make, but only wish to "own", DRM is not going to change the fact that you are, ahem, fucked.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Of course, you can always try charging a reasonable price and trusting people to be honest. Just think of all the money you'll save not having to implement DRM.
The first sentence is quite telling as well. There will always be a small minority that refuse to pay for things, though most people are more than happy to shell out a few bucks for something useful.
I picked up Knights of the Old Republic the other day. It's a great game, but I found that the copy protection wouldn't let me play at first. It took a "no cd" patch before I could play my perfectly legal game. Sigh.
Just think of all the money you'll save not having to implement DRM
It's too bad the corportations don't think that way. "Just think of all the money you'll save by not having to design crippled CDs" or "Just think of all the money you'll save by not hiring people to go after music sharers" or "Just think of how many more people will buy your product instead of downloading it if you lower the price a little".
I think logic is a foreign concept to them.
Take a look at the network traffic of any university. Can you really blame electronics companies for not being trusting of their target market?
Locks only stop honest people....
thats what it all comes down to
How do small content creators cope with DRM? I mean, someone's got to certify that newly created content is original and not a copy of something else, otherwise what's the point of DRM? If there's a fee involved, how steep will it be?
I mean, a small time music producer or a small time comic book creator will have trouble in this environment, especially if they're just doing it because they love the art.
"Think of the money you'll save"
Bugger all, surely? How much does it cost to encode 1 CDs worth of music? Uh...you need a PC, the CD to encode, and..what? 5 mins? 30? 2 hours? Just once per CD. How many CDs do EMI, for instance, release a day?
I'm not a big fan of DRM. I will probably attempt to avoid DRM enabled products. That said, I think it's a perfectly valid technology. Perfectly valid in the sense that the market can decide whether or not it wants DRM, without banning it outright, etc. As long as people can un-DRM things that they own (their own word docs, etc.) and export/import them into a competing product, I don't see how DRM by itself can give anyone such undue influence that there's no turning back. What's the lock? Big media cartels and software monopolies are the problem, not DRM. I think the foolishness of many copyright/licensing schemes will become readily apparent when they can be rigorously enforced.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
The problem isn't DRM, it's copyrights. DRM is just one of many tools to enforce it, where when used in a way to controll people it would, in a normal world, fall by the wayside like all those other "key" schemes that never worked out.
But when you assert that you have a right to restrict what other people copy, even when the cat's out of the bag, then it takes on a whole new meaning. Like the right to regulate hardware companies who don't participate. The right to monitor other peoples computers for the sake of "enforcement". And the right to pry into peoples private content.
Ahhh, what's not to love about engineers...
I mean, if their opinions are heard and understood, their job at designing and implementing DRM is gone. How many people would stand up for a cause that would put them out of work?
Yeah, because that worked really well, didn't it...
"Of course, you can always try charging a reasonable price and trusting people to be honest. Just think of all the money you'll save not having to implement DRM."
DRM should be thrown out - pirates will still find ways to crack/hack the system. It's just a vicious cycle - one that ultimately hurts the consumer.
Producers should instead look towards more effective means of an honest and easy system of distribution. This would generate much more revenue - and shut down the napster-like systems of today.
I know many people who are now avidly seeking the honest route through the $0.99 title online stores.
And what exactly will stop people from holding shift as they copy stuff? Heh heh.
Yeah. This will be about as effective as standing my grandmother in front of the breaking dam.
I like the concept that they trust the consumer to be honest. How about instead we trust SOCIETY to evolve and simply let bygones be bygones? Sure, some industries don't want to die...why would they? But they're hindering our forward progress in their rediculous attempts to merely survive (read: senseless litigation) rather than doing the "right thing", lying down and letting us steamroll forward.
I'd be much more interested in the "next big thing" than their feeble attempts to thwart anti-security measures embedded into an old medium as they push forumulaic entertainment on us with a bombardment of advertising saturation.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
This is the wrong way to think. You shouldn't have any say in what people buy besides what you vote with your wallet. It is very democratic, you see?
If people generally don't care about DRM the sales of the crippled product will not be affected. If they do care then the sales will drop, and DRM will be redesigned or removed. The only possible problem anyone could have with this is that they want a greater say in the matter than "Joe and Jane Six-Pack" as the typical consumer is usually referred to here.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
I've always had this vision (quite deluded, I'm sure) of Bill G. sitting alone in his office in Redmond, plunking things like this in and giggling to himself...
DRM is fine. What is not fine is legislating DRM. If you want to spend time trying to build something I can't break then God bless. If you want to make it a law that I can't alter something I've purchased...the FUCK YOU...come and stop me...something tells me I'm smarter and will probably win in the end.
DRM is not the problem....DRM laws are.
From the article: However, Microsoft has made public that it intends to introduce changes that will make the operating system incompatible with chips that follow the current version of the TCP spec.
I guess Microsoft just can't resist embracing and extending things. I mean.. here, they're not even waiting for the spec to mature before they ruin it with their own implementation. Maybe Microsoft will be our greatest ally in the war on DRM... or not.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Just doens't feel right that someone can sell something and tell you what you can and cannot do with whatever it is... It be like you don't really own it... It's just licensed too you....
>'Of course, you can always try charging a reasonable price and trusting people to be honest. .
>Just think of all the money you'll save not having to have a lock, a money changer,etc
Just leave a bucket I am sure everyone would be honest.'
DRM itself isn't really the concern. It's just a tool: a lock can be used to keep out burglars, or contain the freedoms of people.
What matters is who is holding the keys at the end of the day.
We who hate this "intellectual property" also seem fascinated by encryption. I think the difference is having the law behind the copyright tyrants. If there wasn't the law there, then all this DRM technology would be fun. Break it if you can, or just ignore it and use unencrypted content.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
All that talk on making unbreakable DRM, and not one nod towards the fact that its a free-for-all at the headphone jack. :-)
Sad.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
The War On Copying
The communications industry is ready for an infusion of data, such as digital video, to drive it to recovery, but music, video, and other digital-content owners continue to keep a tight rein on their growing mass of IP (intellectual property) while waiting for a secure DRM (digital-rights-management) scheme to materialize. The complexity of DRM, however, makes it a nontrivial addition to a system, especially a consumer device with a low cost threshold.
Several standards are under development to define how to encrypt material and distribute it over public networks. Rather than define the policies themselves, they define a foundation framework that can support a variety of DRM policies. For example, the ISMA (Internet Streaming Media Alliance) 1.0 Encryption and Authentication spec, scheduled for approval this month, describes how to apply the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to content and packetize content for distribution in such a way as to prevent a late packet from disrupting the stream.
Intentionally, these specs do not define what keys you should use or how to manage particular rights. One reason for this omission is that the industry is unclear on how you should manage keys or express rights. Key management and expression of rights, however, is where DRM gets the most complex.
The TCP (Trusted Computing Platform) from the TCG (Trusted Computing Group) addresses key management by specifying a trusted module that applications can use to protect content. The module is actually a processing subsystem; all encryption and decryption happens on the module, so keys are never in the clear. However, to decrypt a 2-Mbyte/sec video stream, the module needs significant processing ability. The $4.25 (1 million) AT97SC3201 TPM from Atmel, for example, performs a 2048-bit RSA sign in 500 msec.
Support for TCP should appear in Microsoft's next version of Windows (formerly known by the code name "Palladium"). However, Microsoft has made public that it intends to introduce changes that will make the operating system incompatible with chips that follow the current version of the TCP spec.
Several proprietary DRM schemes are under development. Sony and Philips, among a plethora of hopefuls, have their own architectures. However, the lack of a consistent model for how to pay for content and use it will easily confuse users. Different business models that may restrict use to a single person or device or a specific time period will constrain the use of similar content, such as music files. Such flexibility is great for content owners but requires users to interact differently with every piece of content. Confusion will arise when users think they are buying one form of license and getting another. Buying and using content needs to be as easy as saying "I want it" and clicking on a button. It shouldn't mean deciding how you want it and having to read pages of small print to understand what you are buying.
Protection at all costs
Most companies mistakenly believe that content protection is about protecting content. Consider that renting a new video release for a single night costs $4 to $5, but renting an old video for five days costs $5. Most content makes the majority of its revenue in the first few weeks of release. Thus, content protection is really about protecting the release window.
Many companies mistakenly focus on the technology when trying to understand DRM and fail to consider the real social issues that managing content involves. For example, DRM schemes that tie content to a single PC fail to address the needs of, say, a child of divorced parents who lives in two homes. Even more common is the person who wants to play music at home, at work, in the car, on a portable player, and at a friend's house. The killer app for digital content is the connected home, yet most DRM schemes undermine consumers' ability to easily move content between
...it's replete with observations that don't just cover the usual ground (those stale old extremes: "copying is theft" versus "information wants to be free").
Your mileage may vary, but I, for one, had never seen the observation that the chief function of DRM is to "protect the release window" (the short time when content is new and makes most of its money).
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
This is one of the most idiotic arguments around. What a load of crap it is.
Just think how businesses would save money by not implementing electronic tags on merchandise, or security cameras or employing security guards to watch the store.
Just think how I would save money by not having locks on my doors to my house, or leaving my keys in my car or keeping my stuff out in the open for all the take!!
Yes!! The world would just be a better place if I can trust that everybody is not a scumbag just trying to take advantage of the situation if it was so easy!! Kumbaya!!!
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Both sides--owners and users--must benefit in real ways for DRM to take hold.
Impossible.
DRM exists specifically to deny 'right's' to users. How can any device that is used (in this context) only to limit the ways in which I can use a device benefit me?
DRM serves only the needs of the rights holder (and even that is debatable if you consider the 'benefit' is soley profit based and pissing off customers doesn't benefit profit). And that's why users, atleast informed ones, will fight adoption of DRM on devices targeted at individuals.
Analog totally defeats the purpose/use of DRM.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Call me paranoid - I enjoy it.
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
It's rare to see, even on /. .
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Sharing files is absolutely illegal already.
Why doesn't the recoding industry protect their interests the same way as the rest of us? Sue a few of the SOBs and the rest will get the message soon enough.
Oh, that would be "bad" marketing! Tough sh*&, that's the way a free and civilized world works. You have a right to redress in a court of law, not the formation of a police state.
Then the rest humans don't have to live in a world were "automated book burning" is the name of the game.
Recently there was a post here about how Internet makes a poor source for scientific authority. Web pages just up and disappear. Average "life cycle" of "knowledge" on the web? What was it? 100 days.
Today the web, tommorow the world. When Apple gets "tired" of iTunes every copy of your content will simple vanish, without a trace. A world of "books" will burn at the flick of a switch. There will be no place to hide, your backups will burn, copies you use will burn, even if said works should ever into the PD (should Congress EVER remember they govern for the People, rather than the Machine) those works will burn the very day they go PD.
If DRM is such a miserable idea that will be so easily circumvented, why does the /. community spend so much time venting about it? Don't tell me that it's because you all care so much about the common man. This is the same group that loves to ridicule people for using Windows or calls the general public sheep because they don't keep abreast of the latest Internet Free Speech cause.
Could it be that most here realize that they won't be able to easily pilfer the latest copyrighted works quite so easily anymore, or that information won't want to be quite so free anymore?
If DRM is such a bad idea, let it fail in the marketplace. Ths odds are though, that DRM - paricularly at the hardware level - will be at least somewhat successful at preventing the theft of copyrighted works in the future. Sure, the general public may have sime minor inconveniences during the initial phase-in period. These will be addressed and solved eventually, however, or DRM will go away.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
How badly crippled by DRM will the new DVD recorders be? Why would anyone buy one if they can't record anything? DRM is not in the interest of the device makers.
Situations that involve software and major battles of the epic struggle between rights owners/makers (**AA, incumbent politicians, et al) and the rest of us consumers should have open-source (or at least auditable) systems.
yeah, there are some situations where this need not apply, but things like electronic voting and how i get to use my stuff under legal fair use doctrines should have auditable code.
Example: microsoft comes out with longhorn sometime around when i build my first Megaman unit in 200X. it has code that checks for unauthorized movies, in the form of digital signatures it downloaded as part of Windows DateRape (the new, forced windows update). some day you decide to watch episode 3 for the second time to laugh at how terrible it is.
the movie, since it was a divx rip of a dvd you own, has the same signature as a pirated copy floating around the internet. so of course, people still use kazaa in the future or something like it, and the people with movies on their disks that match the signatures have their dossiers sent in MS Word format (twice...maybe three times) to local law enforcement.
After local law enforcement is done scanning the files for macro viruses, they send out a squad, bust down your door and throw you in jail. Even though it was just a divx rip of a DVD you already own.
bad, bad, bad! people need to know if things like this exist, but can't because only Russia, Micronesia and Paraguay can see the code. don't get me started about republican-controlled buddy-buddy electronic voting.
WHY HASN'T THERE BEEN A CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION INTO ELECTRONIC VOTING IMPROPRIETIES YET?
another topic for another thread, i suppose...
p.s. the signatures wouldn't be something complicated like MD5Sums (however easy that would make evasion), but filesize and a soundex title match. or something like that.
Or don't pay for any music and support the freedom of music. Bands that don't care about the money and seem to care about the music are the bands you should be for. If they are distributing their music for free and allowing you the freedom to make copies and distribute that for free, that who you should support!
sharingthegroove.com and FurthurNET
When gas prices go up, there are a lot more "drive-offs" or thefts of gasoline. Why? Most people have the money to afford gas (or shouldn't be driving if they can't). I believe that people don't trust gasoline companies (and, by analogy, the selling agents, gas stations) - they believe that the gasoline companies will take advantage of them to their detriment without corresponding benefits to them. The users (gasoline purchasers) aren't trusted and have no say. They steal in part as a misguided response to their disadvantagement - they don't feel that there is another way to make their feelings known and respected or that the ways available to them are pointless.
The content providers (CPs) have never trusted their audience. If you trust your audience, screwing them over is not an option. Instead, CPs have raised the prices of their content while lowering its quality and making it harder to use. The defenses (warranties) that users have for other products don't work for music. Do I own the physical disc or licence its content? CPs say both and neither - essentially whatever protects them at my expense is their answer. The people who infringe copyrights are wrong, but they are not betraying any sort of trust - by their actions, the CPs have shown no respect for or willingness to give trust. The CPs are now receiving the fruits of their labors. Paybacks are a b**ch.
I thought the onus was on the content providers to earn OUR money instead of on the public to earn the right to be trusted with it. After all, we only let people earn money from our valuable public domain at our discretion anyways. How about the content industries give a little back and prove that the dollar we give them won't be used to fuck us in the legislature with it first.
Look, there's a significant investment of time and money in any album that's out there. I don't care how indie it is, people put work into it. And it's easy to download that music and listen to it w/o paying a dime.
The people who funded the recording effort for that music obviously want to protect their investment. Having the music on the net downloadable for free is exactly like giving the product away on the street...almost no noticeable loss in quality.
The problem is people can't be trusted. Thinking that DRM is not going to be a part of our future is just being an asshat. Think about it...then start thinking about open source DRM solutions that aren't as intrusive that companies could utilize in their content distribution systems.
The truth is that DRM is not for the benefit or protection of users, no matter what content owners or standards groups say.
Amen.
Now all you have to do is let the rest of the non "techy" consumers know that and DRM will most likely fail.
Although a difficult task to successfully complete, just remember to remind them that DRM will make their life more complicated and computers will become even more confusing to the average person... but then again, the RIAA, MS, etc etc will gain an extra buck at a large cost to the consumers, so that's an upside... right?
An Israeli recording company, NMC, has just launched a new music service: Songs.co.il. It's basically 4 NIS per song (which is a bit less than 99 cents), with no subscription, but the kicker is that you buy regular non-DRMed MP3s, which you can download as many time as you'd like once you paid for them.
Keep in mind that Israel is one of the top pirating countries, and it will be interesting to see what will happen with this (I know I bought 10+ songs today)...
More info can be found here.
I wonder if DRM and trusted computing technologies can be used to prevent virus, worm, and ddos attacks. If only "trusted" executables would run on a computer, then malware would be much harder to perpetrate. DRM for your harddisk could prevent unauthorized executables from reading your e-mail address book, corrupting crucial system files, copyng your files, or logging the keyboard. DRM for personal and system files would prevent them from being copied or modified except by a trusted executable.
I would invision a scheme in which executables must be registered by the creator with a trustworthy third party in a non-anonymous fashion. Code that has not been registered in a publically traceable way would be denied access to system resources or run only within a tightly controlled sandbox. Once a piece of code has been validated, it would be locked in an execute-only state.
Given that most users are too willing to run any old app that comes over the internet, stronger controls on what can and cannot run may be warranted.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
that's the 'Trusted Computing Platform' spec .... not the TCP/IP spec ... what they mean is that any TCP hardware you buy now wont work right in the future ....
Of course, you can always try charging a reasonable price and trusting people to be honest. Just think of all the money you'll save not having to implement DRM'.
But they already charge a reasonable price! Just ask them. If they charged $10, some people would consider that reasonable. $5 would be other people's benchmark.
Unfortunately, at the bottom end of the scale you'll have the "music is intangible, therefore it's not stealing so I will take it anyway" brigade, ruining it for everyone.
If music were only a dollar, then the "hey, it's only a buck" mindset would kick in and people would still 'steal' music.
As a music publisher and promoter, I paid thousands of dollars in royalties to the licensing agencies however, not one artist or songwriter in 7+ years has ever received a solitary zinc penney. Never and none. All the money the RIAA is taking in with their extortion tactics stays within the RIAA and the corporations. Not one cent is being paid out to the artists. Never and none.
So DRM isn't about paying royalties to artists and it isn't about protecting them since they will receive very little, if any benefit from DRM.
Those selling the locks and the keys and those selling the media and the players are the only ones who will receive any financial benefit. So, why even have DRM?
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
I've said for years, I don't care if record or movie companies put on copy protection. I don't understand why the FBI has to be the enforcement arm of these entities.
Its perfectly legitimate to put on any kind of weird protection scheme they want. It should be just as valid for me to get around those schemes, as long as the end result is, or could be legal.
To use the example in the article, if I want to copy a DVD to my laptop to save battery life, then that should be legitimate.
What I truly object to is as a result of laws like DCMA, content companies want to have every bit of content as a subscription fee. You won't buy a CD anymore; you'll rent it.
But the market will decide, and I suspect it won't be to the content provider's liking (see DIVX, the real one, not the CODEC).
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
He probably meant GNU/Anux......
The TCP stuff assumes you do a secure boot; you boot a trusted BIOS, then boot the trusted loader then boot the trusted OS. You want to boot that copy of GRUB you've just compiled then boot into Windows? Sorry mate; GRUB isn't trusted. Microsoft has decided that they don't dare make the PC a closed platform, so they do insane tricks to build the trusted world after boot time. You boot the untrusted OS (Most of Longhorn will be considered untrusted) then can get a small bit of it (called the Nexus) trusted later. Interestingly you're even allowed to write your own nexus, if you want to create your own universe of trust.This reveals something very important; Microsoft thinks there are limits to its monopoly power over the PC and we can see where they are.Microsoft will never encourage you to dual-boot but it has massively increased the complexity of Palladium to make sure you can.
In soviet russia stale jokes recycle you!
Of course, you can always try charging a reasonable price and trusting people to be honest.
Oh, how simply adorable! That is just about the sweetest thing I have ever read in my life, I can't stand it! Cuter tan a pile of kittens! I feel like I'm melting in a puddle from the sheer cuteness of that! Thank you, you made my day!
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
From the article:
"Recently, the US Supreme Court ruled on DVD protection, stating that publishing trade secrets circumvents protection schemes as covered under the DMCA. "
I don't remember any such ruling. I remember a DMCA ruling from the 2nd Circuit, and a trade secret ruling from the California Supreme Court, but no US Supreme Court ruling at all. Anyone know if this is confusion on the part of the author, or if there really was such a ruling?
some may disagree, but i think its scary.
..well, who knows.
/. post :D
firstly tonight i read about Trusted Computing, and that Phoenix plan to put all sorts of weird and wonderful things into the BIOS (supposedly for our convienience and privacy, etc) Phoenix's BIOS Roadmap
and then i read about this DRM crap. It all seems to be tied together quite nicely, and results in a general lack of rights, ease of use, and privacy for the end user.
they are literally stripping away our choice, with this stuff. subtly making it more convienient to use proprietary things, (eg windows media player 9: you have to buy the mp3 encoding plugin, or your stuck with WMA... M$'s own audio thing, which does funnily enough have some crappy DRM "protection" in it)
hardware will become the same, im sure: maybe even Linux will refuse to run on certain hardware, or more realistically, the hardware will refuse to let linux run on it as its not trusted / secure enough, or doesnt have such and such a thing.. / cant do the encryption / decryption and all sorts of
i dont like it one bit...
anyways, im sorry for any typos, bad grammar, bad layout, presentation, etc.. i was never good at english, plus its my first
this only applys if you live in the US or in a country willing to go along with the US.
Anyone for moving to Nicuragua?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Microsoft is moving even more slowly than I thought. Only a monopolist could sell an operating system in today's market without support for tcp.
(shakes head in disbelief)
(You heard it here first ... and yes, I do have too much free time. And no, I'm not making a statement pro or con about this area ... this is just a little food for thought. Hah. I made a funny. :-) )
... sometimes more. Only one or two will buy the buffet though. The others just matter-of-factly state they only want a soft drink."
... there's no way someone comes into our restaurant as part of group and only wants a soft drink. You immediately know they're up to no good."
Officials at one of America's largest "all you can eat" restaurants announced today a new method of cost-cutting.
Tuesday, November 25th
For immediate release
Raleigh, NC: Silver Bucket, a nation-wide franchise restaurant chain with over 200 all-you-can-eat restaurants, has just introduced a new technology called Digital Plate Management, or DPM for short. Company executives are said to be excited about this new technology as they expect it will end the ability for unscrupulous customers to share food with non-paying companions.
"We've always faced a certain 'undesirable' component to our clientele," says Bryan Dawkins, CEO of Silver Bucket. He adds, "You can tell who they are as soon as they arrive. They'll arrive in twos or threes
Dawkins adds, "They're lying, of course. We seldom see it happen as they've become such experts at this kind of blatant theft, but come on
The Digital Plate Management technology that is now being deployed at Silver Bucket restaurants will bring an end to all that. The system relies on a high-tech buffet plate that is designed to work only with the person who purchases the buffet menu option. "These plates are going to save our bacon," says Dawkins. "They are just the most fantastic devices we've ever seen." The plates, which cost the company a little over $1300 a piece, are encoded at the time the customer makes their purchase upon entry into the restaurant. From that point on, the plate is designed to maintain its rigidity only when held by the authorized patron. "If someone else picks them up, they go completely flaccid. The plates, that is," adds Dawkins. In other words, the plates will only be useful for the authorized customer.
Digital Plate Management is the results of years of research, combining stunning effort in both materials engineering and biometrics. The plates include integrated sensors that allow them to be encoded with biometric data when the customer is first handed the plate. The plate stores information about the registered user such as fingerprints, skin elasticity, and body temperature. If these values change beyond a certain range of acceptable values, the plate goes limp. That might seem like a problem for restaurant staff, but the plates have been designed to handle encoding for more than one person. "One of the incredible features of these plates is that they can be encoded to allow any of our restaurant employees to handle the plate without having the plate become flaccid," adds Dawkins. This means that, while customers cannot share their plates amongst themselves, restaurant staff will be free to handle the plates when clearing tables and during dish washing. "Oh certainly, in the restaurant business, you never want to annoy your staff with potential hurdles like that," states Dawkins. He continues, "Multiple user encoding was one of the first things they had to solve in the design of these plates."
"Silver Bucket is committed to providing a first class customer experience," explains Dawkins. "Digital Plate Management is an absolutely revolutionary method for maintaining the level of quality our customers expect. These plates will allow us to make sure that only those honest, paying customer will have access to our all-you-can-eat buffet. We will thus be able to ensure a high-quality menu for our guests, and improve the bottom line for our shareholders."
Customer reaction has been mixed. David
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
True, US is about the world's biggest consumer (and nearly as big producer) of digital media and electronics. But how are they going to force other countries to adopt DRM? Won't this be just that China, Taiwan, or Japan will continue to produce two versions of all their hardware - one with DRM for US market and one with some DRM-Dummy - a chip that acts like DRM circumvention device - for the rest of the world? Are you going to nuke them or sue them? Will you make import of foreign electronics illegal?
I can already imagine devices, "DRM-safe. You own what you buy! Copy, edit and record anything safely, DRM won't stop you from that".
I know some basic truths: If it can be displayed, it can be recorded. If it can be heard, it can be recorded. Only heavily crippled hardware could stop you from doing this and circumvention of the protection can't be really hard for someone who makes that protection themselves - foreign producers.
I can expect even more. US will lag about a year after world technological progress: "The new player device will be available in stores worldwide in January. A special DRM-enabled version for US market is expected in November."
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
It doesn't matter if it's illegal, pirates will still do it.
It doesn't matter how complicated it is, pirates will find a way.
It doesn't matter how inexpensive they make the content, pirates will still undercut them by offering it for free.
About all this really does stop is joe average from being able to give copies of his software or music to his friends without being highly technically minded. Except that all joe average would then do is go the little extra distance to find someone he knows or can get in touch with who *IS* technically minded enough to be able to do what he wants. The next step is to raise the bar... and they'll have to keep raising it until the content producers see that they have no choice but to try to get the government to outlaw literacy to ensure that future generations will not be smart enough to break whatever content protection they dream up next.
I'm not saying piracy should be legal or tolerated. But I think that these guys need to get a clue and realize that the most they can ever really hope to do is just keep plugging away and penalize the ones that _DO_ get caught, and it might serve them well to remember that less than 1% of all people who speed get ticketed, so they're not the only ones fighting a never-ending battle.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
WOW.
This article probably uses every single one of GNU's "Confusing or loaded words and phrases". Congratulations to the author for showing his utter lack of bias...
The killer DRM application will be when I can create my resume using professional quality open source tools (like this) and make it impossible for the bastards to convert it to Word.
I have purchased 0 DVD's in the last year, 0 Audio CDs, 0 vhs tapes, etc.
There is just too much good quality audio/video over the air broadcast to worry about buying prerecorded things.
Additionally, I will see exactly 1 movie this year in the theater (t3).
I don't support them and don't find any real value for my money in $15 dvd's or $15 audio cds since I watch a move 1 time and ignore the extras since most of them are just 20 minute advertisements for the movie I just watched.
The bi-monthly 99cent dvd rental coupons from blockbuster/hollywood video elliminate any need to buy anything.
The only content I've bought in the last year was 2 USED xbox games for $14 each.
I expect to get a hard disk based dvd recorder home theatre component in about 12 months, that will most likely end the need to rent anything.
most businesses live or die by attracting customers - either by providing a cheaper product, or a better product, or better service. Content providers have instead raised the prices of their products, lowered their quality, and made them more difficult to use, and are then surprised when sales decrease. The same businesspeople now wish to use copyright law and the DMCA to further increase their profits. None of these changes benefit the consumers - all hurt them. Theft/copyright infringement (depending on the business) won't go away, but as long as screwing over your customers is your business model, you can expect both of them to increase dramatically.
Trust shouldn't be an issue - if people are happy with the product, not many will steal or copy it, because they will be happy with what they get for their money. Since there is another method (the Internet) to copy music, and people are frustrated with content providers, they copy, because they can. The content providers act to increase people's anger with them, and instead of providing people with what they want at a price they will pay, they threaten and try to force compliance, increasing the frustration of their customers while publicizing the circumvention method. Brilliant.
Business models don't require trust - to be sustainable, their simply require an exchange both sides see as fair. The content industries have tried to force deals on their customers that their customers see as unfair. A fair business model doesn't require unbounded naivete or ignorance of theft/copyright infringement, but a simple understanding that both the customers and the sellers should walk away feeling treated fairly. The seller has a right to protect himself, but if he does so at my expense I have the right to walk away. The price-fixing investigations in the music industry indicate that the music industry and other content providers want to limit other (legal) sources of content to force their deals on the consumer. Thus, "trust" is required (or feigned) because consumers have already decided that the deals presented are not in their best interest, and some other method is required to compel their acceptance.
OK, let's say Itunes is the best DRM crippled format there is. Can it do what normal recorded music can? The objections raised in the article strike at real problems facing any DRM that make the whole concept look like a looser. The inability of more than one person to share music collections in more than one place at a time blows it for most people. Answer these questions about Apple's nice DRM that are typical family issues:
What good is any music that I can't share with other members of my own family? If my wife can't listen to my music in her car, while I listen to our music at home or on my bike, the DRM sytem simply sucks. Sure, I can work around it with tapes and other stuff that will rocket me back to the 1980s. What good is that? I'm happier with my simple oggfiles that I can serve out as I please and put on as many computers as I want. When I bought the music, I had every intention of everyone in my house being able to enjoy it. Anything more complicated than that is simply not going to catch on.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
When Apple gets "tired" of iTunes every copy of your content will simple [sic] vanish
And why would that be? Are you saying that Apple, like the RIAA, wants to start hacking into our computers, so they can delete the songs?
The iTMS might someday disappear (though why Apple should give up on it...well...EVER is beyond me!), but your music will still be there. Granted, if you have only kept the original FairPlay-encrypted AAC, you might not be able to play it, assuming that Apple also destroyed/removed/? whatever authentication method they use (and I'm not at all sure it's not local to your machine, rather than some sort of server). But the files will certainly still be there
And if any of the following are true, you will still be able to listed to your music:
Your example might have worked if the songs were kept somewhere central (eg, a server at Apple). But they're not, and Apple can't just tell all the songs to self-destruct. There are probably music services this is true of, but the iTMS is not one of them.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
eg windows media player 9: you have to buy the mp3 encoding plugin, or your stuck with WMA
That's more Fraunhofer's fault than anything else, for pricing patent licenses for MP3 encoders so high. Microsoft can't do anything about it until ca. 2017 when the key MP3 patents expire.
In the 80s with VCRs and tape recorders, people showed that they wanted time- and space-shifting fair use rights, and the law followed. Now the law is swinging back, as the DMCA can make those things technically illegal - consider that if the DMCA and the broadcast bit existed then, VCRs would be illegal now. But the content owners were unable to stop Xerox machines, VCRs, tape dubbers, digital audio extraction, CD-RWs, and portable MP3 players, because people really do want to "own" content.
When you make a sale, both sides get something they want. The RIAA wants money, theoretically so they can pay artists to make music. People want music. Specifically, they want to "own" music, as in, "to have the ability to play it, whenever, wherever." This is where the balance lies - if people could redistribute, artists wouldn't get paid, but if people couldn't "own" (in the sense of sovereignty, not copyright), they wouldn't buy it, and again, the artist starves. DRM tries to do just that - take away "ownership," in return for, nothing but inconvenience. I don't think this would happen in a competitive market. I can only hope it won't happen in the present market.
Litigious bastards
Thanks DRM for making my life so much better."
You should have cracked the game, burned a copy and returned the original as defective. And THEN played the game!!!!
People like you are why the market hasn't solved the problem.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm not sure if anyone has actually tried to quantify this, but I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that unfettered DRM-free copying of music and other media indirectly helped the growth of many sectors of hi-tech. Of course, probably no exec will admit to it in fear of invoking the wrath of the RIAA/MPAA, etc. but it's still probably true.
Think about broadband, CD/DVD-R/RW, large hard drives, solid-state digital music players, etc -- all cheap and ubitquitously avaiable today, due in large part to the demand caused by music swapping, and all having beneficial applications beyond copyright violations.
I think that had Napster, KaZaA, etc not been possible due to DRM, you would not have had this growth, and the state of the tech industry would have been not as well off because of it.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Good luck making reverse engineering illegal.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Well played, old bean!
I spent the last day trying to get my doctoral thesis back. So far, I think it's lost for good. I wrote it back in 2017, and the University copyrighted it. Last week, a fire at the University destroyed the key server; about 20,000 volumes were lost.
At first, it was thought that we could restore from tape, but the problem was that the law mandated encrypting all copyrighted works to prevent illegal distribution. Yes, we still have the backups, but they're encrypted; without the key server, useless. Some of my colleagues have wondered aloud about building a decryption utility, until the legal department reminded them that this would be illegal. Since all software is registered with a central repository by the compiler, it would be impossible to keep it a secret. And given that most decryption algorithms are patented, it would surely get tagged by the patent-crawlers.
Yeah, I remember a time before compulsory registration and mandatory networking. You could actually compile your own source code without having it registered with the copyright office. And even 20 years ago, there was no such thing as a patent-crawler; if you infringed on copyright or someone else's patent, they had to take you to court. With automatic enforcement now, it's impossible to copy someone else's bitstream. Even if you want to give it away, you still have to pay for a distribution license.
And the compulsory registration system has had its problems. The computer science department now has a waiver allowing them to run non-networked computers. With automatic copyright registration and enforcement, infringement alerts became increasingly frequent; it seems as if there's only so many correct ways to write "Hello World", or solve the fibonacci sequence. After a few years, the FBI simply ignored infringement alerts from the University, and soon after, we got the waiver.
But some of us are still writing code with a pen. I've seen illegal copies of D'Christy's prime-factoring algorithm passed around on notebook paper. You would never get away with computer file of it, though, because someone would eventually slip and use the disk on a publicly connected workstation.
Well, I think my thesis is lost. Even though I've got a key, I can't risk bringing it forward (last year, private ownership of encryption keys was made illegal). I didn't know I had it - I found it as I was rumaging through some disks, hoping for a legacy copy of my thesis.
A colleague of mine managed to get a copy of the backup on disk. While rumaging through my things, I found an old pre-registration laptop without a network interface. Tonight, we'll see if we can get our words back.
And some poor kid got busted yesterday. He bought some cheap flea-market hardware that had an old unlicensed compiler on it. He would have never gotten caught, either, had he the insight not to connect it to a network.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
He's a freakin' Artiste'!
i used to work for edn's parent company (then known as cahners) and they're BIG supporters of the dmca. when the dmca was being proposed and voted on in congress, cahners hr department came around and had everyone sign letters of support for the "cause." you weren't required to sign, but it was made pretty obvious that you shouldn't refuse.
everyone should also know that subscribers to edn will have their info sold ("rented") to almost any third party willing to pay the fees. this info includes all sorts of demographic data you supply, including your email address. the list rental, however, is run through a different division of the parent company. when i was there the division was called cahners business lists. the new name is dm2, cute huh? i always felt bad contributing to the spam problem. i never made much of a stand (morals don't pay the rent) but i did steer as many clients as possible away from email marketing.
i dunno, just thought i would share some info with everyone.
here's a couple links for those interested...
http://www.dm2lists.com/
http://www.dm2lists.com/resources/reports/pov/spam /index.asp
the two chicks listed on this spam page, yvette and cara, are cuties. i have pictures of them somewhere. cara is a little thin for my tastes, but still pretty. yvette wasn't as pretty, but looked damn good from behind. ok, ok, now i'm reeeeeally off topic.
Oh ya DRM is gonna make me a paying customer ,already am.....cant buy enough blank dvds and cds these days to keep up with "DEMAND" now if only i had something worth recording to them.
by "good" I assume you are reffering to record/movie excuitives' and/or stockholders' bottomline? RTFA! DRM tech adds NOTHING in terms of value to any entertainment media I would choose to buy. But at the same time, takes away many of the ways I use my media (all legal at the moment, mind you), that I bought with my money.
This may be /. and I'm preaching to the choir. But, hell man, if you aren't trolling you're an idiot.
The content providers are trying to get something for nothing. Give me an audio experience that's so good it motivates me to buy the content in a new format, something I can't get from a high quality analog recording. Instead the entertainment industry has taken the path of least resistance. Much easier to pay Congress and the courts to do their dirty work for them than actually invest in a compelling user experience. You can only dick people so long before they get tired of taking it.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
wma does not always have drm.
When you launch windows media player 9 the first time to rip tracks, it asks you if you want to secure them. It doesn't require you to, in fact, I believe the default is to not, but it forces you to acknowledge this.
We need to remember that wma != drm. Just like aac != drm. aac files can have drm, just like wma, but neither format is drm only.
Fog of War.
My personal contempt for DRM started when various copy protection schemes made a resurgence in popularity in video games (remember code wheels?). I downloaded a CD crack for Diablo 2. Oh, I'd bought the game and my CDs were still functional. I just thought that since Blizzard already had my freakin money and I had a 20gig hard drive, I shouldn't be forced to swap out CDs every time I wanted to play a different game. None of my friends pirated the game. All of them got the CD crack. When even your honest customers are circumventing your copy protection mechanism, how effective is it going to be against pirates?
I believe people should be compensated for the work they produce. But they shouldn't screw me in the process. Don't make it hard for me to do the right thing. And please don't make more appealing to do the wrong thing.
With music it's even more ridiculous. Many albums are available on Kazaa well ahead of the official release. In non-protected MP3 format. The DRM system is already a colossal failure in its stated purpose (preventing piracy) before the first protected CD is ever sold.
The Music Pirate gets music before the official release, for free, that he can burn to CD, play in his car, on his PC, on his Mac, on his Linux box, on his portable MP3 player. He can make backups as he sees fit. When/if the format becomes obsolete, he'll probably be able to transfer his collection to whatever new writable format is popular.
The Honest Consumer gets to wait longer for the privilege of paying an inflated price (price fixing, anyone?) for music that'll probably play in his CD player, maybe on his computer, on whatever platform the vendor feels like supporting. And when that format is obsolete or made to be obsolete, he'll have to buy the same music again. Ok, he gets cover art and track lists as well. I no longer buy new CDs because I don't like feeling like a chump.
DRM will affect a negligible number of pirates, and every single one of the paying customers.
Suppose you own a property that is on the other side of someone else's property. You can't get to your property because his is in the way. You could buy from him a stretch of land sufficient to build an access road to your property. Or you could buy what is called an easement. This is when you buy from someone not the entire land, but the right to a specific use, such as the right to travel through that land to get to a point on the other side. Most of the rights remain with the original owner, with the exception of this one right of keeping you off his property. Of course, you expect to pay a lot less for an easement than you would to buy the entire land.
Now, if you've beared with me this far, I'll get to how this applies to DRM.
With DRM, IP owners are trying to sell us a very restricted set of rights, but they're not willing to sell them to us at a reduced price. If a completely copiable CD is worth $10, I will absolutely refuse to pay that amount for a CD that I cannot copy. I might consider paying a lot less -- say, $1. In other words, if you want to sell me less than what you're selling me now, you also have to charge me a lot less.
I bet there would be a whole lot less bitching about DRM if it was part of a fair bargain: you accept some restrictions, in exchange for a suitable price discount. But no, content owners want to have their cake and eat it too: charge full price AND impose restrictions. Why should anyone but them think this is a good deal?
...it's just another way of looking at it. The food chain for content providers is problematic, whether in how CPs obtain the money from products or in what they use the money for (for example, for advertising and "making stars"). CPs forget that it's the customers' money, not theirs, and to get it, they have to convince customers to give it to them for what they have. To get him to come back, they have to give him enough that he feels the trade was fair. Instead, they want to make him to think the product is great (through advertising) while taking more from him for the product to pay for the image they sell. This technique isn't working so well, but instead of changing, CP have decided that forcing the consumers to give them more money for less product with more restriction is what consumers really want. They seem to think that their money is a natural phenomenon, and that people will continue to buy their content at their price. It helps if you control distribution, as CP have been accused of doing before. If that were true, then a conspiracy theory is not required because when one group makes the rules, they don't need to conspire with anyone else. If there isn't anywhere else to get music, your customers have to like what you sell or get nothing at all. Now, however, they can go elsewhere, and the assumptions that underpin that sales model fail miserably.
The CP (in particular, the music industry) is a dinosaur overwhelmed by small rodents. It needs a lot of energy just to stay alive, and yet it's not fast enough to run and catch its own food. When the rodents stop showing up, it can't chase them, and it certainly can't stop them from surviving. Its only hope is to cooperate with the rodents for its survival, but it has spent its life eating them and so that is not possible. The illusion of dominance is all it has, and cooperation would force it to give that illusion up.
I appreciate this sentiment, I really do. However, the problem is then that a small core group subsidizes the larger group. For NPR, for which I've heard only about 8% of listeners actually support with donations (but there is some contention), this is mitigated by the fact that there is a benefit to the public at large. It is hard to quantify, but I posit that this is why the minority is willing to carry the non-contributing listeners.
Will there be such a benefit to the commonwealth with DRM? I suspect no, because content providers will view DRM as a way to keep purchase prices high and distribution costs low.
There's one point the various industries don't seem to realize. File sharing does not mean a free product. And I'm not even talking about the cost of broadband, the cost of harddrive space, etc.
There is a cost associated with finding the product to begin with. Finding the correct product when you think you've found it. Finding a product of sufficient quality. Finding associated products quickly, predictably, and reliably.
If I knew I could get decent Radiohead unrestricted MP3s at radiohead.com I would be sorely tempted to purchase them at nearly any price than to hunt and peck and hope and test all over the bloody Internet.
If I knew I could download an above average DivX copy of Kill Bill v.1 at kill-bill.com I would be willing to pay DVD prices to have it earlier than DVD availability, rather than hunt and peck and hope and test all over the bloody Internet.
The various industries have forgotten that Time == Money for even the average person. You eliminate the search and procurement time you will "save" money in the eyes of the customers and they will be more than willing to turn those savings into direct cash income.
What crack are you smoking?
Anyone with an under 500 is back from the Bit's and Bytes days circa: 1995-6. I haven't seen an under four digit account post in months. Most of them have been chased off to greener pastures by annoying trolls like you.
Oh yeah, change to content of your posts, you look like a jackass.
The average consumer who purchases a DVD, CD, multimedia device, television, or computer system really has no "upfront" knowledge of why DRM is bad. Nor, do they particularly care. There will always be exceptions to the rule, however, the majority of consumers will not be able to tell (unless the package is marked) whether the brand new Sony DVD player they bought contains DRM capabilities. The criteria that the average consumer uses when making their product selection is not as "robust" as the tech savy or politically aware consumer would use. DRM acceptance by the general public really boils down to satisfying a few key requirements.
One, the hardware device which utilizes DRM should not cost anymore than the device which does not utilize DRM. Certainly, the addition of the DRM components will raise the price of the product. Therefore, it is necessary for the consumer to perceive a benefit which justifies the additional cost. This will require slick new features that are available only on the DRM enabled model and suitable advertising of the device. Thus neutralizing the issue of product price increase then becomes a marketing exercise.
DRM enabled equipment should be able to conduct the authentication/verification of the user and their content with NO user involvement. If the new DVD player becomes more difficult to use, people will not purchase the new DVD player. DRM hardware must become innocuous to the user and must be backward compatible with previous releases of content.
DRM enabled hardware will need to have a single industry standard that is used to encode and decode the content. There can be no competing standards such as DVD-R and DVD-RAM. The price of content that supports decryption on all DRM standards would be quite a bit higher than a non-DRM enabled content. There would also be considerable difficulty in creating content to meet all standards. There is also no guarantee that competing standards would work interchangeably.
DRM enabled hardware must be presented as a positive component by such consumer product publications as popular as Consumer Reports. If DRM is rated as being considerably more costly and painful to operate, the hardware will not be bought.
Finally, the "cut-over" for releasing only DRM enabled content, must be worked out. A large enough majority of the consumer population must posess a DRM enabled hardware device so that the DRM enabled content can be consumed. It wouldn't do for all of the LOTR III DVDs, to use as an example, be released as DRM enabled. There wouldn't be enough people with the correct hardware who would purchase the new LOTR III DVD. The content providers must work with the harware vendors and create a plan to "roll-out" content that by design will only be consumable on DRM enabled hardware.
In conclusion the DRM enabled hardware/media must be competetive in price with the non-DRM enabled hardware/media. The DRM enabled hardware must be as easy-to-use, if not easier, than current hardware. There must be a single industry standard on DRM implementation that allows for backward compatibility. The popular media outlets that consumers consult to build their "criteria of product selection" must present DRM in a "positive" light in order to build public support and neutralize any "negative press" in regards to the DRM product. Finally, the content providers will need to work closely with the hardware vendors to determine how best to implement DRM "roll-out" to the consumers.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
No great music was created to make money. Great music will still be made when it doesn't make money, and with any luck rubbish music won't.
There is a very distinct odor of "shill" around here.
Well, actually, you can have the music on up to three computers and you can stream it to an unlimited number of computers on the same subnet. You can also put the music on an unlimited number of iPods.
That all sounds very reasonable, but what happens when the "master" computer dies? What do you do with music you purchase from other services? Will Sony's brand of DRM work with the Apple Software, even when it's the same song? Worse yet, what can you do if the music publisher decides to pull a MicroSoft/RIAA move and change formats to force you to purchase all your music again? The layers of complication and risk that DRM adds are going to hold digital music back while people will seek the path of least resistance.
I'm happy with my simple ogg files, all obtained legally, and I resent being treated like a criminal. The iPod is a beautiful device, but I will make do with the less expensive and free software solution of Open Zaurus and Vorbis Tools. That "I agree" button is really repulsive after a few years of using free software, so repulsive that things that come with it I throw away. Music companies that make it difficult or impossible for me to get their music into that form just won't get my business.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Locks, laws against murder, and DRM unfortunately do have some other purposes. One simple one is that they let people know that what they're doing is wrong - they force people to make a conscious effort to do the wrong thing.
Nonsense. Most murderers don't "make a conscious effort" to think about the consequences (particularly when the murder is carried out in the heat of the moment), and if a murderer does have a conscience, the law itself would have had only a small role in putting it there.
At any rate, the idea that sharing music is "immoral" is one utterly foreign to any but RIAA plutocrats. Is sharing a book immoral? How about sharing your toys? Giving a friend a lift? What's next, car manufacturers will sue people for sharing cars? Shared houses? Shared beds?
Consumers want to pay a reasonable price for quality content. DRM fucks the consumer over; so they get mad, and they start going for pirated content because they feel like they're being screwed by the plutocrats anyway.
An interesting fact of human psychology--treat a person as if they're honest, and only the kleptos will be dishonest. Treat a person like a suspect, and they'll stop behaving.
Consumers, like anyone who's thought of murder but hasn't done it, have bought into a social contract. Everybody pretty much follows the rules and in return things are peaceful and life goes smoothly. By treating the consumer as a criminal, the RIAA has broken that social contract. If you're going to be treated like a criminal anyway, why not reap the benefits? (This is the way many boys think when they are punished indiscriminately at school, and the way budding hackers think when they come under suspicion for computer problems simply because of their superior computer skills.)
It's not theft, it's unauthorised copying, and in the vast majority of cases nobody actually loses anything because of it. The only possible loss is the potential loss of a sale, but what proportion of illegal copying is done for content that the copier would never have bought anyway? I know in my case that proportion is close to 100%.
The big media corporations right now are obsessed with the idea of "leave no money on the table." Even when they are making enormous profits, they are plagued by the thought that someone downloading music for free, or listening to CD's lent to them by a friend, could have potentially *paid* for that CD, if only they were forced to.
Thus, they attempt to force the consumer to pay, in some way, for *every* time a song is played. Hence these ridiculous "play movie 5 times before it self-destructs" schemes. (So stupid--if you only want to see it once, you rent instead of buying. Did I mention the big media companies have declared war on rental outlets periodically?)
They are dealing in a very flaky brand of economics, of course. They are weighing these imaginary costs from non-customers versus the very real costs of DRM (which includes expensive lobbying, lawyers, and marketing) and lost paying customers. While the potential threat to their control of distribution channels and to their publishing market is real, these phantom consumers who would be spending untold millions on media *if only they were forced to* are not.
I am morbidly fascinated by the history of various forms of "crippleware" (as some call it) - products that are in some way designed to deliberately work against their owner's personal interests in some way. Ordinary "shoddy goods" have been around since before the industrial revolution; I do wonder, however, when the first _deliberately_ crippled products appeared. Aside from DRM, one can name many examples today - cars that record their owner's driving history, cell phones that broadcast their GPS coordinates, etc. These things are abundant today. You can go to any electronics shop and deposit hard-earned cash in exchange for a product that is _designed_ to betray you in some very deliberate way - and what's more interesting, most people don't seem to oppose this trend. Does anyone with a "history of technology"-type background know when this trend began? Namely, when/where was conceivably the first instance of people buying a deliberately traitorous product (something designed to malfunction in some way, or rat out the owner's misbehavior, etc.)?
This is a direct quote from the EULA that they use for Windows Media player "*Digital Rights Management (Security). You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management ("Secure Content"), Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer. If we provide such a security update, we will use reasonable efforts to post notices on a web site explaining the update. ......"
so if your able to do one thing today you might not do tomorow (software wont run movies wont play music wont ect ect ect........and they get root access to your system to Boot ......SUCKS IF YOU DONT READ THE EULA......its been known for a while but they still have it on the system and probaly wont change there outlook I like the way they want to update and you have to find out on there web site what the update is all about ....THAT SUCKS BIG TIME....thats why im not a fan of M$ getting into the entertainment industry ...there just there for the money nothing else more mediocraty for the masses ;)
have a nice day
Completely unrealistic! No business in this day and age would refer to its consumers as 'customers' or 'clientele'! What kind of subversive bullshit are you trying to pull?
(/sarcasm)
Hmm??
DRM.. sure enough, it sounds like as if people will start making sure that they see copyright labells everywhere. From a simple little Internet browser that says Copyright(r) blah-blah.. With all these unnessary ways for companies to actually buy this sort of licencing... Think of it, wouldn't it be a way to show Microsofts and the like minded to proceed with that paladium project?
I used to get Cable TV. I like to tinker with electronics. Do the math. They passed a law that theft of service can be billed for all channels for an extended period of time regardless of number of channels and actual length of time. The risk became high and the value dropped. I unsubscribed when they raised the price and dropped a couple channels from the package and basic became way overpriced. The premium channels were incompatible with the VCR tuner. I couldn't program it to record several programs on several channels overnight. The premium channels are very inconveinent to use. DRM copy bit on HDTV and sat TV and Digital Cable are making a repeat of these same problems.
I still get calls wanting me to subscribe. I let them know I want my old service back including the original price and programming. I've been cable free for 14 years now.
I'm interested in high speed internet for home, but they charge and extra $120 per year if I are not subscribing to the TV content also. WTF? Just sell me the service and let me pick the content. Hopefully soon I'll be able to get DSL or another service. Only widespread competition can fix this problem.
Right now, the music industry is doing the same thing. Huge costs per song if pirated, high cost of content, content restricted, and special extra cost equipment needed to use the premium content. Don't believe it? Try playing some of the new CD's in your DVD player or in your car. Try to use Itunes stuff on your Arcos or Rio. The problem with content protection is vendor hardware lock-in.
Sell me good quality MP3's. These I can use in my car, portable, Winamp on the computer, etc.
So far for music content, I'm stuck with my aging collection of CD's and CDEX. I don't buy CD's without the gurantee of compatibility the Compact Disk logo.
They may push DRM. They may get away with it. It'll just leave me holding my existing collection and not buying new content.
Even the MPAA thinks the RIAA is too expensive. I bought several DVD's of the Andy Griffith show and The Beverly Hillbillys. Guess what, they removed the original theme music due the the RIAA restrictions.
Somehow the story of the dog guarding the haystack from the cows come to mind.
The truth shall set you free!
It's kind of funny. Mickey has just became a corporate logo. Disney has been so paranoid of releasing the original content, the current generation knows nothing about the mouse except as a boring logo or company icon. Really now, have you recently seen any Mickey Mouse cartoons? (other than Steamboat Willie, Phantasia, & Silly Symphonies) Have your kids seen the Mickey Mouse Club? Do they know Annette or Cubby? Of corse the Mouse is nothing more than a logo or icon anymore.
He died when they locked him away to protect him from theives.
The truth shall set you free!
Nah, I think Doctor Fun knows where they're going with all this DRM stuff.
I like the well done article. However you are missing one important bit. The customer has to buy the plate and keep it. It also will not work at a competitors restraunt. (Ipod at Napster, Samsung at Itunes, etc.)
It's simple, the food is incompatible with my current plates and I have no reason by buy a $1300 plate just to eat at the diner.
I'll eat elsewhere while the other places serve food compatible with my plates. (any brand MP3 player, DVD/MP3 player, CD/MP3 player, Linux, Win, & Apple computers, etc.)
The truth shall set you free!
If the employers of the readers of Electronic Design news had stood up to the Hollywood cartel lobbysts to begin with, we wouldn't have DRM schemes to talk about.
What they did instead was stand like deer in the headlights hypnotized by vague promises of infinite future profits based on release by Hollywood of all its content some time after hell freezes over,
Yes, they had a choice.
Compared either by net caps or income, the consumer electronics industry is so much bigger than the Hollywood content cartel that they could exceed the campaign contributions of Hollywood by 10 to 1 out of petty cash. They chose to kiss the butts of major label and studio CEOs instead and are hoping that we're stupid enough to buy the brain-damaged DRM crap which will be the only things they can legally sell us in compliance with the alphabet soup of legislation they have bought and intend to buy from our Congressional "representatives".
Well, I won't be buying the crap and I hope you won't, either. These guys took a risk with their future profits and incidentally, our freedom by doing it Hollywood's way. Well, we're losing our freedom and "fair use" is only one of the things we're going to be losing. I don't see any reason to care about their profits.
Even US R&D is likely to be affected, possibly so much so that corporations will have to move it out of the USA.
I think the current tendency to split the consumer electronics industry into 2 tiers, what the Japanese sell Americans and what they sell each others will be drastically exaggerated. It'll be "crap stuff for those ignorant Americans" and "cool stuff for everyone else in the world"... though the foriegners stupid enough to buy into the laws written by the Hollywood cartel via WIPO will also get the crap stuff made for Americans.
If the consumer electronics industry doesn't do this, the real cool hardware stuff that can be made to work with available media will be black-marketed into the US and cooperating EU nations. Of course, possession might be good for a vacation behind bars.
Bottom line for us hardware types who want to invent and build and be able to get to market cool new consumer products without begging our masters in Hollywood for permission?
Start shopping for a free country.
And if the major electronic companies most affected had only had backbones, this need never have happened.
Tech Public Policy stuff
On this years IFA in Berlin (huge consumer video fair, basically) I had the opportunity to talk to engineers of "some company" who are designing a wireless home entertainment system.
Not only is it clear, technically, why DRM makes this all harder, but it was clear that designing all the wireless audio and video was loads of fun to them. Those were geeks like us, showing off their toys like little kids. But DRM to them was a headache.
Besides, they want to sell hardware and could not care less where you got the content to play.
Just my 0.02
Alex
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder
Yeah. Hardware manufacturors got their perfect ad right there!
--BEGIN QUASI AD--
As far as you (the consumer) are concerned, this is a total stepback compared to any entertainment-technology you've used before. It will offer you less, but at a steeper price! Being technically speaking, alot more complex than anything we've made before, it is without a doubta device that is utterly sure to fail.
This is the new crippled loud. You need this now.
--END QUASI AD--
That sure as hell will bring in the revenues! Unless you lye to your customers, but that would be unetchical, wouldn't it? Oh, those pigopolists don't seem to mind, that's right.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Is it just me or are these abbreviations *really* annoying:
TCP: Trusted Computing Platform
IP: intellectual property
Maybe they could come up with some for FTP, HTTP, SMTP, etc...
Not to mention that the plate is only usable for 1 visit to the restaurant after which you need to purchase a new plate. (and pay disposal fees for the old one...)
Not to mention that the plate is only usable for 1 visit to the restaurant after which you need to purchase a new plate. (and pay disposal fees for the old one...)
What did I miss? I thought you could keep using your same I-Pod at the I-Tunes and the same Samsung at Napster again and again. Each visit is going to cost for the dinner, but I think you can re-use the plate. Sure, if you don't have the latest version, you will have to upgrade now and then at your expense. The Napster plate won't work in the I-Tunes diner and vise-versa. It could be your refrence is when your plate is full, you have to throw out stuff to make room for the new flavors and not save the old stuff for a midnight snack years later.
The truth shall set you free!
Actually, yes I have seen quite a few as of late. Over the past few years, ABC has shown Mickey Mouse cartoons as a part of the Saturday morning "One Saturday Morning" line up that my son watched before we got cable (and hence, Cartoon Network-a.k.a. what seems like the almost 24/7 home of "Scooby Doo"). They had a show called "House of Mouse" which showed Mickey, Minnie, and characters from other Disney cartoons (such as Simba, Peter Pan, Cinderella, etc.) as customers of a "supper club" (where Mickey is the host/master of ceremonies) between cartoon shorts. We also have the "Christmas at the House of Mouse" DVD from a few years ago...
Granted, these shows are not nearly as entertaining as the classic Warner Brothers "Looney Toons" shorts, but at least Disney is making some sort of attempt to make Mickey "relevant" as a character (instead of simply a logo) to today's kids...
It's pretty obvious to anyone who thinks about it that DRM HURTS the economy. But why don't we have any officially sanctioned studies "proving" this fact and countering the propaganda of the MPAA etc.?
I like the way you put it. Not much of the original Mickey if he is sharing a cartoon with Simba, Peter Pan, Cinderella, etc. It seems other than a few spots, he's become the corporate toastmaster/PR spokesperson. I simply don't see the clasic Mickey on TV much at all. Even when I had the Disney Channel, he was very absent other than several hundred ways to produce the station logo.
Huey, Duey and Luey are up to all kinds of advertures. Not so with Mickey. I saw lots more about Goofy and Pluto than I ever saw of the famous mouse. Donald and Daisy are regulars and you know the personality quite well. Micky is not much more than an icon and PR spoksperson without any adventures or personality.
I've since dropped the Disney and now cable completely. The classic content was hard to find and enjoy.
The truth shall set you free!
For example, the journalist who got crucified for copyright infringement for the copy he made of a message in the Chiquita banana companies voice mail system. All the executive in the message was talking about was having people forced out of their homes at gunpoint to take the rights to their land. How could that possibly be as bad as an evil copyright criminal?
I say go ahead and piss them off, but don't settle. We'll pick a poster-boy, fund a strategic big picture defense, and then file an anti-trust-like suit against them. If they can, for instance, be shown to collect far more in "not gauranteed" royalties than they lose in artists they fund but don't make as much money as they put into them, that's a little piece of moral ground.
I suspect that there are lot of little pieces of moral ground, and combined with a little legal footing on their business practices, they might be able to be busted up like Ma Bell. The alternative is to let them run amok and pull strings like oil companies do. Before we know it (if it isn't happening already), their political agendas are being lobbied for on our dime, half of which should've gone in the artists' pockets who may not even agree with their agency's agenda.
Sound far fetched? Fine, call me a dreamer... it's still something to think about.
The only thing more dangerous than a file named -rf is renaming it -rf\ /