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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!
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!
""Actions" => "consequences""
Yes. Action: Millions of people rip songs from cds with no copy protection and share them on Napster.
Consequence:Recording industry decides DRM is necessary.
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
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
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.
This works both ways.
Action: RIAA overcharges for their product.
Consequence: Millions of people download songs shared on Napster for free.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Someone is going to have to make the compremises. The question now is: Will it be the RIAA? Or the millions of people who buy their products but are getting ticked off about getting gouged?
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.
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!
...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!
Consequence ===> Users buy less content. RIAA whines that it's those darn pirates to blame, and not that they themselves are acting like spoiled 4-year-olds.
Call me paranoid - I enjoy it.
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
This is somewhat addressed in the article, when the author talks about the importance of the release window. Since the value of content goes down as it ages (seeing a new movie at the theater is $9, renting a newly released DVD is $4 for two nights, renting that same DVD two months later is $3 for five nights), the only thing(s) of real value is that which is new. So, yes, the only content worth anything is stuff that hasn't been developed yet.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
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.
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.
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?
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
That's impossible, it's not a compromise if only one party makes concessions.
This is actually a falacy. What treacherous computing will do in this respect is prevent other third party applications from reading/writing/accessing your address book or accessing system files, requiring one to use only the trusted and specific applications of the original vendor. However, even today, many viruses and worms are propegated not through rogue executables but rather through flaws and exploits in existing applications (such as Microsoft outlook) and services (such as iis), and these exploitable applications, in their trusted form, would still have access to your data which would also be accessible to the virus and worm the application is permitting to run as part of it.
In the end, all that will be accomplished is that the users will be denied physical access to their own data. This prevents migration to and use of alternate products, prevents users from executing their own programs or third parties from supplying products unless they also have licensed and paid for certificates at the behest of the issuing authority, whomever that might be, and, as such, is actually a form of restraint of trade as well as a fundimental attack on software freedom zero. It does virtually nothing for preventing viruses and worms.
(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.
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.
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
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.
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.
If you can't afford 10-15 bucks for a CD
And where are the $10 CDs? Besides in the bargain bin, the last home of musicians so bad that even their mothers didn't buy a copy? $15-20 is more like the norm now.
Seriously, they are not overpriced! They are already cheap!
The cost of manufacture is in the neighborhood of $0.10 and the artists and composers get about $0.40 (some of which goes to pay back the record company loan which covered recording and production costs, which is why I'm not including those costs here). A couple bucks go to the retailer. So yes, they are overpriced, at least in terms of their real value.
I have an honest question for you, how much would you like CD's sold for, at what price would you buy them?
For me, about $5-10, depending on how good the music is. Luckily, the used market makes this possible. Unfortunately, there's no reasonable way to acquire a single song if you don't want an entire CD (singles are priced about $5 now I think, and there's no used market). I think this is the real reason piracy is so rampant, and why iTunes is so succesful. After all, $10 for a lossy, restricted album with no physical medium or artwork isn't a great deal, but $1 for a single beats anything available in the record store.
By the way, nice Slashdot name, it really shows me what kind of attitude you have in general, a piss poor one!
Strong words coming from Anonymous Coward. By the way, with the economy in its current state, you might not want to make comments like "get a REAL JOB", lest irony bite you in the ass.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
I'm not a RIAA supporter, as a musician I'm pretty much more anti-RIAA than most folk, albeit for different reasons.
But, just because I don't like RIAA, and take an antithetical view to their activites does not mean that I think that gives me license to steal the property of their member labels.
Myself, I stopped supporting RIAA by not buying music which would cause RIAA to profit. In the last seven or so years, I've only bought directly from the artist. And I've stopped buying from those artists when they sign with a RIAA member label. I haven't missed a damn thing. I still get music I like, I don't contribute to RIAA coffers, and I don't make the problem worse by obviating RIAA legal rights.
If you're bypassing the legitimate rights of RIAA members you are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Until folks start to respect the copyright, while villifying the holder, there is no reason to predict that this situation is going to improve.
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
The **AA have been developing digital media for a long time, and they have absolutely no control over people illegally giving it away.
Most music CDs do not have any sort of DRM. The recording industry has been selling perfect digital copies with no protection whatsoever (until recently, and still only in isolated cases) since 1982. In that time, and even in recent years, there have been lots and lots of platinum albums.
DVDs do have some copy-protection in the CSS encryption. But we all know how weak that is. Still DVDs sell like crazy.
Restrictive DRM only serves to remind the honest consumer that Industry does not trust them. The real "pirates" (Yarrr!) will find ways around DRM and sell illegal copies forever. Practically every DRM scheme released so far has been broken, some using high-tech devices like a Sharpie, or the Shift key.
If you were a media executive, would you waste money developing and marketing a DRM method that will most likely be quickly defeated?
blog
Without DRM, you wouldn't even have the choice to buy it because it wouldn't even be available.
Bull. They can not sell it and make ZERO dollars, or they can sell it and make money. If they want to close up shop and not make any money, fine, someone else will will jump in to make a buck selling a product. The RIAA can yell and screaming that the music industry will vanish all they like, that does not make it true. They made the exact same claims when radio appeared, they made the exact same claims about cassette tapes, and the MPAA made the exact same claims about VCR's. Just because they WANT DRM enforcement and they WANT congress to grant them expanded copyright powers and they WANT to eliminate fair use and they WANT congress to pass laws forcing consumer producted to be crippled does not mean they should get it.
They got congress to pass the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) in 1992 which forced all digital recording devices to be DRM crippled. This law exterminated all progress in these consumer products. It killed Digital Audio Tape, it killed MiniDiscs, and it killed others. No progress for a decade! They demanded this law to "fight piracy". The elimination of all new new media formats meant a drop in sales, they lost the market of people re-buying music they own on new formats. The irony is that they demanded the law to fight piracy, and when the law caused a drop in sales they blamed that drop on piracy.
All current pay services are suffering under FOUR SELF IMPOSED HANDICAPS. #1 They only offer crippled products. #2 They have not been offering their full catalog of music. #3 The prices are inflated - a download is undeniably a far cheaper product than pressing and distributing and retailing a physical product. #4 They are struggling to recover from a FIVE YEAR delayed entry into the download market. They should have started selling downloads as soon as Napster smacked them over the head with the fact that it was possible and that there was a demand for it. By refusing to sell downloads they left a vacuum in the online market. That vacuum was the main force driving the development and explosion of P2P.
Even suffering under those four self inposed handicaps these services are still drawing quite a few customers. They can't do squate about the five year late-start, but if they eliminate the other three handicaps they will attract a hell of alot more business. It is no coincidece that the most sucessfull pay service (iTunes) also hapens to be the one that is most nearly DRM-free.
The only effect of using DRM is to drive away customers. It certainly does nothing to prevent the songs from appearing on P2P.
Once someone buys something they have every right to make fair use of it. They have every right to preform a calculation on that file to play it backwards, they have every right to preform a calculation on that file to play it at double speed, they have every right to preform a calculation on that file to make it sound like random noise, and they have every right to preform the calculation on that file that happens to remove the DRM. The DMCA is just play stupid for trying to say it is a crime to do math. The DMCA is just play stupid for trying to say it is a crime to tell someone math function.
Any circumvention a computer can do can also be done purely mentally by thinking through the exact same steps the computer would do. You can violate the DMCA and commit circumvention crime by sitting motionless staring at a DRM'd E-book and mentally descrambling the data to read the text. You can break the law by sitting motionless and THINKING.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Easy there, fellah. DRM can protect YOUR data from other people just as much as it can protect Sony Music's data from you- quit thinking only about entertainment media. The concept of DRM is neither good nor bad- the specific application of that technology can be good or bad.
DRM will be a godsend to corporate security, and can be extremely useful to anybody that wants an easy way to lock down their own data.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
I agree with you that Treacherous Computing is not about any benefit to end users whatsoever. However, a generalized form of DRM would have non-evil uses. I not thinking of the content industry's idea of a "trusted platform". I'm thinking of a built in crypto accellerator that the hardware owner possesses every key to.
Gentoo users would love it. The machine could sign every binary generated by the build processes with the owner's private machine key. No binary without that signature would run. It doesn't have to just be user compiled stuff either. What if you could add your favorite distro's package signing key to the machine's keyring? You could delegate trust in running binaries. Not bad. And no, it won't protect against vulnerable code with overflow vulnerabilities and so forth. It would still have value against trojans. Come to think of it, such hardware could work hand in hand with a new executable format. How about segmented binaries that have multiple checksums embedded? An exploit that messes up a binary running in place could fail such a check and trigger at worst a blue screen or kernel panic. Such a scheme would be expensive on current hardware but a CPU with a built in crypto engine could likely do it with a minimal performance hit. The OpenBSD guys and the Secure Linux guys could have a lot of fun with something like that.
Theres other cool things that could be done with a really ubiquitous hardware crypto engine. Done correctly, E-Mail crypto could be vastly easier to mass adopt. Maybe it could even be used the way crypto accellerators are used on web servers....just cheaper and far more commonplace.
Its a pity that none of this is what "they" have in mind.