CRF Reveals Draft of New DRM Technology

scubacuda writes "PC Advisor and others report that the CRF (Content Reference Forum), a new, cross-industry standards organisation that boasts Universal Music Group, Microsoft, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) and VeriSign among its members, has unveiled a new specification for a DRM technology. A draft of CRF Baseline Profile 1.0 is available for public review and comment." According to a report on CNET News, the "the [CRF-created] file would set up a process that automatically delivers files in the right format and potentially triggers an automatic payment system that could be changed moment to moment by the content distributor."

Comments

Change the law

[MichaelCrawford]

While the United States Constitution allows Congress to enact copyright laws, it doesn't require Congress to do so. Copyright could be repealed, and file sharing made legal tomorrow if you could just get the votes in Congress to do so.

If you think this couldn't happen, consider that more Americans use p2p filesharing applications than voted for George Bush.

Change the Law, from my article Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads, discusses the background of copyright law in the United States, and suggests steps you can take to reform copyright law. Among the steps I discuss are to Speak Out, Vote, Write to Your Elected Representatives, Donate Money to Political Campaigns, Support Campaign Finance Reform, Join the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Practice Civil Disobedience

Thank you for your attention.

Re:Change the law

[penguinoid]

I think copyright should be restricted. For example, a software copyright should last only less then 5 years, or software cannot be copyrighted if you do not show the code. Something that will allow copyright to recoup for expenses, but not be abused.

Re:Scary

[dekashizl]

A lot of people who don't read places like slashdot would be equally concerned if they knew what was going on. They need to be educated, its why democracy works, and why it fails when it doesn't occur.

Democracy works fine without education. The problem is mob-rule where the whims and impulses of social consciousness determine policies that are often short-sighted and dangerous.

This is one reason why we (U.S.A.) have a representative democracy (as opposed to direct democracy). A filtering layer of responsibility prevents horrible things from happening.

I actually think our democracy would work better if people were uneducated. Our education system now is broken, serving to indoctrinate political and cultural agendas far more than impart any useful knowledge.

At least if we acknolwedged this fact and focused our efforts on useful propoganda for our youth rather than bickering with school boards and burned out teachers and still having no consensus on morality, ethics, history, or even current events, then we might have a chance of generating good voters.

As it stands now, kids in school learn mostly how to fight and how to memorize trivia for short periods of time. If our country was a giant game show with a fighting round followed by a quiz round, then we'd be all set.

Because it's what the consumers want!

[forevermore]

Last night, I got a worried IM from a younger cousin of mine. His mom had "cleaned up" their computer, and he was having trouble sending some wmv/rm files to friends of his. Windows Media Player kept giving him and his friends errors along the line of "I'm sorry, but you don't have a license to play that file." Of course, I immediately knew what was going on, and explained to him that Windows was just trying to prevent him from making illegal copies of music. The problem is, the files he was trying to share were of his band, off of their own demo CD. At that point, I pointed him to xiph and enlightened him about ogg vorbis.