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Intertrust Plans Universal DRM System
Rushmore and others wrote in with news that Intertrust, which has a large DRM patent portfolio, is planning a universal DRM scheme for consumer electronics.
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...I pay $50 a month for satellite and I cant even record any TV. Thats bullshit.
Anyone know any more details than are in the article? As much as the idea of DRM makes me cringe, I know it's here to stay and therefore a unified standard would be a good thing ( iTunes on my MD player?). But the article has exactly zero info on the "RM" part of the DRM, specifically the most important question of how many copies can be made (i.e., one onto your computer, one to archive, and one to your media player?).
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain
"DRM is an accelerator which will boost digital sales of media, because it will convince media companies their content is protected. It should not be a competitive weapon," he added.
Err.... Last time I checked, sales were more dependant on the consumer than the peddler. I'd hope it's more important to convince consumers their right to use what they are investing in isn't in jeopardy.
They say they hope to replace a "confusing array of proprietary systems", but they don't say what they're going to do to get people to use their system. It's not a "global DRM" system if they don't even have any large media companies on board.
Does anyone else get the feeling the horse has left the stable, walked down the street, gone in to an electronics store, bought an IPOD and got the hell out of town already?
The problem is that there are perfectly good alternatives without DRM technology. Why would anyone by something new that restricts their existing options? Even worse, why would a consumer pay the extra $x for their media player to buy the rights from a DRM patents company?
Perhaps it's time companies stopped chasing after the music DRM market, let it go, and simply learned their lessons for the still [largely] unfought movie market?
I overlooked the fact that Sony is in itself a large media company. But I still don't see why other media companies would choose this over anything else.
Copy protection did not work for computer software. A sufficiently determined individual can always defeat such a system. And distribute the results. Yes, they can be prosecuted using the DMCA, but that will not stop it.
In this case, it is more instructive to look to the profit motive. When they implement a new DRM system, they can sell us new CD and DVD players, and new CDs of all the old music that we've bought (twice, maybe) already. The "replace your old LPs" profit center was a huge one, until it was knocked down by (1) DVDs and (2) saturation. Now, they are hoping to recreate it through technical means.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
Does anybody else think it would be a good idea if the life of a patent were shortened by a specific amount every time the rights changed hands? The idea would be to discourage companies that exist only to acquire rights to things without actually creating anything.
After all, the original purpose of the patents and trademarks system was, "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries (United States Constitution, Section 8)."
It doesn't say anything about promoting or supporting a "rights market" for clever business people.
...as DVD country codes and the various "disposible" digital cameras whose contents have been analysed and the results posted here on a regular basis, right?
How many times did we hear rumours of pay-per-run services being the wave of the future in the last 10 years? But the best way to keep this from being adopted, is for us as the consumers to boycott such products in the stores and for us as the voters to remember what democratically elected individual supported the adoption of the DMCA-like laws required to back it up.
F-IW...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
This means we'll only have one format to crack, instead of four hundred! :)
...if all media that MOST people want to listen to is DRM-only. Of course, since a DRM-free market will sell more shit than a DRM-crippled media market, manufacturers WANT you to have as much freedom as possible, as it's good for their profits.
The only problem with that is that some of the major hardware manufacterers are owned by companies that reside in the same corporate parent as a large media company (example: Sony and Columbia). So don't expect Sony to lead the anti-DRM charge.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Hmmm, reasonable terms. Another company looking to get everyone established as a revenue stream for them. One more person in my wallet everytime I turn around. Reasonable until they need to meet the street's expectations, then "reasonable" changes. I know, it's not inherently bad, and it's not. It's just not inherently good either and today's benevolent manager will eventually be replaced by tomorrow's pointy-haired boss who has numbers to meet for the year. I'm not against capitalism, I'm just suspicious that this is another attempt to put an armlock on a popular service and then apply their leverage.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world - Ghandi
"DRM is an accelerator which will boost digital sales of media, because it will convince media companies their content is protected. It should not be a competitive weapon," he added.
.com boom?
So let me get this straight:
1. Companies encrypt their data
2.
3. Digital sales of media are "boosted"
They're leaving out the entire... well... consumer and adoption step that I think is a bit important. Just because they build it, it doesn not mean that people will come. Didn't they learn anything during the
unf.
Unless the given DRM technology is truly unbreakable (probably not), having one standard widely implemented will probably be worse protection for content owners. It is similiar to genetic diversity in a population. The benefit of having many different content protection schemes is that if any one is broken, the others will most likely be unaffected. Thus by adopting one imperfect DRM standard, they may in fact be greatly lessening the ability to protect their content.
Go right ahead, Intertust (i.e. Philips/Sony). Make sure your DRM stickers on your equipment are bright, cheery and clearly identifiable so I can find which stuff to NOT buy.
"Consumers want an open system, and the electronics industry wants it too," Ruud Peters, chief executive of Philips's intellectual property and standards unit, told Reuters.
That's the finest example of "two different meanings for the same phrase" that I've seen all year. Consumers have most of the "open system" they want right now.
Wankers.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
The article includes a quote of what has been accepted wisdom, accepted unchallengingly by regulators (see the commentary to the FCC regulations concerning the so-called Broadcast Flag, for example, which accepts at face value that DRM will boost sales, without in any manner examining that assumption):
"DRM is an accelerator which will boost digital sales of media, because it will convince media companies their content is protected. It should not be a competitive weapon," he added."
This quote is simply wrong. DRM has already damaged sales of hardware and content. I predict that increased DRM will not be an accelerator but will continue instead to be a de-accelerator and drain on the economy which will reduce digital sales of media.
"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves." -- Edward R. Murrow
iPod, iTunes, SD cards, Texas Instruments graphing calculators, game consoles, and so forth all have DRM. The items that don't forcefully use DRM are the ones that sell.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
More stuff to crack! Never a boring day, is there?
Really though, if it weren't for all this cat and mouse shit, all these parasite companies wouldn't exist and all the crackers would have to get a real life...
They spend millions to create technology to hinder people from doing what they would like with what they paid for, in that process they increase the price to help pay for this technology.
Increased prices lead to decreased sales. DRM get's cracked, sales increase and companies yell that they are losing money to piracy. To offset this potential loss of money, they increase prices.
They spend millions more to create new DRM to hinder people from doing what they would like with what they had paid for. Increase the cost to offset this spending.
It just continues.
anyone catch the following in the article?
"'Consumers want an open system, and the electronics industry wants it too,'"
[very next paragraph]
"Microsoft, for instance, has opened music stores on the Internet that sell music encoded in such a way that they can only be played back with a Windows Media Player."
how is this good for the consumer or even open for that matter?
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
Lawernce Lessig's Book, "The Future of Ideas" covers the loss of the internet as a commons for us all. Big Business & Government are stacking the legislation in their favor at the expense of this commons, which certainly stifles innovation.
In other words, we are collectively shorting ourselves in the long term for short term profits and security.
This sucks.
Um...It is not at all effective at stopping pirates. The only thing it does effectively is piss off legitimate consumers.
I made my DVD player region free so I can play DVDs from any region. DRM didn't work. I only have one non-R1 DVD (Crouching Tiger which was released in R3 long before R1). I disabled my DVD player's Macrovision "feature". Again, DRM didn't work. I don't know why I'd ever want to record a DVD to VHS but I'm not going to let some corporate clown prevent me from doing it. When I was a kid, I used hex editors to bypass those stupid "code wheels". DRM didn't work. I often apply "nocd" patches to new games so I don't have to keep the original game disc handy just so I can start the game. DRM doesn't work.
You'd think that corporations would have caught on after nearly 30 years of failed DRM experiments but they keep on banging their thick heads against that old brick wall.
Maybe, just maybe he's going on vacation and wants to record the next episode of [INSERT YOUR FAVORITE SHOW HERE], so he won't miss it?
That, my friend, is time-shifting, a legal fair use, as defined under the Betamax desision.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Well, at least if there's a universal scheme we'll only have to crack it once and then we'll all be set. :)
-=-=-=-=-=
I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
Perhaps it's time for a last-ditch attempt to get a law on the statute books that would effectively ban DRM. Make it so that when any product is sold to a consumer, then nothing about that product is a secret from its rightful owner. In other words, the owner of a DVD should have a legitimate right to view the content recorded on it by virtue of owning the disc. {Of course this has wider implications beyond DVDs .....} Then, consumers would be protected from manufacturers' excesses of authority, as they could not legally lock you out of playing a disc you own.
If this isn't already law, we should be campaigning to get someone to try to make it law. No secrets from lawful owners of property -- it sounds perfectly reasonable to me. It would effectively make the worst kinds of DRM unenforceable. Could we even get one of ourselves elected?
I cannot, however, in all honesty see how anyone can expect these encumbrances to work. It takes only one copy to be made by analogue transfer, and then it is possible to make an indefinite number of digital copies no worse than the original. And there are people who would go to the lengths to crack anything they can try. As long as there are fences, there will be someone with the urge to climb over them.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I worked briefly for a now defunct DRM company that was going to compete against Intertrust (we also considered using Intertrust technology under ours where there where patent issues). It seemed like it was going to be easy to compete (and it would have been if the VC wasn't so scarce at the time), because most DRM solutions are designed only to help the copyright holder not the customer. Are designs we focused on a balanced approach.
DRM wouldn't have quite such a bad name if it would provide users with benefits. Intertrust technology has the ability to do this it seems but since consumers are not their clients, so easily integrated features are ignored. We designed a system with the end user in mind. From the point of view of how would we want to use the electronic media we buy.
Important user features should include:
Free trial, and fare use of content, while right management is still in effect.
Merging of artistic works into new works with automatic (pass through) licensing fees.
License to the user not to the computer so I can listen to MY music at home or office or at a friend's house.
Easy distribution from user to user with no penalty to either user in the transaction (i.e. napster 1.0 can work because each file is self managing).
User selected automatic billing from incremental use (such as paying a per hour fee to use very expensive, but rarely used software, PPV etc.) to outright purchase.
From a security point of view our philosophy was not to make an unbeatable DRM solution, but rather to make the cost of circumventing the DRM higher then the value of the content. This came about automatically when you allow people to use $30,000 software packages for $5 an hour or whatever. It just becomes too easy to work with the DRM then not. We also had the ability to pass the billing for the software use (plus any "cost plus" amount) to a user's client, so mom and pop shops had equal access to high end software that big companies had only pay for what you need.
I'd love to see the open source community pick up where we left off. Current DRM solutions need a user-focused competitor. Perhaps, I'll start a project. What do you guy think? Is it worth it?
firetellerATkoldnhostileDOTcom - If you want to talk to me about it.
You know, like DVDs with region encoding (+ CSS to enforce that). Won't take off, dead in the water, right? At which point someone will probably mention
a) All the reasons it was better than VHS
b) that DivX (no, not the codec) lost and so the lesser evil won.
So will the latest DRM be too. Your AMD Athlon 64 or Intel Prescott whatever with the latest "Trusted computing"-mobo and other certified components. So will those HD-DVDs etc. as well. They'll be a lot cooler, and with less DRM than a really draconian alternative. (WMP DRM vs iTunes DRM anyone? Now think about iTunes vs CD... ok not much DRM, but a little)
Then, soon it'll be a standard. At which point you'll have to either tag along with the rest of society or become a real luddite. It's here to stay for the remaining 99,9% of the world even when you exclude it from your own.
I fear that DRM will be a raging success, and that afterwards you simply won't find what you take for granted today, in a non-DRM format. It's not just the "coolest new toys", but it's also about taking away your old ones. Unless you want to only listen to pre-DRM music, watch pre-DRM movies, and in general live in the past, not just with past (pre-DRM) equipment.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Pirates... I feel so silly just using that word...
Surely all that DRM will do is allow the really good pirates (those who are willing to go to whatever lengths are necessary to bypass the DRM) to make much higher profits?
Hell, if DRM stops end-users from backing up their music or whatever, surely they'll just ignore the geniune offerings andy by a pirated copy without the DRM.
I predict that the only people a universal DRM system will hurt are the law-abiding customers who should, thanks to their ethics, actually be rewarded, not penalized.
Meanwhile, those who make a living out of selling $1 per CD copies of popular music and movies will see their profits soar.
Is that *really* what the RIAA and MPAA want?
...in the same way that the Patriot Act is accurate. The PA wants you to be a patriot by destroying the purpose of your patriotism (to exercise freedom). DRM wants you to use your digital "rights" by giving them all to big business and government (who will have the money to implement them) and letting them tell you when you can exercise them...for a fee, of course. Thus your "rights" aren't yours but privileges granted by others that can be taken without recourse, and you "preserve" your digital rights by destroying your capability to exercise them.
at this point, decoding the purpose of a policy or law is easy - look at the name, figure out what the policy claims to preserve or defend, and assume that the policy's real purpose is to destroy it. The more glowing or discreet the code phrase used as a title, the more likely the law is to negate the values it claims to uphold.
- Install Orwellian Memory Holes (tm) in billions of convenient locations worldwide, so that every media--including paper, magnetic, plastic, etc.--can be vaporized upon creation.
- Poke everybody's eyes out to prevent them from seeing something copyrighted, because doing so places a copy in their head, which is a violation of copyright.
- Pop everybody's ear drums to prevent them from hearing something copyrighted, because doing so places a copy in their head, which is a violation of copyright.
- Cut everyone's vocal chords to prevent them from saying something copyrighted, because doing so creates a copy of valuable intellectual property, which is a violation of copyright.
- In fact, cut off everyone's arms and legs, to prevent sign language from being used to violate copyrights.
- Finally, kill everyone to prevent any other form of body language from being used to violate copyrights.
By following these simple steps, we can ensure that nobody's copyright can be violated. This will benefit all of humanity, as piracy will become impossible.Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention... Bill Gates and Darl McBride are exempt from the above, because they are the Creators of copyrighted valuable intellectual property.
Aside from all the (endless, redundant) DRM IS BAD commentary, I still find that these companies are fundamentally missing the point.
I would not mind (so much) them wanting to enforce their rights to sell music, to earn money from it, and to stamp out piracy. Except that each and every deployment of Rights Management/Copyright Enforcement has always put me in a position where I (ie The Customer) would be purchasing a lesser product for as much if not more money.
For Example:
- A new Australian service where you purchase licenses to tracks for (essentially) $2 Australian
- A whole album of tracks would cost more than the CD
- AND if you want physical copy, you provide the CDR yourself
- Only it's WMA (ie lossy encoding)
- And it's 128Kbps (ie not lossless and/or very-high-quality encoding of the original CD bitstream)
- CopyProtection systems on CDs
- which refuse to play on some CD players
- or which flat-out BREAK other CD players
- which take up data space ie you're getting less music
- iTunes and its ILK, which only work on [insert-one-specific-media-player-here]
- I already have XYZ hardware, now I have to buy NEW hardware to listen to music
- What's stopping them next year producing new and incompatible formats, requiring not just higher license fees but MORE HARDWARE
A Smart Consumer wants value for money. In an existing market (ie music), a new product needs to give the customer more value (for some definition of 'value') in order to succeed.So far your (ahem) "solutions" give me
- less music
- playable in less devices
- with lower quality
- and less convenience
- at the same or higher (total) cost to me
After all this you're surprised to find that Smart Consumers aren't interested in DRM'd music?????Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
assuming they want the same level of protection DVDs gave...
keep it in the hardware, make it as platform/os independant as possible. for example, as a cd drive can output directly to the sound card, let a dvd output to the framebuffer and sound to the card. in this example the driver would need little more than a transformation matrix, position in stream(s) and some settins. theoretically, it could be built so the OS doesnt even see the image.
- easier development, less driver/intergration issues
- less software dependance give hardware makers some much needed leverage microsoft
- better PR, for example you wont have the ill will of collage professors or the ACM
possible issuesMS and mpaa/riaa and similar organizations wouldnt like it because they would only the control what theyre supposed to and couldnt use this to create an artificial barrier of entry(2). but thats better for the hardware makers, probably sony (3), and the users. and they wouldnt be able to use thier copying excuse(4)
(1) time to market is, of course, the other, and possibly bigger factor
(2) lock out competition
(3) i suspect sony makes more money from technology than entertainment. either way would be interesting to know
(4) they could complain about it being easy to crack, but given thier past, thats a pretty pathetic. of course the legal people they complain to/buy off wouldnt know or care...
i was going to trace this to drm is not a good idea, but will have to save that for later
Whether you hate DRM or not, this is how it must be done if it is really going to work. Hardware manufacturers have to get together and design sealed and tamper-proof hardware that does this, and stop listening to Mr Gates saying it will all be done by Palladium. They are being taken for a ride so that Gates can screw the entire rest of the computer industry and put them out of business, and possibly also extract a nasty licensing fee from every content producer.
If you are a content provider and you want DRM that works, you should insist on a sealed hardware device where the manufacturer has published all the specs and enough information that a Linux driver can be written. Not because of the trivial amount of extra business by Linux, but because this is a guarantee that the DRM cannot be broken. The hardware device will have an ID in it (which is going to drive privacy advocates nuts, but what kind of horrors do you think Microsoft's DRM will have?) so that you can download content that will only play on your device.
If anybody is still too dense to get it: the API is similar to the remote control on your DVD player. Yep, you can push those buttons in any order you want, but you are not going to get it to do anything other than play that DVD on your TV.
Microsoft is going to fight this with everything they got, because they will lose the ability to lock-in media playback to their software. They will LIE about how their software will prevent cracks. Listen to your own engineers, and do not believe crap from Microsoft!
If you buy DRM products, then you have no right to complain. Sure, DRM is here to stay, because the sheep are hungry. But those of us who are informed, simply don't buy. Tell your neighbors and family not to buy. Tell your dog, don't buy. If you are able, promote those 'after market modifications'. Then you can complain if it's still around.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809