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Microsoft's Janus DRM Software Officially Unveiled
hype7 writes "News.com.com is reporting the official unveiling of Microsoft's new DRM system, internally dubbed 'Janus'. Interestingly enough, a wide variety of companies including AOL, Dell, Disney, Napster and Freescale, a subsidiary of Motorola, have all signed on to the technology. Whilst some content providers and producers are keen, it remains to be seen what consumers will think - 'the new digital rights management tools include features that would protect content that is streamed around a home network, or even block data pathways potentially deemed 'unsafe,' such as the traditional analog outputs on a high-definition TV set. That's a feature that has been sought by movie studios in advance of the move to digital television.' I love the quotes from the MS rep - 'This release of technology really enables all kinds of new scenarios that are emerging now,' said Jason Reindorp, a group manager in Microsoft's Windows digital media unit. 'We're taking quite a holistic view.' It's good to see Microsoft taking a holistic view of preventing the consumer doing what they want with their paid for content, and protecting us from unsafe data pathways."
from the faces-inclined-in-many-directions dept.
Janus looks in two directions, not many; thus the pejorative usage indicating that the abusee is "two-faced". And quite appropriate; the face MS Janus presents to the music
commercialisation industry is of security and protection, while one of restriction and control gazes down on the unwashed masses.
Notably, Janus is the god of gates and doors but not windows; what can this mean for Microsoft's next operating system release? Certainly it will be more opaque than current offerings. Perhaps we also have a clue as to the MS Doors Startup Sound - "Waiting for the Sun"? But Microsoft's wait is over. Perhaps it's really "The End"?
Such opportunity for dismal wordplay!
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
We are getting closer and closer to the day when NOTHING will work on any electronic device without a conglomerate corporation's device allowing it to go through. We are allowing for a bad precedent to be set here.
Notice the names that are interested: AOL, Dell, Disney. Interesting that these companies not only offer what we traditionally thought they did but they are now also offering TV and music related content along with many other items they shouldn't have been allowed to control.
So here it comes... Dell is going to slowly get into DRM. You are going to see it as a benefit. You can now download a large catalogue of music easily and legally to your computer and portable MP3 playing devices. Woo! Just wait till you want to copy your old collections of CDs to your Dell computer with DRM'd BIOS and OS and then onto your portable. Can you do that? Nope. That's illegal! You aren't proving that you own that CD. What if it was burned and didn't come from the manufacturer. Ok, so let's try the old analog inputs. It's an MP3 afterall and we don't care much about quality...
Error: We notice you are trying to use inputs which are attempting to allow something to pass through our DRM system. We are now blocking access to the ports via hardware.
If you think that by running Linux you are somehow going to escape this you're wrong. The possibilities that computer HARDWARE will only work with DRM enabled BIOS's is coming. Nevermind the fact that if you want to be connected to the rest of the world you will have to have a DRM'd computer with a DRM'd BIOS in order to do so.
"Welcome to hell boys!"
Also read Rory Blyth trying to buy an eBook. The stuff sounds made up except that I ad exact same experience with buying an eBook off Amazon for my Dell Axim, which ran Microsoft Reader. The book was DRMed and that was the last eBook I bought off Amazon, and wrote them roughly what Rory described in the complaint message.
HDTV tuners and sets are already in the market, and they know nothing about this Janus technology. If a broadcaster were to use this technology to "protect" its content, these older devices won't know how to make heads or tails of the restrictions, and therefore are going to have to be considered "untrusted" and not allowed to have the content.
That's just not going to fly in the marketplace. HDTV early adopters will just ignore the content that their units can't play back, and broadcasters aren't going to want to limit their potential audience by ruling out everybody but those who have bought certain models of HDTV hardware.
This platform will need a killer app, and I doubt Hollywood can come up with one...
If any human can create it, any human can break it.
DRM for the most part (I think) just doesn't work, being militaristic about media just sours the public opinion.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Microsoft is betting that the steady release of new content protection technology will help its audio and video formats become standard ways of distributing digital music and films, in turn, keeping people purchasing and using the Windows operating system and associated products.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
It's also of course one of the founding principles of capitalism - to harness an individuals greed (or, more politely, desire for improved returns). The thing is that here we have a conflict of greed. One the one hand, we have the **AA and their cohorts trying to control the distribution and use of their material, on the other we have the consumers trying to maximise how they can use the material that they feel they own (irrespective of licencing agreements) because they've paid for it.
There was an article in New Scientist a while back about how even a very young child can appreciate fair play - if the child repeatedly gets given back only 4 sweets when they hand over 5 to the researcher, they quickly feel hard-done-by. Even lower primates have the same sense of 'fair play'. When we purchase a DVD or CD, we expect to be able to use it however we want, make coasters out of DVD's if that's what floats our boat. We resist limits on what we can do with something when we consider it 'ours' by right of payment. This is obviously a very basic and primitive response, but by that very nature will be very hard to eradicate...
The upshot of all this of course will be that the OSS scene will become more and more 'free' in the sense that arbitrary limits on what you can do with data (DVD, CD, whatever) are far less likely than in the controlled (mainly MS, but others too) closed-source environments.
Thank [insert random deity] for Linux and GNU, a tradition that has brought us to the point where we at least *have* a choice on what to do. Consider the alternative - without the rallying cry of the GPL and Linux, we'd be choosing between a fragmented unix market (and only Irix can really do justice to multimedia, IMHO), Apple or Windows. 99% of people would be using Windows and bemoaning that they had no real alternative. I guess we dodged that one, at least presupposing that there will be ways around the DRM imposed on the unfortunate windows users. We do have a far larger pool of talent to pull ideas from than the manufacturers though, so there is yet hope.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Why are companies always trying to push this shit on to the consumer? People need to learn if you don't like DRM then don't buy products that use them. This includes MP3 players, online music stores, DVDs, CDs, and Tvs. Other then DVDs I have been religious about boycotting anything that uses DRM. If more people did this then consumers will have more rights in the end. Just using their new formats only encourages companies to abuse their consumers more and more.
...your compiler is calling.
Breakfast served all day!
Ok, not yet. But, as with anything DRM, give it a couple months after getting out of this concept phase.
I will say I'm rather surprised at the laundry list of those onboard, including AOL, Dell, and Napster.
At the risk of sounding lame, I'm in favor of anything that brings me music and movies in the medium of my choice - instead of having to wait for mail, drive to store, whathaveyou. If it means a lame DRM implementation, so it goes. It won't remain unhacked for long - if for no other reason that Microsoft is behind it, and people would love to show it vulnerable.
Codes were meant to be broken.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
I'm going to offer the movie studios the ultimate in DRM.
For a large fee, I'll cut the optic nerves in all of their customers, thereby preventing any unauthorized duplication or descriptions thereof.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Apple DRM is fair and good and enables access to wonderful online content.
Microsoft DRM is evil and repressive and will smother your ability to use your computer.
Anyone violating these rules will be moderated accordingly.
Many such must exist in screenland.
Dog is my co-pilot.
I think it is ironic that M$ is working on a technology to help with "unsafe data pathways." How will a M$ product keep its content off of M$ products? The DRM that does not allow content. Sounds like a good way to keep it safe.
This was previously discussed on Slashdot a month ago.
What happens to a DVD player that can output a standard VGA signal? Will we see the encryption of every type of signal, to prevent going to buy a simple hardware MPEG encoder? Maybe I'm just not getting it, but what is preventing people fom simply using legacy output methods to encode their stuff?
Maybe the linefeeds are part of the DRM beta test. If Slashdot doesn't qualify as an "unsafe data channel", I don't know what does.
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
Did anybody else immediately think "now why did they name it something so close to 'anus'?"...
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
I'm constantly labelled a "MS Troll" by you morons for saying things like I'm going to say now.
Just a few days ago you were all creaming your pants over Apple's "warm and fuzzy" version of DRM. You were falling all over yourselves to be the first to proclaim how fair it is that you can listen to your songs on up to X computers, and burn up to Y CDs (or no CDs at all if the file is so flagged - but noone mentioned that yet).
DRM is an inevitability. Quit bitching about your "right" to do what you want with the content (code for "get it free off kazaa"), look at it the other way. Don't pay for content with which you cannot do what you want.
Ie; I can't watch Star Wars XIV though my VCR - I won't buy Star Wars XIV, etc.
I mean, I can't drink at Chuck E Cheeses, so I don't go there anymore. I don't write letters and throw a fit about it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It's like a movie: teams of retroriggers with dusty snapcases and old computers descend upon sleek new media and crack it open with forbidden circuitboards from the 1990s.
No, the *end* of everything is when the old stuff is forbidden -- when the government decides to take Jack Valenti's advice (he hasn't given it yet, but he will -- before he retires) and ban all computer equipment made before 2004. Then the only people left are the retroriggers.
The Analog Hole will never die. If content is to be displayed to humans, it's going to have to go get to light waves and sound waves somehow, and content can always be captured by kinescopes and acustic couplers. Sure, there's going to be some quality loss by resorting to those technologies, but there's no way to defeat them from making a copy, and those copies can then be encoded into digital format. There's always going to be a point of demarcation where the digitally encrypted stream must become a plaintext analog signal in order for the monitor or speakers to function, and anything that copies the signals at that point will have a pretty good looking copy as well. Unless the digital demarc point is installed after our eyes and ears on the way to the brain, I just don't see how this is going to work...
Over-the-air HDTV is a done deal; it's unencrypted with the broadcast flag to "control" copying. No one is suggesting using Janus for over-the-air HDTV broadcasts.
The application for Janus is mentioned in the article: playing rented music on portable players.
Janus was also the Russian mafia crime boss in the James Bond movie Goldeneye who **** SPOIILER ALERT *** turned out to be 006.
I rather like the term "unsafe data pathways" - what a wonderful euphemism!
I think I'll go play some morally questionable auditory material over an unsafe data pathway right now.
If you can hear it or see it then it's gone from digital to analog. You can always point a camcorder at a TV screen inefficient and clumsy yes but it works. And if your are able to hear it through your stereo or computer or headphones the digital signal has become analog. All you have to do is tap into those wires which is easy enough and press record. Once again it's inefficient but anyone can do it.
Besides give it a week or two and a workaround will be available. Anyone want to donate so we can buy the cracker of Fairplay and DeCSS (JON?) a new Dell with Janus on it?
What makes the difference is speaking with your money. So once this stuff gets out.. start talking to your family and friends. Educate them on fair use and what these limits may mean. Ask them to get information from the people they are buying things from. Imagine a Dell sales person spending an extra 30 minutes explaining the concept to someone who is expecting certain rights. This rapidly becomes uneconomical for Dell to support. Ultimately it becomes your time and effort vs theirs.
Personally, I check every CD I want to buy by asking the clerk if it has 'protection' on it. If they cannot answer I ask to see the manager and so on. As a consumer you have a right to information and to know. If they cannot tell you, ask follow up and an answer. If they choose not to, let them know you will be filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau in your area. Let them know that you will be filing a complaint with the exact companies that sell them the CDs to state that the distributor is not informing customers appropriately. Be the person who disturbs the ant-hill.
Change happens when it becomes unprofitable to do something (and someone can't blame a hacker or a pirate).
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
Is this a threat, Bill?
If you are worried about not getting your share of music, entertainment, etc, then you need to see all of the alternatives out there. There are plenty of bands not caught up in this madness who are quite good. There is theater, printed books, playing sports, painting, traveling... When you come right down to it, they are really making the easier forms of entertainment (listening to music, watching TV) harder and less competitive to more fulfilling forms of entertainment (playing sports, nature walks, getting out ...). As the cost analysis is shifted for more people, I bet they experience slower sales.
I know they slowed my purchases already.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
I am far from worried about ending piracy. I am, for the most part, worried about it ending freedom of choice, fair use, and free software development and distribution.
You have no idea what will happen. It's a very plausible scenerario based on what has been going on lately (ie. the loose partnership of Phoenix and MS).
I for one feel much safer knowing Microsoft is protecting me from media.
"or even block data pathways potentially deemed 'unsafe,' such as the traditional analog outputs on a high-definition TV set"
I assume that refers to the very dangerously analog visual display. Ohhh and be sure to make sure such dangerously analog outputs as speakers are disabled as well.
And the next
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
It "enables" us to pay for things in a format that, at present, they dare not sell to us because we're a bunch of dirty thieves. If they sold us a movie over the internet NOW we might think that we should be allowed to watch it a second time for FREE.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
This is just playing into the artificial-scarcity crowd. What side are you on? How does one pay for information that can be copied for free? Information wants to be free.
-I am an elective eunuch.
I'm not a moron like the rest of the Slashbots. I understand that 98+% of the world doesn't give one flying fuck about Fair Use, freedom of choice, or anything.
All they care about is whether or not Survivor goes to season 12 and if the Bachelor/ette decide to get married for real on live TV.
But that's of no issue. Just because THEY don't care and don't understand the issues doesn't mean that I don't. It doesn't mean that I am not happy to educate anyone and everyone no matter how paranoid they believe me to be.
It will never make sense to many but if I can get just a few people to understand perhaps the world will not blow up before our eyes.
You can't blame the providers unless you blame the general population's lack of ethics.
It's sad that DRM is even necessary, which it obviously is, because the masses have spoken and said that they aren't willing to respect the content producer's rights, it's turned into a battle of rights. Is it more important to protect your right to make a backup of content or the content provider's right to get paid for creating the content?
Honestly, the content providers have a lot more to lose in all of this, and will probably always need more protection of their rights as it becomes so easy to steal content. The content providers deserve the protection from how ubiquitous copyright violation has become in our culture.
Buzz! Wrong, but thanks for playing! It's in the interest of companies to avoid pissing off consumers so much that they bother to remember the company's name. There's a big difference.
All's true that is mistrusted
it's in the best interests of the companies to please consumers
Well, if you listen to their PR departments...
In reality, companies do whatever they can to maximize profits. If that means pissing off a percentage of their consumerbase to save some money, so be it, as long as the net result is profit.
You ever see those memos from automotive companies where they say it's financially easier for them to pay off the families of the deceased instead of improve the safety of their products?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
You're forgetting one simple word, apathy. Consumers as a whole will take what they are given, not what they need or want (I'm talking on a particular market, the US market, it is different in other places). Slap Microsoft's sticker on it and say it's secure, and an awful lot of people will flock to it. If that fails, well, every new cheap Dell PC you buy will be "more secure for the web" or some other gibberish like that. People not in the know WILL scoop that up and will prove market demand, irregardless of the fact that Dell will be selling only DRM enabled systems. Once one distributor gets some money in from it, everyone will be doing it. The question is, who's going to give the option of enabling and disabling said features? I think you can disable the features in the new Phoenix BIOSes but I could be mistaken. Wonder if the likes of Dell, HP, Gateway, or IBM will do the same? I can definately see a time when the cheap consumer PC will be fully locked down with DRM while the hobbiest or professional that needs to get something done will have to buy relatively high-end parts to get anything done. Then again, there is always MRBIOS (if they're still around). Anyways, enough ranting. I've got to get some work done today. :)
CliffH
sigs are like a box of chocolates, they all suck remove the underscores to email me
Oh whenever i read another story about the libery crushing plans of DRM i recall the humorous humorous 'slashdot DRM Helmet'
/. will be used as a prior art reference:)
It plugs that 'analog hole' by analyzing everything you hear and blocking it out if you dont have a license.
I wonder if some day in the future
> I'm sorry to tell you, but Fair Use rights are
> only really an issue here at Slashdot. Outside
> of this niche of tech opinion, the rest of the
> world doesn't care all that much.
My experience is that people care a great deal about fair use, but that industries tend to be ahead of the average consumer and try to slip by unfair limitations in order to maximize profits. Corporations are compelled to do this - it's their raison d'etre.
What's potentially worse in this case is that the same corporate entities that have an interest in stepping on fair use in the name of profit also control many media outlets - so the potential for lost consumer rights is subject to censorship.
I'd be interested to hear any examples of those media outlets permitting or censoring reports of anti-consumer features of various DRM schemes. Anyone?
That's because people don't realize that half the stuff they do with their own technology ("that they paid for") is illegal under current law... they have sat quiet for too long.
Now those abilities will be hard-coded away from them. Congress won't stop it (they haven't yet) and besides they are in the hip-pocket of big business anyway.
When I tell people that the stuff they are doing... making full copies or even mixes of their CD collections and sharing them with friends is technically illegal under current law... they laugh. When I show them the law... check out the DMCA, they are shocked... but they figure no-one can stop them.
Now with the advent of DRM technology... someone can stop them (and perhaps report that they tried). It is kind of late to roll a lot of this stuff back just by voting with your dollars. That time has passed. I am afraid that it will take a LOT of messy court battles to iron this out.
Ah, the subject that cost me Karma when I jokingly said "sounds like anus. As in ripped or torn..." Got tagged as a troll; some ppl can't take a joke.
But to my point:
I work in the entertainment industry (not music) and you might find it interesting MS's heavy push to position itself as the troll under the bridge.
The movie industry is struggling (for many reasons that none of us are going to solve because they're not technical) with digital distribution of assets. Microsoft is positioning itself to have at a minimum some part of that industry.
I've never worked outside the IT industry till now, and I can speak with certainty that it is indeed interesting to watch this going on.
See this: MS Digital Cinema
As the predominate software vendor in the world, Microsoft is in the unique and enviable position of defining everyone's digital rights.
Should a "monopoly" be allowed to wield this power? What oversight group is going to ensure that the People's rights are included in DRM?
As the majority market owner, does a technology company have an obligation to open up proprietary software that directly affects a consumers ability to manage / safeguard digital solutions they quiet literally own?
It's one thing with your Quicken database, you can print it out. But it's a completely different thing when you buy a song you have a legal right to copy or backup, but may not be able to because of a third parties technology solution.
There are some areas, IMHO, where some standards body has got to step up.
Best regards...
/me sips his coffee and ponders a new sig...
I have an HD set (Sony GWIII), HD cable (Sci Atlanta 3250). The SA3250 will output downconverted versions of HD channels, but they don't look any better than their digital channel versions, and in some cases worse since the 3250 makes some icky choices about letter/pillarboxing 16:9 content.
Why would you even bother blocking downconverts via DRM? They look just "OK", you almost never get access to a 5.1 sound track you can do much with besides listen to (some complicated HTPC setups excluded).
Besides, it seems to be a nod to fairness to allow the next level "below" as an allowed copying medium if they're going to get persnickety with the "best" current medium.
With all of this Digital Rights Management in the U.S. being developed I cannot help but think of how the content producers have acquired the "RIGHT" to add access control to works ??
I just looked over the Copyright laws (www.copyright.gov) and I cannot find any laws that permit the copyright holder to impose their own controls on the actual product. All I could find are laws that allow the Producer the rights to either reproduce, distribute, perform the work publicly or make derivative works.
There is no basis for the ability to control how the works should be viewed, heard, etc. It only covers who has the right of redistribution, etc. In fact copyright laws actually give certain rights of redistribution to the purchasers of copyrighted material, such as fair use.
Also, fair use is only applied if you want to redistribute the work (part of the work) or make a derivative work to the object in question. What you do with the content you purchased in your own home, as long as you do not redistribute or make a derivative work that you plan to distribute, is perfectly legal (or was anyway).
To put technological limits on how I use works that I purchase is beyond the scope of Copyright and is therefore (or should be) outlawed.
Am I way off base with my thinking in this matter ??
Please. The whole "RIAA will pass a law making it ILLEGAL for BIOS to load Linux!!!!" is tinfoil hat stuff in the extreme. (Even tho it gets moderated up around here.) Linux & NetWare & even older versions of Windows are just too fucking popular for that to even be a remote possibility.
I honestly don't see DRM making much impact outside of ventures like iTunes. Consider x509/SSL infrastructure. Its been around forever, yet most people consider it too complex to deploy. DRM is an order-of-magnitude more complex than that, so its unlikely anyone will use it unless they have a damn good reason to do so.
The biggest application of hardware DRM will probably be in things like Tivos and other home electronic components.
What the *#%$ is a "mandated possibility"?
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Copyrights still expire. When that happens when copyrighted works fall into the public domain?
This seems to be at direct odds with DRM. Is there any consideration of expiration of copyrights for this in the usage restriction laws?
How long is it going to take before people realize that corporations creating "standards" is just their way of ensuring that people continue to buy their proprietary non-"open" products?
Sorry, I'll stick with my impossible-to-control-or-limit mp3 technology, thanks. I don't care if it has to be "licensed", mp3 codecs are downloadable and usable very easily with no technical limitations at all, and that's exactly what I've been doing for quite some time now.
If legal issues arise with the mp3 format I'll just use Ogg Vorbis.
Why waste my time dealing with DRM bullshit like corporate-controlled statistics and tracking, and even worse, waste CPU time encoding the extra data used to for all of that when ripping my CDs to disk?
Also, not being able to play a WMA file on my Mac because they don't make the newer Windows Media Player for older Mac OSes is just stupid. Microsoft's "standards" cut off previous systems and formats, and we all know it. Personally, if they're going to go so far as to use DRM-enabled BIOSes, I'll stick with my 1.5ghz system, regardless of how "fast" computers get. If I'm required to use a DRM-enabled system to get online, well, guess I'll have to resort to these.
Also, my household has numerous computers of varying platforms and OSes. I'm not going to segregate my network by eliminating the current interoperability I experience by using software that isn't crippled or even better, is designed to work with other software by default.
In the end, it's just marketing. MS doesn't care about our "security". It's to protect their profits and their stranglehold upon the IT scene... this is just blatantly obvious, and I'm disappointed that people don't see this.
A few final things to consider: in the end, who does this benefit? Do we really need DRM? Are you willing to make the privacy-related sacrifices neccesary to attain the benefits supposedly only attained through DRM?
Lately, I found the copy protection on especially games gives troubles when playing the game on my computer. When that happens, I download a cracked version that works fine. For the next game that comes along which I want to play, especially from a company which gave me problems before, chances are I'll go for the cracked version immediately.
The region encoding for DVDs doesn't give me any problems now. I have two DVD players, both of which are region free. I have heard, though, that there is a new region encoding which will cause DVDs not to work on my players. But what the hell, I have broadband and it is easy to download them, so I'll do just that.
Music never gave me problems. But now this DRM thingy is coming along. That seems to mean I can't play CDs anymore on my computer, right? Tough. I'll have to stop buying CDs. And if the cracked version works, I know where to get it.
It seems that I am the ideal customer of the entertainment industry. I am willing to buy everything, and I buy a lot. So the question is: what are they gaining by driving me to get stuff illegally?
Does anybody get it? Intellectual property has virtually no "variable costs". It does not cost Apple diddly for the bandwidth to provide a 4 MB iTunes download. The only costs with IP are the "fixed costs" to develop it in the first place. This is unparalelled in human history! For the first time, information can be deployed for almost nothing. Sadly, all this DRM bullshit will destroy the greatest thing about computing today - that is, perfect and practically free copying. They're trying to apply the old business models of good A costs x amount to produce, therefore Megacorp will sell it for amount x + a dollars. Economically, DRM removes the ability for anyone technically inclined to copy IP without paying the content provider, or to put it another way, it introduces an artifical "variable cost". I can only hope that groups like the EFF can raise enough hell to get Joe Sixpack interested in the loss of what could have been a new paradigm as significant as the Industrial Revolution.
Which of these the governements around the world will choose?
Free market is a neat thing, but when it makes corporation more powerful than the governement, it look like a bad thing.
Why do you americans think the free of free market is the meaning of real liberty?
Why not reconsider what should be sold and what not? The internet and the digital medias now makes the distribution of them an all differant thing.
Do we want the corporations to become richer, or we want the population having a real liberty in their own country?
Cash earned for working make people happy. Accumulation of this cash makes everyone but you, less happy.
There is no more good arguments to support capitalism when we see what is happening now.
Its not paranoia, when you consider that this is the beginning of what corporation can do with the technologies.
It will be very interesting to see how far microsoft can push their users before they say Enough!
Fortunately for me I do just fine with OpenSource and don't need or use their products.
The real test is going to be with everyday to day users who just want to use their computer. We know DRM, etc is styfling creativity and since universities are now using a lot of OpenSource too, I see it as a race. A race between oppressive and open use. Some people and organizations stand a lot to loose/gain.
The Internet is a great place to try to control society from as it reaches so many people. See how the psychs wants to control each kid by having access to their school computers to ensure they have the "right" attitude. They lobby to replace academic score cards with "proper" attitude. Why go to school if not to learn?
It has already happend with the news media here in the US. It's controlled to keep americans afraid of each other. Just look at our neighboor Canada. They are very friendly and not at all afraid of each other. I dare you to compare the media. People in Europe sees everyday how one sided news are from the US.
The Internet is the current battle ground. DRM is in that very same line of "work". It sounds kind of dooms day like, and indeed I see our freedom is being attacked. I for one will do what I can to oppose DRM and similar technologies with both my mouth and my money.
"Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
...But I fear you're not. You'd think businesses and schools would be the last stronghold, but those have been "infected" too. Microsoft makes schools and businesses alike offers they can't refuse. Even if those groups resisted with all their might, there is something bigger at work here.
These aren't some random chunks of bad news suddenly coming together and giving us these nightmares; this stuff has been a long time coming. Getting folks to think that software and music and television all come from magic far-away places floating somewhere above everyday life, that was important. That's why music and television programming are so streamlined, overproduced and bottom-line optimized. Meanwhile, if you buy a computer the way a normal person does, it has Windows on it. Period. Windows has traditionally been a saddle that's comfortable enough that most people don't mind the bundled blinders.
Well before the whole AOL/Time Warner thing, Microsoft, AOL, Compuserve, you name it, they were all about getting computing to work more like "big media", so that similar profits could be reaped and similar big-dollar deals made. At the same time, "big media" were seeing something on the horizon that scared them. Consumers could perfectly recreate media, be it their own or anyone else's material. If they could get their hooks into computing and somehow stop this, they too could sit tight and enjoy the same profit-reaping and deal-making that they were used to.
That so many companies are behind this from day one just shows how badly this is wanted by those at the top of those industries. And when it comes time to try and legally require all this nonsense (notice how both software companies and big media have been getting more aggressive legally? Also no accident), multitudes of deep-pocketed corporations have rather a lot more lobbying and political funding clout than do "business and academia", let alone the odd free-thinking individual who's interested in _doing_ as opposed to consuming.
I don't want to believe it either, but this is one nightmare that only gets worse when we wake up each morning.
#2, GPL/OSS != music. OSS applies to software, hence the name. Open Source Software. The GPL was never intended for use with music. Get your head out of your ass.
The fact is, media corporations have no business dictating to me what I can and cannot do or run on my computer. It's MINE. I OWN MY COMPUTER.
The day that is not true, is a sad one for all our liberties and freedoms.
We do not advocate piracy. I abhor it. It is important to support the artists that make their music.
The fact remains that media corporations have no business telling me or anyone what we can and cannot do with our computers.
I don't really have issues with people posting older music, but if we would practice what we preach we could get a lot more attention for "good" artists rather than continuing to post and share mainstream pop releases. And look at the other discussion here recently on "gaming engines" - "machinima" is destined to become more realistic, the day when we have "klans" competing through releases of original movies on usenet and irc is coming... and their move into "popular culture" will surely not be far behind.
Whenever I read about new some new security measure, I wonder if they are talking about security for me or security from me. Am I buying a lock on my front door to keep potential burglers out, or a lock on my door to keep me out? So the answer is no... I'm not interested in paying for an upgrade that prevents me from using the content I purchased. What do they think we are, stupid? Oh right, that...
501 Not Implemented
My imagination...
:)
You buy a book, but you're not allowed to read it in public.
You buy strawberries, but you're only allowed to eat then with yogurt brand xXx.
You buy a MS-paper, but you're only allowed to use an MS-pencil on it.
You have a Windows OS and you are only allowed to run Windows certified applications on it.
And you have to pay to get a certification of course
Privacy is terrorism.
Copyright law (in the U.S.) does not give the copyright holder any say over how their work is used by an individual who legally possesses a copy. Copyright law only gives power to the copyright holder over making and distributing copies, and (where appropriate) publicly performing the work. If you legally buy a copy of a work that is available to any member of the public willing to pay, you can take that copy home and read it, listen to it, watch it, burn it (set it on fire, not burn it to a CD), wallpaper your room with it, wipe your ass with it, or whatever else you see fit. (As long as that use isn't illegal in other senses, e.g. you may not beat someone to death with it.)
The DMCA (and now various DRM schemes) effectively give the copyright holder a right they never had before: the right to dictate how you can use that work in the privacy of your own home. Copyright law doesn't say that Disney can force you to only watch their Aladdin DVD using software that Disney has approved... but the DMCA does. Since the DVD CCA controls its DVD decryption software as a trade secret, and only licenses it to DVD player-manufacturing companies who paid them a fee, AND since (thanks to the DMCA) it is illegal for a customer to reverse-engineer that DVD player in order to find out how the decryption works and write their own software... well, you get the picture.
The solution to this problem is left as an exercise for the reader.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
The assertion that AOL is truly interested in Janus is severely lacking in scope. AOL is only interested in ensuring that they aren't locked out of a system that might become the preferred commercial method (of content providers) of distributing music and movies online. AOL has no interest in propping up a Microsoft technology that only strengthens Microsoft if there isn't a decent back-end for AOL.
Let's look at the facts. AOL is a partner in MusicNet with Real Networks and EMI, but AOL prefers Apple's iTunes, not only because it is the most popular online music distribution system, but also because it isn't Microsoft.
AOL signed an agreement with Microsoft back in the late 90s that AOL email could be downloaded to Microsoft Outlook. It never materialized.
AOL paid lip-service to instant messaging interoperability but has not made AIM or ICQ directly able to send and receive to MSN Messenger. At the same time, AOL partnered with Apple to ensure that iChat was based upon the AIM client.
AOL is still interested in Netscape although they have no full-time employees working on Mozilla. That was a Time Warner executive decision to cut the development team to "save" monies earmarked for salaries. If Time Warner loses interest and sells AOL back to Steve Case, this will be reversed.
On the Time Warner side of the business, they have no interest in Janus for music purposes since Time Warner sold off Warner Music Group to Edgar Bronfman's group. Perhaps they still have a minority stake (as does all historical sales done by Warner Communications, like the Atari Inc. divestiture of 1984) but that's about it. Bronfman will make any type of decision independently of what AOL or Time Warner proper wishes.
The bottom line is that AOL may be included in the press release, but for the most part, this is round-file material. It is only a survival option if Microsoft gets the upper hand in media.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Agreed.
I don't agree. Non-DRMed computing equipment will simply be unable to acceess DRM content. If the computer can't access DRM content without permission, authorization or payment, DRM content providers won't care. They already have all that they need: DRM software and the DMCA.
Some content providers (e.g., individuals with web pages, Google Groups/Usenet, perhaps corporate providers such as CNN depending on the market) will continue to be happy to provide non-DRM content. Non-DRM computers will be able to access that content, and some (perhaps many) will be content with that.
The key issue is not merely the "right to read," but instead the "right to read what?" or "the right to read [fill in the blank]" under what terms and conditions.
The typical Slashdot submission (including this one) assumes that everyone has the "right" to read everything on every possible device despite the fact that the content is offered subject to specific terms and conditins, and that one agrees to the terms and conditions before accessing the content.
It appears the attitude is, "Yeah, I know this is subject to agreed terms and conditions, and DRM, and I agreed to same when I downloaded it, but DAMN IT, I WANTED IT. I have a "right" to enter into a contract, and knowingly download DRM content, and then just say, screw you."
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
they really don't care so much about analog paths, as those will fade into obscurity in the next decade or so. No, they want to protect data pathways, and your current digital/optical sound channel isn't so much a problem. You see, you have an dvd player now, but in two years from now you will buy a new one. Except you will notice that all the new ones have the new JANUS digital outputs. You'll have an option to run your JANUS output in 'BLAH' mode, where it will work with your current amp, or you can turn on 'WOW' mode, which will require a new AMP. Eventually you will buy a new amp. And trust me when I say that this new amp will only work in the new JANUS-WOW mode. At that point, you will no longer own your data paths, and the whole time Microsoft never lifted a finger to force you to move. They will use the classic marketing ploys to lure us into the new tehnology. They will make JANUS-WOW an industry standard. They will offer us features beyond our imagination, and stop making as much content that works on non-WOW hardware siteing that the new content just doesn't work as well on the old platforms. The combination will force the market and we will have little choice. We can keep our neglected hardware or switch to the new. one way or the other, RIAA and MPAA win. you are no longer playing their content on a non-secure box. 10 years isn't a long time to wait for technology like that to catch on. mark my words, this senario will happen.
But all is not lost. We will continue to find holes. We will develop the tools we need to get the information we want access to. They will not beable to stop us, because in the end, if they can read it, we can read it too. you are not owned. fight on brothers!
no more mookie stank, ughm-kay?
also, what will the peope do when they have no were else to look? look at the list of companies that are in on this thing!
I know this won't be a popular argument on Slashdot, but I can think of one scenario where DRM is potentially enabling.
Take, for example, the fact that you can't download The Lion King on the Internet right now (I mean from Disney, not BitTorrent). I'd guess that this is because Disney can't afford to put such valuable IP on the Internet without being able to control its distribution...yeah, yeah, information wants to be free and whatever, but can you REALLY blame Disney for not liberating something that DESERVEDLY makes them money?
The only way we're going to see experimentation with content distribution is with DRM like this. It's better to boycott Disney's draconian DRM and have them loosen it than to not have any DRM and content distribution at all.
And to those of you who will say "but Apple got music distributors to accept DRM that doesn't include analog out screening!": in my opinion, this may be a slightly different beast. Today's music industry is pop hit obsessed -- the business model is based on short-term success. With movies, it's a little different. Even though rentals occur most frequently soon after a movie's release, I'd think the tail stretches out much farther.
Most people I know (myself included) claim to use digital copying to retain backups (albeit lossy) or media stored on CDs & DVDs. I couldn't count the number of CDs or DVDs that simply can't be listened to due to scratches from lending to friends or kids playing with.
Now, if there was a service where I could return my damaged disk to be replaced with a new (undamaged) disk, our 'backup' arguement would go out the window. I would still be copying media to my PC because it's so much easier to select all CDs by my favourite artist or load up a playlist than playing track one by one and changing disks in between. Not to mention transferring media between different PCs in different rooms of the house.
Well you see, as society came to rely more and more on industrial technology - a skilled and mobile workforce became essential. This was a disaster to the plantation system that relied on just the opposite to uphold slavery.
At first the southern states tried to react to it by imposing harsher and harsher laws, to where you couldn't even legally teach a black person how to read, and slavery was made to last forever and for every generation. Then they tried to micro-regulate the industrial northern states, who eventually completely got fed up and went gung-ho anti slavery. Then they tried to react to it by fencing themselves off from the northern states and forming a seperate country, at that point all hell broke loose.
Well now we are in the information age which demands the uninhibited flow of open information. Is it a disaster for those who rely on the copyright monopoly system. At first they tried to extend copyrights to forever, and impose insane punishments. Then they tried to microregulate everybody with the DMCA. Now they are trying to fence themselves off from the rest of the world by using DRM.
Brace for impact, all hell is almost certainly about to break loose.
They are selling us movies over the internet now: click me
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
"Janus" is really a Swing-compatible version of Microsoft's "anus" class. Janus is a producer class for all other kinds of Microsoft content.
Sorry. Too much Java lately.
After all, weren't they, for the longest time, advocating the end-user security benefits of Palladium, when in fact, they were referring to the security of those wanting to restrict and otherwise impede the fair use of their intellectual property?
We'll find ways to communicate freely, ladies and gents.
:P
Slashdot wants me to think that DRM-protected MP3s downloaded from an official website is somehow going to prevent people from communicating freely unless we form Internet guilds.
I mean, really...do people think about their own viewpoints before expressing them? I just don't see what the big deal is about this, but then again, I don't often share the majority hivemind viewpoint.
Considering you can get "The Lion King" from BitTorrent and many other ways, why wouldn't Disney sell it? How does this technology actually propose to prevent people from getting access to the digital content? I don't believe that this will really keep people from making a conversion program/process any mroe than CSS did for DVD, so why would Disney start releasing films under it?
-no broken link
Way wrong. The Titanic was compartmentalized, however the long gash in the hull flooded too many compartments.
I wonder how much of the rest of their web site is pure BS?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
JUST RELEASED, AND ALREADY HACKED!!!! Ok, not yet. But, as with anything DRM, give it a couple months after getting out of this concept phase.
Here's a better way of looking at this. This hasn't been fully released yet, and it has already been "hacked", in the sense that the NSA already has gotten their plants and bugs inside Microsoft* to steal and relay to them all of the plans for how this system will be used and implemented as well as all the keys that make it work.
(Clarification: That's the neat thing about "trusted computing" from their perspective-- it would mean every system in the world would be "trustable", but that trust would have a single point of failure: Microsoft's guarded private cryptographic keys for Janus/Palladium. So all you have to get a copy of those keys and you can do anything you want...)
* Further clarification: I base my belief in the existence on said plants on the simple observation that if the NSA doesn't have plants inside Microsoft, then they're completely incompetent.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The courts have already decided that it is legal to copy music off the airwaves. Assuming these "new" Janus devices will have a headphone jack (kind of hard to go jogging and listen to music without it), just plug one of those FM broadcast things like an iRock into the headphone jack.
At that point, all you need do is record to your tape deck or computer the captured broadcast signal. I may take a little longer and the quality may not be exactly the same (but then again, neither are MP3s), but that's a small price to pay.
Now some may argue (incorrectly) that you don't have the right to broadcast the music without a license, but the FCC says you can on low power devices. So you have the FCC saying you can broadcast and the courts saying you can record the broadcast. Case closed.
Submitted for your aproval. A studio that takes stories that are in the public domain and animates them.
Then after that studio releases this movie and makes a healthy profit and against the public good, they pay to lock these movies out of ever moving into the public domain. The "IP" value is to high to allow this.
A movie studio afriad to let the public view a movie because it's IP value is so great.....only in the DMCA zone
vi +
While I understand the problem, and I see that some technology to make it hard to get the material for free is needed before big studios will embrace digital distribution, DRM technology is not a good way to do it. The problem with DRM is that it ends up requiring that EVERY layer of the software, from the gui where you click a play button, all the way down to the firmware burned into the chips, be secret, or it will get broken through. And *that* means that it will be illegal to spread technical knowlege about *anything* that could be related to playing that movie. It would be like the CSS fisaco, but worse. In order to be allowed to view that movie, not only will you have to have an approved playback software tool, but you'll have to have an approved OS to put it on, as well as an approved firmware suite in all of the hardware involved. And every level of that is going to be locked up behind DMCA walls. It will put a legal barrier up preventing ever using open source systems to look at any sort of media.
Songs, Movies, Television - all of it is going to be distributed on computer in the future, and if it uses the current crop of DRM technology, then it will be a world where nothing open-source is allowed to participate, because open-source tools are not legally compatable with the way DRM works, and DRM invades ALL levels of the technology, from hardware up to end-user-tool - so the option to just give in and use a closed app for the media, but still use open-source for everything else, won't really be an option either.
The media cartels love it because it means nobody else can learn the technology but them, which keeps new competition from cropping up. and Microsoft loves it because it will become another thing they can lie about claiming open source is incapable of (as opposed to the truth that it's being legally dissallowed from) doing. - and the evidence will make it look like they're right to the average non-techie person.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
God, I hate replying to my own posts, but I just did a google search on Janus and the third hit was for "The Society of Janus," which is a San Francisco based BDSM education/support group. Maybe that's who they licensed the name from. It would at least be more fitting for what they are trying to do.
Sooner or later they will require you to listen to it through headphones where the signal is transmitted digitally and the headphones decrypt it internally. Sure, you can still head the signal off right before the speaker, but it makes it much harder.
And then after that, they just need to make versions where the digital signal goes all the way into your skull and hooks up directly into the brain. It will be much harder to head that off at the pass, but I'm sure it will still be possible.
In any case audio is the simple case. It's video I'm worried about because you can't just point a camera at the screen and record what it sees, expecting to get decent quality.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
If we're going to have DRM, we might as well standardize it. From what it looks like, it seems as though DRM is going to play a huge role in the future of the internet.
All we need is some sort of STANDARD DRM container for all formats. Look at the mess apple's DRM has caused because so few portable MP3 players support it.
DRM may be evil. But it's also a necessary evil, and we need a standardized DRM format to allow content-providers to be able to set their own terms. Janus looks like the closest thing to that... as much as I like apple, the iTunes DRM is too closed.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
you have an absolutist opinion that's just as extreme as anything you rail against. the government passes laws about EVERYTHING all the time. Pick a subject, there's laws and regulations.
.000001% of the people who will be modding hardware, except for the occassional feel good TV news spot "bust" they will make on "dangerous computer hardware hacker terrorists who put e-vile circumvention chips in their machines so they can steal million$$$$ and hack the net and...." crap. THAT'S what will happen if the fatcats want it to happen.
There's NOTHING stopping mandatory DRM schemes of various types in hardware within politics. And who knows what they might think proper. How about no way any more anonymous surfing? they could mandate that if they wanted to, with your normal serious fines and jail ties associated with it to "stop child molestation and to catch crooks and terrorists and hackers" and whatnot. make you have a signed cookie thing follow you, connected to a real name. there's any number of schemes they could come up with. I had this same conversation just a few years ago with people when I told them that pretty soon tracking chips would become mandatory in all goods traded, they told me it would never happen, tinfoil hat. Well? Sure looks like it'll all be here soon, doesn't it? Isn't RFID now the hottest thing since burgers in a bag with industry now, and with government? See? Stuff happens.
This is the US, enough "campaign contributions" above board exchanges hands, and the usual hookers and whatnot behind the scenes, you get "laws passed". the one rule on that is, "no rules"on what they can pass. Then your entire market becomes your "choice" of this hardware which conforms to the new standards or that hardware which conforms, or used. In fact, you ALREADY have hardware which must conform, the US regulates the heck out ofhardware now, has certain standards for manufactured goods of all types, espeically electronics. Look at refrigeration, heck, look at the it now takes two flushes to work johns they mandated to "save water". You can NOT buy a new john made like the older ones now, stroke of the pen, law of the land deal. Like, where's my "free market choice" to buy one? It don't exist except used now, at least inside the borders, and if ya get caught selling or smuggling, yep, fines, jail time, whatever they think is cool.. Just like they passed mandatory auto emissions, which morphed from what used to be an automobile about anyone with a box of tools could work on now takes a trained specialist in a particular car maker, subset a particular system and there is NO choice there to get just a clean simple new car without all the crap on it, even if it ran clean with a nice tuneup, like they used to do anyway. The problem with cars and smog is using petroleum based fuels, they are dirty, but I don't see a choice for me at the pumps if I want to run a new simple car designed to run on something that runs clean out of the box, like ethanol for instance. No cars sold new without every piece of crap computerised system they can think of now on them. No "free market choice" there except used, and even then you with your older used hardware ride you still got to follow a lot of "laws" that weren't even in existence when your older machine was built. If they did it with cars, why not with computers, or TVs, or digital recorders? Nothing stopping them, and they are always aware that attrition will get rid of the old hardware eventually, and it don't take too long.
The siamese twins Government and BigBrandBusiness does this all the time, and believe me, big giant business doesn't allow laws to be passed they aren't in favor of, even if they cry big sobbing crocodile tears over them in public. If the bigboys want uber nasty DRM in everything, it'll happen, and you'll be stuck with used or smuggled in questionable quality hardware, or really learn to solder some teeny tiny stuff, and that's about it. And government won't care about the
I am not saying it WILL happen, just that it easily COULD happen, they do it everyday to something. What are we at now inside the US, 5 MILLION laws, maybe more? Think they are gonna just STOP making new ones???
If DRM is implemented at the hardware level, your fucked. Imagine a custom DRM encyription/decryption CPU working with low level bus data. Sure, you may be able to fight software with software. But if DRM is at the hardware level...may the best of luck be with you. May it be with us all.
Life is not for the lazy.
This is the whole point of an effective antitrust system (which we certainly do not have) versus what comes close to laissez-faire economics. If there were another platform with an even remotely significant percentage of the user base, no customer in their right mind would swallow Janus; they would gravitate toward the inevitable alternative. In this real world, however, there is not going to be any other alternative that runs on Windows -- Microsoft can make sure of that. Sadly, in a monopolistic world, our rights diminish every day. *This* is the reason why we need open standards and, apparently, open source.
Unless they manage to come up with a content delivery system that bypasses the need for ears and eyeballs, the analog path will always exist.
My company manufactures speakers for the Australian market. They are assembled in Australia, but all the parts come from China.
Trust me, our Chinese friends will happily continue to make devices with analogue inputs and outputs as long as we continue to order them.
What's more, the Chinese don't give a shit about American patent and copyright issues. Where do you think those region free DVD players come from? Do you think they're approved by the DVD consortium? But can you get one? Of course you can!
And this situation will remain. Even when DVDii (I like that :-) becomes available, the market will demmand features we all love, like being able to copy things, and the consumer will simply choose the device which meets their needs; of course, as the device they need will be a 'grey-import,' it will be much cheaper than the alternative, just as region free DVD players are cheaper now.
Plus the fact that many, many people will interpret any restriction on our digital freedoms as a challenge, new firmware and hacks will be available to 'unlock' your devices so quickly that it will appear within 24 hours as the top response for the google search term 'unlock my tv.'
How exactly did Apple's DRM cause "a mess" if "so few" players support it? Wouldn't that very fact render their DRM irrelevant? Apple has produced another "whole widget" with the iTunes Music Store and iPod which works flawlessly. How is this a mess?
I would assert that you preceive the situation to be a mess because a vocal minority snivels about "overpriced" Apple hardware, and that it isn't fair that the iTMS won't work with their $74.00 Lucky Best MP3 player.
Yes, Microsoft is famous for letting "content-providers" and developers pretty much write their own ticket. No strings attached there. No sir. Not that Apple should be trusted completely either (Newton).
"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus
Fair use is no big deal, really. For myself I just use and buy whatever works well and easy to do.
Why in the rat's ass do I have to shell out tons of money and struggle with technological crap like DRM just to do something simple like reading a book? Granted, ebook is very handy when you want to bring that War & Peace together with the complete Lord of the Rings, but if being able to do that means that I have to do lots of work and PAYING for it instead of getting paid, I'll just buy and use an old-fashioned-works-well book instead. Cumbersome but less stressful. Besides I'll look more like an intellectual and less of a geek.
Remember the DIVX fiasco few years back (this is DIVX as in DRM-heavy version of DVD, not the file format). Many people here are scared shitless of DIVX at that time and the same thing happened to slashdot then. Now DIVX is a museum piece of what's not to do(tm). Simply put, any DRM that's restrictive and uncompromising will not survive. Ever.
The typical scenario is this:
Joe: I want them new DVD shit.
Seller: Ah, this new DVD player is a good choice. It's much improved from the older DVD. But to play this you also need this TV and this amp and this speaker because it's a new thing from Microsoft.
Joe: Oh, can I use my old ones? I got them for $100,000. Top end shit.
Seller: Sorry but no. (long sales pitch follows).
Joe: Bye.
I agree that copyright is needed for the artist's protection, but since the one ripping off the artists are the studios themselves, the copyright law as we know it is biased more toward the studios.
DRM is not created for the artists. It's for the studios in a Frankensteinian twist of the copyright law. Apple's DRM succeeded mostly because it fits fair use in most people's mind, and the price is right at $1. At that price you can throw Janus or Anus or whatever and I won't care. If they want to twist DVDs this way, they better make it $1 a pop as well. I won't pay $30 for something that I can't use the way I like it. So is Joe.
On a lighter note, China practically ignores world standard and create their own. If ever this DRM stuff get a little out of hand, we can always use Chinese stuff. They have their own DVD-like format, and I'll bet it's free of any DRM whatsoever.
"But the new digital rights management tools also include features that would protect content that is streamed around a home network, or even block data pathways potentially deemed "unsafe," such as the traditional analog outputs and cathode ray tube on a high-definition TV set. That's a feature that has been sought by movie studios in advance of the move to digital television."
I think the above might work as advertised. Anything less than that is a total farce, but we all know it already.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Follow the money.
Look at the history of Microsoft doublespeak. It's no secret that Microsoft has been the single largest beneficiary of software "piracy" in history. This kind of doublespeak is core to Microsoft's business.
Now consider this, Microsoft Corporation has distanced itself from media investments. If they were so sure they were going to secure digital media, wouldn't they be buying movie studios and record labels? They could afford to buy some of the biggest in cash.
Certainly that strategy has some problems though, not the least of them is anti-trust. Well, now imagine you were in that situation. You can't join them, so what should you do? Beat them.
How to beat them? Easy, same ol' doublespeak game. Say you're going to fight "piracy," but actually enable the hell out of it by simple incompetence. You guarantee all your media partners that you've got the unbeatable secret solution just like you did with all your softwre partners before. Of course they believe you because they're greedy.
So you roll it out and presto, there's holes in it and suddenly these huge media collections you've given the public access to are owned. The public cheers again and your competitors in media, ie Sony, Time Warner etc take a hard, hard hit.
It's the same ol' game. And nobody is going to complain because why should they?
I believe most of us don't think we "own" the content, but at least we should have some freedom to do what we want with it, but this does not include giving it to other people who have not bought it themselves. OK, some on /. think that all software should be free, etc, etc. But really, what we want is the ability to buy software, and if there's something wrong with it, be able to fix it ourselves. Most people are not able to do that, but a lot of programmers can (if given source). There has been several times that I would use a vendors product, figure out what was wrong with it, know how to fix it if I had the source, but since I didn't, I was stuck waiting for the patch, which may never happen.
for example distributing binaries without source
This was RMS way of using the same laws that he hated, to do something that he wanted. And that was for all software to be free. I don't personally agree with RMS. My favorite license is the LGPL. I don't care if the code you write is free or not, but the code that I give you should keep all the modifications open. I don't even care if you add an API to your close source, but if you fix a bug in my code, I would like that given to all those you give my code to as well.
Now, for this DRM crap! I've been in Germany for several months and have bought several DVDs in German so that I can practice the language (X-Men2, Matrix, Der Herr der Ringe, etc). I went home for a week (USA) and was very disappointed that I couldn't watch these on my DVD player. Now I have to order a DVD player from Japan or something to get a region free player. I've spent over 20 Euros ($24) on some of these DVDs and I can't watch them on my own DVD player. Luckly, Linux can, so for now, I have the ability to watch these. Funny thing too, is that an acquaintance of mine told me that if I were to get a Pirated version of those movies, I would be able to play them on my machine. So, this is what the DRM gives us, legal copies can't be played, but if I were to buy an illegal copy, that would work. This is like those laws that only hurt the ones that obey them, but the criminals still do what they want.
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
When was the last time a copyright actually did expire in the US?
Just like how Macrovision in DVD players has gone away? Run out to Best Buy, Circuit City, Sears, etc and buy a DVD player that doesn't have Macrovision. Go ahead, try.
I think that in spending $100M animating it, they've added some value to the IP. And that's the part they want to protect. You can still perform Hamlet; you just can't do Disney's Lion King version of it.
Ah, but they took the old grimm stoires, and added and embleished on them, they may even has based some artwork or themes on old woodcut illustrations...all in the public domain. Tit for tat, at some point, these Disney works should be available at some point in the public domain for other to work with. At some point, I should be able to make "The further adventures of Steamboat Willie" just as well as I can make "The further adventurs of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse". One work is currently in the public domain, and the other one SHOULD be. Lets face it, from a business investment standpoint, if anyone at Disney cared, when they Made Cidnerella, no matter how many millions of dollars it cost. they KNEW or SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that that work would enter the public domain in 75 years (or was it 50), and they could do whatever they want for that xx years to promote it and make money from it. After that, public domain. You can buy "Bob's DVD of Steamboat Willy" for $1 a DVD, or you can have the box with the Disney name on it, that says "Steamboat Willy" and own an offical version for $5.00. Yes the Disney version is worth more to the collector, even if ANYONE could use the public domain material. My complaint, is DISNEY feels their IP is of such value it is OK to be hypocritical and still take material from the public domain, make millions off of it, and fight so that they never have to give something back. In 2010, or whenever it is that Steamboat Willy will roll into the public domain, Disney will fight again to push that boarder back. There is other material out there, books, audio recording and such, that I do not have access to, because their mainstream value is low enouch, the peple who hold the rights on them don't even feel it is work looking at the material. It is NOT public domain because Disney wanted to keep Steamboat Willy another 10 years! Let's face it, current Disney animated film efforts suck. Disney is raking in profits off of their old movies. They can't "optimize Shareholder value" buy creating decent new content, they have to rape PUBLIC DOMAIN the the public good, to "optimize Shareholer value'.
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