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Cory Doctorow on Digital Rights Management
VerdeRana writes "I just heard the EFF's Cory Doctorow give this fantastic argument critiquing DRM. He makes a great case for why DRM is bad for society, business, and artists, why it simply don't work, and why Microsoft (the audience for this talk) should not invest in it. Broadcast this far and wide, and maybe someone will listen."
The problem with DRM is that it's got a name that people might consider making it the only right-management-related concept, now, DRM is not alone in its category and there'll be other to take care about, like DVD region locking, etc...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
If anyone will listen I think Microsoft will be the last to actually do anything about it. they have too much at stake to not go with DRM, sadly.
that nobody has right to decide have I right to read something or not!
...then we'll see, in the long term, exactly how good an investment that was. My guess is lousy.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
DRM will stop enough 14 year old girls from sharing their CD collections with their friends, forcing all of them to buy personal copies of the latest boy band CD.
What you think about DRM doesn't matter a whit.
Erm... Brad Pitt was supposed to be a Greek, not a Geek nor a Roman.
Well written pamphlet, otherwise.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Companies dealing in intellectual property have never before faced this level of onslaught of piracy and infringement. This isn't something that happened overnight - it's been building up for years (although in recent years, it has accelerated greatly). While a lot of people criticise the methods they're employing to try and protect their assets, few can offer insightful solutions that have solid financial reasoning behind them. We all just seem to assume that if you offered your property for $1/track, that piracy would vanish. Well, they took us up on that challenge, and piracy hasn't vanished.
These people/companies are getting desperate. Sure, I don't think DRM is a silver bullet either, but it is at least slowing the problem until they can figure out a better, long-term solution.
The real thing we should be worrying about in all this is the laws they're passing in the meantime, like the DMCA. While the companies themselves will evolve through this, the rights-stripping provisions enshrined in legislation will be much, much harder to phase out. Laws are rarely repealed, and THAT is what should concern us.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
So don't be surprised if some companies take htr same concept, put a less 1984-esque label on it, and market it successfully to people. DRM is here to stay, in one form or another, and for better or worse.
A blog like any other.
Think about it
Actually, it seems to be a re-hash of eveything we have known that is evil about DRM for the last few years, just all prettied up and in the same place. I despair that these arguments have much worth, particularly when you are talking to a corporate entity that has twice been convicted of monopolistic practices. It seems naive to me to even expect to be able to make such a difference. Since I live in the U$A, I know, no matter what the rhetoric, that it all comes down to money in the end. They will take a buck from anyone and anywhere that they can, and of course genetically they subliminally support the monopolistic practices of others. Computing literacy will be the next dividing line between rich and poor......
slashdotted with only nine posts in this article... did anyone get it mirrored???
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
DRM sucks. Companies are evil. Microsoft is evil.
Information wants to be free.
DRM really sucks.
Think about it!
"DRM turns computers against their owners. I don't want a Disney security guard sitting in my living room watching my every move." -- Ian Clarke
In case you don't know, Doctorow is the author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (available for free), a great book which explores a sort of utopian future where the economy is no longer scarcity based and reputation is everything. Interestingly, if there's anything that's sure to kill any chance of our transitioning to an abundance-based society, it's DRM.
Microsoft Research DRM talk
Cory Doctorow
cory@eff.org
June 17, 2004
--
This text is dedicated to the public domain, using a Creative Commons public domain dedication:
> Copyright-Only Dedication (based on United States law)
>
> The person or persons who have associated their work with this
> document (the "Dedicator") hereby dedicate the entire copyright
> in the work of authorship identified below (the "Work") to the
> public domain.
>
> Dedicator makes this dedication for the benefit of the public at
> large and to the detriment of Dedicator's heirs and successors.
> Dedicator intends this dedication to be an overt act of
> relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights
> under copyright law, whether vested or contingent, in the Work.
> Dedicator understands that such relinquishment of all rights
> includes the relinquishment of all rights to enforce (by lawsuit
> or otherwise) those copyrights in the Work.
>
> Dedicator recognizes that, once placed in the public domain, the
> Work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used,
> modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any
> purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including
> by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived.
--
Greetings fellow pirates! Arrrrr!
I'm here today to talk to you about copyright, technology and DRM, I work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation on copyright stuff (mostly), and I live in London. I'm not a lawyer -- I'm a kind of mouthpiece/activist type, though occasionally they shave me and stuff me into my Bar Mitzvah suit and send me to a standards body or the UN to stir up trouble. I spend about three
weeks a month on the road doing completely weird stuff like going to Microsoft to talk about DRM.
I lead a double life: I'm also a science fiction writer. That means I've got a dog in this fight, because I've been dreaming of making my living from writing since I was 12 years old. Admittedly, my IP-based biz isn't as big as yours, but I guarantee you that it's every bit as important to me as yours is to you.
Here's what I'm here to convince you of:
1. That DRM systems don't work
2. That DRM systems are bad for society
3. That DRM systems are bad for business
4. That DRM systems are bad for artists
5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT
It's a big brief, this talk. Microsoft has sunk a lot of capital into DRM systems, and spent a lot of time sending folks like Martha and Brian and Peter around to various smoke-filled rooms to make sure that Microsoft DRM finds a hospitable home in the future world. Companies like Microsoft steer like old Buicks, and this issue has a lot of forward momentum that will be hard to soak up without driving the engine block back into the driver's compartment. At best I think that Microsoft might convert some of that momentum on DRM into angular momentum, and in so doing, save
all our asses.
Let's dive into it.
--
1. DRM systems don't work
This bit breaks down into two parts:
1. A quick refresher course in crypto theory
2. Applying that to DRM
Cryptography -- secret writing -- is the practice of keeping secrets. It involves three parties: a sender, a receiver and an attacker (actually, there can be more attackers, senders and recipients, but let's keep this simple). We usually call these people Alice, Bob and Carol.
Let's say we're in the days of the Caesar, the Gallic War. You need to send messages back and forth to your generals, and you'd prefer that the enemy doesn't get hold of them. You can rely on the idea that anyone who intercepts your message is probably illiterate, but that's a tough bet to stake your empire on. You can put your messages into the hands of reliable messengers who'll chew them up and swallow them
Companies like Microsoft steer like old Buicks, and this issue has a lot of forward momentum that will be hard to soak up without driving the engine block back into the driver's compartment.
really ads much to his argument or is likely to MS to dump DRM or anything. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for papers written in a readable manner, but this guy just seems a bit off the mark.
DRM is not something that Microsoft is trying to promote because it wants to safeguard hollywood content.
It is a technology they are trying to force on everyone because it allows them a greater level of control over their market, and they are using the Hollywood lobby to push their own agenda.
As such, Corys talk can be used to unmask their real plans by debunking the "spin"
In the end it does not matter, turing will out!
what happens when Moores Law cranks a couple of more notches and we can use MS Excel as a media player by scripting it with VBA?
Where is your DRM then...
How many people want to make a copy of anything?
To protect your Toy Story Disc from damage by children, you put it in a a safe place, and make them ask you for it before they watch it.
If the blind wanbt to read a book, then, yes there may be a problem with anticircumvention technology. I agree this is somethign that should be addressed, but how many of you would be happy if there was an exception in the DMCA solley for circumventing copy protection to allow the disabled to access a work? Would this make it a good law?
People keep bringing up the case of Jon Johansen, and Dmitri Skryalov. They neglect to mention that both of them were found totally innocent, and in the makers of the garage door openers lost their case. Okay, so the law is badly worded to allow these actions in the first place, but we now have soem case law that explicitely spells out the exceptions.
Then there are the limits on audio copying. Well, yes, there are limits, but you are able to copy a CD to a cassette for the car, copy iTunes onto a CD, and on a number of other machines, and that is more than adequate for most people.
And just about nobody wants to build their own TV or DVD player!
The fact is, DRM and the DMCA rarely prevent people from doing anything they actually want to do. If you tyhink they're bad, then you need to come up with some reasons that are more convincing than these.
Believe it or not, most serious artists actually want to retain the hope of selling their work and making a living, and believe it or not, but Kazaaification is at odds with that reasonable gold.
Consumers are not being told which devices do and which don't contain DRM and therefore there is no opportunity for marketplace discipline to occur. By the time consumers understand what is happening, every new device will have DRM and it will be too late to "vote with your dollars."
I recently saw a full-page ad in the Boston Globe for a Gateway (remember? the company that ran TV ads a year ago saying they support my fair-use rights to music) for something called a Media Center PC. My wife was interested and asked me to look into it. Go here and click on "What can I do with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004" and it says:
"Watch your favorite shows, whenever you want. Record a single episode or capture an entire series. You can also watch a previously recorded show while recording a live TV program. With the new Media Center 2004, you're able to record a TV show directly to a DVD so you can start your own DVD collection or take it on the road and watch it late."
Only if you go here , click on ">FAQ" and scroll way down do you learn some relevant details:
"Media Center uses a new file format called DVR-MS... Q. Can the file format used by Media Center be changed? A. No... Q. Can [they] be converted to another video format? A. At this time, [no]. Q. Can I edit Recorded TV files? A. Currently, [no].
Q. Does Windows® Movie Maker support the Media Center file format? A. [Not at this time]."
"Q. What is content protection and how is it used by Media Center? A. Content owners and/or broadcasters can set copy protection flags to indicate that a program is subject to content protection. When Media Center detects that this flag is set, it will protect the content by limiting the ability to copy and distribute the program. Q. Can protected Recorded TV files be watched on another PC? A. No... Q. Can protected Recorded TV files be played back on the same Media Center PC using Media Player 9 or other DirectShow-enabled applications? A. No... Q.
Can I record a TV show to my hard drive and then to a DVD using my DVD-R and play it on my home DVD player? A. No..."
Since few programs are currently using the broadcast flag, few consumers will discover these limitations either before they buy it or during the period when they could conceivably return it. DRM is currently in stealth mode. Like a virus that doesn't release its payload until it has infected many PCs, over the next five years millions of consumers will buy devices with DRM and not even know it. Then, suddenly, media companies will start turning on their protection flags and it will be too late to do anything about it.
When I asked direct questions to Gateway representatives about whether I could "use it like a VCR or DVD recorder to record my favorite shows on DVDs" they assured me that I could. Essentially the reps seemed to know about the "what you can do" paragraph I quoted above, but not about the "funny file format" and "content protection" issues I summarized below.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I do believe that's the first argument I've ever heard that uses the Flo-Bee as an analogy for high tech.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
Here's a better explanation for non-geeks.
So what you're really saying is that DRM will destroy the music industry, not directly, but due to an inevitable breakdown in the quality of music... As these steps won't prevent any but the least educated, lowest common denominator listeners from actually purchasing the music more than a few times...
Thereby pushing indie furtherer in the direction of indie and pop more in the direction of pop...
Or, wait.... So really you're saying it won't change anything?!?
Of blankness, I know nothing.
The government states that it is illegal to copy copyrighted materials for other than some particular purposes. The copyright owner has absolutely no right to stop you from doing anything at all other than the rights anyone has.
I am going to state a counterpoint purely from a technical stance (my stance on DRM is not pro- or anti- as I still have a lot to learn). It is possible for the key to remain a secret, even if it is in the hands of the consumer. Right now apps such as iTunes have it in software. You can generate keypairs and store keys in a medium analogous to that used in smart-cards, in the player hardware such that if it is ever tampered with to get the key, the key itself is destroyed. The hardware would probably be the sound-card or the speaker system if it is digital where the decoding of the compressed audio would take place. Yes this is not available now, but there's a good chance of such systems coming into operation.
Also like somebody in the MPEG committee recently said, the job of such DRM systems is not to put off the super clever guy who can break the system anyway... most systems are breakable. The plan is to put off the average consumer who may drag himself/herself into investigating the use of copyrighted content illegally if software and tools are available to *easily* circumvent such content-distrbution-restriction systems.
Right now, to crack iTunes songs using a software program is super-easy because of easy availability of easily-usable software. Hardware systems will likely be much harder to crack if implemented properly (every tried cracking an iButton?). The key-pair can be generated by the hardware in question and can be used only by that hardware and the user will have no access to the private key. Tampering with the hardware will destroy the key.
Unlike cracking the firmware (example: DVD firmware is 'patched' before update to play multi-region DVDs) the device may require the firmeware to be cryptographically signed by the vendor before it accepts it, hence voiding the ability to tamper with it.
Of course, we have a long way to go before such hardware is designed and adopted.
Banu
Articles like this one follow a familiar pattern:
1) The history of copyright, complete with exhaustive descriptions of the piano roll and the Monarchy.
2) A sob story about some poor honest member of the global audience who can't watch the latest Hollywood crap-fest because they don't have eight copies of it arranged so they are never more than 10 yards from at least two of them.
3) Ringing, strident statements about how Anything can be copied(tm) do you hear me??!?! WELL, DO YOU??!?!?!?!?!!?!
4) The argument then swerves into the ever-popular "in the future, the Internet will make copyright obsolete and artists will all live in a Utopian paradise where everything is free, free, free like the book they spent 4,000 hours writing which is at this very minute available on 4,000 warezzzzzzz sites for your convenience"
5) This is usually followed by the standard "books are worthless, music is pointless, art is disposable, inspiration is a commodity" argument which offers the idea that because something can be cheaply copied, it has somehow become worthless.
Throughout each of these discussions, there is always support for "well, we'll just copy it anyway" which is why this argument has long since lost even the remotest shred of credibility.
There is only one question that needs to be answered. Is there any set of conditions under which the "copy every last fucking bit on Earth" people will just pay for the fucking movie/book/CD/whatever?
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Sorry about that...
I really should use the 'preview' button more often... I'd probably catch mistakes like that....
Of blankness, I know nothing.
No. But you could of made the same argument for CDs just a few years back.
Eventually, people are going to want video at their fingertips not unlike music/mp3s is now. People want to make copies, not for the sake of having copies, but for ease of use.
See, its easier to have a remote-device that selects "spiderman," "cowboy bebop," "return of the king," or "big breasted asian honeys 4" then it is to get up off your chair, walk to the dvd shelf, find the disk, and swap out the dvd currently in your drive.
Before you call me lasy, remind yourself again of what is happening to CDs.
I think DRM is stupid, as it simply has never worked. Why bother wasting the money on something that has been demonstrated time and time again as a faulty non-working system that _always_ has workarounds. They should spend their money on something profitable.
Yeesh.
no
Microsoft Research DRM talk
Cory Doctorow
cory@eff.org
June 17, 2004
This text is dedicated to the public domain, using a Creative Commons public domain dedication:
> Copyright-Only Dedication (based on United States law) The person or persons who have associated their work with this
> document (the "Dedicator") hereby dedicate the entire copyright
> in the work of authorship identified below (the "Work") to the
> public domain.
> Dedicator makes this dedication for the benefit of the public at
> large and to the detriment of Dedicator's heirs and successors.
> Dedicator intends this dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights
> under copyright law, whether vested or contingent, in the Work.
> Dedicator understands that such relinquishment of all rights
> includes the relinquishment of all rights to enforce (by lawsuit
> or otherwise) those copyrights in the Work.
> Dedicator recognizes that, once placed in the public domain, the
> Work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used,
> modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any
> purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including
> by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived.
-----------
Greetings fellow pirates! Arrrrr!
I'm here today to talk to you about copyright, technology and
DRM, I work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation on copyright
stuff (mostly), and I live in London. I'm not a lawyer -- I'm a
kind of mouthpiece/activist type, though occasionally they shave
me and stuff me into my Bar Mitzvah suit and send me to a
standards body or the UN to stir up trouble. I spend about three
weeks a month on the road doing completely weird stuff like going
to Microsoft to talk about DRM.
--
I lead a double life: I'm also a science fiction writer. That
means I've got a dog in this fight, because I've been dreaming of making my living from writing since I was 12 years old. Admittedly, my IP-based biz isn't as big as yours, but I guarantee you that it's every bit as important to me as yours is
to you.
Here's what I'm here to convince you of:
1. That DRM systems don't work
2. That DRM systems are bad for society
3. That DRM systems are bad for business
4. That DRM systems are bad for artists
5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT
It's a big brief, this talk. Microsoft has sunk a lot of capital into DRM systems, and spent a lot of time sending folks like Martha and Brian and Peter around to various smoke-filled rooms
to make sure that Microsoft DRM finds a hospitable home in the future world. Companies like Microsoft steer like old Buicks, and
this issue has a lot of forward momentum that will be hard to soak up without driving the engine block back into the driver's
compartment. At best I think that Microsoft might convert some of that momentum on DRM into angular momentum, and in so doing, save
all our asses.
Let's dive into it.
--
1. DRM systems don't work
This bit breaks down into two parts:
1. A quick refresher course in crypto theory
2. Applying that to DRM
Cryptography -- secret writing -- is the practice of keeping
secrets. It involves three parties: a sender, a receiver and an
attacker (actually, there can be more attackers, senders and
recipients, but let's keep this simple). We usually call these
people Alice, Bob and Carol.
Let's say we're in the days of the Caesar, the Gallic
War. You need to send messages back and forth to your generals,
and you'd prefer that the enemy doesn't get hold of them. You can
rely on the idea that anyone who intercepts your message is
probably illiterate, but that's a tough bet to stake your empire
on. You can put your messages into the hands of reliable
messengers who'll chew them up and swallow them if captured --
but that doesn't help you if Brad Pitt a
Microsoft wants a single encryption key as the secret.
It wants that key protected inside the CPU.
It wants OEM's to pre-register the computer with Microsoft and the key exchange will be done at that time to avoid man in the middle attacks.
Your PC will have an encrypted channel, done via private key encryption between your CPU and Microsoft.
So now all DRM keys for all encryption flow down this channel, direct into the CPU's store.
You DON'T give the attacker the key in this instance, you give the COMPUTER the key. The COMPUTER works against the customer to protect the copyright holders wishes.
It's still a breakable scheme , but the EFF guy didn't give them full credit for the scope of the scheme. Palladium & DRM are ONE AND THE SAME strategy.
Without MS you can't send your DRM key securely, so any DRM seller has to be pay MS even if it doesn't use MS's DRM.
I wonder though if governments will stand idly by and let Microsoft create a private encryption channel between everyone's computer and Microsoft.
I strongly doubt it.
Cory's points don't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. I'm appalled that he would attempt to explain how cryptography works in front of an audience at Microsoft that actually CODES crypto, considering how many fundamental errors he makes. But the kicker is his anecdotal evidence that there's no market demand for DRM. He whines about how he hit the 3 CPU limit of iTunes DRM, because he forgot to decertify one of his Powerbooks before he sent it back to Apple for repair, and that he already used up his other two authorizations on his other machine, and his mom's machine. Skipping over the apparent violation of the terms of the DRM by using one auth for his mom in another household, he failed to mention several points, like how you can call Apple and they will remove the dead auth for the dead machine, and that Apple extended the limit to 5 CPUs. But that doesn't even account for the fact that Cory was just a damn idiot that didn't deauth his machine before sending it in for service. Still, Cory whined and ranted about this problem on BB, rather than placing the blame on himself for making a stupid error.
The ultimate point of his lecture is where he rants about how nobody's calling up manufacturers and begging them for features that restrict rights, therefore there is no market demand for DRM. But he overlooks the obvious fact there are whole markets that would not exist if not for DRM. Like iTunes and DVDs, for example. If the manufacturers won't release the products without DRM, and customers want the product, they'll buy it with DRM, therefore, there IS market demand for DRM.
Hey, I'm no fan of DRM, but this sort of sloppy thinking isn't going to help his case, even if he throws in 1337 5p33k and pirate voice "arrr.."s into his lame lecture.
Apple has shown that DRM (like it or otherwise) CAN work.
85m DRM'd songs sold.
70% marketshare when (some) non-DRM alternatives are available.
DRM is not strictly necessarily bad, it's just at the current state of play almost every implementation of DRM out there involves inconveniencing the user.
When (if) this is fixed then DRM may shed slightly the synonymity with "evil".
This sig has been deprecated.
It's Eve not Carol, for Evesdropping. This guy must not of read a lot of crypto material, it would certainly be a plus for someone in his position.
6E8C 8721 B3D9 5269 5A9B 1122 00C3 C03D 99A7 1CFC
Actually, I think the argument that it's restricting innovation is one of the better ones. I'd like a device that could cache all my DVDs (Come to think of it, I'd like a device that could fast forward through the norwegian language copyright notice on a DVD), but the motion picture organisation wouldn't like me to have such a device.
There are all sorts of ideas I've thought of that will not be possible because of anti-piracy hysteria. A DVD download service could net billions, but if you can burn it onto a DVD, it can't be copy protected, so they're not going to do this. They're not going to do it though because of piracy fears.
But arguments that "Oh no! the blind can't watch it" or "I want to make a copy for my 5 year olds" isn't going to convince anyone excpet the blind, and those with 5 year old children that excessive copyright controls are a bad idea.
DRM systems are broken in minutes, sometimes days. Rarely, months
And from a Windows Media developer point of view (as opposed to purely technical), v2.2 of the MS Windows Media DRM has been around for at least 2 years, with no cracks.
unfuck, the way around MS DRM v1 didn't break the drm system, it bypassed it (sure you can argue it means the same, I'm using break in the context of the original speak, as in "yank the keys out, bypass the cipher").
Screamer didn't bypass the DRM either, it relied on you already having a license and it was then able to strip the DRM header away. Again it didn't attack the encryption or the ciphers. This was patched in about 2 weeks if my memory serves me right (ah the joy of repacking all that content) and has lasted since then without any exploits.
(note: I spent 2.5 years working with drm stuff, I am somewhat biased)
You don't need permission to record a compositition, you most certainly need permission to sample a recording. At least if you are going to release it commercially. There are two sets of rights to consider: The rights of the publisher (who may or may not be the writer or the recording artist) and the rights of the owner of the recording (which may be the artist, a record label, or some combination of the two).
After reading the whole thing, as a minimum there is no way it was given as a speech. It has too many typeisms like enclosing words with '*' and un-pronounceable words like 'hack0rzed', and 'b0rked.'
It reads completely like an email or something typed. Perhaps this is an email he wrote before and spoke on the same topic? But it certainly can not be what was said at any conference to Microsoft.
CD's aren't going out of style anytime soon
Vinyl isn't going out of style any time soon.
Customers have choices. And that isn't going out of style anytime soon
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Hardware protection schemes can be broken. Ti-83+ calculators use a system similar to what you describe for DVD firmware to authenticate new OS software when its being flashed. It took more than the couple of weeks that software DRM takes to break, but in the end one guy in his basement was able to logic probe his way around, and eventually came up with a method to flash any OS code you want onto the calculator. The same thing will happen to any firmware-upgradable device.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
the real genius part was that Doctrow is presenting this as though it was his original idea when, really, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that this has been Microsoft's internal strategy all along. As he pointed out, MS has already had products that are well suited to infringement for years. I remember the day Outlook shipped with a newsreader I was very impressed and tempted to write a letter to Gates and welcome him to the porn distribution business. Microsoft is totally in the game, who's kidding who?
So, this is a slick presntation and as things play out Doctrow can go back and take credit for guiding MS when he's really doing is clearing the air and having the balls to state out loud what everybody already knows is happening in silence.
The Carol, Bob and Alice analogy was misleading though. If Microsoft, or anybody else, really wanted to make DRM work it could be done as long as you could guarantee your user had to connect to you to view the media. Obviously with fixed media and no network this doesn't work, but nobody said fixed media was the only way to go or that authentification couldn't be combined with a network verification routine.
Microsoft could have taken any number of steps to restrict users years ago and the fact that they didn't seems to suggest that they didn't do so intentionally.
And why should this be surprising? How did they get on every desktop from the first place. This is no mystery. As far as file trading is concerned, nobody has made out anywhere near as well as Microsoft; there is no question they wouldn't be where they are today without it.
But although I'm certainly jealous of Mr. Doctrow for being in such a sweet position I'm not deriding him. He's in the right place at the right time and he deserves credit for presenting an excellent brief. Somebody had to speak up and he really did a nice job.
"The plan is to put off the average consumer who may drag himself/herself into investigating the use of copyrighted content illegally if software and tools are available to *easily* circumvent such content-distrbution-restriction systems."
Did you even read the article? It's utterly pointless to worry about the 'average consumer', when it only takes one person to crack the content and put it up for download.
This is snake oil, pure and simple.
The important part in the whole scheme isn't the key.
... I can easily play someting legally on one, and then copy it to VHS or whatever. [I get an odd audio hiss from the desktop based PVR, I think it has a noisy power supply... I get better quality off of my laptop] Of course, with a DVD, you don't get the menus, and such, but you can get the basic content, which is what I need when I'm helping my neighbors assemble 6hr VHS tapes of kid's programming so their 3yr old will stay entertained during multi-day car trips, and they don't have to change tapes or DVDs every 30 minutes.
... but you can't, as the companies who approved the 8mm film standard put a specific clause against copying stuff]
Yes, the key, combined with the algorythm and ciphertext can get you the original content, and so, if you can get the key, you can use alternative software or hardware to decrypt the files and use them without the restrictions that the vendors might have imposed.
However, just as simply, even with the keys and/or algorythms remaining secret, so long as the program can extract the relevent content, there will be someway to intercept it, and from that, make a copy.
Take for instance the pay-per-view cable channels -- you need a little box to decode the signal. Tampering with the box is illegal. But it's really easy to place a VCR/Tivo/DVR/whatever in between the cable box and the TV, and make a copy.
I have TV out on more than one of my computers
With an iPod, or whatever, you can wire the headphone jack to line in on something else -- of course, you'll lose track information, but you can get the basic content out.
All that DRM can do is make it more difficult to make copies -- never impossible. DRM is going to become more of an issue as technology changes [imagine, it's the 1980s... you've got your 8mm home movies, and you want to transfer them to VHS
When DVD came out, you couldn't just copy all of your VHS tapes to 'em. Hell, you can't even right now, but that's more of an analog-to-digital issue more than anything else, at this point. But when the next great standard comes out, you know that the movie companies are going to do their best to get you to buy all new copies of the 100+ DVDs you might already own, so they can get another $2-3k out of you.
Anyway, the only way that DRM will reliably work in the long run is to get rid of the standards that most movies depend on right now (vision, and hearing)... they''ll have to come up with some special chip you have to have inserted in your brain so that you'll only understand the movies that you've paid for.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Or they might want DRM laws to only allow black-box software, therefore crippling open-source.
Imaginge this: all media player products MUST have inbuilt DRM. Therefore, said product probably won't be in most free linux distributions. Then, new user installs mandrake on his/her computer, and tries to play a cd/dvd. That user decides on the spot that Linux doesn't have important features that Microsoft implemented years ago, and immediately switches back to Windows, and tells everyone she knows never to use Linux, and keep buying Windows.
This way, not only do studios get what they want, but Microsoft can also try to stop Open Source from being a major Desktop OS.
Right now, to crack iTunes songs using a software program is super-easy because of easy availability of easily-usable software. Hardware systems will likely be much harder to crack if implemented properly (every tried cracking an iButton?). The key-pair can be generated by the hardware in question and can be used only by that hardware and the user will have no access to the private key. Tampering with the hardware will destroy the key. Key pair encryption? Reverse engineer the software, and then do a man in the middle attack, poof, you've either got the encrypted data, or at least another key. But, Again, DRM is stupid. I wouldn't use a format I can't use on my computer, and, I could simply run a VMWare box with windows XP in it and capture the audio output, no matter what DRM is used.
...or at least misleading.
You can de-authorize computers to play Apple Protected AAC's and thus authorize any different computer. So if you upgrade a computer you can de-authorize the old one and authorize the new one at no penalty.
Other then that the article seems right on though.
--- Nothing To See Here ---
...to be if they don't make an effort to contain those who "abuse" resources, either by stealing or share them, it will look as though they don't care. And they don't truly understand how things really work. Remember Eisner's (Disney) education a few months ago? He thought "ripping" meant "ripping off". Unless|until these guys loosen their ties so oxygen can begin circulating back up to their brains, they're going to spend a lot of resources (time, money, people) trying to "protect" their assets - without realizing how the real world works.
But if you can hear|see it, you can crack it. And even if it's not a do-gooder trying to crack it as a mission of justice, someone will crack it just for the challenge.
______________________________
The talent-laden Lakers stand to be disbanded as at least three players are eligible for free agency, including Kobe Bryant. Upon hearing this, Cell Block D has made an offer of three cartons of cigarettes, two bars of soap, and an inmate to be named later.
What companies like SEGA and Data East did on various arcade boards. Basicly, there is a chip/blob/block that combines the CPU and decryption logic in the one casing (even on the same die in a fair few cases). As of yet, many of the more sophisticated examples of this have yet to be cracked.
Obviously this wont work for music/movies/etc because of the fact that if you can see and/or hear it, you can record it. However, it would certainly be something to consider for code (particularly code on game consoles).
Basicly, microsoft/sony/nintendo/whoever could produce a chip that combines a PPC/x86/whatever they want CPU core on the same die as a hardware implementation of something like RSA or DES or something else with a long enough key length to make brute forcing impractical. Then, all they do is to encrypt the game executables and even the console bios and stuff (keeping the means to do that secret shouldnt be that hard, after all, the secret MS only private key for signing xbox xbe files hasn't yet been released/leaked/cracked/whatever).
Because the CPU will only execute code that is encrypted by the private key held by the console company, running "unauthorized" code wont be possible. (even if you find a way to get it to jump to some area in memory you loaded with your own data, you dotn have the encryption key so you cant turn your code into something the CPU can sucessfully decrypt and execute)
Plus, because the only way to get the plaintext or the public key is to take the top off the chip with a powerfull microscope or whatever (and because there arent that many people/companies with the resources and skills to do this), its (theoretically) secure. Another way to make it more secure is to change around the meanings of the decrypted opcodes. For example, on regular x86, 0x90 (I think) means the NOP instruction. if you change things around so that NOP is some other value, its even harder to crack. Plus, since you have no way to know if is the correct one, you cant brute-force it.
And, given how special/specific the key is, there are ways to keep it secret. For example, build the encrypting mechanisim as a speical box which doesnt contain the key in software but in hardware instead (thus preventing some hacker from hacking in and stealing it).
However, (as the article says) just because I cant think of any flaws in this system doesnt mean there arent any.
You don't see it???
let me simplify
"He makes a great case for why DRM...simply don't work... "
Still don't see it?
It should say, "He makes a great case for why DRM is bad for society, business, and artists, why it simply doesn't work"
no thats not all.
When creating a list of items separated by commas, one should strive it insure that the items have similar meanings.
Quoth the Grammar outlaw
The list above contains the structures
- society
- business
- artists
- why it simply don't work
- why Microsoft (the audience for this talk) should not invest in it
There is no "pleasing symmetry" amongst those ideas when expressed in that form.
what you say?
No this isn't minutia. This is important. Mr. VerdeRana want us to go and spread this messaage far and wide. If we were to spread the above message we'd come off looking like buffoons.
English: It's not just a good idea, it's a language.
Kinda hard to figure out which "fantastic" you mean:
s ti c]
1. Quaint or strange in form, conception, or appearance.
2. a. Unrestrainedly fanciful; extravagant: fantastic hopes.
b. Bizarre, as in form or appearance; strange: fantastic attire; fantastic behavior.
c. Based on or existing only in fantasy; unreal: fantastic ideas about her own superiority.
3. Wonderful or superb; remarkable: a fantastic trip to Europe.
Oh, and lest we forget:
n.
An eccentric person.
Ah. Got it.
[http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=fanta
(The above URL has slashdot added space in it. Always remove prior to use).
What were the skies like when you were young?
Thanks for posting this article. I haven't bought a DVD in 2 years because of the loathing I have for the whole approach of the distributors and region encoding etc. Only today I had been wavering and considering purchasing a couple of DVD in particular and reading the article has stiffened my resolve once again.
It is just sooooooooo broken
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Broadcast this far and wide, and maybe someone will listen.
I did, but because of my DRM, no one can hear it.
Three days ago I was modded down to Troll simply for posting this list of Miscrosoft's DRM subscribers. The topic was convergence, how devices are all going to work together, so it seemed important to point out that MS DRM is already widely adopted.
.
Supporters of Microsoft DRM
* Content companies America Online Inc., The Disney Co. and OD2
* Service providers CinemaNow Inc., Movielink LLC, MusicNow LLC, Napster LLC, VirginMega France and Yacast
* Consumer electronic device manufacturers Archos SA, Creative, Dell Inc., Digital 5 Inc., iRiver International, PRISMIQ Inc., PURE Digital, Rio, Samsung Electronics Company Ltd., SimpleDevices Inc. and 2Wire Inc.
* Chip makers BridgeCo AG, Equator Technologies Inc., Imagination Technologies, Micronas, Motorola Inc., Sigma Designs Inc. and SigmaTel Inc.
* HP
But it will be good for the established sleazy and shady characters as it will limit competition from the upstart sleazy and shady characters who will find higher barriers to competition. "legitimate" spyware vs. illegitmate worms and virii. Did you think spyware would have any problem getting a DRM certification?
A lot of us would like to protect material from damage or destruction, or would prefer not to keep subjecting our originals to constant exposure to use. (This was more of an issue with tape because of friction.) Or maybe I don't want to have to buy two copies of the same disk or tape because I don't want to have to keep a copy upstairs and a copy downstairs in order to watch it. I can afford to buy duplicate 50c-$1 used books; buying, say, 500 duplicate DVDs at 15-30 bucks a pop is out of the question. My sister has a DVD player in her room that holds 300 discs. It also has a system to allow you to type in the names of every disc. You can use the remote (if you're masochistic or a lunatic) or you can (much closer to sanity) plug in a keyboard. But if you remove a disc from the machine, you lose the stored data. (If you take it out and put it back without doing anything else, you're okay, but once you watch any other disc it will lose the stored info. I can't watch any of the disks from her machine without losing the stored disc info unless she does not use the machine at all for anything. Would be simpler for me to make a copy and watch the copy upstairs than to go downstairs, remove the disc, watch it up there, take it back downstairs, then re-enter the stored data for that disc when she's not using her machine. If I was using DVD-RW, I could simply copy the disc, make a copy, watch it, then erase the copy and use the DVD-RW for watching a temporary copy of a different disc. But I can't do that because of anti-copying protections.
One time I was copying the master CD of an application we make and by accident I dropped it, which scratched it so badly it would no longer work. And I'm careful.
There are lots of legitimate reasons for making copies of things, none of which has anything to do with piracy.
I've never been a parent but I have the suspicion you've never been either. Do you really expect to keep kids out of any place you can think of to hide things? And it doesn't matter even if you do make them ask; kids can damage things unintentionally in unbelievable ways. And not just kids, either. My sister has a friend whose child comes by to visit. I have to remind this little girl on a constant basis not to slam the door on the car I'm driving. (I have also had to remind my brother, who is over 50 and older than me, not to do the same thing, so it isn't just kids that have problems (he's broken the side mirror on two of the cars I've owned)). This little lady did something to the Windows Me computer we have that completely destroyed the ability for it to boot-up normally; windows kept saying there was a protection error and would not boot. Would come up in safe mode but not otherwise. Reinstall from the CD would not fix the problem. I ended up having to wipe the hard drive and reinstall on bare metal. I'll tell you this: I have been doing programming for over 20 years and I'll be damned if I can figure out how she did it. I'd even be willing to redo the reinstallation of everything if I could see and find out how she did it.
After spending time in jail and thousands of dollars in legal fees to have to prove they were innocent.
After spending thousands of dollars in legal fees to prove their actions were non-infringing.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Windows DRM hasn't been cracked because there hasn't been a need to. People just copy the music to MP3 and don't worry about the DRM in WMA. If WMA were the only option, I can guarantee that it would cracked in no time.
Last weekend I went to the Fanzilla Fan Film Convention to see the absolutely brilliant Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. For anyone who doesn't know, this movie was the work of three junior high kids back in the 1980's, that were so moved by seeing the actual film, that they decided to remake it shot-for-shot.
At the screening, they informed us that security guards would be monitoring the audience to make sure none of us were taping the film to distribute it across the net, since it is a reproduction of the original film. As I was watching the grainy film of a 13 year old adventurer mock fighting 13 year olds wearing turbins in the streets of Gulfport, MS, a security guard walked up the aisle scanning with a night vision scope to make sure nobody had any naughty cameras.
The whole situation just seemed so ludicrous. Nobody was going to mistake this film for the actual Raiders. The point of watching this film was not to be entertained by the movie's plot (though it does hold up well in the re-telling), but in seeing how these kids with limited resources managed to pull off outrageous stunts and ingeniuously improvise set pieces to make a film that actually held together.
They succeeded bigger and better than you would think. But Industrial Light and Magic doesn't have to worry about their jobs. I still bought the Indiana Jones Trilogy DVD set. In fact, I watched the real Raiders that night when I got home because the kids did such a good job that I felt like seeing the original.
That fan film may not be creative in the sense of creating a new work from whole cloth. But it was extremely creative in execution, and inspired a few of the kids involved to become a part of the movie business. Ironically, one of them works for a DVD production house.
I wish more people could see this film; it is truly inspirational. I felt like running out and making my own movie. Why can't it be out there on the 'Net if nobody is going to make money from it? Would it really cut into LucasFilm's profits if someone did make some money on it?
One of the producers of the film introduced it at the festival and said that they occasionally show it for educational purposes. What kind of message does it send to show kids this film, and then tell them that there are these bizarre boundaries on their creativity? Do they send security to those screenings? I've heard a lot of complaints on this site and others that kids don't do these kinds of ambitious projects anymore. Why do you think that is?
======
In X-Windows the client serves YOU!
"Every spelling or grammar flame must contain at least one spelling or grammar error."
let me simplify
Sentence not started with capital letter.
Sentence not ended with period (or other suitable punctuation).
one should strive it insure that the items
One should strive to ensure that the items
what you say?
"Someone set us up the bomb."
No this isn't minutia.
Then you should have taken more care in your own post.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
One point you fail to address is that competition and innovation are good, in the end, for the artists. When VHS machines came out, the MPAA screamed that it was the end of the universe and they were going to take their marbles and go home if congress didn't stop it. Well, lo and behold, an entire industry was created for renting and selling videos which not only added to the MPAA's bottom line, but in some cases actually surpassed box office sales. The very industry screaming for ARM (analog rights management) actually ended up benefiting greatly from the thing they were trying to control, because they lacked the vision to see what it would do for them.
I'm not going to sit here and pick apart your strawman, you seem pretty proud of it. I'll just say that where it even resembles the very insightful speech Cory gave, it's too simplistic to be considered anything other than a (*cough*) troll.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
His article is impeccably, thorough, and articulate. The research and timeline used to explain his points were... well... I can't even fucking come close to writing like that which is obvious at the moment. Like the story submitter said, it was fantastic. He clearly points out the problem with great detail. However, he doesn't propose a solution.
When the World Wide Web was introduced, it seemed like a godsend; now books would be published electronically, libraries could be digitised, and anyone anywhere in the world would be able to search through them and read anything. Yet that isn't how things have panned out, even after years of its existence. The Internet has become an indispensable research tool, but it turned out to be something very different from a library. Information comes in bits and pieces, squeezed within a clutter of navigational panes and advertisements. Web pages have the flashy, disorienting visual effect of grocery shelves. It never turned out to be the coherent electronic medium for publishing that it was meant to.
The way corporations are implementing DRM does not address this issue by design. DRM is meant to secure profit for corporations, while constraining the potential of technology to fit in an antiquated business model. Yes, authors, musicians, film-makers, and everyone involved in creating forms of media must make a living. Yet the internet must also be allowed to reach its full potential in allowing people to access their works. There must be a way of allowing both to happen.
I don't accept that. AAC/Fairplay was "cracked" (again it's stipping the encryption - not breaking it), even though people copy music to MP3
Thanks for the feedback.
For Great Justice!
When real free-market think-tanks are publishing their material on the Web there is no justification left for DRM. Works that are put into formats that are easily archived and copied will be preserved. Over half of all of the movies made by commercial studios have already been lost through degradation of the media. I like to believe that some of what I write will be worth reading in a century or two. Perhaps the general public won't have any interest since they don't seem to have much now. But my descendants might. I intend to make sure that they can read it. DRM schemes enforced by hardware and software that will be long-dead by then won't help.
that doesn't just pay a living wage, but a "buy all the over-priced CD/book/movies I want wage"?
Moderator take a look at the comment above.
I disagree with it TheGavster. It must have been some primitive form of signing firmware updates. With modern crypto you can't logic probe your way around and break crypto. It is a hard math problem. Even if you do have the public key for verification, you can not break the system if it is properly implemented as determining the public key to -make- that signature is a very hard problem.
What can be done is probably modify the firmware by programming the flash memory directly, which needs access to tools which the average consumer doesn't have. Even this is stopped in some implementations of hardware crypto today where the device is rendered unusable if tampering happens. Although this is used to protect keys in such devices it can be used for other reasons too.
It'll take some time for such hardware to become popular, but it'll happen sometime if digital rights management is taken up by corporations strongly.
Banu
It's a .txt file, it's not going to get slashdotted, it's not going to get taken down or altered in situ. So why the heck are you posting the whole durned thing into the comments section?
You have a good point that once a copy is cracked and in the open, it's already unprotected. I don't know how they would counter that.
Watermarking can be used to stamp content with the recipient's identity, but there are many counter-algorithms out there to destroy such watermarks.
Banu
There is no market demand for this "feature." None of your customers want you to make expensive modifications to your products that make backing up and restoring even harder. And there is no moment when your customers will be less forgiving than the moment that they are recovering from catastrophic technology failures.
They know this and they don't care. They are going to, once again, leverage their monopoly to try and change the market.
And sadly, even if their customers are so unforgiving it is a long strech to see joe-sixpack and sally-homemaker deciding to break with everything they know and install Linux or makeing a whole new investment in a Mac.
At the end of the day they will grumble and bitch but swallow that bitter pill and reinstall Windows and deal. MS knows this and so does its partners.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
You can't just reverse-engineer the software as you say, or do a man-in-the-middle attack and get the -decrypted- data or keys.
Reverse-engineering of crypto-algorithms (by that I suppose you mean breaking/cracking them as if you want to know their implementation, the source code and algorithms of the popular crypto ciphers are widely published) such as RSA is an impossible problem as it stands today. It could also be implemented in hardware which will clear itself of its code and data if you try to open and find its contents.
Banu
He makes a great case for why DRM is bad for society, business, and artists, why it simply don't work, and why Microsoft (the audience for this talk) should not invest in it.
He's going to talk to Microsoft about this? He might as well go talk to a wall.
Any form of digital content is just a number, maybe a big number, but nothing more than a number.
Is stupid to try to 'hide' or 'protect' numbers.
What's in a sig?
Sorry I meant private key there.
Banu
What do you mean by "stripping the encryption"?
Decrypting? If yes, why don't you just say decrypting?
> "yank the keys out, bypass the cipher"
Huh? What the hell is that supposed to mean?
What iTunes, et al, do with DRM is actually very lenient in light of what the 5 majors want (and are actively seeking). They have appeased the RIAA and brethren by perpetuating the illusion that digital material can be fully protected. In reality, all that these DRM schemes have done is place a bump in the road... and a pretty insignificant bump at that. However, that is the price that they (as retailer) must pay to allow major label content to you (the consumer).
There is a bit of a solution though. Companies like mine, AudioLunchbox, Magnatune, and a few others, are skirting the entire DRM issue by offering indie and quasi-major label material (eg, a compilation put out by an indie that contains tracks by major label artists).
As time goes on, I sincerely believe that DRM will become *less* of an issue, as the majors begin to realize that while they need to aggressively protect their copyrights, they also need to make sales to the consumer. In the interim, please support those of us who are working to bring you quality music unfettered by DRM.
The only price being freedom?
Game consoles are often sold at cost (or lower), with the money made up on games (free the razors, sell the blades). Cheaper consoles means a more widely adopted platform, means a bigger market, and a bigger pie for all partners.
Intel and Microsoft might really try this, because right now, they're both in tremendous trouble: back-compatibility is their key asset, but they both want to break it (Longhorn, Itanium 64-bit). This could be a way to do it.
The question is: can Microsoft dominate the PC hardware market? They're already sewn-up the third-party market with their driver signing... and free (or at cost) hardware is simply impossible to beat - provided they can make it cheap enough.
It could even be argued that they were doing a great thing, by ushering in the next price-point for computers, making them affordable to everyone, including the untapped markets of the third world...
What price freedom?
And the second someone pirates his work, he will be at the front of the line screaming for DRM.
Dawn of the Dead
Might I add, "Mr. VerdeRana wants us to go and spread this message far and wide."
These were just typos and not a failure in understanding of the language. However, I think many errors are less a result of a lack of understanding than they are a result of a lack of applying understanding. That is...
Learn to proofread, people.
Now I'll just wait for somebody to point out ironic errors in this post.
Let's not let facts skew our judgement !! Joe Friday types we aren't !!
.
he was a US citizen or was to become one.
I really wish he wouldn't use those types of terms. They may seem cool when you're reading them on slashdot, but to a Microsoft exec (or any other company for that matter) is going to picture a pissed off 15 year old locked in his bedroom whenever they see nonsense like this.
I'm not always formal online, but I'm always professional when dealing with business. This seems like a time to be professional.
I know first-hand that BMG is wanting to sell DRM encrypted wma files the mixers and movie sound-effect houses, but they want to remove the DRM encryption once it gets to the end user, and use the DRM as a way for safe transit.
Obvious holes in this security plan, just like installation keys, but in their view it's better than nothing.
The problem with DRM is that people who should know better *still* do not call it what it is: Digital Restrictions Management.
So long as this those pushing this can continue to pretend that this is about protecting their so-called rights, the harder it is to argue against it.
Either call DRM what it is, and don't cede the moral high-ground, or just give up now.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
"Do it again! This is a company that looks the world's roughest, toughest anti-trust regulators in the eye and laughs. Compared to anti-trust people, copyright lawmakers are pantywaists. You can take them with your arm behind your back."
"We need a fourth law of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife"
This whole situation reminds me of a joke:
A man went to see his new house under construction. As the contractor was showing him around, every few minutes the contractor would walk to a window and shout, "Green side up, Brown side down!" After a few repetitions of this ritual the new homeowner asked what the contractor was doing. "Simple," replied the contractor, "we've got <insert ethnic class here> laying the sod for your new lawn, and I need to keep reminding them to put the green side up."
I imagine Cory and Larry and others like them walking to the window of the burgeoning digital media market and shouting, "Create what your customers want, don't crap on them," then turning with a wink and saying, "We've got corporatists building the digital media infrastructure, I have to keep reminding them how to increase sales in a capitalist society."
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The point of Doctorow's talk was that yes of course copying the bits is cheap and so people will do so. BUT in the past, faced with changing technology, the artists, authors, musicians, etc. have always found a way to adapt to the new environment and prosper even more than before. Today's artists are faced with the same challenge, and must not stick their heads in the sand and try to DRM away all the changes to the world and return to yesterday's status quo. We (society) may need to poke and prod them along a bit to get them to go down the right path.
Here is how I see this playing out, take musicians: lets imagine a world where musicians realize that they don't need publishers anymore (at least, not old guard publishers); instead, they put their own copies of their studio recorded music out on the filesharing networks free for anyone to download. They make their living by doing a combination of other things a) live concerts INCLUDING streaming broadcasts on the internet b) limited runs of collector's editions a.k.a. box sets, artistic packages, etc. c) any number of new ways to do things that I can't imagine because they haven't been invented/popularized yet.
Regarding A: yes anyone can rip the stream and make it available for download. But what you're attempting to do is to get society back into a mode where it appreciates live musical performances and values them accordingly. In other words, going back to the pre-piano player days. But this time you aren't limited to only being able to play in front of a roomful of people at a time. The challenge will be keeping the performances interesting and entertaining. Today's artists (Britney) aren't simply going to be able to take a road-show from city to city doing the exact same choreographed dance moves and expect people to tune in to broadcast after broadcast. Fortunately there are musicians out there that actually play music and know how to improvise. Hey I know its a crazy idea but there once was a time when people actually enjoyed music like jazz that by its very nature is changing.
Regarding B: there is a market right now for art books. Books that tell a story but do so with a collage of words, pictures, and tactile experiences. These are generally expensive to produce, especially the ones with hand-made art. So the print run is limited. But that's a good thing. You can sell them for $100 or $200 to a limited audience of really enthusiastic fans. How about a box set of a new CD release from your favorite band that has hand copied liner notes, or maybe hand copies of the original sheets that the song was written on (scribbles and all), would you buy it? Maybe not, but I'm guessing there are fans that would.
Regarding C: I don't have a magic crystal ball but I'm still confident that artists and musicians will come up with new and interesting ways to display their art to society and hopefully these new models will not be so dependent on owning a stranglehold on disseminating the actual bits. Just as player pianos begat pre-recorded publishing in the first place, the internet will beget new ways of disseminating art that we may not have thought of yet at this early stage of the game. The fellow (or gal) that comes up with this new scheme stands to make a pretty penny selling it to the artists.
The entire premise of today's movie and music business is that you can make a fortune by controlling a stranglehold on dissemination. Well, that stranglehold has been loosened, time to find some other way. The stranglehold on distribution itself is a relatively modern happenstance, so this idea that its an artist's god given right to be paid handsomely for each note of his or her creation every time it gets played is a strange one, historically speaking. This evolution will require some effort on the part of the artists, but also some changes in society. Re-acquiring appreciation for live performances and musical improvisation and substance over style. Am I optimistic? Maybe overly so, time will tell.
The music and movie studios rant and rave about how piracy is their target with this whole DRM push. Fine -- DRM the movie reels, the review disks, the portions of the chain that are never held by a paying customer, the portions that have in fact have been repeatedly shown to be the source for piracy, and drop those restrictions at the end of the supply chain.
DRM your business lines boys, not the end product. That way we know you're fighting the pirates -- after all, if you only DRM the end product, somebody might get the mistaken idea you're fighting the customer!Do you like Japanese imports?
...maybe you shouldn't be surprised if they start acting like them.
Perhaps if the public were treated as if they were honest they would act that way.
I'd distribute the document far and wide if only Cory would be a little bit more professional and less 1337 about it... I mean, he makes great points but he keeps talking about ciphers being g0n3z0rz and all that stuff. It won't clinch with the suits.
That's because there's actual Fairplay-protected content that people want (for 'fair use' or for piracy). Who uses protected WMA except some porno sites?
Also like somebody in the MPEG committee recently said, the job of such DRM systems is not to put off the super clever guy who can break the system anyway... most systems are breakable. The plan is to put off the average consumer who may drag himself/herself into investigating the use of copyrighted content illegally if software and tools are available to *easily* circumvent such content-distrbution-restriction systems.
This is covered in the speech aswell. I think the point here is that if someone needs to crack any particular type of DRM, it will be done. And any cracker who makes my life easier by doing so will be infinitely more popular and (IMO) more deserving of my money than the blood-sucking company that are making a nuisance of themselves.
In short, the "average customer" only needs Google and a healthy sense of adventurism.
All interpreted languages are abstractions over Lisp
this guy is a genius !
And, best of all, he seems interesting and funny !
What I got from this article is that throughout history people who try to make money from the old media try to fight people who try to make money from the new media. Artists make only a small amount of money from either. The only advantage the artist has is that the new media plays to a larger audience and the artist, because he gets a smaller slice from a larger pie tend to do OK. The media companies, old and new do OK also but that's besides the point...
:)
The lawyers always get paid.
They get paid by the old companies to fight the new companies and they get paid by the new companies to defend against the old companies and they get paid by the artists to make sure they get their cut.
History teaches us that it doesn't pay to be a creative artist, inventor or even business man.
Kids, be a lawyer and get all the others coming and going.
If this system was to become mainstream, you wouldn't think that there all of a sudden were millions of idots as well, do you?
As an informed tech-geek this is simple to you. Maybe many others. However if the technology makes people too "stupid" to use it, it is the technology that is the problem, not the people.
You can twist this anyway you want, but blaming people for not coping with intentionally broken technology, that is plain stupid. Not to mention disgustingly elitist.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Free Software cannot seriously implement DRM. (Any that does, will just get forked.) The most it can do is work around it, like libdvdcss does. But that's against the law (DMCA) so that keeps interoperable Free Software products underground.
It's in Microsoft's interest that all content be DRMed so that they only have to compete with other proprietary vendors. And more specifically, only the proprietary vendors that are big enough that they can pay DRM licensing fees. This helps to keep the lighter, more nimble competition out, so that MS only has to compete with large companies.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
How about everyone just cuts their losses. Live with the fact that artists are not going to get compensated for their work.
It's tough, but them's the breaks. The only reason anybody ever made money out of distributing recordings of artistic performances was that the ability to manufacture recordings was a scarce commodity. With the ready availability of CD and DVD recorders, that is simply no longer the case.
So let's let the whole music industry just pack their bags and go home. It's been a good ride while it lasted, but now it's over. So long and thanks for all the tunes. The world will not end just because there are no more Britney Spears clones, and people will not stop playing good music just because they are not getting paid for it.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
'Rights management' sounds neutral, benign even. Not something to get fired up about. Start calling it 'digital restrictions mechanism' and perceptions change. There are enough of us that if we all do this when talking to family, friends, the press, etc. we can get the meaning of the term changed.
I happily read the article & clicked elsewhere, then found the article couldn't be found on craphound. On the off chance this is permanent :-(, and you want a copy, email me and I'll send you a text copy that I presciently stored on disk. (Non-DRMed, too!)
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Most of mukund's points were addressed by Doctorow's article; specifically, the point about DRM systems only needing to put off the super clever guys. The point is that the super clever guys will immediately tell everyone else, unless you create the most totalitarian police state ever known to prevent them.
Doctorow also talked specifically about the "put the key in the hardware, glue it down with epoxy" idea. Someone will take one apart and word will leak out. The only way to stop it will be to censor every communication to make sure that no one is telling anyone else anything about DRM. Before long, no one will be allowed into computer science or electrical engineering programs without a security clearance.
Or we could just pitch the whole thing, allow free copying, and find some other mechanism to compensate artists.
The article further points out that Susy Homemaker, a loyal customer and all-round honest person, when she gets shafted by DRM, will go online and download that non-crippled version not because it's free, but because it's non-crippled.
You can compete with 'free'. You cannot compete with better AND free.
The RIAA should have started selling MP3 downloads six or seven years ago. They refused to sell anything for several years, and that market vacuum is exactly what drove the P2P explosion. Now they enter the market several years late after creating their own worst enemy, only offering a limited selection, with excessive prices, and a crippled product.
It's not like their use of DRM on download sales has ever prevented a song from appearing on P2P. Their use of DRM is purely self destructive. The only thing it accomplishes it to drive away customers. If they offered MP3 sales - a noncrippled product - the product customers want - their customer base would multiply almost over night. Lowing their price points wouldn't hurt either.
DRM is counter productive.
As for the hardware you discuss, I am a programmer and I have been reading all of the Trusted Computing specifications and I have been compiling an entire list of methods to beat it or to strangle its spread. Clearly extracting either the PrivEK or SRK is enough to completely liberate a computer, but it is hardly the only method to seize control of your own computer or to extract decrypted files. The CPU, RAM, the main bus, all are prime targets for a variety of manipulations. I'm still a little fuzzy on the low-pin-count-bus systems and how the measurement system will function, but I'm pretty sure that is wide open to almost trivial attack. If you can manipulate the measurement system/values then you own the system. Plug in a fairly inexpensive specialized component almost anywhere in the system and you can extract data or seize total control.
So it is a no-brainer that some "pirate" somewhere can trivially extract that single non-crippled version to post. The non-crippled file that honest Susy Homemaker goes in search of after getting bitten by DRM problems. And I think it quite possible to have pretty cheap plugin hardware that anyone and everyone could install, with the obvious legal battles over hardware to ensue.
Also, managing to extract the key from a self-destructing chip may be rather challenging, but when you figure out how to do it once, well, then you know how to do it. You could pretty much set up an assembly line extracting keys.
Another approach is just to strangle the spread of the system. Ideally the mainstram news will pick up the crippled hardware story and there will be a public backlash rejecting it. Newsweek has already run such a story, see my sig.
Another way to strangle the spread is to minimize the number of compliant Trusted computers out there. Software companies and media companies and websites and ISPs simply can't afford to make Trusted Computing mandatory if it means locking out too many non-compliant customers. Well, Trusted Computing is intentionally fragile. It is a complex and multi-layered system. Any disruption anywhere in the process and the computer has a hair-trigger to "failsafe" into a non-trusted mode. It effectively becomes a plain old pre-trusted computing computer. Any software - especially popular software like P2P - could very easily include an option during install to deactivate the computer's Trust system. Some methods of doing so are trivially reversible, some methods would take a full identity wipe and reactivation of the Trust system, and some methods may be irreversible.
Obviously I'm not a fan of Trusted Computing, chuckle. It's my computer damnit! I have every right to open MY computer and rip open MY chip and read out MY keys with a microscope any time I feel like it. They can certainly make it a pain in the ass for me to actually do so, but there's no way in hell they can stop me if I decide to do it anyway. It's my computer and my property.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Cory points out some compelling examples of past clashes between Content, Medium and Market. However, you must realize that there are difference between each historical phase.
In this one, I see certain new unique attributes:
- The record seller of today suffers from tunnel-vision. In a true global market, the knowledge of the cryto method and content location; everything except the key is everywhere. The collaborative nature of the global market tremendously speeds up the exposing of schemes and solutions to DRM.
- Once Content is unlocked, it is permanently unlocked. DeCSS forever opened the DVD format that was sold up to that point. Using the physical market, Content providers are reluctant to buy DRM since then it must guarantee it never fails. Given the huge Market, tech companies want to bring Content into the machines but cannot make that guarantee. So, a stalemate arises.
- Cory's argument that by building a non-DRM enhanced player, rish with copying and encoding capabilities would make a significant change, is lost in the oceans of US copyright and patent law, regardless of how popular it would be. Funny enough *right here* is where the FOSS saves us: By never charging for the technology - and never forming a single head to the beast - products are going to (or already) exist to be this fabled wonder-machine. Litigation can kill a project or company, but it cannot erase code from the mindshare.
Unless that secure hardware device has audio ouput jacks, there is some point at which the DRM'd content is un-DRM'd for playback, and there's vulnerable software that can be hacked to save a cleartext version of the content instead of (or in addition to) playing it back. If the hardware device somehow can verify the playback app, how about a stub audio hardware driver that just saves the "output" as a .wav file? How about a little USB device that pretends to be a set of USB speakers, but what it really does is to stream the audio back into the computer where a companion app can save it to a .wav file?
Face it, the *entire computer system* has to be tamper-proof from end to end, looking like a black box that DRM'd content goes into and analog audio comes out of, or else someone is going to find a weak point and exploit it.
And remember that "thought to be tamper-proof" and "designed to be cryptographically secure" are not the same as "actually tamper-proof" and "actually cryptographically secure". CSS was broken because one of the trusted partners goofed in their implementation. Microsoft can't make a browser that is secure after however many years and however many critical updates and service packs; why should we think that they (or anyone else) can make a DRM system that is?
I agree, it's not that DRM will succede - it's that MS is effectively forced to use DRM, because without it they will half to compete against the sunami Linux head on.
Ironically DRM reminds me of the 1850's. The industrial revolution required an educated and mobile workforce, but it was looking to be a disaster to the plantation system way of life. First they made tougher and tougher laws till you couldn't even teach slaves how to read, then they tried to regulate the northern states, and when that failed they tried to break off from the union and fence themselves off from the rest of the country. Of course, it wasn't long before all hell broke loose.
Today, they tried to extend copyrights to infinity, and then they tried to impose the DMCA, and now they are trying to use DRM and fence themselves off from the rest of the world. Watch out, SCO was a peace walk, all hell is about to break loose.
From the article:
DRM systems are broken in minutes, sometimes days. Rarely, months.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the original CSS take over 2 years until it was finally broken? And the culprit was that a certain PC DVD-player software didn't encrypt the key correctly, and without that hitch, we could possibly still be without CSS?
Similarly, isn't the XBOX copy protection scheme already 2 years old and still uncracked?
I think this is a strong argument that DRM indeed can work. Yes I hate it, too, but the article seems a bit on the wrong-ish side, doesn't it?
> CSS was broken because one of the trusted partners goofed in their implementation.
Wrong. They all goofed. You can't distribute your algorithm implemented in object code to millions of people and expect that nobody will analyze it.
Nice article, if you didnt read it, i can sum it up for you in my own words:
"If you the corporations dont make the hardware that we want (i.e non-drm), then we're going to go and buy it from someone that does! And all you pig-fucking assholes who think you can tell me what i can to with my own property: go stick your region encoded DVD right up your ass and i hope it snaps in half and cuts you."
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I have such a device. It's a modded Xbox with a larger hard drive. Attached via the network to my PC, with larger hard drives still. Running Xbox Media Center, I can watch whatever I feel like, when I feel like it. I'm also archiving some of them to DVD-R as DivX for more compact storage.
Why should we support DRM systems that "put off the average consumer" instead of a DRM system that would "put off the pirates who sell massive numbers of copies on downtown street corners"?
In the US music licensing is compulsory. You HAVE to license it. This is why there are so many cover songs. Now I have to pay you to use it, but you can not legally stop me.
Huge insight. And a lesson that seems incapable of being learned.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Here was here! IN MY BUILDING! Down the hall, for pete's sake!
AND I MISSED IT
Parent poster goes on at great, ungramatical, length expounding on the supposed erroneous grammer of the list in the following sentence:
Here are parenthesis that show that there are actually two nested lists:
Nested lists like this are one reason why English grammer was revised to requre a "," before the word "and" in a list as both a visual and verbal (pause) marker. The other reason being to bind the word "artists" into "(society, business and artists)" rather than "society, (business and artists)". [<-- intentional] The word "and" itself is there to convey grouping. Also notice that each item in the outer list starts with the same word ("why") to provide further verbal clues. Once you parse the lists properly, you will find that parallelism was maintained.
Yes nested lists have the potential to be confusing but they are useful sometimes. And if you can't come up with uses for them, it probably means that your thought patterns are way too simplistic to accurately represent reality.
The subject line of this posting contains a gramatical error in using the word "don't" instead of "doesn't". Did you honestly think, even for a second, that I didn't intend it to? Writers deliberately break the rules of grammer when it serves a purpose. In this case, the purpose was to sound derisive towards a certain grammer troll. Just as the original posting may or may not have made that mistake on purpose in order to deride those who advocate DRM. Given competent handling of nested lists (a concept beyond the meger understanding of a self proclaimed grammer cop), I will give the original author the benefit of the doubt. In any event, it using the wrong form of the word did not detract from anyone's ability to comprehend the sentence. And sometimes people just like to abuse the English language; it has certainly abused us enough.
I am not a grammer wiz. I can't, for example, remember what a subjunctive gerund is. Spelling and gramatical errors included at no extra charge.
1. How did he know I have red hair?
2. Those should be golden handcuffs.
RIAA: I own the content but you may use it
User: If I pay you I own my copy, that's not negotiable.
RIAA: Ownership is not something we're willing to give you.
User: Well my money is not something I'm willing to give you, let's see how much content you can produce without an audience.
RIAA: Government, User is using unfair negotiating tactics.
User: Unfair? BAH! You're paid to encourage you to produce content. It's not a need, it's a want, but you need MY money. You will give me what I want, or you will get no money.
Government: IANAL but I will ask counsel.
Counsel: User is quoting straight from the history of copyright, the law says he's right, until we can change the law, no matter how much RIAA pays.
DRM negotiation in a perfect world, except if you're the RIAA
Re: "Ripping a CD to mp3 isn't something copyright "permits" you to do. It isn't "fair use.""
Says who? What if I'm making this inferior copy for educational purposes? What if I rented the CD and ripped for time shifting purposes so that I could listen to the song later?
I hate when people make assumptions about fair use that are not proven. You give up the game before it's even been played.
> With modern crypto you can't logic probe
> your way around and break crypto. It is a
> hard math problem.
You are making the crypto-utopian mistake
that everyone with a cracked code makes:
The blocks-world assumption. Real world
cracking doesn't restrict itself to the world
of equations, but deals with the vulnerabilities
inherent in moving a perfect algorithm into
an imperfect environment. It just doesn't
matter how good your crypto is, if it can
be mooted with a few probe clips, or your
keys can be lifted, or the decrypted stream
intercepted, or.... the number of out-of-band
solutions to the cracking problem is limited
only by your imagination.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
One thing that this community REFUSES to pay any attention to, is the SAME laws that punish music "piracy" make the GPL possible.
You can't have it both ways guys. If you want to be able to impose restrictions on the use of code that you've released into the "public domain" then you have to accept that companies will want to use the same rules to protect "art" that they don't want to be part of the public domain.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
The parent is right, but pretty much echos the sentiment of the original article... DRM isn't fooling anyone who wants to get around it.
Most bootleg content I have seen, I have deleted. No Backups, just gone.
Stuff that is worth owning is worth paying for, and I *own* plenty of it. I rip my own CDs and have no desire to have to re-do my work due to DRM restrictions - I make MP3 files of my own CDS, not WMA's, and certainly not DRM'ed WMA's... duh!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Most people will still buy stuff, as "needed" and those that won't, won't.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Let's face it: DRM's bark is worse than its bite. Assuming DRM'ed media becomes the standard (not counting DVDs, which are already locked), it will be easy to circumvent. CSS (DVD locking system) isn't robust; look at how easy it is to decode. Remember that "locked" CDs must be able to be decoded by standard CD players, offering two logical possibilities: 1. The RIAA will alienate many customers by switching to a new CD format, requiring a new CD player. Further, because CD players don't have extensive computing capabilities (far less than DVD players, I would imagine), the locking scheme will be *simple* to decode. 2. The RIAA will lock the CD in a way that doesn't affect the track data, as to maintain compliency with all current CD players. Thus, all non-industry sanctioned players/OS's (think open-source) will be able to ignore the "extra data" (as described here ) altogether. Let's face it: the RIAA just wants to shut down the average user. Whether right or wrong, ethically speaking, I don't think it will cause problems for most /. readers.