Slashdot Mirror
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.
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 $1/track, that piracy would vanish. Well, they took us up on that challenge, and piracy hasn't vanished.
These people/companies are getting desperate. Sure, I don't think DRM is a silver bullet either, but it is at least slowing the problem until they can figure out a better, long-term solution.
The real thing we should be worrying about in all this is the laws they're passing in the meantime, like the DMCA. While the companies themselves will evolve through this, the rights-stripping provisions enshrined in legislation will be much, much harder to phase out. Laws are rarely repealed, and THAT is what should concern us.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Erm... Brad Pitt was supposed to be a Greek, not a Geek nor a Roman.
Not Brad Pitt the actor, you goofball. Brad Pitt the famous Gaul tribal leader of 96-50 BC.
Actually, it seems to be a re-hash of eveything we have known that is evil about DRM for the last few years, just all prettied up and in the same place. I despair that these arguments have much worth, particularly when you are talking to a corporate entity that has twice been convicted of monopolistic practices. It seems naive to me to even expect to be able to make such a difference. Since I live in the U$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......
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.
No, DRM will stop 14 year old girls from sharing CD collections with their friends so they will all get copies from Kazaa, instead of one person in the group buying each one and then sharing with their friends. I've had problems in the past where copy protection has prevented me from exercising my rights to a product (even installing a piece of software I've bought, because I took the disk with me when I and my laptop left the house, but didn't pick up the manual which had the CD key on the back). My response? To bypass the copy protection. This often wastes a lot of my time, and in the future I avoid products from manufacturers who have wasted my time in the past.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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'm a 14-year-old nerd who can burn cds for 14-year-old chicks. How does DRM help then? The worst it can do is wreck my life by letting people find out that I have their cds on me, and they'd think that I like that band. But how does that stop the copying?
In order stop copying of cds, we must lower the nerd to cd and the nerd to non-nerd ratio to 1/10000 and 1/500. Any more nerds, and DRM will be useless.
Here's a better explanation for non-geeks.
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.
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.
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
...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 ---
Actually, I think what Cory was trying to convince them of is that they're being suckered into defending a business model they're not invested in -- namely, the Hollywood/RIAA model. (And, as a side note, that given the option between defending a dying business model and developing a new one, the new one is almost always the better bet.)
His point is that Microsoft, like Sony with VCR, has no incentive to make a less capable tool.
DRM should be seen, from Microsoft's perspective, as a Linux/free software incentive program: if you build deliberately crippled tooks, you give your users reason to walk away from them.
And Microsoft has (or should have) far more interest in retaining the userbase than it does in
receiving micropayments every time somebody plays a song on a DRM'd system.
It also bears pointing out, of course, that there is a version of events in which DRM is a winner for Microsoft -- it's the version where we posit strict legal enforcement of restrictions on the right to create new digital technology and innovation is never allowed to outstrip DRM. Setting aside for the moment the moral arguments against that, Cory points out that history suggests that betting on the 1984 vision of DRM and computers is pretty long odds.
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
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.
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!
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.
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 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?