European DRM News

burgburgburg writes "Two new fronts opening in the battles over digital rights management. First: news.com is reporting how French authorities are investigating EMI France and music retailer Fnac over anticopying technology included on CDs that allegedly renders them unplayable on some systems. The investigation began after the Bureau of Competition's antifraud unit (DDCCRF) received complaints from a consumer group known as UFC-Que Choisir. Second: BusinessWeek reports that the EC is investigating Microsoft to make sure that they don't illegally dominate the field of digital rights management. Regulators have told Microsoft and its partner Time Warner that they are looking into their plan to acquire the company ContentGuard, which makes DRM software because of concerns that it will create or strengthen Microsoft dominance of the field."

Comments

Region oding..

[t_allardyce]

When is someone going to investigate region coding? its anti-competative and has absolutely nothing to do with copy protection.

Re:Region oding..

[lfourrier]

http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do? reference=SPEECH/01/275&format=HTML&aged=1&languag e=EN&guiLanguage=en
too lazy to put the correct link...

important facts:
date: 11/06/2001 (not iso, so don't know if june or november)

subject: speech from Mario Monti, European Commissioner for Competition Policy

extract: Another area where the Commission is giving direct follow-up to the concerns of individual consumers is that of Digital Video Disc pricing. We have received a significant number of complaints from private citizens on this matter. In each case, the complaint is virtually the same namely, that DVD prices are significantly higher in the EU than in the USA.

Whilst the prices of many products are higher in the EU than in the US, the major film production companies in agreement with the major equipment manufacturers have introduced a worldwide regional coding system for DVDs. Under this system, a DVD sold in one of the world's six regions cannot be played on a DVD player sold in another region. The thrust of the complaints that we have been receiving is that such a system allows the film production companies to charge higher DVD prices in the EU because EU consumers are artificially prevented from purchasing DVDs from overseas.

As a direct result of these complaints, we have initiated contacts with the major film production companies. We will examine closely what they have to say. Whilst I naturally recognise the legitimate protection which is conferred by intellectual property rights, it is important that, if the complaints are confirmed on the facts, we do not permit a system which provides greater protection than the intellectual property rights themselves, where such a system could be used as a smoke-screen to allow firms to maintain artificially high prices or to deny choice to consumers.

My services have had contacts on this issue with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which has also sought clarifications from the major film production companies. I have noted with great interest the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's conclusion that the regional coding system imposes a 'severe restriction of choice' on consumers. The Commission will need to determine whether there are similarly negative effects in the EU which could fall within the scope of the competition rules.

concrete actions : none to my knowledge as of 3 years later

Re:Its just a fund rasier

[freedom_india]

Nope. Not EU. Theu ACTUALLY investigate and FINE them. The company is prohibited from repeating the same mistake on penalty of criminal action against its management. Take SCO in Germany for example.

Re:Well....

[st1d]

Very true, but there's a gamble there as well. For instance, if MS and T-W were to come up with one system, and other groups came up with their own, there would be the temptation to break the other guy's system, to drive artists to your "better" DRM system (DMCA items aside). Especially if MS has desktop dominance and an interest in promoting one system over another, seeing as they're the only folks that know how their OS interacts with the software.

DRM is actually a beautiful catch-22 for MS. They can cash out any way you build it, because all they need to do is break/leak competing software, and competitors are screwed. (And as history shows, MS has no problem doing this when the situation calls.) So, MS builds a system, IP's it to death, and gets to call the shots on who gets to do what. Even if someone were to do the same for another OS (not that OSS folks are real big on the DRM idea), they're risking MS's ire.

So, in one smooth "righteous" move, MS automatically sweeps up the competition. Thanks to the DMCA and other fine laws, reverse engineering and so on means that no other OS users will be able to listen to music on their PCs. Then, while sales fall, those laws will get tightened even more , until using another OS is all but illegal.

It kind of reminds me of school. Someone would screw things up for everybody else, because the boneheads in charge (in this case, congress), can't see that they need to deal with the real problem (putzes that load 500 CDs onto the internet). Instead, they want to "protect" everybody, so we all have to sit back and allow our computers to be loaded down with stuff to protect us from what we MIGHT be tempted to do.

Meanwhile, the majority of people respond with, "Baaa. I just want to listen to music. Baaa!" People often can't believe that the Inquisition happened without more people standing up against it, yet we're watching it unfold right in front of her eyes. Gotta love how history repeats itself.

Palladium

[Steve Cowan]

I may be missing something here, but is there anything new on the evil Microsoft master plan known as 'Palladium'? Is this ultimately what's under investigation?

Seems to me that Palladium is the uber-DRM trump card that Microsoft has up its sleeve - just far enough off that it doesn't warrant "investigation" (yet), but still close enough that it makes me worry for the future of personal computing.

Only in the EU!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, oh please, I wish a US legislator would say this someday:

we do not permit a system which provides greater protection than the intellectual property rights themselves

followed by, "... and we've given you enough protection. In fact, we're thinking of repealing some if you don't go out and do what you said you would!"

Does anyone remember the legislative reason for the DMCA? The reason was to encourage copyright holders to increase the availability of music and video online to accelerate the transition to broadband lines. What happened? The entertainment companies got their law, and then started hunting down copyright infringers on websites, while meanwhile Napster arose, and then decentralized P2P, and then, yes, broadband adoption did begin to accelerate - the predicted effects did occur, but not because the media companies advantaged themselves of the protection the new law offered, but conversely, because citizens saw fit to break the law to achieve the ends the media companies promised in hearings publically and in closed sessions supposedly that they would implement.

With the same tongue-embedded-firmly-in-cheek tone one asks "How many mice does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" I ask, "How many times can the media industry lie to a Congresscritter before Congress screams, 'NO!'?"

I say to the hell with the lot of them! Nuke 'em all; and let god sort them out.

Re:DRM

[Audacious]

The truth about copy protection is that there IS no copy protection.

The first rule of computer programming states:

1. You must start somewhere.

The first rule of computer hacking is:

1. Since you have to start somewhere, then that "somewhere" is where you start hacking.

To put that in English: In order for your program/music/movie/whatever to be readable you have to provide some mechanism so the information becomes usable by the computer. Whereever that location is - that is where you start from to pick apart what they are doing and how they are doing it. Thus:

A. If you encode the information into a machine's prom you just desolder the prom and dump the code (or use hooks to latch onto each of the pin's legs and watch what it does as it does it).

B. If you release software to be able to read a disk (CD/DVD/Floppy/etc...) then you just get a disassembler to regenerate the original code.

So no matter what you do - so long as you have to let the user have the hardware/software, then you've just made it available to a hacker who will break the code.

SO! Knowing this, what are the companies really doing? If only a tiny fraction of the entire population of the earth (8 Billion people) are working against you why are the rest of us being discriminated against? Wouldn't it be better to just not do any kind of protection at all and put your money towards finding those who are doing this and prosecuting them?

Seems to me that these idiots are doing both. Which is why I have stopped having anything to do with movies and music. Let them keep their movies and music. I'll just read books instead, play the games I've written (or that are given away for free) and have a great time without them! :-)