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DRM Advocate Violates DRM
Alsee writes "A year and a day after arguing DRM was good for business, acceptable to consumers, and necessary in today's world, JupiterMedia VP and Research Director Michael Gartenberg comes face to face with DRM reality, downloads a circumvention tool, violates DRM, and blogs about his MS Reader DRM issues being solved ... permanently. Perhaps now he would be interested in the EFF Action Center where Americans can quickly and easily ask your Representative to co-sponsor the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act."
... such an irony. Its like advocating for death penalty and finds yourself in a electric chair with the executioner asking you "Medium Rare or Well done?"
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
To quote Mike from his original blog last year:
"Our research shows clearly that DRM is only an issue to consumers when it's technology they keep bumping into."
That remains true. His problem now w/ the MS DRM is that he's bumping into it. If the DRM was improved so that it would get out of his way, he would still have no issue with it.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
1. force drm down our throats
2. circumvent drm to do it
3. ????????
4. profit!!!
Note that he still feels DRM is a necessary evil, just so long as there's a way to circumvent it...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
this probably is not the only guy doing this. It is just like celebrities that tell you to not do drugs, right after they finish clearing the bong. I really wouldn't be surprised if Bionic Bill himself has violated DRM at some point in time.
-- Yes, I work for the government, and yes I am watching you.
You can be for DRM, but against shitty implementations thereof?
No wait, that would involve too much thought and judgement. Black and white is so much easier.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Oh ho ho... we've gone from praising DRM to circumventing it, haven't we? This is exactly the problem with DRM, when the DRM is so bad it restricts the legitimate use of the media it's protecting. I like how he praises DRM but says it's a "necessary evil" and is willing to circumvent it when it inhibits him.
Sorry Mike, you can't have your DRM and circumvent it when it's in the way too y'know.
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To the agencies and get him arrested for violation of the DMCA?
Finally, a GOOD use for the DMCA... putting people behind bars that support the DMCA.
Mod me flamebait, if you want... but DON'T mod this funny! I'm being serious...
-=Lothsahn=-
Re-read the comments he made: From the first article, last sentence "DRM is a necessary technology that need not burden consumers, tech vendors or content providers."
From the second one, last sentence. "Good case study for firms on HOW NOT TO IMPLEMENT DRM solutions."
He didn't make a 180 degree turn on the issue. He was critical of this particular implementation of DRM (and the general cluelessness of Microsoft tech support when it came to his esoteric issue).
It's a small step for him in a better direction, perhaps, but he hasn't changed his position from reading those remarks.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
The blog entry (TFBE?) highlights a huge problem with DRM schemes. You legitimately obtain a copy of a protected work. Years later, something breaks or becomes obsolute. Now you're screwed, because you can't use the protected work that you paid for. You have two choices: buy another copy, or break the DRM. But the latter makes you criminal under the DMCA.
This madness has to stop!
If God had meant for man to see the sunrise, He would have scheduled it later in the day.
Advocating and promoting the use of DRM - $1,000,000
Blogging about your own circumvention of it - $10
Getting caught in the act, and ridiculed by the millions that view Slashdot - Priceless.
-Imidazole
Hilarious Office Prank!
Did he just break the DMCA, in a very public way? Or is this not the case.
It sure looks like the did the sort of thing that folks do, that can get them in huge trouble -- he attempted to circumvent a technological device there to protect Copyright.
Is he really so dumb as to blog about it?
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
nice to see its bi-partisan names on the bill.
Goes to show that evil is not a party line problem; its a congressional whore problem, spanning both parties.
I hope that this passes. Reasonable R's and D's need to get behind this kind of thing, putting the assholes like Hollings and Hatch out to pasture...
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
He still supports DRM, but only "good" implementations of it.
What he does not get is that DRM *has* to be intrusive to work. DRM is based on having someone other than the owner of the machine control the data on that machine. If you want to move that data to another machine, you have to request permission and it had to be hard to get pewrmission, otherwise people will take advantage of you and copy the data more times than allowed.
DRM is all about control. Control does not work unless you show them who is the boss early on.
An interesting side effect of this is what it is teaching Americans. It is teaching them that they only way they can do what they want in society on a day to day basis is to break the law.
Contemptable laws generate contempt for ALL laws.
Or as Macalypse the Yonger put it...
"Imposition of order = Escalation of Disorder".
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
As far as I read this, he read content that he legally owned. He did use a different piece of software than the "correct" s/w, but that required him to own a copy of the correct software. He did not redistribute it.
Is this really a violation?
It's certainly a poor advertisement for MicroSoft. Apparently security isn't their only weakness. ;-)
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Oh ho ho ho, it's about time he got a taste of his own medicine. Now he knows what it's like to be on the recieving end of DRM that restricts the legitimate use of media, media that customers paid for.
Notice how fast it the DRM was defeated as well. From TFA, it took Michael only a few minutes to convert the DRM-ed eBooks over to PDF. Compared to the tech support nightmare that he went through, it's obvious why DRM is and always will be, a doomed technology.
DRM does nothing except hinder the legit and paid-for use of media by honest customers, and mildly thwarts those who are determined to break it. Hopefully (but don't count on it), this will be a wake-up call to anyone seeking to implement a DRM system. When one of DRM's great apologists breaks out the "illegal" tools, you know there's a problem.
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Apple's DRM, in the iTunes Music Store, is hardly there at all. It's "nudge nudge wink wink" DRM, it's "honor system" DRM. They should call it "digital rights hinting". Apple's old "Rip, Mix, Burn" ads pretty much tell you how to remove DRM from their files, if you're not prepared to use any of the widely-available HYMN variants. Just... change the order a little. Yeh, you take a one-time hit in the audio quality... but if you care about audio quality why aren't you buying and ripping CDs instead of lossy-compressed files anyway?
DRM is acceptable when it's just strong enough to remind you that this isn't freely redistributable content, but not strong enough to actually prevent you from breaking it when you need to.
That's what Microsoft doesn't get. That's what Michael Gartenberg doesn't get. Strong DRM will inevitably screw you over. If Apple used strong DRM in iTunes I'd have been really pissed when I ran out of authorizations due to a bad disk that forced me to reinstall my OS a couple of times... because even though Apple was willing to reset all my computers AGAIN, it took a while, and having all my music burned onto audio CDs meant it wasn't actually held hostage by the DRM...
That's why Apple's DRM works. Because it doesn't. If it did, it wouldn't.
Good DRM = Good. Don't try to go around it, that's bad.
Bad DRM = Bad. It's good to circumvent it if you need to.
Um, so who gets to decide what's good and what's bad?
In the words of Homer, "Ummn, I don't know, the Coast Guard?"
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
https://tips.fbi.gov/
Let him get the taste...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Good case study for firms on HOW NOT TO IMPLEMENT DRM solutions. Wrong. Which generates more revenue: selling people the same content over and over again each time they buy a new computer, or giving it to them once and letting them migrate to any other machine for the rest of their life? He is obviously forgetting the main purpose of DRM: to make consumers pay for the same content over and over again! I'd say Microsoft's DRM is optimally designed to acheive Microsoft's goals: derive continuing revenue from something you used to pay for only once.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I sincerely hope that someone, somewhere, takes him to court over this. It would publically shed light on how ridiculous the DMCA really is, and we'd have a better chance at fighting it. Or we'd at least have a precedent set that allows us to crack things we legally own.
He is right up there with the anti-handgun advocates who own guns for their own protection -- he wants everybody else to follow rules that he feels he is personaly above. I say we contact the appropriate copyright protection organisation and have him audited, since he has already publicly admitted to breaking the law (DMCA)!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
DRM needs to become commonplace so that companies can see it doesn't work. Once cracks and cracking tools become widespread enough that one Joe Average can say to another "oh you just need to download this program and it will work ok" it will become apparent that DRM in any usable form is able to be circumvented.
Once DRM becomes nearly useless, the incentive to include it with products declines, and we begin to see more and more DRM-free software. Even though we can see it's useless, the computer world needs to make these mistakes so it can learn from them and hopefully, not repeat them.
Please, for the love of the cause, quit asking people to use a form to send their Congressperson spam. They don't read it and it sends a poor message about the kinds of people who care about the issue.
Instead, type out a personal letter, put it in the envelope, stamp it, and send it. The time investment is considerably larger and I can assure you that it doesn't go unnoticed.
I've had the opprotunity to work in the offices of several legislators, and phone calls (those were with a state legislator) & e-mails were replied to in bulk with generic standard responses, such as the "We are considering measure _____, and appreciate your input" that you may have recieved if you sent in an e-mail. Letters, on the other hand, get read. Especially if they're well written.
So take the time to clearly articulate your reasoning and use the good old-fashioned snail mail. You'll get a lot more done.
Who's he to say that this is a "Good case study for firms on HOW NOT TO IMPLEMENT DRM solutions."?
.lit files. Is there a governing body that overseas any potential abuse by corporations by use of DRM?
This is what Microsoft intended when they put DRM on his
You can't say that DRM is a great solution and continue to say so after you had to (illegally if you don't believe in the fair use act which seems to be getting stomped nowadays) free up what you paid for with a hack.
Companies will shove DRM down your throats so that you will have not be able to use what you paid for on a competitors product. It's just good business nowadays
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
You can both discuss common life experiences together -- like hypocrisy!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This is quite sad. The entire Slashdot crowd is being very unfair, here. He didn't change what he was saying - he said one thing and then did another. That's totally different. He castigated the community about how things should be, but when faced with harsh reality, he broke the law and tried to convince you that the law is not at fault - someone else made him do it. It's not that the law didn't protect him as a consumer of content, it's that the producer of content did a poor job - so now, he had to break the law - but they still shouldn't fix the law.
Get ready for office!
Education is the silver bullet.
I'm a fan of a lot of the products Microsoft produces, and I was even a Microsoft MVP (Most Valued Professional) for several years.
I was also employed as a Windows Media DRM expert for several years.
I have to say, Microsoft's eBook DRM is probably the worst DRM I have ever encountered. I frequently buy eBooks, but now I have books I can't use. There is no way to de-activate an old piece of hardware from their hardware list, so after 5 equipment changes (and as geeks we update our PCs and PDAs reguarly) you're screwed.
They promise another activation every 180 days or something on their. But that's a total lie. A complete falsehood. It says you can mail support and ask for more activations, but you just get denied every time.
The reason their technical support knows nothing about the DRM is because the whole MS LIT/MS Reader project appears to be abandonware. The reader app hasn't had any non-critical updates in years.
MICROSOFT! PLEASE! We just want to read the books we bought! *sob*
I've had some bad experience with Adobe's DRM too - it won't let you re-flow DRM'd books so I can't read them on my PDA. I have to remote desktop into my PC from my Pocket PC to read them in bed.. and that's just a total scroll-fest then.
Don't make me have to go back to using tree-based books...
Of course, if it ever was uncrackable, they wouldn't be able to sell version x+1.
Not if the DRM vendors rent the patent licenses and trade secret know-how to publishers rather than sell them. Then the vendor would be able to sell version x+1 when the publisher's contract expires.
It is extremely important that we continue to build a hardware infrastructure capable of enforcing rigid DRM. This enables me to do things like, for example, prepare a confidential document, send it to someone, and have it NOT be copyable.
But the availability of the technology is a separate issue from the use of the technology - something bittorrent whoring slashdot users should understand easily, but apparently seem to have a brain-freeze when applying the concept to DRM.
Just as we don't accept the argument that bittorrent is illegal merely because it can be used for illegal activity, or is in fact mostly used for illegal activity, we should not also label DRM bad just because it can be used for bad purposes.
DRM doesn't stop you from copying your music. Music distributors putting DRM on the music is what stops you.
Wither the technology is at fault or the people who use the technology inappropriately are at fault. We can't have it one way when we like the technology and the other way when we don't.
paintball
"This enables me to do things like, for example, prepare a confidential document, send it to someone, and have it NOT be copyable."
What you describe is fundamentally impossible to do.
You can wrap it with ten tons of DRM Snake oil, but if the recipient can read it, it can be copied. Accessing = copying.
Well my idea of DRM (stuff that "D"isturbs my "R"esplendent "M"ind) is that whatever impinges upon my senses is mine to play with as I will. OR KILL ME. Then again what Orthodox Thelemic Odinist Subgenius would argue otherwise ?
Witness blackbirds in England who have taken to include the sounds of car alarms in their calls... (After all this could be another bird trying to muscle in on their territory).
The attempted enforcement of DRM on all current "Bit Manipulating" technology sums up how shallow, unimaginative, uninteresting and shite our 21st century culture currently is. Working "uncrakabull" DRM (which will never occur, trust me) is the ultiate masturbatory fantasy of the utterly untalented who only seek to catch and control the output of the inspired (who will do what they do regardless of reward) In the long term all it will mean is that large parts of DRMd culture will be forgotten. And quite frankly it's for the best.
Any good artist will do what they've always done... i.e. make a living by performing their art live or doing custom work for willing patrons.
Watching the retard "media crowd" arguing over who owns the "rights" (sic) to pimp the inspired work of artisits reminds me of nothng more than flies arguing over who owns the right to the dung of an elephant.
In't booze grate ????
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
And, thanks to Google cache, here is the link to the program he used:
http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
This enables me to do things like, for example, prepare a confidential document, send it to someone, and have it NOT be copyable.
Why would you want to do that? If you don't trust the person on the receiving end not to copy the document... well, you're screwed, because if it's that important and they can see it, they can copy it.
Every other form of information hiding is different from DRM because you are worried about an unintended third party viewing your message. Even then it is extremely difficult to do right, and impossible to guarantee. With DRM, it is the intended recipient who you are worried about. You're trying to simultaneously give them access to the message, yet not allow them to share it with anyone else. This goes way beyond mere encryption in terms of impossibility.
The enemies of Democracy are
Now we can see why Jobs wants Apple in bed with Intel.
See, now, that's not a bug, that's a feature, if you're in the hardware market.
I've got to force feed you a pile of nonsense so that I can declare defeat, and sell you some more stuff, and declare victory.
See sine wave.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
so... why the HELL was Dimitry held in jail?
The LoC's exemptions to 1201(a)(1) cover circumvention acts, not circumvention devices. Dmitry was held for the latter.
You can wrap it with ten tons of DRM Snake oil, but if the recipient can read it, it can be copied. Accessing = copying.
For instance, if I am a commie spy, and you send me a DRM'd double-super-secret document that becomes visible on my screen, such that it can be seen and read, well, I can utilize some archaic technology to circumvent the DRM, in fact, this is a classic commie spy technique: I can write it down on paper or take a picture of the screen with a camera.
This public service announcement was just to drive home the point about how unbelievably stupid the thought of using DRM for protecting secret documents is. If the destination isn't trusted, you can't send them information. It simply doesn't matter how you diddle with it.
Jeff
I think its important that Mr. Gartenberg, after exhausting reasonable methods to restore access to his content, then immediately reached for a (presumably) illegal DMCA-breaking tool to gain access. By his own advocacy these tools will not be available if his viewpoint prevails.
In his follow-up blog entries he completely avoids this point.
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
And it looks like the bill sponsor is the Representative from Slashdot, Boucher. Seriously, I love this guy (and I'm kinda sad that he represents Virginia instead of my state). Take a look at the list of legislation he's been involved in.
Reading down the list, he's opposed the RIAA, the DMCA, argued for fair use, argued for privacy laws, argued against the broadcast flag, argued against additional RIAA laws (and urged that the RIAA simply lower prices to provide a more appealing product), in favor of allowing features for Linux, worked on weakening the DMCA, pushed an anti-spam law (though admittedly not the most stringent of the proposals), pushed for the Do Not Call List, opposed DoJ anti-P2P propaganda attempts, and been a proponent of pro-VoIP laws. His arguments are quite tech-savvy -- if the man does not understand technology himself, he has some pretty sharp advisors. Many of these stances have been those that oppose major lobbyist groups (direct marketing, RIAA, MPAA, etc).
Stick about a hundred more like him in Congress and throw Orrin Hatch to the wolves and I'd have a damn lot of respect for the legislative branch.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
http://www.apple.com/itunes/burn.html
This is great. There is now three kinds of DRM:
1) Crappy (Good) DRM
2) Strong (Bad) DRM
3) *new* Questionable DRM - the kind of DRM that confuses you when you futz with it. Hmmmm... did I just break the law? I wonder...