Intel Stands Up For Consumers in Next-gen DVD War

Sanity writes "According to a Macworld story, Intel is standing up for the interests of consumers in the war between Blue-ray and HD-DVD, by making its support for either format contingent on support for 'mandatory managed copy', the ability to copy content to 'home servers' so that it can be accessed from around the home. While it is refreshing to see someone consider the (often ignored) interest of consumers in the world of DRM, it appears that 'mandatory managed copy' will still allow content producers to limit what consumers can do with the content and equipment they own well beyond the limitations imposed by copyright law. Thus the question over DRM remains: should we be policed by our own property?"

Comments

DRM will never work

[bradbeattie]

As with all DRM, if I can watch it once, I can record it without the DRM. I wish they'd understand that.

Re:DRM will never work

[TripMaster Monkey]

I wish they'd understand that.

I'm kinda glad they don't...

Re:DRM will never work

[enrico_suave]

you speaketh of the "analog loophole" which is slowly closing.

If all the ins and outs are protected digital your "if i can see it I can record it" will be bunk. Unless you're talking shakey cam pointed at your TV ;)

(and yes sure, drm can be cracked... but that's hardly the point)

e.

Re:DRM will never work

[Lucractius]

since when does a self respecting geek use "shakycam" style... Much better to rig up a stationaty mount and an automatic High resoloution digital camera pointed at a good High Def, LCD screen, (they cant protect the Audio anywhere near as well since theyd be stabing their faces in if they pissed off audiophiles will decades of high quality audio gear they like to use for listening on) and then frame step through making sure you get a good clean shot of each frame before moving on. ... days later... ther you are.. a high res non shaky pirate!

Re:DRM will never work

[l2718]

"As with all DRM, if I can watch it once, I can record it without the DRM. I wish they'd understand that."

Actually, this is only approximately the case. Indeed, you can record any analog output they produce. However, high-quality output is going to be via digial channels, and they have total control over these (imagine a DVD player that doesn't output a picture unless the TV produced a digitally signed certificate).

Now, as long as no-one forced you to by DRM'ed media (i.e. it's private industry doing whatever they want with their product), it's difficult to argue against -- exactly because it has nothing to do with copyright law. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the ??AA will try to get Congress to pass a "DRM is mandatory" law (e.g. in response to the recent ruling on the Broadcast Flag).

Till then, expect to pay more for a Trusted-Computing free PC (think of it as your "??AA cartel tax").

Re:DRM will never work

[topical_surfactant]

The "analog loophole" will persist until there are digital ports direct to the human brain's sensor cortex. With mid-level consumer hobbyist equipment, you can make decent analog copies of anything played or shown for the purpose of stimulating the eyes and ears of humans.

Re:DRM will never work

[Trigulus]

At some point the bits will be transfered unencrypted--unless all manufacturers get together and use the same encryption tech which we all know works so well (dvd). You may have to mod your hardware but its still possible to get at the information. It can be made difficult but never impossible to access and fiddle with digital information. Its a big advantage and drawback of digital tech. If information ever goes quantum then we are fucked. I dont think we are that far off (maybe 100 years) from seeing entangled particle communication systems.

Re:DRM will never work

[_Sharp'r_]

Modify it to:

1. Buy cheap TV/DVD player/Tuner/etc... that legitimately decodes the signal (or eventually simulate it in software)
2. Remove signal decoding hardware/software from cheap device
3. Output perfect digital copies to your own blank media in order to give/sell them to others to copy
4. ??????
5. Profit!

DRM just raises the dififculty level of making "perfect" digital copies, it doesn't actually prevent it as long as anyone can buy a cheap device that decodes and provides an output of the information.

It's the old "you can't have your cake and eat it too" problem. You can't let someone play something, then expect to be able to prevent them from re-recording that play of it.

What DRM does do in the long run (IMHO), is reduce the ranks of IP piracy to those who are willing to go to greater efforts to break the DRM, thus empowering the professional pirates in it for the money at the expense of their normal customer who would just copy it for themselves instead of setting up a whole worldwide internet business based on it.

Re:DRM will never work

[l2718]

"Ok, capture the certificate handshake."

I don't think you understand what digitally signed certificates are or how they work. The point of this idea (mostly encountered under the 'public key cryptography' umbrella) is that I can prove to you that I am who I claim to be without allowing you to impersonate me. In brief, the idea is as follows:

There exists two functions, "encrypt" and "decrypt" which are inverses to one another. The "encryption" function is publicly known, but only specific people (the TV in our example) knows how to "decrypt". Now the DVD player generates a random message, "encrypts" it, and gives the result to the TV. The TV "decrypts" it and returns the result, and the DVD can compare that to the original. Note that capturing the data in transit will do you no good -- the data was random! The "certificate" consisted in the ability to do something.

This depends, of course, on the encryption function being "one-way", in that it is very hard to compute the decryption functions from it. All modern cryptography depends on such functions. Finally, in case you were thinking of learning the secret ("decryption function") directly from the TV hardware, there exist tampre-proof chips that break when you try to do that.

Re:DRM will never work

[alandd]

If all the ins and outs are protected digital your "if i can see it I can record it" will be bunk. Unless you're talking shakey cam pointed at your TV ;)

(and yes sure, drm can be cracked... but that's hardly the point)


If I cannot do with the content what I want to do with the content, I will not buy the content. If I cannot buy equipment that will let me do what I want with the content, I will not buy the equipment. DRM cracked or not, if the products (content and content players) restrict me from doing what I want, the producers will lose me as a customer.

There are vast numbers of ways to spend my time that I will not sacrifice my freedom at the alter of entertainment. Maybe I will end up in the minority from the mindless masses. That's my choice. But they (entertainment industry companies) face two dilemas getting this to come about.

1. The content producers and content player companies will always be at odds. The producers want more enforced control but the player companies know that less control will increase sales. This will not change. Even Sony's movie and music arms can't fully bring the electronic side in line.

2. Even "average" users expect to be able to move content around and watch it without having to jump through hoops. There are no examples of content and products with hard DRM that have been a success. iTunes and DVD do not have hard DRM. No one I know, for example, wants to buy a song that can only be played on one computer and not moved to a player or a new computer like some music services do.

I, therefore, feel pretty comfortable that full control DRM will not succeed in the marketplace. This is why those that want it are trying to get laws passed to mandate it.

Re:DRM will never work

[|/|/|||]

The last paragraph nailed it, but you missed his point. Yes, DRM does work for preventing Joe Schmo from making a copy of a movie that he bought - but it does not stop the professional criminal who wants to make 10000 copies and sell them on the black market.

Joe Schmo should be able to make copies, but can't. In fact, the black market pirate should also be allowed to make copies, but is not allowed to sell or otherwise distribute them. Trying to prevent the crime from happening is the wrong approach in this case. The individual is responsible for obeying the law, and it's up to the law to catch him if he commits a crime.

We don't have governors in our cars to prevent us from speeding, so why should we have DRM on our media to prevent us from copying it? In the end, DRM prevents legitimate use of data, but does nothing to stop the illegal sale of that data by criminals with the means (and motivation) to break the DRM.

In that sense, DRM does not work.

The subject said it all (or most)

[GuyverDH]

No, we should not be managed, watch-dogged or even monitored by our property.

If we don't own it, then don't bother *selling* it.

If you wish to call it renting, or leasing, then call it that.

FYI- there is *NO* such thing as Intellectual Property. It doesn't exist. It's not a material object.

Re:The subject said it all (or most)

[Karma_fucker_sucker]

Or, if they're going to put all of these restrictions on the media, then charge less, and I mean a lot less. So, instead of $25 for a new release, I'll only pay $5. And if they still insist on selling it for $25 or above what I'm willing to pay, then Fuck'em! I won't buy anything. There's still plenty of good books I haven't read. And I've been reading a lot more, lately, considering the current state of American media.

Re:The subject said it all (or most)

[ScentCone]

You sound like one of those right-wing gun nuts, opposed to the smart-gun technology which can save lives.

I think you'll find that most of us gun "nuts" are not at all opposed to technology, not even that technology. What we're opposed to is the mandatory use of the technology. In other words, I'd like to know that my wife, or a friend of mine, can pick up my gun and use it with needing to cut off my fingers first, or having the Magic Bracelet on. For that matter, I'd like to be able to pick up my own gun and use it with gloves on, or whether or not my Magic Bracelet's batteries work in sub-zero weather.

I can think of some occasions where I'd like to know that only I could use my gun. But more importantly, I can think of endless circumstances when I'd want the choice to not rely on such technology. Completely aside from the fact that such tech could be highly unreliable under rough circumstances, it's the principle of the thing. And we already have trigger locks, gun safes, parents, and brains to prevent misuse. You know, the same brains that parents use to talk their kids through not killing themselves by drinking drain cleaner or driving the family car off a cliff.

You'd think, for as much as the left wing talks about choice and freedom, and bitches about the Bush administration and the Patriot Act, that the left would be the very first group to stand up and keep the government from forcing loopy personal tech into use on a simple metal tool. The murders in my county this month have been by gang members with knives. I suppose the cure for that is Smart Knife Technology(tm)?

Mandatory Smart Gun tech isn't any more appropriate than Smart Lawn Mower tech would be in really saving lives. It will, though, be a shining monument to government control in place of personal accountability. Where were the high number of gun deaths back when you could mail-order a gun from Sears and have it shipped to your house? What's changed since then... then lethality of guns, or the culture? Fix the no-consequences culture, and leave the machetes, knives, baseball bats, guns, flammable liquids, garden fertilizer, and family cars out of the personal behavior regulation equation.

No such thing as Intellectual Property?

[Mustang Matt]

How can there be no such thing?!

I just bought 40 acres of Intellectual Property on ebay and got an incredible 1.9% finance rate!

No?

[ucahg]

should we be policed by our own property

No, but the moment someone breaks fair use and delves into full-scale copyright violation, they lose their right to honestly answer in the negative. However, for those who do follow fair-use laws, we should not be limited by our technology by treating us as guilty until forced (by way of DRM) to be innocent.

Re:No?

[LordoftheWoods]

Bah. DRM wouldn't be a major obstacle without the DMCA. That law gives copyright holders unlimited power to protect their content by making it illegal to circumvent protections no matter how trivial it is. The discs or players aren't the real problem, the DMCA is. Accept this and then complain to your local politicians. Don't waste your time here, since if the DMCA is changed you could circumvent whatever bs protection they have (and you know someone will break any such protection scheme eventually (CSS)).

Intel protects business interests! News at 11.

[PCM2]

Intel is big into the "digital home" market, with its VIIV platform and various peripherals designed to serve content over network links. Of course it wouldn't want this business compromised by controls in upcoming DVD formats. Hardly the champion of the little guy; Intel is championing its own business interests, nothing more.

Re:Intel protects business interests! News at 11.

[compro01]

doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still doing the right thing.

They're not standing up for consumers...

[the_skywise]

They want to keep sales of PCs going by allowing you to transfer contents back and forth between your server.

Next you'll be telling me that they're standing up for my rights by including mandatory DRM management at the hardware level and putting a serial# on each chip to uniquely identify a PC.

Never-ending Battle

[evil agent]

Every time a restriction or limitation is imposed, a work-around will be developed. Necessity is the mother of invention, and you can't just disregard the will of the people.

Stand up for consumers???

[ChrisF79]

This is completely psuedo-altruistic. Intel is standing up for themselves as it has the opportunity to create a market for these "home servers." Although this may be good for consumers, this is fully in Intel's best interest, plain and simple.

Sometimes it's gets pretty stupid around here

[ifwm]

"Thus the question over DRM remains: should we be policed by our own property?"

Well, since it's only your property if you choose to buy it, then YES. Not because it's right or fair, but because YOU ACCEPTED THE DEAL.

If you don't like it, don't buy it in the first place.

Re:Sometimes it's gets pretty stupid around here

[enrico_suave]

"
Well, since it's only your property if you choose to buy it, then YES. Not because it's right or fair, but because YOU ACCEPTED THE DEAL."

While on principle I agree folks should boycott DRM-laden devices... you sometimes don't know you've been crippled by DRM until it's too late.

You bring home your uber progressive scan DVD player only to find out it won't do anything other than 480p out of the analog component inputs (i.e. 720p,1080i, 1080p ONLY through the digital "protected" outputs!) For the sake of argument lets say you didn't figure this out until after the return period passed. ;)

And let's not start slurping on intel's knob just yet, after all thanks to intel and the like we won't have much choice but to be computing on a "trusted computing" platform which will probably only allow approved DRM laden media software to run on it (yeah that's a little FUD'ish on my part, but I don't think it's too far off the realm of possibility)

e.

What if DRM were for regular products...

[Ossus_10]

1) lipstick with a DNA detector to see if you let your friend borrow it 2) your car requires fingerprint identification on stearing wheel 3) your lawnmower can only mow your own lawn 4) flashlights only work within a 5 mile radius of your house At least they can never DRM my pokemon cards. I can trade those puppies as much as my heart desires.

Consumer Interest or viiv's future?

[swimgeek]

Has the decision just to do with consumer's interest or is it more related to sale of their viiv based products? Consumers won't buy PC based digital home theatres, if they won't be able to rip of their movies from the disks (HD-DVD or Blu-ray) and put it on their PC's hard disk.
Just my 2 cents

drm simply doesn't matter

[circletimessquare]

years of endless debate and millions in funding, and any product that is released will be hacked within the month

when you pit the well-funded r&d department of a major corporation against a million highly motivated, poor teenagers who want their media fix, the teenagers win, every single time

you can't control the consumer

listen again, very carefully, dear corporate megalomaniacs:

you can't control the consumer

make it too constrictive, and no one will buy

give them no other option than to buy you, and it will be hacked

that's really about it

so give it up

Argh, DVDs suck

[saberworks]

It already pisses me off that they won't let me skip the FBI warning or the movie studio splash screen. Can't fastfoward, can't skip, can't press "DVD Menu" - drives me nuts. This crap has gone far enough, they should have mandatory "Do whatever you want with it" clause instead. I guess they will try to say that skipping watching the studio splash screen is from now on illegal and protected by the DMCA.

don't like DRM?

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

then don't buy DRM.

it really, really is that simple.

if people don't buy DRM, companies will make products without it and lobby to remove laws stopping them from selling the products people will buy.

however the chance of Joe Consumer giving a shit == null.

Re:don't like DRM?

[LordoftheWoods]

I disagree. When Joe consumer wants to do something that the DRM restricts, he will realize what the disadvantages are. However, you can be 90% sure that by the time Joe figures out whats happened, it will be too late (for at least him, and probably for most other Joes as well). See the beauty in this for the corporations? The same thing goes for clickwrap licenses--nobody knows what the restrictions are until they are prevented from doing something practical or are hit with a lawsuit. The corps love it because they can stick anything in there and nobody will know any better. It _should_ be illegal or at least invalid as a contract. At least with clickwrap you have the option of reading it, but in all honesty who does that?

Managed copy and attack trees

[Wesley Felter]

Without managed copy, HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies are protected by AACS, and AACS is either cracked or it isn't.

But managed copy allows movies to be trans-DRMed into Windows Media DRM (and possibly others, like FairPlay), thus introducing an OR into the attack tree. To access the content, you only have to break AACS or WMDRM (or FairPlay or whatever). This makes the overall system much weaker (which is good or bad, depending on your viewpoint).

And BTW, why isn't Intel lobbying the DVD Forum/DVD CCA to allow managed copy for regular DVDs? It'll be a curious world where you're legally allowed to copy HD-DVDs but not "inferior" DVDs.

Never will I buy DRM-hardware

[bruunb]

How can a major player on the international market who oppenly wants "fair use" support in the "new" DVD-hardware be a bad thing? I mean, if you don't like Intel pushing for at least "fair use" support in the hardware then what do you want? Do you want to be able to make further installs beyond what you are allowed to by DRM (that's only one install) or don't you like that a huge firm actually tries to do some good instead of what M$ wants (total DRM control of every machine)?

If it ends up with Intel, AMD, IBM, ARM, et.al. only producing DRM hardware then I'll stay with my current hardware (I'm not a gamer). I'd rather wait an extra second/minute/hour for some piece of software to do it's processing than being robbed of my rights given to me by eons of trade traditions and by law when I buy hardware or software - If I don't own what I buy then why am I paying for it as if I an buying it and not renting it under some strange company's oppinion of what I can and cannot do with it???

I am a huge fan of F/OSS, but never ever will I buy hardware that only works with DRM or software for that matter. Might I add that I havn't bought a piece of software since '97 when I made a total switch to GNU/Linux!

By the way, DRM stands for Dumb, Ridiculous Monopoly.

should we get to read before we sign?

[PsiPsiStar]

What I'm sick of is this whole "sell a product with one hand and revoke rights with the other."

If they're going to sell a DVD, they should have to list any kinds of user limitations up front. Can't skip the FBI screen? List it. etc. If you don't agree, you don't buy.
I'm sure that the MPAA could develop a standard, so announcing this info would be as simple as a short acronym on the label or in the ad.

If they're going to revoke my rights to the unlimited use of a product, it needs to be spelled out before they sell the thing to me, NOT afterwards. None of this 'well, what did you expect?' nonesense. The burden is on them to be upfront. Shrinkwrap denial of rights should be illegal.

Well...

[LeonGeeste]

I hate to be bad guy here, and I especially hate how I'll unjustifiably lose my positive karma for saying thus, but when people say things like:

it appears that 'mandatory managed copy' will still allow content producers to limit what consumers can do with the content and equipment they own well beyond the limitations imposed by copyright law.

I cringe. You do not own the content. You bought specific use rights. They sold you the content contingent on certain usage standards you agreed to. Ergo, you only own the right to use it in very specific ways. You do not own the content simpliciter, as much as you would like to. DRM simply enforces the contract you agreed to and which the law recognizes.

Re:Well...

[Convergence]

There is no contract with the purchase of a DVD. All there is is copyright law restricting the rights of public exhibition, duplication and a few others. If I wanted to do something with the DVD beyond copyright law, only THEN would any license be necessary. However, in the typical case, there is no license necessary --- because legitimate use of the DVD like playing it in linux, backing it up, playing an import, is already legal. I own the DVD, I own the DVD player. I don't own the copyright, but none of the above requires posessing the copyright.

DRM attempts to enforces a superset of restrictiosn above and beyond copyright law: That I can't play a DVD in an 'unauthorized player', that my DVD player refuses to activate its high-quality digital outputs, that I cannot fast-forward past commercials. That my DVD player refuses to play dvd's purchased on vacation. And then the DMCA makes it illegal to bypass these controls.

Worse, there is no limit as to what other controls may be applied by DRM, controls far above and beyond what copyright law allows.

Re:Floppy copy restrictions?

[krbvroc1]

Well, I was around during that time and most consumers rejected copy protected floppies in the 80's. Copy protection on floppies was a problem. It was not always compatible and caused problems. Some argued that some of the schemes even put extra wear and tear on the floppy drives trying to seek to invalid sectors. There was also the fair-use argument that people couldn't make backups of their valuable media for their own use.

Some more expensive programs came with 'dongles' that were even worse. In order to run the software you had to reconfigure your parallel port with a hardware device. If you ran several of these high end programs such as Autocad you had all these dongles daisy chained - it was insane. Plus it caused problems with certain software / printers.

Despite the so called copy protection, people still defeated it, yet everyone suffered. I just don't think DRM works - its costs are way higher than its benefits. I've got 6 machines here at home, I can see DRM restricting me to one machine or only working under windows despite that I dual boot XP / Linux.

I love to read all the free marketeers here tell us that the free market will fix this - it won't. All the large studios who control the content are supporting this en block. The consumer doesn't stand a chance. Any concessions that are made might allow me the 'privledge' of copying only on a machine running on an Intel(c) Trusted Computer under Microsoft(c) Longhorn but thats it.

Intel wants unification, not dual support

[Caesar]

A clarification is needed.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051004-5385 .html

As you can see from my coverage here, Intel isn't hinging support for Blu-ray on Managed Copy support. They're going to have to support it either way. Rather, Intel is trying to get the two parties together again to talk about unification, but they're stressing the importance of managed copy to the whole discussion.