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Info on Intel's Viiv DRM
An anonymous reader writes "CNET went to Intel's Viiv launch in Australia and scored some interesting info about Viiv's DRM scheme. From the article: '[Don] MacDonald also told CNET.com.au that Viiv won't be testing to see if the content being played is pirated from networks such as BitTorrent. He believes that it's not Intel's job to be policing downloads and that it's wrong to assume that all consumers are criminals. As such, Viiv won't test for watermarks or other red flags that reveal pirated content, allowing any type of media to be played.' Another choice quote from the article: 'MacDonald is confident that piracy won't be a significant issue for Viiv, as Intel promises to make content easier to buy than it is to pirate.'"
I lost count of how many times I said "yet" while reading this...
Maybe I should take my cynical hat off and read it again.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
Easy to use is even nicer.
What?
Viiv won't be testing to see if the content being played is pirated from networks such as BitTorrent. He believes that it's not Intel's job to be policing downloads and that it's wrong to assume that all consumers are criminals. As such, Viiv won't test for watermarks or other red flags that reveal pirated content, allowing any type of media to be played.' Another choice quote from the article: 'MacDonald is confident that piracy won't be a significant issue for Viiv, as Intel promises to make content easier to buy than it is to pirate.'"
Translation: "If we say we're against DRM right from the start, we'll sow seeds in people's minds that we're the good guys, so that when we start implementing really restrictive DRM schemes, it'll be really difficult to turn people against us. Hey it worked for Apple"
Somebody at the RI/MPAA forgot to mail their "donations" to Intel. Expect Intel to see the error of their ways before long (3 business days for a cheque to clear these days isn't it?).
What? Me, cynical?
I propose the following DRM and media corollary:
Whenever a DRM scheme is proposed, and a hardware manufacturer, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, uses a phrase along the lines of "make content easier to buy than it is to pirate" -- the manufacturer is *lying*. It intends to abuse the DRM scheme as early and as often as the content industry asks it to.
He's telling the masses what they want to hear. The Furher means you no harm. You will all be protected. These rumors you have heard are too fantastic to be sure. We are civilised, like you, yes?
May the Maths Be with you!
Then that's unfortunate, but doesn't give you the right to do anything dodgy to obtain it.
People are willing to pay to be honest, they just don't like to feel ripped-off by the transaction - something the record labels have yet to learn with their demands that Apple raise prices across the board and closer to the MSRP of physical CDs. One can claim that the labels can demand whatever the market will bear, but I think the whole point of the matter is that we've seen what the market will bear and the creation of the iTunes Store is partially a response to that. No one wants to pay what the labels have been charging for physical media, and that has been reflected in the sales figures. Their stubbornness when it comes to accepting this fact has a good deal to do with their grim prospects.
DRM on these files is rather pointless as anything Apple sells is already widely available elsewhere, and few who chose to buy something from the iTunes Store do so because they cannot obtain the content for free. Their very choice to purchase the content negates the need for DRM. The very presence of it is - surprise - due to contract stipulations made by the record labels. Steve Jobs has gone on the record that he does not believe it is necessary, but he has no choice.
It's funny that he thinks it's wrong to treat consumers as criminals, yet endorses DRM.
The entire idea of DRM seems to be that you prevent people from passing the file to someone else. This idea is flawed, because the "someone else" will always be able to get the file from elsewhere, illegitimately, and the "original customer" will probably end up doing the same because DRM is an inferior product when compared with illegitimate versions of the same thing.
This idea assumes that the original customer is a criminal. All DRM treats the customer (the person who has decided to pay for the file) as a criminal.
"Intel promises to make content easier to buy than it is to pirate"
This is funny. Going to the shop, picking up the title and handing over money is still easier than downloading p2p programs, setting up firewalls, understanding how it works, finding where to grab stuff from, waiting around for it to complete, sorting out the fakes or the subtitled German-dubbed clips from the real thing... yet many people do the latter rather than the former. And in many cases, the reason is the M-word...
Intel is pushing a technology called Treacherous Computing, which will prevent unsigned code from running on their hardware. So even if you have the source code, if you try to remove the DRM restrictions, the hardware will refuse to run the modified binary.
The Free Software Foundation admits that the anti-DRM provisions in the GPLv3 will not be enough on their own to prevent the nightmare scenario where users can't trust their own computers.
People who understand the dangers of Digital Restrictions Management at a technical level (ie.Free and Open Source software developers) should warn the general public to avoid buying DRM-crippled hardware. Consumers should know about the great variety of DRM-free computers and accessories built specifically to work with Linux, the KDE desktop, and other Free and Open Source applications.
On the music side, there are plenty of websites that legally sell DRM-free, RIAA-free music by independent artists. Consumers can use a cross-platform, iTunes-like application called Songbird to easily download songs from these sites.
As for movies, building a Linux media center works just as well as the DRM-crippled offering from M$FT. Just download MythTV and run it on a computer equipped with the pcHDTV HD-3000 card and the PVR-350 card -- these will capture both standard definition (NTSC) and Digital/Hi-Definition (ATSC/HDTV) signals.
Get computers and accessories from Linux-friendly manufacturers
Can intel be that smart promoting VIIV's DRM capabilities at a time when they are losing market share to AMD?
On Wall Street, AMD is currently gaining market share from Intel. (slowly, but surely)
As a consumer, I see AMD with a better price-to-performance ratio then Intel. Also AMD's chips require less electricity for that performance.
Now throw DRM into the mix and what am I going to buy? A DRM enabled chip that costs more, or a chip that is DRM-Free, costs less, and performs better?
It sounds like Intel is shooting themselves in the foot...
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
Maybe not the right, but it sure gives him a helluva good reason. So long as it's easier to buy then pay for something, people will generally pay for it. But if you want something, and nobody will sell it to you, and someone else says, "here, have it for free..." well, then thats where cause and effect come into play.
It's poetry with a beat behind it! And guns! They're like beatniks with automatic weapons.
OK, I know Don MacDonald personally, and I was the first one to sound the alarm bells about ViiV, then called East Fork. See:/ 170256
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24638
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/17
Intel flat out lied about Linux, they said it could happen to my face, but all the docs said otherwise. They are handing the space to MS and the DRM infectors.
That said, Intel honestly does want to do the right thing here, but they are caught between a rock and a hard place. They have no leverage, and are being used until the content industry tires of batting them around like a cat with a half dead mouse in it's grasp.
The sad thing is, Intel can not do anything to prevent being bent over and screwed here. They have to smile and minimize the damage, but the whole process has been coopted. They were planning on making v1.5 and v2.0 a little better each release, but right now, they are in backpedal so hard it hurts mode, so the chance of them being able to do right is next to zero.
The first version will be mostly non-functional, it won't do most of what they hoped, and has more animosity among the vendors than any product that I have seen to date. Everyone I talked to at CeBit last week was something between annoyed and angry that it was being shoved down their throat.
But wait, it gets better. Notice he said that it would be easier, not cheaper. You get a file locked down hard, seriously DRM infected, and restricted. The PRV functionality is already shut down because they MUST support the broadcast flag (HD only though), so basically, they are screwed. If you like PVRing CSpan, VIIV is your toy, everything else, well, not so much.
So, you have the grand plan of selling an inferior, restricted, DRM infect product at a higher price than the competition. Add in that you are selling an expensive box that phones home way to often that says 'NO!' to it owner more often than most find palatable, and you have a recipe for disaster.
My prediction, abject failure. Why? The content industry does not want it to exist, and Intel is a fly under their steamroller. It is a pity, it could have not sucked.
-Charlie
I always see this kneejerk reaction to DRM on the net...it must be evil, bad, etc.
And yet without DRM, itunes would not be possible. So is iTunes thereby evil? and is Apple evil also?
Or is maybe DRM just a technologicial tool, and the way its used determins if its 'evil' or not. If so, then better DRM technologies I welcome, as they may allow for more digital distribution of media. For example, right now I cant copy a DVD legally to my PC. My entire house is networked, and if I can get a video onto my PC, I can enable all sorts of video distribution scenarios in my house (watching tv downstairs, pause it, go to bedroom, lay down and finish the movie there). Perhaps DRM will allow this scenario, if we can get video content to be transferred as audio content is, and get the trust of the content providers that it's safe and legitimate.
I don't hate DRM any more than I hated looking up the 13th word on the 7th page to play "Legacy of the ancients" or any of the Gold Box DND games. "Content protection" has been around forever, and I respect the rights of content producers to protect thier wares.
I just want them to trust users a bit more so we can do more with it.
"..something that doesn't involve violence, or is this the wrong crowd for that" -Wash -Serenity
Maybe the term "right" isn't appropriate, but the author's refusal to provide access may well give me immunity from infringement liability. Fair use specifically applies when permission is NOT granted, after all. It would all depend on the facts of the situation, which is precisely what the grandparent was getting at.
Of course, DMCA is "fair-use"-free, so there you're in strange waters indeed.
Watermarks are probably one of the less offensive DRM methods--they allow copying and playing, but make it possible to trace content back to you. And they don't have to be perfect to do that--it's sufficient that they are reasonably hard to remove, which they are.
Is Viiv like the next generation of f00f?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Yeah, I agree with all of your post, but who are people going to buy non-DRM hardware from??? Today, AMD (but they are/will follow suit). Alternatives I see (not for the mainstream):
The first two options don't go well if you need to replace broken/stolen equipment either.
As you point out, people won't be able to trust the new Trusted Computing PCs. In my mind, they aren't realy PCs anymore, just as Macintels aren't PCs either, even if they share a lot of the components.
So effectively we will see the end of open/trusted commodity computers. :-(
“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with nuclear bombs. We have a protractor.” — Neal Stepnenso
I was at the Intel Viiv launch yesterday. It was a reasonably interesting launch although I will forever have the jargon "the new normal" burned in to me brain.
Whilst the talk of making "content easier to buy than it is to pirate" is nice, you have to remember that Intel is only providing the platform to access the content and not the content itself. This is clearly different from Apple's iTunes/iPod/Frontrow strategy of controlling the software and hardware platform(s) for viewing content *and* being the distributor/supplier of content. Hence Intel itself doesn't have much to say on the crucial issue of the cost of content (in fact, to the best of my knowledge, cost -- in comparison to existing distribution points/media types -- was not mentioned once during the presentation). Its all very well to make content easy to access, but it also has to be priced correctly. Intel is obviously hoping the market and competition (between content suppliers) will take care of pricing. I guess time will tell, but its a far cry from the simple easy-to-remember 99c-a-song (in the US, $1.29 here) model of the iTMS.
Whilst its nice that Viiv won't apply DRM restrictions to content that enters into the system without DRM, that doesn't mean that the content provided through the Viiv platform won't be ladden with DRM. Again, as Intel doesn't control the supply of content supply the best they can 'promise'(as per the Cnet article) is to "[encourage] Viiv content providers to allow users to pass their media to other devices". Personally I would prefer a stated policy rather than some airy-fairy promise about encouraging fair(er) use for consumers.
On a related issue, Dan Warne of APC raised an interesting point during the panel discussion regarding billing. Unlike Apple's system (where, obviously, they are the only supply point through iTunes), because there will be multiple content providers and there is no centralised billing system its likely you will have to provide your credit card details to each content provider seperately (at least for the time being, although MacDonald made some soothing noises about investigating a more centralised model... grain of salt, etc). Ironically, despite making much of the fact that you won't need a keyboard with Viiv for complex tasks (such as networking, etc), some on the panel noted it would be cumbersome to have to enter your credit card details through the Viiv interface with the remote and suggest hooking up a keyboard or visiting the content providers website on another computer.
In case you hadn't guessed, whilst I think Viiv has some interesting uses, I remain very sceptical that this is anything more than a flash in the pan despite Intel's claims of this being the (wait for it) "new normal" and hoping in 50 years time it will be remembered like the introduction of television. It may have more impact in other markets, but given the lack of interest in such basic technologies as Standard Definition Digital TV, trying to get consumers to spend thousands on a PC for the living room (without the buzz of the iPod/iTunes duo) seems like a hard sell to me.
.. thee can make things "easier to buy than they are to pirate".
Way the First: You make sure that everyone can buy whatever they please in a manner that is convenient to them, at a price they consider fair, and you basically treat them like a valued customer. This has been the business model of countless organisations for many years, I tell thee.
Way the Second: You make it harder to pirate material. You concentrate your efforts on this, rather than making your products easier to buy or use. You appear on television sounding like something out of a 1950's movie about the American fear of Communism, except you use the word "Pirate". This be a difficult model to sustain, as thee are in a constant arms race with people the world over.