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Sony DRM and the New Digital Hole
expro writes "If the root kit scandal was not enough for Sony, Time Magazine reports that it is a delay in 'the release of copy-protection software required for the PS3's game and high-definition movie discs' giving Microsoft a serious advantage in the market place. Is there something Sony should be learning here about preoccupation copy control? With high definition writable media appearing already, will the price drop soon enough to help me overcome the real obstacle to backing up my exsisting commercial DVDs, cost of single media large enough to hold them that is playable in a player? Will the resulting new digital hole in copying existing DVD schemes to higher-density media replace the analog hole of VCRs in copying movies?"
Who would have thought it'd be Microsoft capitalizing on a competitor's fumbling attempts at DRM resulting in confusion and loss of product usability?
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
There probably isn't. I guarantee you that in a corporation this large, the beancounters have already run through the numbers plenty of times to decide that this is their most economically viable course of action.
I'm not saying corporations are always right or always do the right thing, but when it comes to making money, Sony usually gets it right, and I don't think one self-important slashdotter speculating otherwise carries much weight compared to a financial beast that's been generating astoundingly large piles of cash for the past long while.
Sony is now a bipolar company and should just split itself into two halves (content and electronics) so it can move on. If Sony take any longer to make decisions, the next wave of technology will come on go before the Bipolar Sony can make a decision on what technology to release. I divested myself of all Sony components quite awhile ago and have since stopped having flexibility problems with how I view/use my electroncs.
No matter what DRM, watermark, or token system they release will do nothing more than frustrate their consumer base. Many consumers are now feeling for burned by Sony that they will wait until the mid to trailing edge of the technology cycle to adopt it.
You act like having the ablity to copy things in an analog format is wrong or something.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
No, it isn't just you. That was pretty much incoherent rambling...
The first eight Sony blu-ray discs will play in full resolution over componet cables. That's an awesome standing on copy protection sonsidering HDCP is suppose to kill the resolution for any analog singal.
I truly hope that expro isn't a native English speaker. If he is, he really needs to go back to 7th grade English class to learn about sentence structure.
This guy's the limit!
This is just a convenient excuse. If you read the statements. The dev Kits are only going out in June!. This mean everything is behind, not just DRM which has no effect on games development. Further Blu-Ray players are also due in that timeframe and all the AACS discussions are over and finalized already. You don't even need a Blu Ray drive for Dev Kit and I bet even the final dev kits don't have one.
Sony is late with everything most likely the Cell processors and the programming tools for it. DRM is just a smokescreen, handy because really did have issues with both HD/BD getting it finalized, but it is now.
But in Sonys case it is a very stupid excuse, give the rootkit problems. Many people will percieve this is Sony being late so they can figure out new ways to screw us over with DRM. They really need new marketing droids before they release lame excuses like this.
I wouldn't count on this to change Sony's attitude. After all, this is the second time they have seriously dropped the ball when it came to market in which they didn't already dominate.
There were many times before the arrival of the Ipod that Sony had the best looking Mp3 players, and they always seemed to have the features I wanted. However, they made the idiotic move of making a user convert all of his songs to the ATRAC3 format. Seriously, who wants to deal with that crap? So what happens? Smaller players move in and dominate.
The irony is that most of today's media: games and movies aren't worth playing/watching, much less making back-up copies.
HURR
Nobody ever explained to me why Microsoft would inherently give a damn about DRM. As far as I know, it's the content industry that says "chain up people's PCs or we won't release high defenition material at all".
Microsoft's actual anti-piracy efforts have been a token effort at best, especially when you consider that MS actually depends a lot on penetrating developing countries with its pirated software. All other things being equal, I seriously doubt they'd give a shit less about implementing something technically very thorny and that just makes your software a pain in the ass to use.
Only reason X360 and Xbox have copy protection is to ensure developers actually pay licensing fees and don't just release software for their loss-making hardware without paying. It's got very little to do with piracy.
They will never learn the idea of "enough profit" or "too much."
The stark reality that has always been out there for everyone to see is simply that MOST people are willing to spend their money of "official" copies of their favorite entertainment. This means they'll watch the movie and if they like it, they'll buy the DVD. If they hear the song and like it, they'll buy the CD. This pattern (I have no studies to back this up... it's just my observation) fits the vast majority of consumer out there.
So then the question comes up, "...that's fine, but what about the REAL pirates who attempt to counterfeit and sell to a public who thinks they are buying 'official' copies?" GO AFTER THEM to the fullest extent of the law. I doubt that anyone would fail to support legal/criminal action against those activities. But the 'copy protection' that exists today and is likely to exist tomorrow will not thwart those pirates, but it goes a long way to inconvenience their paying consumers.
So far, they have mostly gotten away with it. Sony didn't get a black eye from the back-door infecting CDs... I'd liken it more to a minor abrassion if even that. The majority of the buying public never noticed and still have never even HEARD of Sony's stunt.
I believe there is such a thing as "enough profit" and they should recognize it for their own benefit as well as their consumers. It has been demonstrated that big business often consider government fines, liability lawsuits and other costs associated with survival in a litigeous society as "a common business expense." I believe they should stop viewing casual or civilian copying as a threat to their business model because I would believe (again, no supporting facts) that the legals costs, the costs of product delays, the costs of lost fandom, the cost of development of 'protective measures' and the COSTS OF SUPPORTING LEGISLATION far outweigh any potential losses they might consider lost due to civilian copyright infringement.
(I also believe they know this... I believe their aims are a little bigger than they will admit and it's likely something along the lines of price fixing, monopolistic control and that sort of thing.)
Sure Betamax was a superior technology compared to VHS, but who won that war? Now they have Bluray. Sure it's a good idea, but Sony is already fumbling the format. It does not matter how good a technology is if the consumers aren't willing to adopt it. DRM takes quite a bit of processing time compared to non-copyprotected media. What does that mean to consumers? Since DRM takes more CPU time and memory, the hardware required to play a DRM'd movie will have to be that much quicker to operate. The faster and more sophisticated the hardware is, the more expensive it will be to us. These units also have a higher energy draw, about 25% more. This is just part of the hidden costs. DRM software doesn't invent itself. It takes a lot of time to develop the software, distribute it, etc etc. Time=Money. This cost is of course passed on to the consumer.
Now lets got to the real issue here. Which will consumers prefer? An expensive, poorly designed piece of technology, or something that is no more difficult to adopt than what they currently have. Most computers have issues playing non-DRM protected HDTV content let alone one that is. I bought the new special edition Terminator II that had the metal case and the high-def version. My computer was brand new at the time and it wouldn't even play it because of the DRM.
So what new format will we choose to distribute the next generation of media? Will it be Bluray or HD-DVD? Maybe neither! There are competing technologies out there that are capable of high-def right now without the need of clunky, ill-deigned DRM software. There's Xvid, DivX, etc, why PAY for proprietary forms of media you can't even bring to your SO's apartment to watch? That was the beauty of VHS, you could record stuff off of tv CHEAPLY, there was ONE format in video stores.
All of this just leads to confusion for the consumer. The new DVD format should piggyback on the old technology and be founded on OPEN standards. History will repeat itself with Sony's proprietary formats. Early adopters of Bluray will be throwing out their money. It will be at least 5 years before HD is fully mainstream. The majority of the movies out there will not benefit from being in HD.
Do you honestly think seeing Gone With the Wind will be better in HD?
This "delay" is nothing more than Sony realizing that it would make much more money by releasing an eagerly anticipated new product during the peak Christmas buying season instead of releasing it during post-Christmas spring or the summer doldrums.
That's funny, if the dev kits are going out in June, what've companies been developing on all this time? I'm curious where you've even read that, as the article mentions nothing about dev kits.
If I remember correctly the story a few months ago about that artist who was fired for slamming the PS3 made some comments on the dev kits his team was using to develop their next gen titles.
...such as the "wink wink" 'backing up my DVDs' nonsense of the submitter...
I have a two year old daughter. She's fond of Monster's Inc., Yellow Submarine and those damned Baby Einstein DVDs. She's also fond of touching the disks themselves. I own legally purchased store-bought copies of all the aforementioned titles. You think my desire to back them up is nonsense? Now THAT's nonsense!
The road to hell is paved with Cat 5 cable.
Let me illustrate with an example: Sony regularly names Sony as a defendant in copyright lawsuits.
Sony Corporation is: several mini-divisions of Sony Electronics (Walkmans, stereo gear, camcorders, TVs, phones, not to mention an entire division dedicated to pro-level broadcast hardware and Betacam SP); a large media arm in Sony-BMG Music Group which has its own problems, Sony's movie studio - again, schizo in performance but huge and sprawling; Sony's various software divisions (SCE*), in NA, Japan, and Europe; 'online' or SonyConnect verisons for each of those again...not to mention weirdo initiatives like Sony Ericsson (very successful)...
You see where I'm going with this. Here's an article that does a good job summing it up.
It is pointless to discuss an entity called SONY as if it were a coherent entity. It is more like the EU. Very competitive, aligned loosely, but basically all fighting each other tooth and nail for internal dominance, which usually translates to external dominance. This has been Sony's culture for a long time, only recently changing under their new CEO (a Welsh guy, another first for the corporation).
If you ask Sony's hardware guys about the iPod, most of them will readily concede that they were soundly thrashed by Apple. iPod is the new Walkman, no doubt. Sony could have competed with Apple if they didn't have the content arms sniping at them throughout the development process (and also if they had let go of certain insane engineers who loved minidisc a little too much).
So when you guys are boycotting Sony products - a principal I do not disagree with - I do have to wonder a little if you know exactly what you are boycotting. Sony-BMG are bastards, I deal with them all the time and they really just are the epitome of the 'evil record label'. Sony hardware is a completely different entity, and they more or less hate Sony-BMG as well. When you stop buying Sony TVs and whatnot, you are actually punishing the guys who are (now somewhat successfully) pushing against the DRM in the hardware. They hate this shit, and they know what consumers want (mostly...). DRM comes from the media arms, and its dictating product design inside Sony, and that is the battle.
What I am saying is, you need the carrot and the stick. Don't buy Sony-BMG music, they cam eup with the rootkit. DO buy those Sony products that are free of DRM. The message will be clear. I have a Sony Ericsson phone (W600i) and it does not have any DRM for loading and playing music, short of the veil necessary to keep you from beaming pre-canned content into other phones. it actually is the iTunes phone that everyone wanted, and no one shipped, including Motorola/Apple. My iTunes collection, all uninfected MP3 and AAC, loads (both directions) and plays beautifully.
Sony Electronics has typically kept the underperforming divisions from showing up more drastically on the balance sheet (PS2) but they are suffering now as well. Let's hope the hardware guys win over the media guys.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Nobody WANTS DRM.
Nonsense. The media companies love DRM because of the market control it gives them.
willingness of ordinary people to engage in acts of willful copyright infringement
Gosh, when the vast majority of people disagree with your view of the world then maybe it's your view which is at fault?
People have been sharing with friends and acquaintances since the dawn of time.
the underlying problem is still the willingness of ordinary people to engage in acts of willful copyright infringement simply on the basis of the belief that their chances of being caught are low.
No, the underlying problem is IP companies who feel they have a right to unlimited profits for the one piece of work at the expense of the general population. And due to broken IP law are currently getting away with it.
There is also a problem with lying astroturfers who fraudulently misrepresent company propaganda as a personal opinion and also repeatedly spam discussion groups with their propaganda but that's another story.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Hate to feed the trolls (and my most recent mod points just expired, damn!), but...
The fact of the matter is that, whatever pseudophilosophical bullshit exceptions people give here
You do realize that copyright itself counts as a "pseudophilosophical bullshit exception" to physical reality, right? You don't have a natural "right" to control copying and distribution of something just because you happened to put a particular combination of words/notes together, of which 99.99% of your "creation" already existed just under the surface of the culture that spawned you? You only have some protection because society as a whole values your work in entertaining us and, however little, for enriching our culture as a whole. Shift the balance just the teensiest bit, and the only justification of your copy-"right" vanishes like the fiction on which we've based it.
(such as the "wink wink" 'backing up my DVDs' nonsense of the submitter)
Some people will pirate movies. Some people really just want to back them up . Most of us fall somewhere between those two, wanting backups of our own movies, and not really caring if we have a few copied movies or CDs for which we don't own the original. Almost all of us prefer to reward the creator, however, thus the delicate balance we have between copy rights and fair-use rights. To repeat, don't mistake a copy-right as a natural right; it exists only at the whim of society as a whole.
It doesn't matter if you think 70 years is too long for copyright.
True, it doesn't - Nor does it matter if you think it too short, or just right. My previous point will hold whether you make copyright last forever, or for a week. Deal.
mindless overcommercialized shite and that somehow justifies your piracy.
Who needs justification? You seem to have missed the point. We. Don't. Care. "They" have failed to act in good faith in upholding their end of the social contract implicit in copyrights. "We" have started responding in kind. "They" will lose.
You are not engaging in meaningful rebellion against 'the corporate overlords' by engaging in software piracy. you are not gandhi.
"meaning" exists after-the-fact, and the victors get to define it. Ghandi promoted passive terrorism, tax evasion, and open sedition. But he won, so we think of him as some sort of frickin' saint.
You help no artist with your piracy, period.
Heard of Galactic Civilizations II? You might have, it made it to the Slashdot FP recently. Or LsL:LotLL? Or for a more blunt example, heard of Microsoft Windows, probably the single most pirated yet best-selling product line in the history of computers? Not that I really care, though - Just because you have that particular point wrong doesn't mean its truth has any influence on this topic.
It is not possible to successfully find some 'loophole' in the concept of fair use. There's simply no such thing because fair use by definition is a fungible thing
I would like to see your definition of "fungible". However, I will agree that you can't find loopholes in fair-use, because fair-use itself exists as nothing more than the holes in copyright law. But to repeat myself yet again, what you consider "fair" use really doesn't matter, because we define collectively which fictions we allow to remain codified as law, and individually which ones we adhere to.
Yes, companies occasionally trip over themselves and make mistakes while trying to protect their goods. but making that the central issue (as slashdot always does) as opposed to addressing the fundamental problem is just wrong.
I agree completely. The "fundamental problem" here involves the idea that we grant corporeal status and human rights to non-human groups assembled for the solue purpose of extracting profit from society. Yet the same penalties we can apply to humans cannot, in practice, apply to corporations. Thus we have a problem.
This sentence gave me headaches. I highly doubt it qualifies as proper english. :)
"With high definition writable media appearing already, will the price drop soon enough to help me overcome the real obstacle to backing up my exsisting commercial DVDs, cost of single media large enough to hold them that is playable in a player?"
Did you see an earlier story from yesterday evening, it is here and it is about how the Canadian RIAA has contradicted it's previous public statements?
Did you also see the article about how DRM costs 25% of a mobile systems battery power?
Here is an example of how the US government is investigating price fixing.
Do all the above examples validate piracy? No, I don't think so. Do they validate DRM? hell no! I will never buy media strangled with DRM. Ever.
Thacherous computing plattaforms won't be able to run Linux. Or, at least won't be able to do that the way we do it now, that is easy to modify and improve.
Rethinking email
Well, you got some karma for it, but Microsoft is actually the author of one of the most successfuly DRM schemes. Apple's Fair Play has been cracked, but to my knowledge Microsoft's Janus scheme is still protecting music downloaded from sites like Napster and Rhapsody. The only way around it is the analog hole, which requires realtime playback and strips all metatags.
It is not possible to successfully find some 'loophole' in the concept of fair use. There's simply no such thing because fair use by definition is a fungible thing that relies on reasonable human judgment to decide when too much is too much. Therefore, the very fact that you attempt to use some loophole pretty much in itself no longer makes your actions fair use.
What on earth do you think you are talking about. No one in their right mind would go looking for a loophole in a concept. The idea of a loophole is that a badly drafted law may allow for it to be interpreted in a way that it wasn't intended, thus allowing an action which would otherwise be prohibited. Surely you can tell the difference between the concept of fair use and a legal definition of fair use. To argue something is falls under the concept of fair use is not looking for a loophole it is just giving an example of an action which a person considers a definition of fair use should cover. To look for a loophole in a legal definition of fair use in order to cover an action that falls under the concept of fair use is a legitimate thing to do. It does not make that action non fair use, it merely extends the legal definition of fair use such that it falls more into line with how a reasonable person might define fair use.
Secondly, you use the word fungible but it does not mean what you think it means. Nothing in and of itself is fungible, you need at least two things for them to be fungible. These two things must be interchangeable in regard to a legal obligation. For example say I go into a store and ask for a copy of a particular CD, and the shop has three copies of that CD in stock. These three CD's are fungible because any one of the three will satisfy my order. Similarly I may pay by cash or credit card, these are fungibles because either is sufficient to satisfy my debt for the CD. What exactly are you saying fair use is fungible with, or were you just using a big word in order to sound impressive.
You are right that Sony is like a Hydra, or a zaibatsu to be more precise. But they put a content side, IP protection gaijin in charge as CEO. He's from Sony Entertainment and before that CBS Television.
Putting him in charge was a solid kick to the nuts for all of Sony's hardware businesses. He doesn't control everything, but he functions as a tie breaker when the two sides disagree. And he is *always* going to come down on the side of more locked down content. I wouldn't be surprised if the decision to delay the PS3 until the copy protection could be made even more strict was his personal decision.
Maybe that what they wanted when they gave him the job. If so, it was stupid. I thought at the time that he was put in as a "chainsaw CEO" - someone that could do things (like fire lots of people) that a japanese CEO couldn't/wouldn't do. After he does all the demolition the board is *shocked* at the devastation, fires him with a golden handshake, and moves on with a leaner company. He hasn't done that. Now it seem more likely that they decided that for the 21st century "content is king" and didn't think it through to the damage it would cause the the company as a whole.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Mandatory managed copy.
You can save HD to back-up media or hard drive at full resolution. (Preserving closed captioning and multiple audio tracks?) You can distribute to home networks. You can painlessly downsample/download to portable devices and media.
That would meet 95% or more of anyone's "fair use" requirements.
The difference between the PS2 and the XBox though is that the PS2 came out first. The power is almost irrelevant, it's who has the better games. The PS3 is going to need a strong launch lineup to compete.
The grandparent was referring to the final devkits, which are probably going out in May/June. This was fairly widely reported in the gaming media. Here's just one example story.
I'm not sure how different the current devkits are from the final PS3 hardware, but it could potentially lead to some serious development work still to come. If nothing else the more elite devs will want to take at least a few months to get better performance/graphics out of their game using the presumably superior performance of the final kits. A good example of this is Rare's X360 launch title Kameo: Rare added self-shadowing to all of the characters within the last two months or so of development, and it really improved the (already beautiful) graphics.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
You wrote:
The fact of the matter is that, whatever pseudophilosophical bullshit exceptions people give here (such as the "wink wink" 'backing up my DVDs' nonsense of the submitter), the underlying problem is still the willingness of ordinary people to engage in acts of willful copyright infringement simply on the basis of the belief that their chances of being caught are low.
1. Backing up our DVDs so my daughter doesn't destroy them is not a "pseudophilosophical bullshit exception;" it's a fact of life. I don't much care if other people want to make copies of DVDs to distribute illegally. That's not my concern, nor is it my problem.
2. The underlying problem is not my willingness to engage in an act of copyright infringement. It is instead the fact that I currently CANNOT make a fair use backup copy of my own DVDs without breaking the law (thank you, DMCA).
I considered defending myself against your implication that I'm lying about my daughter, but instead I'll just issue the age-old curse:
"Just wait until you have kids of your own!"
The road to hell is paved with Cat 5 cable.
Janus is a better target, because of the subscription scheme -- you can download hundreds of thousands of files for a few bucks a month. Crack Fair Play, and you still have to spend 99 cents to download the file. But if you crack Janus, you can download a million files for ten bucks, and keep them after you cancel your subscription.
Aren't the newer versions of FairPlay still unbroken? JHymn can only do iTunes 5.0 and below songs, for example.
Earlier versions of Microsoft DRM were cracked too.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
There's already a solution to that provided by the law; it's called a civil suit. You find someone who's violating copyright by redistributing copyrighted content without a license, and sue them for lots of money. It happens all the time. Copyright violations are a civil matter between the violator and the copyright holder. You're not going to go out and dull every knife in the marketplace to prevent stabbings; same thing here, you're not going to lock out everyone from using the content they purchase just to prevent a bit of piracy. Part of living in a free society is that you have to give up total control, and use market forces such as pricing, availability, marketing and lawsuits to guide your business dealings. We have a word for total control, and it's called totalitarianism. Whether it's coming from a government or a corporation, people are perfectly justified in revolting against such behavior...
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
But unlike WMA's DRM, Apple's is actually in public use. More people want it cracked. Why did we start seeing security exploits in Firefox? It was gaining huge popularity, not because it was bulletproof. There are (relatively) so few people who are actually using a non-iTMS music store that all the cracking efforts are on FairPlay. And also note that the iTMSv6 fairplay hasn't been cracked yet. Honestly, life is in analog, so why don't they just give up already? Until we're actually converted into Matrix-bots, there's no way to fully close it.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?