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Sun DReaM Finds Home In IPTV
An anonymous reader writes "The Register has a story reporting that Sun's DRM will find a home in a Korean IPTV system. From the article: "This week Sun released the source code for two components of DReaM, its DReaM-CAS (Conditional Access System) and DReaMMMI (Mother May I) the underlying mechanism for always asking a central resource for permission to access content. In papers that Sun put out this week it has described both of these processes. DReaMCAS or D-CAS currently only manages access to content in the MPEG-2 format."
I hope their catch-phrase isn't going to be Keep Dreaming.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Hopefully, this kick starts the IP TV network.
This is good for the whole bubble in general, in that more bandwidth needs will sustain it for longer periods.
rajmohan_h@yahoo.com
I feel like puking in my DReaM.
Please purchase a subscription to access the content.
Sun also has a "customer" in Fluendo... the company set up to develop GStreamer... the media framework in GNOME. Fluendo have committed to the whole DRM shebang. Locked down kernels, trusted computing, and DRM built in to Gstreamer (and hence, GNOME). And Sun, a full-blown member and devotee of The Trusted Computing Group with it's DRM hardware.
Lovely thought isn't it.
All that corporate involvement in GNOME was worth it, wasn't it? I mean... now that we've a got DRMed desktop that is completely controlled and developed by three corporations and a few small businesses around edges.
... a car with a Plexiglass hood that's glued shut. You can see, but you can't fix.
Why are customers paying for the extra costs of DRM?
How many times do these people have to be told, DRM can't work, at least not the way they want.
(shudder) to quote Bruce Schneier, you can't make water unwet, you can't make bits uncopyable.
STOP STOP STOP.
The only crypto should be authentication, as in, I the user want to be protected from fraud.
That and I don't really see the worth. Not a lot of TV is worth seeing once let alone twice.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Do you?
No one in Sun "believes" in this DRM stuff. They just do it because theu have to to play in the pointy-haired Western markets. They make it Open Source to make a point.
When Digial Restrictions Management puffs and wheezes its last breath in a few months, Sun will calmly pick up from where it left off, as it has always done, as if it hadn't happened.
The enigineers in Sun know what they are doing, and they keep the PHBs beaten into shape. Mark my words.
This is just Sun playing ball with the suits in the short term.
In the mean time, I urge you Slashbots to learn how to use a compiler.
Stick Men
It will only work for MPEG-2 transport, not MPEG-2 content. The content will be MPEG-4 since bandwidth's scarce.
I've got a machine in my kitchen that can make water into a unwet state
what the hell are they smoking?
Although... on a separate point, and purely hypothetically... the people who would care enough to get all in a huff over the concept of DRM to start with are probably not the ones with the free time to sit around and watch TV on the internet *cough*cough* because we all know that geeks are all too busy coding, right? *looks innocent*
I know there will be the inevitable "DRM is teh suX0rs" and "Sun is teh eVi1 for making it", but the Sun model is different enough to warrant a second look:
http://www.sun.com/2005-1025/feature/
I'm NOT a fan of DRM---including Sun's---but as DRM goes, Sun's is less honerous than most. Read the details before commenting, as they may surprise you. They address some of the more common complaints about DRM. Again, I'm still against it, but there's somethig to be said about being against it for the right reasons.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/technology.html
-Tom
Yes you may.
"DReaM-CAS"? Where did I hear that before... *ahem*
Circumcision is child abuse.
Both Microsoft, Apple and others have their more or less closed source DRM implementations in place. Microsoft provides their WMRM SDK's to developers so anyone can roll their own DRM system based on MSDRM. Apple's DRM system is exclusive for Apple only (correct me if I am wrong).
All of the current implementations are closed source - if it was possible for anyone to write players that could play/strip the DRM from the files then the whole DRM idea would fail. That is why I have a lot of problems seeing how any DRM system could be open source...
DCAS also has another meaning in this field: (downloadable conditional access system)
http://www.cedmagazine.com/article/CA6303853.html
I dont want my content phoning home every time I play it. If I want to watch debbie does dallas 100 times a day that's my business and not theirs.
Next thing you'll know if you watch CNN too much you'll get republican are great email and snail mail and if you watch Fox News the democrats will be trying to swing you back.
Or if you watch only shows showing violence you'll be flagged for special security at travel terminals.
This can be abused way too much. Corporations do not protect our security if there's a dime to be made off selling your information.
DReaM-CAS.
Sounds like DreamCast... the video game console that became infamous because its advanced and revolutionary disc copy protection mechanism turned out to be easier to break than swiss cheese.
Hm.
And then he passed out.
Better luck next time, Rimmer.
I think you may be on to something there. :D
People who actually pay for DReaM'd content are not the kind of people who have the patience to circumvent it.
I find it interesting that every single reply in this thread is a knee-jerk reaction lamenting about the evils of DRM and content protection simply due to the fact that the product name of this system is misleading.
"The system uses AES encryption, requires a constantly open two way IP connection and it sends encrypted keys to the content along with the content, and these have to be decrypted by an existing public key. Entitlement messages are delivered out of band in a separate communication using the Mother May I protocols. More D-CAS applications will generate the entitlement messages, and a Java smart card will be used for authentication, which will store and manage viewers rights and viewing history."
This is clearly a pipe protection CAS mechanism and not a rights management and persistence mechanism (DRM).
Oh, and as for the 15 months to market... if that is the case, other open source CAS products have already beaten these guys to market *cough* http://www.logici.com/content/prod/lines/encry/ *cough*
This certainly offers an improvement over current systems, such as Apple's you can only access your music with our hardware and/or our software.
O verview.pdf
However, as others have pointed out, you obviously need to lock down the player for this stuff to work. Not too sure how it is suppose to work on an open source system with Linux, as it obviously can't do something like trust a custom compiled kernel...
Really, by open source they are talking about the openness of the standards and the reference implementation, not the fact that it is going to fit well into a front-to-back open sourced platform (in software libre sense of the FSF -- one in which the users are free to play with everything).
To quote the relevant part of their documentation:
http://www.openmediacommons.org/collateral/DReaM-
2.7 Consumption
The DRM player will consume the content based on the conditions specified by the license. The DRM player must be secure such that unauthorized use of content is prevented. Typically, the player environment will have secure storage and execution environments, where keys and decrypted content cannot be accessed by unauthorized clients.
Someone at SUN must have a sense of humor, Mother May I? That is just too good :D
The "ownership society!"
It's very disheartening to see righteous indignation like this consistently modded up. No mention of action, ever. It's okay to complain. But for dog's sake don't ever do anything that would label you a nut case.
go here: www.eff.org and give them some money, or figure out a way to volunteer some time.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Thats a bogus concept, forcing one to have a connecton of some sort to even watch a damned movie, o listen to a song.
Will my car have to have wifi ( and a subscription to a mobile internet service ) just to lisetn to the traffic report at some point? What about trying to read a book in the park on a nice day, once they outlaw paper books since they 'cant be controlled and monitored'?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Bah!
No sense of humor.