The History of Hacking DRM

phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica writer Nate Anderson has penned an in-depth look into past DRM-crackings and what the future looks like for people who are vehemently anti-DRM: 'Like a creeping fog, DRM smothers more and more media in its clammy embrace, but the sun still shines down on isolated patches of the landscape. This isn't always due to the decisions of corporate executives; often it's the work of hackers who devote considerable skill to cracking the digital locks that guard everything from DVDs to e-books. Their reasons are complicated and range from the philosophical to the criminal, but their goals are the same: no more DRM.'"

Comments

Anti-DRM?

[rwven]

I don't know anyone who's NOT Anti-DRM. All DRM does is make buying music miserable for the people who are doing it legally. People who don't care about the legality of it will just torrent the CD or get it off some other file sharing network. They avoid the headache of DRM as well as the "cost" of being legal...

The only way DRM will ever be plausable will be if they produce a DRM'd codec that plays on anything. People are sick of buying CD's on itunes and not being able to play them on their other players...as well as other music services trying to play on itunes.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[Darundal]

I know several people who are pro-drm. They are also the least technically literate people I know, have next to no experiance with any digital music players or services, and they generally assume that because someone is accused of something by a company or the government, they are automatically guilty.

In other words, they are joe consumer incarnate. They don't follow the issues, they are unaware that their is even any type of debate over this subject, and and they are unlikely to ever encounter any issues with DRM because they all use Windows and are the type to be highly loyal to a brand, so probably wouldn't ever buy a music player from another company.

While I myself am vehemently anti-DRM, your post assumes two things;

A: Everyone is aware that there is even an issue, and will become frustrated by DRM

B: Even if someone becomes aware and frustrated, they would attempt to use other channels unconcerned with industry FUD and would know what those other options are or where to find out about them

Re:Anti-DRM?

[rwven]

Let me rephrase that then... I don't know anyone with more than an ounce of braincells who is NOT Anti-DRM....

Re:Anti-DRM?

[SkipNewarkDE]

People are sick of buying CD's on itunes and not being able to play them on their other players...as well as other music services trying to play on itunes.

Isn't this kind of the beta vs. vhs thing all over again?

Re:Anti-DRM?

[dada21]

That is ridiculous. As I said in this post, I am not anti-DRM, nor am I pro-DRM. I am for the right to perform your labor in the way you want, as long as your customer is willing to accept any reductions in their rights (usually for a discount). DRM is not bad, not evil, and definitely not anti-consumer. If a DRM'd product or service allows a company to produce a product for a customer at a HUGE discount, isn't the price decrease pro-consumer? No one can know each and every consumer's desired outcome of a product or service -- you're just afraid of the State-mandates that back up DRM, not the DRM itself.

They don't follow the issues, they are unaware that their is even any type of debate over this subject, and and they are unlikely to ever encounter any issues with DRM because they all use Windows and are the type to be highly loyal to a brand, so probably wouldn't ever buy a music player from another company.

To paraphrase this quote: They don't care to waste time following non-issues in their lives, they're extremely happy with the product they have, and the price is perfect so they're not in a rush to change anything. The problem isn't the DRM or the consumer, in your case, though, it is the law that reduces your private-property rights: you are not free to act and labor in the way you want to with your time (you are not free to waste time trying to remove the DRM).

While I myself am vehemently anti-DRM, your post assumes two things;

You forgot one: if an individual or business wants to obfuscate something in order to sell more of the items themselves, they're free to, ignoring the laws. If an individual or business wants to de-obfuscate something they've bought in order to learn to duplicate it, they should be free to, ignoring the laws. Again, it is the LAW that is evil, not the DRM. Most people on slashdot are confusing one three letter word for another.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[SkipNewarkDE]

I don't know anyone who's NOT Anti-DRM. All DRM does is make buying music miserable for the people who are doing it legally.

Don't you KNOW IT. I cry everytime I click that one-click purchase button in iTunes to download a song. It's like crawling over broken glass when I have to take the extra ten seconds to authorize one of my computers to play my music the first time. Such a drag. It's an even bigger heap of misery when I need to deauthorize one of my five machines so that I can play my music on another machine. I wail everytime I need to burn a copy of a CD and I hit that 7 CD limit, and am forced to go through the extra ten seconds it takes to shuffle the songs around into a new playlist. It's awful.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I know several people who are pro-drm...they are joe consumer incarnate. They don't follow the issues, they are unaware that their is even any type of debate over this subject"

And I am a technical proponent of DRM.

Do I like it? Fuck no. It gets in my way. Its annoying. I occasionally lose data.

And who do I blame?

The Fucking Information Wants To Be Free internet-fuckwad cabal.

I don't blame the companies. I have a well known name in the type of software I put out and I've generally put out my works at lower than the 'professional' packages -- without protection. Who's work do I find on eBay? Mine or the big guy? I'm more likely to get ripped than the big guy because I only charged $30 for my stuff where the other guy is selling theirs for $130 -- I've heard pirates tell me that its not like its that big of a deal because its not 'professional' software (and the only difference is the price).

Gotta tell you, the last upgrade I put out with DRM on it -- sales increased 400%. Its not that big of a market to attract the crackers, and by the time they get around to it, I'll have moved on to another system of DRM (I could care less if someone is trading an older package...too far down the long tail for my needs).

If it weren't for the whole crowd screaming Software Piracy Is Not Theft, I'd be totally for unDRM'd software. My old software is put out free and I'm starting to give away the source to software that isn't too close to the current code base...but until a maturity comes over software users, I'm totally pro-DRM.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[IAmTheDave]

A: Everyone is aware that there is even an issue, and will become frustrated by DRM

Well, I think that hardly anyone outside of this circle is aware there is an issue, but I am almost certain that almost everyone will eventually be frustrated by it - whether it's the inability to put purchased music on the iPod they received for Christmas, or the inability to rip a DVD, or the automatic deletion of a movie on their DVR, or a DVD recording of a HD show being downcast to low def without their knowledge, or...

As DRM becomes more smothering, it smothers more people. It's not something many are aware of - it's something almost anyone that participates in the digital culture WILL eventually butt up against.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[packeteer]

Do you really believe that when DRM is implemented that will bring down prices of consumer products?

If you think that you dont understand how economics works. The price that is set for a particular goods or service is not at ALL based on the price of making it. The price that something is sold at is based on the highest price someone can get and still sell the most of the commodity.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[tcc3]

What if you want to use it on your media center pc? Or Linux? What if you have a non ipod mp3 player? Apples drm is less offensive than some others, but its still obtrusive enough that people hate it. The funny thig is that if MS used an ipod like advantage in a market to control or limit another market (like music or video distribution) folks would be grabbing the pitchforks and torches and screaming "Kill the monopoly!!"

Re:Anti-DRM?

[MrNixon]

Problem is, you can only deauthorize 5 Computers a year. So if you're a student working in a computer lab, you can't authorize your music in different machines through the year, because at some point, you're going to run out of deauthorizations.

Then what?

Re:Anti-DRM?

[sevinkey]

I'm not 100% anti-DRM... but I did have to think long-and-hard before becoming the head of software development for a DRM license clearing house. Main reason I was okay with it was because it was bringing content to the Internet that would have not otherwise been put out because the owners are paranoid.

After working there, I think DRM is a great solution for rentals. I think its a load of garbage if they are selling permanent access to content at the same price as physical merchandise. It's not reliable enough for that.

Now don't get me started on Media Center Edition's DRM for the broadcast flag. I just turned my MCE boxes and cancelled my cable TV because I got sick of losing content I legitimately paid for. At least when I lose my licenses for iTunes content, it lets me download it again. If HBO fails on MCE, I lose my episode of Sopranos permanently.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[lowrydr310]

It's not just downloaded music where DRM gets very annoying. My shiny new Treo 700P (through Sprint) is loaded with DRM, and I'm guessing many other devices are as well. I downloaded some pictures, and they're showing up as 'locked'. I can't share these pictuers with anyone and I can't even transfer them to my own computer because they're locked.

I also don't like restricted PDF documents. I wanted to quote a paragraph from a PDF that I have and send it to a friend of mine, but whoever published the document restricted text copying, forcing me to type it out by hand. In this case it wasn't a big deal, rather just a minor inconvenience.

PS: When is someone going to release a stable linux distribution for the Treo 700P? I know someone has it running on the 650, but last I heard it wasn't very stable and there weren't many applications for it. Palm OS isn't the best thing out there, though I'll take it over Windows Mobile any day (despite the fact that my Palm crashes a lot)

Re:Anti-DRM?

[kimvette]

You're being sarcastic now, but what happens if/when you dump (OS X|Windows) for Linux or BSD? Or, when the day arrives when you come to realize (much like Philip J. Fry did) that the Dave Matthews Band doesn't rock, and decide to exercise your right of first sale and sell (as in transfer ownership) your property (the music you bought) to another person? Oops, guess what? You don't actually own anything to transfer now.

Or, what happens if/when Apple goes belly-up or is forced by the music mafia (RIAA) to shut down iTunes and quit the music business? Good-bye music collection, so sad, too bad. You'll be pissing and moaning over DRM then.

Granted those are hypothetical scenarios, but much like Divx, it can definitely happen, only this time around everyone with a clue will be continually saying "told ya so" like a bunch of nine-year-olds.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re-phrase please: Technically-Inclined people are sick of DRM.

The fact of the matter is that iTunes is very popular and continues to be so. Just because the techies don't like it doesn't mean people everywhere are sick of it. Not true - if people were sick of DRM on iTunes that business would simply fold - it hasn't yet nor does it look like it's going to anytime soon so your apparently incorrect in your assessment.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[CastrTroy]

DRM doesn't make anything any cheaper. iTunes still cost as much as a regular CD. Sure you can just buy one song, but for the entire album, the price is pretty much the same (sometimes more on iTunes). Plus you get a lower quality version, no physical CD, no Case, no Liner notes that are already printed on a commercial quality printing press (not some crappy liner notes you have to printe out on your crappy inkjet), and they pay pretty much 0 production cost. Oh, and the music is locked down a lot more than it is on a regular CD. For iTunes to be worth it, it would have to be down around 25 cents a song.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a minute...

You seem to think if it weren't for the anti-DRM people, you wouldn't need DRM...

Bullshit. People pirate stuff (on the whole) because they want free stuff, not because "information wants to be free". If by "maturity" you mean "everyone spontaneously deciding to follow the laws with no incentives", then sure. But this has nothing to do with the "information wants to be free" people.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

"You seem to think if it weren't for the anti-DRM people, you wouldn't need DRM..."

Where the fuck did I say that?

*LEARN TO READ*

I said I went DRM because people were stealing and selling my creation.

DRM has so far kept anyone from breaking my application. I'm not against Anti-DRM people, I'm against pirate and thieves and low-lifes...of which there seems to be a large subset of one another.

This is entirely because of people wanting to steal other peoples information that DRM exists. If people respected other peoples property, I'd doubt DRM would have the relevance it does today.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[westlake]

whether it's the inability to put purchased music on the iPod they received for Christmas or the inability to rip a DVD, or the automatic deletion of a movie on their DVR, or a DVD recording of a HD show being downcast to low def without their knowledge, or...

These scenarios may not play out as you expect:

Assuming the ICT is invoked, a "degraded" recording will still output the original digital sound track and significantly higher resolution video than an american standard DVD.

Thar's not the end of the world if you happen to own an aging first generation HDTV.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[inject_hotmail.com]

I know several people who are pro-drm.

Obviously, as a slashdotter, you have not done your duty. :)

Re:Anti-DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree about the other people's property part -- if people respected other people's computers, I'd doubt cracking would have the relevance it does today.

But people like you -- not that I don't think you're a troll, but it still serves to demonstrate the archetype -- think you own everything your code touches, and until you respect your customers' computers enough to not use copy protection, crackers will keep cracking it.

And when they do, you feel insulted and threatened, and you don't decide that you might have done the wrong thing by adding copy protection, you tend to nearly always assume that the protection you added obviously wasn't strong enough... why don't you ever understand that it's impossible?

So you're only inconveniencing your legitimate customers, and the more obnoxious you make the copy protection, the more challenging and interesting you make it to a cracker, and the more repugnant you make it to the legitimate customer.

So we end up in the DRM territory; repugnant, rootkit-like verging-on-malware copy protection that cripples those who try to play by the rules, but which the rulebreakers won't even see because it's been skilfully stripped out before they ever even got it.

No-one wins in this situation. And you can be damn sure it won't be the crackers who fold first. It could very well be the legitimate customers, until they flock to your competitor who has less obnoxious - or dare I say even, none because they're freeware or open-source - protection that actually works on their computers properly and reliably.

*sigh* Copy protection is SO mid-to-late 80s. Get over yourself.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[Dark_MadMax666]

Gotta tell you, the last upgrade I put out with DRM on it -- sales increased 400%. Its not that big of a market to attract the crackers

  Dou you mind sharing the secret? I am actually looking for non intruisive but at least somewhat effective system for software which is distributed online .

Re:Anti-DRM?

[mentaldingo]

I know one pro-DRM technically literate person. In fact, he's also pro-MS, pro-Windows, pro-.NET (yes, he is a programmer), etc. He's going to the same uni as me (a pro-ISO-C, pro-Linux, pro-OSS and very anti-DRM). Apart from those differences we get along OK (the Linux vs. Windows arguments are fun).

I don't quite understand his reasoning. He's not much of a music fan but I still think he believes everything RIAA/BPI says about piracy...

All those 'pro-' suffixes are making my head hurt.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[SkipNewarkDE]

Actually, you can deauthorize as many computers as you want. You can only do the "deauthorize everything and start fresh thing" once a year, but that is not really a limitation. A call to iTunes support, and they will do it for you any time you ask. And again, the whole DRM thing in slashdot, is, as usual, through the eyes of the poor college student.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

"But people like you -- not that I don't think you're a troll, but it still serves to demonstrate the archetype -- think you own everything your code touches, and until you respect your customers' computers enough to not use copy protection, crackers will keep cracking it."

If you read, I did respect my customers not to do this until I started finding this stuff everywhere.

I had pretty liberal licensing and they ran all over it. Updates for the same serial number were coming all over the world on the day I announced the upgrade. Almost every number was downloaded at *AT LEAST* twice from seperate subnets.

I respected them and gave them limited restrictions and customers that really needed access to the code got it. Some wanted to throw plugins or hook into the app and I helped them out.

Yet, when I added restrictions, sales shot up 400%. And sales have been there since then.

And back to the original point, no I don't own everything my code touches. My customers know I give away the old software. They know I do it to fill a gap that isn't there. It helps me to develop it...90% of the features aren't features I need though. I own the code I own and nothing more. Nothing in my code holds anyone elses data hostage. If my software stopped working tommorow, they could go on with life. I own nothing more than what I've designed.

And you can be damn well sure in my case, its not the crackers that fold, or my customers, but it will be me if I feel my customers are taking advantage of me. And thats why I support DRM...

Re:Anti-DRM?

[TubeSteak]

no physical CD, no Case, no Liner notes that are already printed on a commercial quality printing press (not some crappy liner notes you have to printe out on your crappy inkjet), and they pay pretty much 0 production cost.

Aren't the RIAA (member companies) getting sued by artists because the cut they (the company's) take of iTunes sales includes production/manufacturing costs?

This might be the lawsuit I'm thinking of, but I'm not 100% sure of that.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[ultranova]

I don't blame the companies. I have a well known name in the type of software I put out and I've generally put out my works at lower than the 'professional' packages -- without protection. Who's work do I find on eBay? Mine or the big guy? I'm more likely to get ripped than the big guy because I only charged $30 for my stuff where the other guy is selling theirs for $130 -- I've heard pirates tell me that its not like its that big of a deal because its not 'professional' software (and the only difference is the price).

Are you related to the troll who always posts here complaining how his CD store is doing so badly because of piracy ? Is that why you don't reveal your "well known name" ?

If it weren't for the whole crowd screaming Software Piracy Is Not Theft,

It isn't. It's copyright infringement. They have nothing common, aside from being both illegal.

but until a maturity comes over software users, I'm totally pro-DRM.

Contrary to what you may think, "maturity" does not mean conforming to your or copyright cartels viewpoint.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, I remember some artists saying that the production companies were still taking their share for breakage, shipping, and a multitude of other things that don't apply to digitally distributed music. Also, artists like Weird Al, (let's not argue about whether or not he's an artist), were actually even getting a smaller cut per song/album when it was sold digitally. Sucks to him for signing the contract, but the record companies are being quite underhanded in their dealings. I seriously hope there's a large number of artists who form some kind of revolution and dump their production companies. They could probably sell tracks for 50 cents each and make more money then they are now with their current deals.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tool.

Re:Anti-DRM?

[GWBasic]

Actually, I'm Pro-DRM, as long as it's not applied to consumable media. Specifically, if I send you an email with naked pictures of my wife, I want to make sure that you can't forward it to her sister. This use of DRM is actually meant for a company to be able to protect trade secrets that are stored in electronic form.

That being said, I'm against DRM on consumable media, such as any music, movie, or book that is available to the general public for purchase. This is why I will never buy DRM-restricted downloads.

Obligatory

[fullphaser]

I find your lack of faith in the hacking community disturbing

Re:Obligatory

[pawn63295]

(DMR = Crap)

To the people doin what needs to be done like hacking DRM's i thank you as a matter of fact i thank you on behalf of every computer user. Although DRM will probably never hold because of the resistince all of us give it, but I think we need to go farther than just DRM laws.

Without us youd still be asking yourself what irc server its on

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

this is the smartest thing ive heard all day, though faith is a well subjective word, the only thing that has never been FULLY cracked/hacked is Starforce, and even that has a few cracks and hacks for it if you wanna jump through loops(ive done it, and id definitly say its not newbie friendly, but its possible nonetheless), i havent actually bought music(unless its a indy label) in at least 4 years becasue thats when i first realized how expensive it is for such bad music, and not to mention like 2 seconds after i stopped drm and shit came up and the riaa sued little girls and shit, i mean cmon who wants to buy from that, want GOOD music buy indy CD's and there like 5 bucks, want corporate induced crap get frostwire or bitorrent

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back to MySpace, kid.

Re:Obligatory

[kungfujesus]

i beat starforce by manually disconnecting my cd drive

Economics

[asudhir]

Another case of supply and demand in action. There is a huge market for DRM on the producer side where deployment in or on all future mass-media is desired, while at the same time consumers will do anything to fight its implementation. It will be curious to see whether the producers or consumers will have something equivalent to "market power" in this scenario.

Re:Economics

[plasmacutter]

"market power" means nothing in this scenario.

The law is hindering the consumer's ability to fight its implementation by say.. starting firms which are dedicated to stripping the DRM.

repeal the DMCA.. then see who has market power, until then there is no free market here.

Re:Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be curious to see whether the producers or consumers will have something equivalent to "market power" in this scenario.

The consumer will always win, eventually. If simply put, if everyone stops buying they are out of business. Me I stopped buying Sony/BMG CDs. Buyers resistance until the package has a guarantee of "No DRM, no Root Kit". When enough people do this, they will have to listen.

Re:Economics

[Tim U.]

... consumers will do anything to fight its implementation.

Most consumers I know see either:

1. Don't care about DRM, or
2. Never heard of DRM (even if they're currently using it).

Until there are a significantly large number (like.. uhm.. I don't know.. 524,288) of people complaining about every piece of DRM that comes out, it will never die. I'm rooting for these guys: http://defectivebydesign.org/

Re:Economics

[megaditto]

It will be curious to see whether the producers or consumers will have something equivalent to "market power" in this scenario.

No, this is a losing game for the consumers. The (pro-DRM) Industry spends billions on Congressional "contributions" to make sure the laws are pro-DRM. The (anti-DRM) consumers are misinformed, disorganized, and apathetic. Since EFF alone just cannot outspend the DRM lobbyists, and since the voters cannot outvote the corruption (both political parties take bribes; both support DRM), we have some nice pro-DRM laws.

Pro-DRM laws in turn mean that the hackers are now fighting against the Government in forms of police, courts, military, nukes even, if it comes to that! That's what being 'illegal' means: hackers are essentially designated economical terrorists; there is just no way they could possibly defeat DRM.

Re:Economics

[westlake]

Another case of supply and demand in action. There is a huge market for DRM on the producer side where deployment in or on all future mass-media is desired, while at the same time consumers will do anything to fight its implementation.

---or nothing.

Seriously. How many people do you suppose have evver given a second thought to DRM? Compared to say the number that buy or rent home videos? Subscribe to cable or satteliite TV, XM or Sirius radio?

The Geek tends to forget that personal media collections --- libraries --- of any size and significance are historically quite rare and the province of the comfortably well-off.

Sales of sheet music and records shrunk to almost nothing in the Depression years. People discovered quite quickly they didn't need to own the music that was being played on the radio.

The entry level for media for the Internet is broadband service, a mid-line PC or better, with greatly expanded internal and external storage, a quality monitor and sound system. With Wi-Fi and the iPod as the next step up.

The phrase "middle class entitlement" seems to fit rather well here.

Re:Economics

[dosius]

Is an income of $690 a month in the US middle class? (I would assume not, since I'm entitled to food stamps.) Yet I have a reasonably fast broadband connection and a relatively new computer. I live damn high off the hog for my income and yet don't have a fucking penny of debt. Fucking proud of it too.

-uso.

DRM is not evil

[dada21]

I'm a vocal pro-market advocate, and I don't see any problems with DRM. If you have something you want to keep out of prying eyes, you should be free to protect it in any way possible -- including making it ultra-proprietary.

The big issue I have with the entire DRM debate is that EVERY side forgets where the evil comes into play with DRM: the State. I have many "trade" secrets in the businesses I own and run. In order to keep others from learning the secrets, I perform the actions in private -- away from prying eyes. I'll often mask the output in order to make it not time-effective for my customers to learn the secrest -- and they do continue to hire me so it means they're generally happy with my prices. If they weren't happy, they wouldn't hire me again.

The State, though, removes the market of competition from DRM. If one of my customers took the time to disassemble my services or products, they should be free to use their hands and their tools to mimic the same product or service. The same is true of any DRM -- once you have an item you bought, you should be free to learn to reproduce it at will, regardless of what that item or service is. But the State has created laws preventing us from using our labor in the way we deem best for our needs.

DRM is perfect for many markets -- business can use just the right amount of DRM to deter reverse engineering or disassembly, just long enough until they release their next product to their market. Some industries just need 6 months in order to bring the newer product to market -- if the competition or the customer base wants to waste their time taking something apart rather than buy the original, they should be free to.

Let us look at the real evil in the DRM market -- the one group that wants to prevent us from using our hands and tools in the way we want to. Companies should be free to use any tools (including DRM) to protect their trade secrets; consumers and competition should be free to use their tools to discover how to reproduce a product or service themselves. The State has no right to regulate, require or subsidize either party.

Re:DRM is not evil

[mrsbrisby]

I'm a vocal pro-market advocate, and I don't see any problems with DRM. If you have something you want to keep out of prying eyes, you should be free to protect it in any way possible -- including making it ultra-proprietary.

You're confused. DRM is about you keeping customers away from their data, not you keeping customers away from your data.

If I buy an accounting and compliance package, and it timebombs six months into full use, I should be able to buy another one, and transfer my data. I should be able to pay someone else to transfer that data because I feel the first vendor was untrustworthy.

DRM means I must pay the first vendor, or go out of business (compliance laws). Never mind what happens if they go out of business- I have no options anymore.

Now, you might think the government has no business protecting people from incompetent companies, what if the vendor did this on purpose? What if that company deliberately set up their accounting package to explode so that they could underbid the competition and recoup the costs later? Isn't that tantamount to extortion?

Re:DRM is not evil

[dada21]

You're confused. DRM is about you keeping customers away from their data, not you keeping customers away from your data.

We offer all our customers non-proprietary services as well, but for significantly more money (150% costlier, actually). Our rates on our proprietary services are about 40% cheaper than the competition and we've proven our reliability by being in business for 16 years without a loss in that time frame.

If I buy an accounting and compliance package, and it timebombs six months into full use, I should be able to buy another one, and transfer my data. I should be able to pay someone else to transfer that data because I feel the first vendor was untrustworthy.

If you buy an accounting package that time-bombs, you go into that purchase realizing that risk. What if the reward for using that package was a 40% savings, or more? If you're a new company, you might be willing to take that risk -- depending on what YOU decide you want and need and are willing to pay for. My own contract with my customers stipulates that if my company goes out of business, we will relinquish the proprietary services to them for their purpose. I did NOT put this stipulation in the contract -- I had customers demand it. In order to close the sale, I had to add this line. Do you read every contract that you sign? You should.

DRM means I must pay the first vendor, or go out of business (compliance laws). Never mind what happens if they go out of business- I have no options anymore.

How ridiculous can you get? You must have absolutely ZERO experience with running a business. No one who wants to stick around for a long time signs an agreement that hampers their ability to self protect. Even with my recent T-Mobile re-contracting, I made sure to make changes to their contract, which I had their customer retention and sales department approve. Only someone lacking in business sense signs an agreement without understanding what the repercussions might be.

Now, you might think the government has no business protecting people from incompetent companies, what if the vendor did this on purpose? What if that company deliberately set up their accounting package to explode so that they could underbid the competition and recoup the costs later? Isn't that tantamount to extortion?

Depends on what both parties agreed to. When I buy services from someone, I'll set up my expectations within the contract. My work agreement with my subcontractors contains over 4 paragraphs of assumptions like "You will not attempt to defraud [Company] or its customers." and "You will not attempt to harm, destroy, erase or reduce in functionality..." If you're buying services or items without a contract, I would consider that an "as-is" sale, and you better get a really good deal on it.

The market is providing for every consideration you threw at me here, keep them coming so I can find one that really requires the State to regulate.

Re:DRM is not evil

[Arker]

Actually, without state enforcement (i.e. DMCA) of DRM, you'd have what you say you want. If the first company tried to screw you, you could hire a second to crack their DRM and salvage your data. (Inconvenient, yes, but a reasonable price to pay for being STUPID enough to lock your data up under DRM to begin with.) What's preventing that right now is exactly what the OP said - the state enforcement. Under the DMCA, and similar legislation in other jurisdictions, it's a criminal offense to break DRM, even when that's the only way to exercise your legal rights over your own works.

Re:DRM is not evil

[Magus2501]

As hard as it is for me to say, I have to agree. If the markets demand DRM, it's a right of the people to make it to meet demand, and it's the distributor's right to use it. That's how a free-market economy is supposed to work.

There are laws against piracy, but they are weak in practice due to Fair Use and similar conventions. The state can't easily punish piracy because it's difficult to catch and difficult to prove.

DRM because is a market-oriented solution to piracy. Instead of relying on laws to threaten people, the market is trying to protect itself. However, the protection methods (those listed in the article, at least) are common and breakable. Breaking the DRM once is all it takes for all of the content under that scheme to be made freely available for piracy.

The DMCA is a move back toward a state-level solution, but it still relies on the presence of some rudimentary DRM. It is now illegal to break a DRM scheme. The difference between this legal solution and the previous is that this one can be proven more readily.

Hypothetically, if I used a software program to undo the encryption on one of my legally-purchased DVDs (I'm not implying anything, I swear!), it would be near-impossible to catch me by the first level of antipiracy I mentioned, and it would be similarly impossible to prove that I was doing anything illegal if I actually got caught (I could be making a backup copy or storing the contents on my laptop to watch on while travelling). The second obviously hasn't stopped me, as the software took care of that. The third, DMCA, takes care of that burden of proof in the first level. By using the software to undo the encryption, I am guilty and all they have to do is catch me.

Piracy networks are getting more and more advanced, so catching someone in the act is very difficult. What usually leads to an arrest is carelessness on the part of the pirate, which can be neither designed nor legislated. Even if the content is geting pirated, the DRM is undone, and the encryption's removal is illegal, nothing can be done if no one gets caught.


And did anyone else think that a spoofed BD+ update disc can be used to undo DRM in Blu-ray players? Seems like the door's open...

Re:DRM is not evil

[soft_guy]

If you have something you want to keep out of prying eyes, you should be free to protect it in any way possible

Right, the movie companies want me to NOT look at their movie. My suggestion is that instead of wasting our time with DRM, they should just stop making movies completely. That would be OK with me. I think that would stop people from pirating movies.

Re:DRM is not evil

[RSquaredW]

You make a reasonable point about being forced to include escape clauses in your contracts with your clients. However, I get the impression that you aren't selling shrink-wrapped products, and you aren't including a EULA that claims to be enforceable upon the opening and use of the product already purchased. The concern about many forms of DRM is that there is no opportunity to renegotiate the contract - how do I tell Sony-BMG or Apple that I don't accept the terms of their 'licensing agreement'?

Apple's EULA for iTunes. What happens if Apple bites it? I'm going to guess that such an event falls under the "We're not responsible for damage to your stuff" clause near the bottom.

Finally, I have to ask. Does your licensing contract state that you can change the terms of the agreement without prior notice, whenever you want, unilaterally?

Re:DRM is not evil

[plasmacutter]

The DMCA is a move back toward a state-level solution, but it still relies on the presence of some rudimentary DRM. It is now illegal to break a DRM scheme. The difference between this legal solution and the previous is that this one can be proven more readily.

there are more differences than that grasshoppah.

this one is also completely unaccountable. It has no judicial oversight, oversight which has always been necessary to check the unreasonable assertions of copyright cartels on the producer side, and in so doing establish new and explicit fair uses.

by passing the DMCA they have removed that accountability, which is wrong on many levels, and gives legislative authority to a private institution in violation of the US constitution, although our lovely corporatist judges will never ever make a decision against their briber.. i mean the "free market".

Re:DRM is not evil

[BalanceOfJudgement]

"The state can't easily punish piracy because it's difficult to catch and difficult to prove."

I would reply to this by saying - that's by design. The whole point of how the United States government (in particular; you may not be in the US) was designed was to put the burden of proof and force on the government - to protect the rights of the populace. Our government and the rich and powerful forgot those ideas a very long time ago.

Re:DRM is not evil

[hyfe]

You're confused. DRM is about you keeping customers away from their data, not you keeping customers away from your data.

Well, it may be, but you're still missing Grand Parents point.

If you believe in the free market, then DRM doesn't matter. Just as companies should be allowed to do whatever they want to stuff before you sell it, you should be able to do whatever you want with it after you bought it.

What's making DRM so potentially crippling now, is possibly patents, certainly copyrights and trade-secret laws aswell as anti-reverse-engineering laws. The common factor for all of these, is that they are artificial constructs imposed on the free market by the goverment. They're unbalancing the market and creating de-facto monopolies, which in the end, hurts us all.

I have never, ever understood why the majority of right'ish people believe in freedom, individuality and the power of the marketplace will give everything they believe in the boat as soon as the rich people want something. Discuss healthcare, benefits, disability-support and other life-threatening issues and people will throw marketplace-argumentation in your face. Discuss patents, copyrights and trade-secret laws which primarily serves to let big companies strangehold the previously well-functioning market and people will preach pragmatism, because surely the status-quo is worth sacrificing a little for?

If I buy an accounting and compliance package, and it timebombs six months into full use, I should be able to buy another one, and transfer my data.

No, you shouldn't. If the company lied to you, they commited fraud. That's already covered by other laws. If they didn't, its your own bloody fault for buying their software, and it's certainly not the goverments place to enact laws protecting you against your own stupidity.

Isn't that tantamount to extortion?

They did defraud you? Did they lie? What does your contract say? What did they advertise their product with?

If they didn't in any way make any statements about how long your software would live, it's still your fault. If you bought a mission-critical piece of software from a non-reputable vendor, without checking messageboards or previous customers at all, I think you pretty much deserve what you got anyways.

Re:DRM is not evil

[Archangel Michael]

" how do I tell Sony-BMG or Apple that I don't accept the terms of their 'licensing agreement'? "

With your wallet!

If you don't like the terms, don't do the deal. Period, end of story.

Re:DRM is not evil

[pandrijeczko]

I'm a vocal pro-market advocate, and I don't see any problems with DRM. If you have something you want to keep out of prying eyes, you should be free to protect it in any way possible -- including making it ultra-proprietary.

I agree with you totally - provided that when DRM is applied to "things people can buy", all advertising, marketing and hype that masks that DRM from the potential customer is removed.

When applied to CDs, DVDs, etc., DRM removes my fair use of that product. But as long as the product is clearly labelled as a DRM product, then I can choose to buy or not to buy that product as an informed consumer.

DRM is not in itself evil - it's the advertising and marketing people that mask its presence who are.

Re:DRM is not evil

[wall0159]

"Only someone lacking in business sense signs an agreement without understanding what the repercussions might be."

So, according to you, it's absolutely fine to take advantage of people who lack business sense, are distracted (eg. single parent), or are just stupid? Is that your general attitude to life?

And really.. would you truely read an entire agreement everytime you purchase a song (remember, the contract could be changed between purchases)? Would you be in a position to negotiate with Apple, if you didn't agree? I mean, c'mon.. this is crazy!

Re:DRM is not evil

[Anonymous Coward]

That totally misses the issue that there might not be an alternative. When you only have one option to get something and you want to get that something, then you'll probably take it, no matter if it is a truly rotten deal. And yes this does happen in the real world, it is quite typical when a monopolistic or oligopolistic economic situation exists, which forinstance the music and movie industries are mostly. Or one of the more clear examples of the modern world the OPEC cartel making sure oil is the price they want it to be.

Re:DRM is not evil

[0111 1110]

Even if looked at solely from the POV of the content producer, DRM has serious issues. Let me give an example. I am a big fan of a particular developer of computer role playing games, Black Isle/Obsidian. There are some highly creative folks over there like designer/writer Chris Avellone whose work I have particularly admired over the years. I am highly supportive of the overall aims of this company. It is very important to me that they succeed. Their next game, NeverWinter Nights 2 will be released this October.

I sincerely hope that they sell record numbers, allowing them to more easily get funding for future projects. However, I am currently trying to decide whether or not I should buy the game or download a cracked version. How could I be rooting so strongly for a company and yet at the same time possibly planning to not buy the game, not vote with my dollars for their continued success and efforts? The answer is DRM.

Atari is the publisher of the game and they will almost certainly be using Securom, a form of copy protection, the latest versions of which do not allow any backup copies to be made. But this will not stop the serious hackers from producing cracked versions of the game with all the checks removed so that 1:1 copies are made irrelevant.

I purchased Neverwinter Nights 1 (Bioware) in the first weeks that it was released, but instead of installing it, I downloaded and ran the cracked version. No CD check slowdowns or crashes, no worries about a small scratch or fingerprint making the original disc unreadable. No worries about losing a disc. I was a paying customer. Why should I have to deal with that whole mess, when thousands of people who hadn't paid a dime had access to a far, far better version? It just didn't make any sense.

For the moment I have (tentatively) decided NOT to buy the game but instead to wait for a cracked version to be released. In my particular case, the DRM is the only factor in my non-purchase. Hell, I would donate money to them on a regular basis if they allowed for such a thing. Money is not the issue. The issue is that when I buy content I am (mainly) buying the information, not the media. Even if I were willing to continue to rebuy the same content again and again due to scratches and losing discs, eventually the publisher would stop selling the game. That publishers like Atari are encouraging even the most passionate fans of the developer to download the (superior) cracked version of the game is what I find ironic. Unless the copy protection is SO incredibly unbreakable that it will not even allow one hacker to crack and release the game online all the rest is useless. And even in that (very hypothetical) situation you will still succeed in getting your paying customers angry and annoyed with you. And for what? For a slight increase in sales?

Re:DRM is not evil

[lgw]

No one who wants to stick around for a long time signs an agreement that hampers their ability to self protect.

This happens more often than you'd think, even with large and successful companies. Before there was a name for DRM I used to work for a vendor of complete turnkey solutions (accounting, payroll, inventory, etc.) for car dealerships. All of the customer's data was encrypted, and the customer didn't have the key (at least, not without more technical comptetance that the customer had available). The backup tapes were encrypted, the network was encrypted, and so on. If a customer went to a competitor, the customer would have to print all of their data and hire temps to type it in to the new system. Our competitors did the same thing, BTW, and each company would try to break the other's encryption or key management from time to time to gain advantage.

Of course, the customers were car dealerships, so arguably they deserved it.

Re:DRM is not evil

[apotheon]

Exactly. I wish I had some mod points right now . . .

DRM isn't evil. What's evil is the fraud that so commonly accompanies it, and the corporate business law that allows the people committing such fraudulent acts to get away with their deceptions.

Re:DRM is not evil

[ebyrob]

Even without the benefit of law, DRM can be evil.

The Sony root-kit is one example. Of course, we also have other negative terms for such software like "malware", "spyware" and even "adware".

Of course, the point that much of DRM is not evil without the legal elements is well taken. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that Technological Protection Measures, by themselves, are not necessarily evil.

Re:DRM is not evil

[salesgeek]

My own contract with my customers stipulates that if my company goes out of business, we will relinquish the proprietary services to them for their purpose. I did NOT put this stipulation in the contract -- I had customers demand it. In order to close the sale, I had to add this line. Do you read every contract that you sign? You should.

Reading the contract is good advice, especially when dealing with persons like yourself.

If you're buying services or items without a contract, I would consider that an "as-is" sale, and you better get a really good deal on it.

The best deals I've ever been a party to were always handshake deals. Every deal I've ever seen go down the river has often been accompanied with a contract so detailed it spells out the correct way to use the contract to wipe your ass. At the end of the day, if you don't trust the other party - don't do business. This is a hint: insistence on ridiculously detailed contracts is a sign the other party may have different intentions than you.

Re:DRM is not evil

[Lehk228]

no need to worry over secuROM it's more like wrapping paper than a lockbox. Alcohol 120 has no problems with it, AFAIK blindwrite also has no problems with it. just about the only thing you can't use to rip it is the software that came with your computer/DVD burner

Re:DRM is not evil

[ebyrob]

And did anyone else think that a spoofed BD+ update disc can be used to undo DRM in Blu-ray players? Seems like the door's open...

You mean a player that likely won't decrypt the latest discs? Don't forget the discs *are* encrypted.

Re:DRM is not evil

[novus ordo]

Even with my recent T-Mobile re-contracting, I made sure to make changes to their contract, which I had their customer retention and sales department approve.

I sure hope you didn't miss the part where they say "reserves the right to change terms and conditions at any time". Oops?

Re:DRM is not evil

[tomjen]

As hard as it is for me to say, I have to agree. If the markets demand DRM, it's a right of the people to make it to meet demand, and it's the distributor's right to use it. That's how a free-market economy is supposed to work.

The thing is - free markets does not work. I would like a non drm mp3 music download service where I can buy both songs that are popular and Indie artists. I am willing to pay for it, as are others. Jet no one has tried to make such a service.

Laws are needed to prevent companies from harming customers (IE issue food with a new best before date, add dangerous chemicals to clothing).

Re:DRM is not evil

[1u3hr]

Depends on what both parties agreed to. When I buy services from someone, I'll set up my expectations within the contract. My work agreement with my subcontractors contains over 4 paragraphs of assumptions like "You will not attempt to defraud [Company] or its customers." and "You will not attempt to harm, destroy, erase or reduce in functionality..." If you're buying services or items without a contract, I would consider that an "as-is" sale, and you better get a really good deal on it.

That's just crazy. You don't need to have a clause that says: "You will not attempt to defraud...". That's already a crime, it's not like someone is free to steal from you, or kill you, if they don't sign a contract specifying that.

Re:DRM is not evil

[1u3hr]

There are laws against piracy, but they are weak in practice due to Fair Use and similar conventions. The state can't easily punish piracy because it's difficult to catch and difficult to prove.

But the state doesn't need to prosecute; the RIAAA et all can make civil suits, demanding huge cash payouts, under current law. And they rarely have to prove anything as the victims usually settle before trial.

Re:DRM is not evil

[mrsbrisby]

Well, it may be, but you're still missing Grand Parents point.

If you believe in the free market, then DRM doesn't matter. Just as companies should be allowed to do whatever they want to stuff before you sell it, you should be able to do whatever you want with it after you bought it.

But I don't believe in a free market, and no sane economist does. Free Markets produce monopolies that are harmful to their customers. Free Markets produce more Enrons, Wal*Marts, and Microsofts than they do good.

I believe in an Open Market.

Isn't that tantamount to extortion?

They did defraud you? Did they lie? What does your contract say? What did they advertise their product with?

If they didn't in any way make any statements about how long your software would live, it's still your fault. If you bought a mission-critical piece of software from a non-reputable vendor, without checking messageboards or previous customers at all, I think you pretty much deserve what you got anyways.

Actually, the company that did this is convicted monopolist, and as a monopoly they were able to hurt lots of people this way.

Re:DRM is not evil

[mrsbrisby]

We offer all our customers non-proprietary services as well, but for significantly more money (150% costlier, actually). Our rates on our proprietary services are about 40% cheaper than the competition and we've proven our reliability by being in business for 16 years without a loss in that time frame.

So what? You're the good guy?

Even if I accept that, there are far more WAL*MARTs, Microsofts, and Enrons than you.

The market is providing for every consideration you threw at me here, keep them coming so I can find one that really requires the State to regulate.

This is what makes me worried. We need stronger state regulation. Microsoft has already been convicted of hurting people and companies, and their penalty allows them to continue to hurt people.

People that believe in Free Markets are either crooks or naive. Open Markets help people by guaranteeing that a market can never be closed to a single company, and that successes in one market cannot translate automatically (i.e. in the absense of a good product) into another.

Re:DRM is not evil

[Culture]

You want me to believe that T-Mobile changed the contact for a single individual? Sorry, I do not believe this, unless you are talking about a corporate contract with 1000's of phones. I know this, because I just went through it with 150 phones, and they would not make any changes to the contract, other than the normal "fill in the blank" stuff.

Re:DRM is not evil

[dada21]

Call customer retention and demand it (if the changes are reasonable, of course). We don't have 1000s of phones but we do communications consulting so we likely do account for a few hundred -- not much more than your number.

Re:DRM is not evil

[Archangel Michael]

I want a brand new BMW or Lexus, the ONLY option is to go to a dealer and buy one (or lease). They are so expenisive it is really a rotten deal. I wish there was an alternative .....

So your solution for me, would be to go and steal one? The problem is, there ARE alternatives, you just don't like them. There are ALWAYS alternatives.

GO call the WAAAAAAAAMBULANCE.

DRM is like gun control

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither will work for exacly the same reasons.

Re:DRM is like gun control

[rwven]

There's a guy who knows his stuff :-) They both pushing the law abiding while making the criminals more brash than ever. :)

Re:DRM is like gun control

[kemo_by_the_kilo]

the parent said:
DRM is like gun control...Neither will work for exacly the same reasons. DRM doesnt kill people, people do?

Re:DRM is like gun control

[maximthemagnificent]

And the war on drugs, of course. Try to treat a public health problem as a criminal one! Great plan.

When you have unrealistic and unenforceable controls, you lose the real control more measured approaches could yield.

Maxim

Re:DRM is like gun control

[Bryansix]

Are you trying to say that selling black-tar heroine to little kids should not be illegal and is only a public health problem? I doubt many people will agree with you.

Re:DRM is like gun control

[k_187]

no its that going after the suppy when fixing the demand is the real problem.

Re:DRM is like gun control

[maximthemagnificent]

And selling booze, cigarettes, or guns to little kids is allowed right now? Did you actually think about what I wrote before responding?

Maxim

The reasons are quite simple.

[purpledinoz]

I don't agree that their reasons are complicated. I'm sure their reasons are quite simple. They want to do something challenging and get some props for their hacks.

DRM that plays on anything?

[MarkByers]

"The only way DRM will ever be plausable will be if they produce a DRM'd codec that plays on anything."

Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of DRM though? If you did that, people could buy songs from one place but a player from another. The whole point of DRM is to stop that happening.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[IamTheRealMike]

No, the point of DRM is to prevent supply from being infinite, because a market in which there is infinite supply is a failed market.

The fact that Apple and Microsoft can't resist abusing it to promote sales of iPods/Windows is unrelated and not inherant to DRM.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[plasmacutter]

Water is practically infinite.. it covers 70% of our planet.

Yet a market still exists for evian.

Hollywood's product is significantly different from bit torrented mkv's made from hollywood's product.

Thus there will always be a market for those who seek increased quality and convenience over price.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

You're both right.

The content production companies, such as the music and movie companies, want DRM to prevent the unlimited distribution of entertainment or information.

The content distribution companies, like Apple, want DRM to lock people into their other products, like the iPod.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[evilmousse]

'failed'? or did you mean 'unprofitable'?

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[IamTheRealMike]

"Failed market" is an economic term. Informally it means a market where the usual workings have broken down for some reason so it's no longer operating efficiently.

For instance operating systems are a failed market because network effects make it economically unviable to break the Windows monopoly.

In the absence of copyright (and a way to practically enforce it - DRM), creative works would be a failed market because supply is infinite, therefore pushing prices down to zero. The creator of the creative work gets nothing in return for production of that good so, the market has failed.

Failed markets are very common. A market is quite a fragile thing, which is why we have lots of regulation designed to protect it and bracket it (like anti-trust law). I would say many of the more stupid errors of the 20th century were due to inappropriate application of a market, which then failed .... the UK rail privatisation is a good example of that.

Failed markets aren't necessarily unprofitable. In the case of failed DRM then the 'failed market' becomes unprofitable in the classical sense because nobody makes any money. In the case of operating systems it's obviously very profitable for the dominant monopoly.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[contrapunctus]

Potable water is not infinite.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[plasmacutter]

neither is air, but it may as well be.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[evilmousse]

ah, i did miss that it was standard terminology but i suppose the allusion i made is still intact: whether economical terms are the best way to assess the situation.

there is the ultra-liberal position that art will continue to be made when all economical incentive is removed.. not one i wholeheartedly share, but it's interesting at any rate. i think software qualifies.. i suppose helpful widgets always have.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[wolrahnaes]

For the most part nowadays DVD rips are quite good quality and come with full 5.1 or greater soundtracks. Quality is no longer an issue.

Convenience is the same. Between DivX/XviD-ready DVD players, Media Center PCs, and modded game consoles, there's no loss. Hell, a MCE box or Xbox running XBMC is more convenient, because you don't have to deal with discs EVER. Grab remote, click, watch. All from a hard drive or server machine which could hold hundreds or thousands of movies.

Price obviously there's no challenge.

I can see seeking DVD extra features and occasionally interesting things bundled with a special edition DVD release, but price, convenience, and quality all go in favor of illegal downloading as long as you've got a decent connection.

If the studios offered something which could match the quality and convenience, while having a reasonable price, I'd go for it. It's never going to happen though because convenience as I see it (play anywhere with no fuss) and DRM are inherently incompatible, and the studios have their heads stuck so far up their DRM-loving asses to see what a flawed idea it is.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[klmth]

You misunderstand the point. Potable fresh water is not merely finite, it is a scarce resource, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[Ohreally_factor]

And it's becoming more scarce in many places around the world. Some say it's going to be the next really big commodity, as fossil fuels are today.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[CommunistHamster]

For convenience, time is a factor. It may take several weeks to download a whole series of something via p2p, but it can be bought in DVD format, thus paying for the convenience of having it NOW.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[mikek3332002]

exactly, it is just like Microsoft integrating WMP and IE into Windows.
ie Illigal Monopoly actions.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[NewWorldDan]

Watermarked content would be sufficient to limit supply. The problem with digital content without some sort of encumberence to it is how do you establish ownership? The powers that be will never allow anarchy to reign in the digital market. Watermarking provides a means to trace files back to a single owner, who then has some explaining to do. In short, security through paranoia, which works about as well as DRM. Watermarking is by far as good of a compromise as we will ever see. As someone who buys his content legally, I can live with that.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

Technology often causes markets to fail. The buggy whip manufacturers, the candlemakers, the oil lamp companies, the musket and sword makers.

Sure, you can still buy buggy whips, candles, oil lamps, and swords (probably muskets too) but the markets are but a tiny fraction of what they were.

The same will come with movies and music. The DMCA is as if the candlemakers and oil lamp manufacturers had persuaded Congress to outlaw light bulbs.

As to "infinite supply" and the zero price point, what about water? It's free, it falls from the sky, but I still pay to have it piped into my house. I've occasionally bought a bottle at a higher price than gasoline!

People will pay for convienience and they'll pay for quality, even if the product can be had for free. Folks will still go see live shows and buy CDs. Just because some folks don't want a shelf full of CDs and their cover art and liner notes doesn't mean the market is dead.

I'd download an unencumbered MP3 at the right price point - but that price point is ten times less what the producers are charging. It's incredibly STUPID to download a CD's worth of low quality DRM encumbered, virus prone WMAs for a higher price than you would pay for a CD.

The market won't go away, but most of its present players probably will.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[wolrahnaes]

Which is why I put in the caveat about having a decent connection. With a 10mbit cable at work and a combination of 8mbit cable and 100mbit to campus in my apartment, it takes more time to watch than to download. If it was possible to stream multipart RARs and parcheck on the fly, Usenet would be like Video-On-Demand.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[LunaticTippy]

Watermarks are powerless against cash sales, rentals, libraries, stolen, borrowed, and resold media.

Watermarks are DOA.

Re:DRM that plays on anything?

[Strolls]

In the absence of copyright (and a way to practically enforce it - DRM), creative works would be a failed market because supply is infinite, therefore pushing prices down to zero. The creator of the creative work gets nothing in return for production of that good so, the market has failed.

I'll bite. In the absence of (enforced) copyright creative works stored in / on a digital medium are a failed market.

As the article observes DRM is effective in preventing Joe & Mary SixPack copying DVDs, the RIAA lawsuits are somewhat effective in curbing music downloads, but there are always some people who will buy the disk from the store just for the pleasure of owning the original, pouring over the liner-notes, or simply because they're collectors. In this environment it should be pretty easy for artists to make a decent wage out of their creative works... they just have to learn to think a little creatively (ha! the irony!) about how they market themselves and break out of doing things the "same old way" that things have been done for years.

I'll bet there's a 250 people out there who'd happily pay $1000 each for an autographed copy of Madonna's latest album on release day - that's a quarter of a million right there, Madge, for 45 minutes signing your name. Can you now please quit bitching about people getting your songs on Napster? Fans become fans by listening to & discovering music, and it's a large fan-base that supports this kind of marketplace. For smaller musicians limited-edition artwork & packaging can similarly produce additional revenue.

On Radio 1 news a few weeks ago there was a piece about the price of some tickets to a gig - I think they were about £300. Fans were interviewed & bitching about this "unreasonable" pricing (actually, I'll bet the word used was actually "unfair"), but judging from the number of my customers who have P2P software installed I wouldn't be surprised to hear of a downturn in album sales. Meanwhile, in purchasing tickets to a concert you're buying something that you can't download, that can't be duplicated - that uniqueness has value, a gig is a enjoyable event with a limited capacity, so supply & demand comes into play again. Where's your "failed market" there?

£300 for a ticket to a gig might seem like a lot of money - hey! I can buy 2 Wiis for that!! - but if you're really a fan, and it's the gig of an artist of Madonna or U2's significance that you'll be talking about for years, is a week or two's wages really so much? And if it IS so much, then that musician won't be filling the venue, and prices will have to fall for the next tour.

I'd love to see musicians release tickets to their concerts straight on to eBay (or an alternative bidding system), cutting out the middle-men, undermining the touts (there's currently a parliamentary investigation underway into ticket-touting on eBay. WTF??!?!?!) and letting the market's supply and demand work out how much tickets are really worth. Second-hand ticket prices demonstrate that some people are prepared to pay more for a ticket than list-price, and there will always be people who would consider going to a gig were it cheaper, so just give the high-bidders tickets in the VIP booths at the front & let those with less disposable income stand at the back.

It might not seem "fair" to the original artist that for zero-cost I can make a copy of his music with the same fidelity with which it was recorded in the studio, but this is a fact of the digital age, and there's no point in ignoring that fact. The Grateful Dead discovered that bootlegging did their popularity and over-all ticket & record sales no hard at all, and I believe that musicians in Eastern Europe and Asia are also living with both piracy and sell-out tours. Failed market? My donkey!

Stroller.

Re:I don't understand

[rwven]

Bullcrap. I would readily hack DRM'd files i own if it were possible so I can play them in MP3 only players. I still own the dang things. What about people who like a particular service that uses WMA files and they want to play their songs on an iPod? Yeah without DRM you can't guarantee that people won't pirate those songs...but the people who will pirate the hacked DRM songs wouldn't have actually bought them in the first place. All one needs to do to pirate a CD is to buy it from the store and rip it. They might pay an extra 3 or 4 bucks...but hey...no DRM. DRM only punishes the law abiding.

iTunes Videos

[aychamo]

Dear DRM Hacking Community, iTunes' protected video DRM sucks. You can only view the videos in iTunes or QuickTime player. This is garbage. Please find a way to remove the DRM from the iTunes videos!

Wow

[Umbral Blot]

Although that summary contained many lovely methaphors and similies it was strangely empty of actual content. How odd.

Illegal?

[ClayTapes]

Isn't it illegal to spread information on disabling DRM? Then again, i'm not a reader.

Re:Illegal?

[Anonymous Cowled]

it depends on the country you're in - in the US, it's illegal, whereas, in the UK, it's not.

Re:Illegal?

[Darundal]

I don't think an article detailing the history of cracking DRM falls under the wrong end of the law...one detailing the Technical Details of how to do so, however, would.

Carefully disguised pro hollywood puff piece.

[plasmacutter]

There seem to be no substantive points.. I see nothing after reading this whole article which can't be found on about.com or from the mouth of anyone between the age of 16 and 26.

I did however find carefully slipped in hollywood propaganda, like this little nugget:

"The force of law (and the risk of lawsuits) combined with the obscurity of most cracking tools means that even DRM solutions which are easily cracked can be effective at preventing casual piracy"

This devious little term, causal piracy, actually refers to what should be our legally protected rights to fair use, and our rights under the AHRA for reproduction on recording devices.

Then there's self serving drek:

DRM's not going away anytime soon, and newer techniques such as BD+ promise to make future technologies even more difficult to hack for long periods of time.

hollywood to hackers..."naa naa-na-naa naa".

  Not to mention it goes against every point made in the "if you can't use the door, find an open window" argument that cracking the cypher is not necessarily necessary.

Re:Carefully disguised pro hollywood puff piece.

[Angst Badger]

Actually, I thought the point on preventing casual piracy -- which I took to mean not legitimate backups but making copies for your buddies -- was really crucial. Professional pirates, the folks who are selling counterfeit DVDs out of Hong Kong and other points east, are not in any way going to be deterred by DRM. They have the resources to route around it at the hardware level and the incentives to do so. But stopping professional piracy is a job for bilateral trade agreements and customs inspections, not DRM.

In between are the people uploading movies and music to the alt.binaries.* hierarchy and p2p systems like BitTorrent. Frankly, as much as I'm sure the big publishing firms would like for this to stop, the (admittedly modest) technical knowledge needed to take advantage of this kind of mid-range amateur piracy are beyond the average user, and the effort involved is sufficiently great that most people would rather just buy the damn movie at the store. The publishers may or may not understand this, hence the occasional wave of egregious lawsuits, but I suspect they do, if only because crushing Usenet binaries and p2p networks would neither legally nor technically all that challenging.

The goal of big media is to make most people afraid to pirate their products. The huffing and puffing over the technical fringe is just a publicity stunt.

The only really disturbing aspect of DRM is the legislative component, which tramples all over fair use and other elements of free expression. That is something to worry about for sure.

As for BD+, I don't think it will stick around long after the first time some discs are distributed with buggy flash code that cripples the players they are inserted into.

Re:Carefully disguised pro hollywood puff piece.

[plasmacutter]

casual piracy -- which I took to mean not legitimate backups but making copies for your buddies -- was really crucial.

the intent of the law on this was covered in the AHRA..

companies allowed the production and marketing of recording devices and forfeitted all right to call the activities described above "piracy".. in return they got a levvy on the blank media used on the devices.

Re:Carefully disguised pro hollywood puff piece.

[Angst Badger]

Well, I never meant to imply that the major publishers weren't greedy, craven, corrupt, and utterly morally bankrupt, just that even imperfect DRM serves the purpose it is intended to serve.

The question of whether the piracy DRM prevents is worth more than the sales it discourages is another matter altogether. Right now, it's a matter of speculation, frankly. And given that most of the market is sewn up by a cartel of price-fixing corporate titans, the market is unlikely to sort things out, either.

For the record, the levy on blank media really pisses me off. I have, like, ten times as many DVD-Rs filled with database backups as I do with pirated MP3s and movies, so shouldn't I get a discount? ;)

Re:Carefully disguised pro hollywood puff piece.

[identity0]

Look, I'm as pedantic a person when it comes to that as anyone - I would prefer simply calling it "copying", not piracy. That said, you're going to have to accept that what he describes is 1) The accepted term in current language, and 2) Against current US law.

Now, the more interesting point that need to be made again and again is that DRM is not a computer security issue. It's a consumer convienence issue. This means that, unlike a server or encrypted file where if the security is breached once it's considered a total loss because the data is in the hands of "bad guys", it doesn't matter if a few hackers crack DRM and publish instructions for how to get around it, as long as most consumers either don't find out or it's too inconvienient for them. How many owners of DVD players know about DeCSS?

They don't need to keep it secure against hackers like an OpenBSD box, they just need to make it hard enough to be worth spending $10 at Wal-mart for a DVD.

DRM circumvents copyright limits

[GodWasAnAlien]

Yes, I am Anti-DRM. It attempts to circumvent any publishing control limits allowed by the government.
Copyright law is already about 100 years longer than what most people would consider a reasonable "limited time". DRM attempts to remove the monopoly limit entirely.

Re:DRM circumvents copyright limits

[ultranova]

Copyright law is already about 100 years longer than what most people would consider a reasonable "limited time". DRM attempts to remove the monopoly limit entirely.

Copyright lasts as long as Disney does. Not 10 years, not 100 years, not 1000 years. It gets extended each time Mickey Mouse comes close to falling to public domain. Face it: copyright term is infinite.

if you can't use the door, try the chimney!

[plasmacutter]

in the spirit of this article, i'll propose to you a very unique method of skirting itunes video DRM..

Numerous "itunes video crack sites" can be found here, here, here, here, and more here

enjoy your higher quality DRM free itunes video files XD

Complicated reasons?? Not really.

[necro2607]

"Their reasons are complicated and range from the philosophical to the criminal"...

I don't know about the people specifically referred to in this article but most reasoning behind dislike of DRM is quite simple in nature. For example, being able to listen to a song on more than one brand of audio-playing device, or being able to watch a movie on more than one brand of device. There are also the cases where it's simply a matter of being able to burn a copy of a piece of software, or a movie.

Re:Complicated reasons?? Not really.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you need to RTF summary - the quote refers to people who hack DRM and their reasons for doing so, and postulates that these reasons are complicated. You seem to be confusing this with the question of why people are generally anti-DRM - which is pretty straight-forward.

Re:Complicated reasons?? Not really.

[necro2607]

People hack DRM for the same reasons they dislike it, as far as I've ever observed.

Re:I don't understand

[SkipNewarkDE]

You know, having those cash registers, security cases and the security gates at my local Tower Records is a drag, too. It is just punishing the law abiding people who actually pay for their CD's rather than lifting them.

Re:I don't understand

[rwven]

No. Until you pay for that CD, you don't own it. They can put you through whatever cash register they want to, wrap the CD any way they want to, etc etc. Once you buy it...the "hassle" (not that buying a CD has ever been a hassle) is over. You can walk out of the store and do whatever you want with it....

The difference is...when you buy a DRM'd music file...you own it...but they still restrict you.

WMA DRM

[in2mind]

While almost every software[Windows XP,soon Vista too!],copy protection schemes [DeCSS] have been cracked , why hasnt the WMA/WMV DRM been cracked?

What makes it hard to crack WMA? How did Microsoft get this one right?

No.. DMCA means you must pay first vendor

[plasmacutter]

DRM means I must pay the first vendor

No.. without the presence of the DMCA there would be a huge sector of our economy right now devoted to producing DRM cracks, one of which would be for your program.

OP is right, it is state regulation.. the technology mandate known as usc section 1201 (DMCA anticircumvention provision), which is keeping you locked in, not the DRM itself.

I'm all for regulations which make sense, but the solution here is not the further regulation of the market by preventing sellers from selling products the way they want to sell them.

It is the repeal of the regulation which prevents buyers from using the products the way they want to use them, and preventing other sellers from selling tools to help buyers in their quest to use the products the way they want.

Re:No.. DMCA means you must pay first vendor

[mrsbrisby]

No.. without the presence of the DMCA there would be a huge sector of our economy right now devoted to producing DRM cracks, one of which would be for your program.

So what you're saying is that in the absense of the DMCA, there wouldn't any DRM because any DRM that companies tried to make would be broken immediately.

I'm all for returning to pre-DMCA laws...

Re:WMA DRM

[plasmacutter]

I refer you to the winamp method of stripping WMA drm..

or the soundcard loop method, or the virtual soundcard method... etc etc..

they didnt crack the algorithm because they didnt need to.

Trying to head video DRM off at the pass

[widesan]

Disclaimer: I created WideSAN

I'm doing my best to head video DRM off at the pass. I recognized that content owners would be clamouring for it a while ago and have tried to create a viable alternative.

WideSAN technology would allow video to be distributed free of charge, supported by ads. Since the video is free, and easily downloaded from a web site, this eliminates the need for DRM. After all, who's going to scour the p2p landscape for something they could have already legally downloaded as an AVI from a web site by the time they found it.

People get video (such as movies and TV shows) for free, owners get paid, everybody wins! Now I just have to get some owners to realize this.

Re:Trying to head video DRM off at the pass

[spectrum-]

yea so how about when the adverts are stripped out of the website by adblock programs? How are you gonna ensure the programs aren't going to be stripped of an adverts added in and then passed around by means other than your website? Who's going to want to download programs stuffed with adverts when they can leech them from torrents anyway?

Re:Trying to head video DRM off at the pass

[widesan]

yea so how about when the adverts are stripped out of the website by adblock programs?

Go right ahead, the ads are inside the AVI file, part of the video. That's the innovation in the WideSAN technology, changing the video on the fly (in this case inserting advertisements) while the server does virtually the same amount of work as it would serving up static files of the same size.

Who's going to want to download programs stuffed with adverts when they can leech them from torrents anyway?

There are a *lot* of people out there who can't figure out how to find and download from a torrent, or other p2p system, the various things they are interested in. Personally, given the choice of downloading the original AVI, legally, from a website, or one that is pre-stripped of ads from somewhere else illegally; I'm going to chose the ad supported one, for the following reasons:

• It's just plain easier, it takes less effort to download from a website than to hunt around for it in p2p land.
• I'm supporting the owners (hopefully the creators also) which will provide me the future benefit of further content.
• It's not that hard to fast forward through the commercials, there's no DRM, it's not illegal, and there's nothing stopping me.
• An ad free version will almost certainly be re-encoded, thus lowering the quality. (re-encoding content from a lossy format to a lossy format will result in lower quality)
• It's already in a standard format (AVI with standard codecs) that I can play almost anywhere or convert to any format I choose.
• There's nothing stopping me from editing out the commercials myself, and that would be perfectly legal.
• I don't have to worry about getting busted for copyright infringement. However minute the chance might be, it exists, people *are* getting busted.

Re:I don't understand

[bberens]

A better analogy would be if you had to pay $15 for your cd at the local Tower Records but were not allowed to leave the building with it. You could leave, but the cd had to remain in the store at all times.

A question

[hypethetica]

Quoth the article:
"AACS relies on the well-established AES (with 128-bit keys) to safeguard the disc data. Just like DVD players, HD DVD and Blu-ray drives will come with a set of Device Keys handed out to the manufacturers by AACS LA. Unlike the CSS encryption used in DVDs, though, AACS has a built-in method for revoking sets of keys that are cracked and made public."

So what happens when someone cracks ALL the keys and posts every one of them publicly?

Re:A question

[spyfrog]

Then we will all smile. ;-)

Re:A question

[sethstorm]

Product Recall (of course, for some safety problem).

Re:A question

[CastrTroy]

Well, I imagine that if all the keys need to be revoked, they will either give up and just let us copy everything, or they will release some sort of upgrade disc that can be read only by the players (yeah right) that will have new keys on it. This could go on for sometime, where every 3 months you have to go out and get a new disc of keys. Here's a question. If a disc is encoded with 1 key, and that key gets revoked, is that disc unplayable in old players? in all new players? or does it not disable anything at all, and just cause no new discs to be printed with that key?

Re:A question

[IDontAgreeWithYou]

Well, here are the first two keys, you can work out the rest for yourself.

KEY 1: 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000

KEY 2: 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000001

Re:WMA DRM

[in2mind]

I refer you to the winamp method of stripping WMA drm.. or the soundcard loop method, or the virtual soundcard method... etc etc..

While the methods you mentioned work,they are tedious - you have to play the whole song & save it as a non-DRM MP3/WMA.

Theres nothing like cracking the file straight -

• No loss of quality
• Saves time
• Ease of use

By the way what would you do with DRM WMV huh?

Bullshit - What About unDRM

[Wrath0fb0b]

From TFA:

>

I'm surprised Ars Technica doesn't consider unDRM and Sidda, which work on all modern encrypted media (incl. video). Microsoft has tried very hard to suppress all mention of unDRM and I guess it worked (it does take some persistent googling to get the files).

Still, it works. I downloaded an encrypted rental from aebn and gave it a try . . .

Re:Bullshit - What About unDRM

[IamTheRealMike]

unDRM appears (from a quick Googling) to be a Visual Basic script that automates usage of drmdbg and related tools. These exploited a simple oversight in one of the DRM DLLs, which Microsoft rapidly corrected. Media that was encrypted after this update was pushed out is no longer vulnerable. If it worked for you, possibly it was old media that was never "renewed".

Re:WMA DRM

[plasmacutter]

By the way what would you do with DRM WMV huh?

winamp plays video.. but frankly I wouldnt buy anything encoded in WMV, as it's an inferior format, and anyone who encodes in it obviously must disdain their work =)

Since we're on the topic

[OverlordQ]

Since we're on the topic of DRM, somebody get around to cracking ITMS 6.0 FairPlay, i want to use Hymn to Fair-Use my music again!

Re:Since we're on the topic

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. iTunes 6 puts the lie to the commonly seen claim that "any DRM will be cracked immediately after it comes out". There appears to be only one person in the world who can crack iTunes DRM, and if he decides to chase girls in California instead, then tough.

economical terrorists?

[blueZ3]

It's nice to know we can save some money when crashing jet liners into tall buildings!

Or did you mean economic terrorists?

Re:economical terrorists?

[megaditto]

You are right; should have been 'economic', not frugal.

Sorry, Herr OberGruppenGrammatiker ;-)

(Does this count as a Goodwin?)

It's frustrating

[Evil Shabazz]

I find it frustrating and tiring to continually listen to/read about dinosaurs pressing for legislation to protect their business model. Essentially, the RIAA is anti-capitalistic. :P

side note - interesting logic question

[magnamous]

From the article:

Such technologies end up controlling only the behavior of legitimate users; those who want free copies of Dude, Where's My Car? from BitTorrent won't be deterred.

I wonder how many people who agree with this statement also support gun control.

Re:side note - interesting logic question

[andphi]

So do I. In both cases, the laws are definitely enforced on those who buy their goods in a primary market.

However, in the case of digital media, the enforcement, because it is part of "the product", encumbers all downstream users. If I buy a DRMed CD and then give|trade it to my sister, her fair use rights are as infringed as mine were. If I buy a gun, use it, and then give|trade it to her, I experience gun control (waiting period, background checks, yadda yadda) but she does not.

Summation:
More questions: Why is digital content more encumbered than a firearm? Why are primary market participants consider "legitimate" while all others (included secondary market participants) are illegimate?

Re:side note - interesting logic question

[magnamous]

Interesting, but I don't know if we're asking the same question.

I'm interested in the idea that the controls put in place to affect "illegitimate users" (people who want to steal from or murder others, or people who wish to distribute copyrighted content, for profit or otherwise, to people who have not already purchased a legitimate copy of said content) do not affect them. The criminal who wants to harm people still finds a way to get a gun, and the pirate who is determined enough finds a way to distribute the content to others.

The controls instead end up controlling the "legitimate users" - the ordinary citizen who just wants to be able to protect himself, or the person who just wants to put a copy of the movie he just bought onto his hard drive, or his iPod (or even his non-iPod!), or sell it to a friend, or put it on whatever next-generation storage system comes out because he doesn't feel like paying for the same movie over and over in different formats.

It seems to me that to support this idea for digital content but not for weapons is a bit incongruous, so I wonder how many people actually think that way.

Re:side note - interesting logic question

[Anonymous Coward]

You make an interesting point, but I don't think it's impossible to support one and not the other viewpoint without being hypocritical. Essentially it's about public safety - if people legitimately own firearms, there will be firearm related accidents regardless that the people did not intend to use them illegally, and that has direct impact on everyone in society who is a potential victim of such accidents. If people are determied to do harm illegally, they will do so by whatever means necessary - guns, knives, pummelling. Removing dangerous weapons from the hands of citizens merely takes away the opportunity for accidents to happen.

If people legitimately own music, what's the public safety comparison? I guess you might burn one too many fair use CD's and suffer injury from an exploding CD writer.

Also, removing weapons may result in a lowering of anger-related incidents - if someone is pushed to a point of anger and has a gun to hand, they may well use it without meaning to. If the gun's not there, the problem isn't there. Again, with music, there's no comparison. Nobody is going to be hurt because some kid torrents an album in anger.

Another point - sure there's a lot of gun crime and owning a gun might make you feel safer, but how many of the criminal weapons came originally through legitimate sources? I'd imagine a fair number. If there weren't so many legal guns in the first place, it stands to reason there'd be less illegal guns. If you are a responsible gun owner but someone, nevertheless, steals your gun, does that have the same implications as if you have a CD stolen?

It's like comparing apples to oranges. You could ask, "If I'm allowed a gun, why am I not allowed chemical or nuclear weapons? I'm a responsible citizen, after all." That may well be the case, but there are public safety implications that make it the concern of everyone to control ownership of such things.

By the way, I don't have any particularly strong feelings either way on gun control, I can just see that there are implications with guns which don't exist with data and it's an unfair comparison to say you can't be against DRM without being against gun control. What is odd is that a society can exist where music is more strictly controlled than weaponry...

Re:side note - interesting logic question

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Duh. Completely illogical and irrelevant question. Handling DRM is not a conduit to killing someone. Let me guess, you're american, right?

Meh

[Tatsh]

VirtualDubMod was encoding a decrypted DVD to XviD while I was reading this. Have a nice day!

Re:Meh

[turdodine]

i was using dvdshrink on a movie and nero on a ps2 disk ( for playback on "antiDRMed" ps2 =) bring it on!

Not So

[Srin Tuar]

It is the government's grant of copyright which makes the bits effectively finite, NOT DRM.

If its goal is to limit supply, DRM is a failed technology concept:
Thah would be much like an attempt to make dry water.
You cannot show someone something without them being able to see it.
You cannot tell someone a secret without allowing them to know it.

So why would they push such a flawed technology: the true goals are likely much more insidious.
I believe they are more along the lines of controlling what you are allowed to view, and
controlling who is allowed to produce content.

Re:Not So

[IamTheRealMike]

It is the government's grant of copyright which makes the bits effectively finite, NOT DRM.

Yes but as the RIAA discovered actually using the courts of law to enforce copyright is a losing proposition. Too many violators and court time is too expensive. So DRM makes sense for copyright owners because it cuts the number of violators in a cost effective fashion.

You cannot tell someone a secret without allowing them to know it.

Obviously, I can circumvent DRM by simply humming the tune to myself. Copyright and DRM are not absolutes. You can "violate" copyright to a certain extent under fair use rights. You can evade DRM by using the analog hole or your memory.

A failed market is one that is so inefficient it's no longer doing what it's supposed to do. Copyright and DRM are nasty hacks around the limitations of the market, and they improve its efficiency enough that people can be full time musicians/authors/movie-directors/game-developers/ whatever. They don't have to give it 100% efficiency for it to be worthwhile.

The so-called "hackers" who want to eliminate DRM for philosophical reasons would do better to engage in some economic R&D. If there was something like the market but which worked in the presence of infinite supply, nobody would care about DRM. It wouldn't be worth the (considerable) cost, effort and risk. But so far nobody figured out a better way to pay for content creation than a hacked-up market.

Re:Not So

[Srin Tuar]

Yes but as the RIAA discovered actually using the courts of law to enforce copyright is a losing proposition. Too many violators and court time is too expensive. So DRM makes sense for copyright owners because it cuts the number of violators in a cost
effective fashion.

Suing individual downloaders for contributory infringement is not efficient or cheap.
But its not cheap for those who get sued either, and they generally end up forced to pay
an outlandish settlement to a party they have caused no measurable damage too.

Obviously, I can circumvent DRM by simply humming the tune to myself. Copyright and DRM are not absolutes. You can "violate" copyright to a certain extent under fair use rights. You can evade DRM by using the analog hole or your memory.

The fact that DRM interferes with one's ability to make fair use of material, such as making backup copies, or quoting sections of content are effectively diminishing the value of the content and extending copyright into places it was never meant to reach.

The so-called "hackers" who want to eliminate DRM for philosophical reasons would do better to engage in some economic R&D. If there was something like the market but which worked in the presence of infinite supply, nobody would care about DRM. It wouldn't be worth the (considerable) cost, effort and risk. But so far nobody figured out a better way to pay for content creation than a hacked-up market.

There is nothing more noble than defending the basic human right to think, and thus those hackers are defending our very freedom.

There is a way for a market to work in the presence of inifinite supply: get paid in advance. The old patron of the art's system could easily be re-vamped for the modern age, and it requires none of the monopolies or invasions upon personal liberty thrust upon us by the copyright system.

Copyright is a failed experiment in oppression, and with any luck the internet and the pirates may eventually break that system's back. The alternative end-game is fairly bleak, and has been illustrated in science fiction several times.

Copyright was supposed to be a means to and ends, not and end in itself.

Re:Not So

[ultranova]

A failed market is one that is so inefficient it's no longer doing what it's supposed to do.

Low prices are the mark of an efficient, not inefficient, market. A market where you can get anything you want for free is 100% efficient and a complete success.

Copyright and DRM are nasty hacks around the limitations of the market,

Copyright is a legalized monopoly, where only a certain person is entitled to produce something. It is not a hack to make the market work, it is a hack to keep the market from working, which exists since certain individuals can get more money by enforcing artificial and arbitrary restrictions on the free flow of information and have bribed various governmental entities to pass laws on their favor and against the best interests of the populace.

and they improve its efficiency enough that people can be full time musicians/authors/movie-directors/game-developers/ whatever.

If I build a house, I'm paid for it once. If I record a song, I'm paid for it again and again and again.

There were authors before copyright existed. They had patrons who paid them to write or compose or whatever, since the author was good enough that the patrons wanted to get more of his works. But I guess you have to actually be good at what you do to get people to pay in advance, which explains why the current musicians would starve without copyright, as they claim.

The so-called "hackers" who want to eliminate DRM for philosophical reasons would do better to engage in some economic R&D. If there was something like the market but which worked in the presence of infinite supply, nobody would care about DRM. It wouldn't be worth the (considerable) cost, effort and risk. But so far nobody figured out a better way to pay for content creation than a hacked-up market.

Suppose you remove copyright laws. Suppose that this leads to no one or almost no one paying for content anymore - it it doesn't lead to this, then it has no effect. What happens ?

Well, the commercially produced stuff stops being produced, of course. There's still the amateur stuff that people make for fame or for fun. Is that enough to satisfy the demand for new content ?

If it is, then fine - the demand is satisfied. The writers and such who aren't good enough to get people to pay them to write more or continue their series are simply going to get another job.

If it isn't, then again fine - there's demand, so people will start filling it. A director might get funding for a new movie from prepayments (which works fine to filter out bad directors), from either the viewers or from Wal-Mart which figures that it needs something to fill the DVD isle - what, did you think that people would stop buying movies in convenient no-hassle no-wait format just because they could get the same stuff for free by searching the Net ? Of course you'd need to start with cheap movies to build a reputation - amateur movie scene come to mind.

So, as I see it, content creation market would work just fine, in fact better than it does now, without copyright. People create from the joy of creation, and for fame; if that's not enough to satisfy the demand, then there are the pre-payment, patronage and voluntary donation systems that work fine without copyright. And if it is enough to satisfy the demand, then all copyright ever did was help parasites to fleece the public.

Either way, abolishing the copyright would make the world a better place.

Re:WMA DRM

[The MAZZTer]

Because other players have been able to implement WM? playback support (mplayer, Winamp), so you don't need to crack WM?. The major focus is probably on DRM that includes vendor lock-in.

No, no... grammar nazis are so yesterday's news

[blueZ3]

Grammar ninjas are the new hotness ;-)

It seems that you've been living two lives.

[Anonymous Coward]

One life, you're Nate Anderson, writer for a respectable hardware website. You have a social security number, pay your taxes, and you... help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in breaking DRM, where you go by the hacker alias "Nater" and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not.

mnb Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Real men use CCE 6 pass.

How to Hack WMA DRM

[qsqueeq]

Download music.
Use DRM enabled program to burn music to CDs (New Napster supports this).
Use favorite CD ripper to create MP3s from new music CD.
Have a nice day. Sam

Why nobody has said this..

[Dryanta]

TFA and most of the replies fail to miss the point. "DRM SUCKS DRM SUCKS" DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!

Don't buy music or software that is copywritten in this way. There are open alternatives. Show the entertainment industry what you think with your dollar. Why spend money on recordings of movies or music anymore when you cannot even utilize them the way you would like without becoming a criminal?

Hollywood and Washington are taking a big fat dump on the entire point of copyright and anti-trust laws - protecting the interests of business and the interests of consumers EQUALLY. I hear stories every day of the RIAA or MPAA sueing Joe Blow for downloading X - that's just as assinine as sueing twenty years ago him for copying the same crappy ass rock from the radio to tape.

The solution - Just vote with your dollar! Ever since that whole Sony DRM scandal - I have boycotted their products even though I do not utilize Windows. This is no longer just a privacy or copyright issue, it is one of personal civil liberties being trampled by big business.

Re:Why nobody has said this..

[jimicus]

The minor problem with the mass market is that it's a mass market.

Boycotts very seldom happen en masse. Generally, they're so small as to pass completely under the radar of the people responsible for looking at sales figures.

DRM will never be a problem

[Prowler50mil]

If it's music, a movie or an ebook DRM will never be a problem, because at some point it needs to be converted to a format which humans can interpret. Then it's just a matter of recording it with a camcorder or microphone.

Re:DRM will never be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

welcome to our new analog overlord...

No need to hack DRM

[merc]

I'm disappointed how many consumers will eat what they're fed. I hack DRM by simply refusing to purchase anything that makes use of it. If everyone did that the problem would solve itself. Remember, it's your money and nobody can force you to buy something you do not want.

Re:No need to hack DRM

[Tatsh]

Then you pirate what you know has DRM? I guess that would be every DVD then.

Not saying that's bad or hurts anybody, but someday, the way things are going, there will be no alternative other than true free content (as in beer), and to be 100% honest, I just haven't seen anything incredibly terrific from that (I like THE.SCENE and TEH.SCENE but that's about it).

what

[tetromino]

Carefully disguised pro hollywood puff piece.

If you had been reading Ars Technica for any length of time, you would be aware of its incessant and strident criticism of DRM and **AA stupidity. This article is no exception, although perhaps it's not anti-hollywood enough for your tastes.

"The force of law (and the risk of lawsuits) combined with the obscurity of most cracking tools means that even DRM solutions which are easily cracked can be effective at preventing casual piracy"
This devious little term, causal piracy, actually refers to what should be our legally protected rights to fair use, and our rights under the AHRA for reproduction on recording devices.

No, "casual piracy" refers to "widespread small-scale copyright infringement by average users", like making half a dozen copies of a copyrighted audio cassette (remember those?) for your friends. Lawsuits and DMCA-protected ass-broken encryption are indeed effective enough to deter casual copyright infringement. Hence the fact that itunes is more popular than allofmp3.

DRM's not going away anytime soon, and newer techniques such as BD+ promise to make future technologies even more difficult to hack for long periods of time.
hollywood to hackers..."naa naa-na-naa naa".

Unless you've been living in a cave for the past 10 years, you know that DRM is not going away any time soon. Bluray, HDDVD, this- and next-gen console games, Valve's Steam, itunes, etc. are all covered with DRM. In fact, US is using its economic power to push **AA-designed pro-DRM laws onto the rest of the planet. DRM is wrong and evil, but it's here to stay, at least until we can out-bribe music executives.

Not to mention it goes against every point made in the "if you can't use the door, find an open window" argument that cracking the cypher is not necessarily necessary.

As the article says, even broken DRM still discourages the average luser from pirating, and the average luser is all the studios care about.

Re:what

[plasmacutter]

yes i know about ars technica's normal position, but this is still a pro hollywood puff piece.

o, "casual piracy" refers to "widespread small-scale copyright infringement by average users", like making half a dozen copies of a copyrighted audio cassette (remember those?) for your friends.

no.. that would be called "fair use", and the AHRA was made to address EXACTLY this point. They charge levies on the recordable media, and in return they are not allowed to claim that it's piracy to copy things noncommercially. The only reason computers/the internet were not covered under the AHRA was a suspicious loophole in the definition of "recording device".

Unless you've been living in a cave for the past 10 years....DRM.... it's here to stay, at least until we can out-bribe music executives.

the quote I made was making claims and implication that it would somehow become more effective.. basically the whole article was saying.. "before they were broken, but we made them stronger.. nyaaa nyaa-nya-nyaa nyaa you cant hack us"..

It's a bs claim.. you dont have to hack the algorithm to bypass DRM.

Its existance is different from its effectiveness.. and its effectiveness is nil.. and no it doesnt stop "casual users from copying half a dozen copies for friends", which is not piracy.. if they cant break the disk open theyll go to kazaa.. and dont you dare say they can't use kazaa.

Re:I don't understand

[SkipNewarkDE]

Bullsh@t. You own the media of the CD but you don't own its contents. We can all get high and mighty about how awful DRM is, but the sad truth about human nature is that if there is a freebie to be had most are going to take it. An official release of a movie put online in decent quality without DRM for $2.00? Who is going to buy it? How many are going to buy a copy and then through the magic of p2p spread about a million copies all over the internet. It is easy for you kids to sit and blame the evil corporations for being evil with their awful DRM thing. Go and create something, software, a movie, music, whatever, watch it get copied, stolen all over the web and then get back to me on that. When you actually work for a living, I think your perspective changes. I have worked in the software industry for some 20 years, and I have had the "great pleasure" of seeing software for which I get royalties for my hard work show up all over the place thanks to the web. "I'm just sharing it with my friends - all ten million of them." It's nice to b!tch and wail about the evils of DRM but the mindset is such that it ignores the realities of the digital media and human nature.

Back in the olden days....

[Anonymous Coward]

When Apple ][ was king, and all the games were "copy protected" I knew people who would buy the game, never play it and defeat the copy protection. To them, defeating the protection scheme was the game. Every time a new protection scheme would come out, they would buy the game just to defeat it.

When the PC had "copy protected" games, they would buy a PC, the game and defeat it. I thought they had too much time on their hands, but it was fun to watch. One of these guys came to my house with a game, because I had a C64, and there was a scheme that other people he knew were having trouble defeating and he messed with it. He had partial success, and I packed up the C64 with him and sent him home, when I got tired. About a week later I asked him about it and he said he figured it out on the way home.

Dongles and other tricks have also been defeated. All the copy protection schemes do is make legitimate use more difficult. Treat your customers like criminals, and they will go somewhere else.

With the internet, and all the tools available, no DRM, (copy protection) scheme will be reliable. All of them will quickly be defeated, the results published, and the people who create the schemes will try again, and again, and again. Movies and music will get cost prohibitive, due to the dopey folks that will insist they need "protection".

Most games are no longer "copy protected", I am thinking the RIAA and MPAA will get a clue eventually.

Anti-DRM

[rooot]

Something about genetics and statistics here. Intellectual property being a genetic trait of the human organism.
I would, and do, argue that all human knowledge will traverse all humans in a distilled, misinterpreted fashion over some period of time. The likeness of the IP recieved/observed/grok'd will aproximate the original based on proximity of disclosure and number of interpretations observed before consideration. Also, long before conscious realization of the thoerem/mechanics/method/concept in question, many uses of the INVENTION/WORK will be reiterated by the subconscious. It is important to understand that EVERYONE has those GEOMETRY/SITUATIONAL dreams (a construct of bizzare permutations of real experience by our subconcious)that LATER allow them to problem solve or create in a new way, and in a way that a mid African monkeys know how to catch and eat coastal crabs. OR allows Bollywood to use Japanese Punk Rock, but not American Punk Rock musical constructs thus deriving Punk Rock but not from the Brits.

Simply being aware that knowledge and art are facets of our subconscious creative mind will show you that all knowledge is Individual Intellectual Property only as long as the individual secrets the knowledge, immediately upon sharing or EXPRESSING the concept, public domain powers of inertia start to build. I should say that creating a painting does not teach anyone how to master a new brush stroke, but once SHARED it sure as heck does, and there is no stopping them(anyone) from spontaneously deriving the CONCEPT 7.7 from BRUSH STROKE DEMO v.999.

So, DRM or not. My consideration is that IP laws protect knowledge that has already been given to THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. The essential problem is that we are trying to use behavior modification (legislation) to control genetics(human survival) without a clear understanding of human learning, psychology, mutation or inheritance(as they apply genetically), on the Humane Organism against all laws of survival and nature.

Apparently, the Democratic-Representative ..8p.. Capitalistic Bean Counter Governments..*8p...and (well distributor, promoter, producer) think they are in a position to value fair compensation for thought. hmm. All humans think all the time, and if we all learn without intention, and our creative subconscious hallways interprets and reapplies.. then essentially the value of original thought is nothing unless we use or teach it WELL. Kind of like getting graded for being human.

SO .. how long do you get your +5 income modifier? heh.. as long as you use it and somebody cares. The powers that be will come to understand this, as will market forces define this for RIAA and all representative resellers of original thought. Unfortunately for me, the consumer and the PARTNER THINKER, I am developing an antisurvival instinct by being associated with the losing team of RIAA, SBA, and MPIAA, and most GOVm't PATENT AND TRADEMAARK OFFICES.

If, as humans, we were capable of valuing these things correctly then the US patent and trade office may as well just pay us directly on submission. Unfortunately for those who would do well in this environment, the USPTO is only responsible for cataloging, not for market performance. They cannot pay for what marketing/sales/manufacturing you may or may not do or others derive from what you have done. They themselves cponclude they are not competant to assign value.

The legislatures/lobbyist/judges of america think they are. There is no INHERENT RIGHT TO YOUR IP. There is a HUMANE right to it and IT WILL BE ABSORBRED (what do the BOrg say?) ASSIMILATED, that I GARUANTEE, unless you ostracize yourself. FULL WARRANTY IMPLIED. It is a matter of survival. So what we have here, is an ability to sell at market value, survival techniques. To the highest bidder, so the law of club and fang states. Beyond that, we have those that cannot survive on there own, buying and selling concepts and most importantly spending there earnings trying to lo

Re:WMA DRM

[Darundal]

While almost every software[Windows XP,soon Vista too!],copy protection schemes [DeCSS] have been cracked , why hasnt the WMA/WMV DRM been cracked?

What makes it hard to crack WMA? How did Microsoft get this one right?

Microsoft definitly has the time, money, and power to get everything perferctly right. However, they have a secret; They secretly work for THE DEVIL to spread customer DISSATISFACTION and FRUSTRATION, both of which are the fuels for the evil army of flame-throwing lamas with which he shall conquer first Hoboken, NJ, and then the whole world, one water fowl at a time! Microsoft only perfects products that cause DISSATISFACTION and FRUSTRATION for the consumer, and they half-ass everything else, so that Bill Gates doesn't have to fulfill the part of his contract with THE DEVIL in the event that people find themselves enjoying their PC use; The requirement that he dress up in a Mumu and have intercourse with Oprah Winfrey, Rosie O'Donnell, Gary Busey and the Taco Bell Chihuahua whilst singlehandedly performing "Never mind the why and wherefore" from the HMS Pinafore!

DRM is not evil, is not bad, and has it place.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone seems to be media centric here. Maybe it is just because everyone (including myself) wants to grab the latest album off the web and wants to not have to shell out a few bucks. Maybe it is because that is all we see being used. Who knows - But the fact of the matter is just about everyone in this space has a very slanted view on reality.

First and formost DRM has a GREAT place in documents. Now I know everyone wants to view DRM as a way to stop the owner from getting access to their content - but that is just some stupid idea that someone spitting alarmist hyperboles came up with. With DRM on documents a company can effectivly impose rights on an important document. This helps secure valueable IP. For instance with MS Office RM at my company I am able to write up a draft of a new design and I can easily limit the people viewing it, printing it, and copying it. I don't have to worry about people saving the document locally or taking on their laptops - it is always protected and accessible to anyone who has the right. I see no reason why this is 'evil.' In fact this is a very valuable tool to me. There are lots of other companies besides Microsoft that offer this kind of DRM, and I encourage you to investigate yourself before you make remarks like "DRM is flawed by design," those types of remarks only make you appear ignorant.

Now I am not going to defend any of the media companies here, in fact I believe that the reason why everyone hates DRM is not b/c of Apple, Real, Microsoft or Adobe (but possibly Sony ;) ), it is instead that media companies are forcing overly restrictive DRM. Did you know that napster and apples contacts w/ those music bastards pervented them from keeping online backups of users rights (in other words if you lose you harddrive, you have to repurchase your music)? This may have changed since, but this gives an example of why those bastards are the root of the evil.

Also what I find paradoxical about this conversation is that many people hate DRM because it binds you to that system (like Apple's FairPlay). These are the same people who have no problem buying a Mac that locks all your hardware to the same system. Why aren't we protesting this? If openness is the issue then we should be attacking (and we are) MS's closed source and (we are not) Apple's closed hardware and mostly closed source (Granted parts of OSX kernel are open)? Seems like we are guided more by emotion, branding and familiarity (we expect Apple to be closed, but not music - hmm what about the next gen of music listeners...) then with logic.

Also DRM on media content is inharently bad, it is just effectivly bad. The reasons why we don't like it is b/c it is cumbersom and restrictive. Now imagine a world where everything you had rights to just worked - forever. You had some database in the clouds that kept track of everything for you. Now worring about losing songs, you could play on your iPod, on Linux, on you cell phone, in your car. You just couldn't steal the music off the web, or give it away free to everyone you know. The problem is that is far off, but until then we will just have to make due with what we have (or purchase CDs and DVDs for gods sake!)

Re:DRM is not evil, is not bad, and has it place.

[jimicus]

DRM is defective by design if part of the design is "and yet the user shall retain some control of their system"

If the information is stored on a private network which is locked down tight so it can only be accessed by "approved" PCs, and the "approved" corporate PCs are also locked down tight, then yes, DRM will work just fine (though it won't protect much against someone retyping a "protected" document onto another, non-corporate owned machine).

However, if we're talking about the information being made available on a public network to anyone with a PC, the only way DRM can be made to work is if everything is locked down tight - essentially, retrofitting the tight corporate lockdown described above to the Internet.

FWIW, I think DRM has some very useful applications - back in the days of Win9x, you could lock down a machine by setting a policy which dictated which programs could be executed, but it was a dumb list of filenames so could be defeated with a simple rename. By mandating "only signed applications from this list" (and set up different lists on a per-group basis), any organisation which needs tight control over its computers but still wants to be rolling out PCs (as opposed to dumb terminals) can do so - and there are lots of organisations which have that requirement. Think banks, hospitals, call centres, schools etc.

CinemaNow DRM Cracked in 24 Hours

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM will always be cracked. The DVD that "cannot be copied" launched yesterday by CinemaNow has already been cracked. There DVDs are showing up on YouTube (see http://youtube.com/watch?v=RZ6HZtq3GXY).

Support your local hacker.

[cwsulliv]

Any well-informed individual who values our cultural heritage and wishes to preserve it for our children will go out of his/her way to acquire DRM-free versions of media content, whether by legal purchase, from hackers, or if necessary even from commercial pirates.

The history of our civilization over the ages teaches us that media stored in one or only a few repositories will most likely be lost - prime examples being the great libraries of Alexandria and Constantinople. But while these libraries flourished for hundreds of years, the volatile nature and rapid change of digital storage technology of the current era practically quarantees that the majority of works stored in digital form which cannot be readily copied will vanish within our lifetimes.

Highly acclaimed works often have an initial spike in popularity but then languish in near obscurity for years or decades until rediscovered. And of course some works considered valuable in later years never even achived that initial spike. But rediscovery requires that a work remains available, which will not be the case if a DRM-enabled work goes out-of-print for very long. It's difficult to judge apriori which works will be recognized as having lasting value and it takes considerable resources for a publisher to continually re-archive all works for the sake of preserving the unknown few.

That's interesting, if extreme, libertarianism

[CurtMonash]

You seem to be arguing that all businesses should be free to use whatever DRM they want, but all buyers (or whoever else) should be free to do all hacking they want. For "intellectual" property that will never have more than few copies made, that idea may or may not be workable.

But do you seriously propose a world in which books and movies would be released with zero copyright protection, and "pirates" could legally reproduce and sell anything they physically could copy? That certainly would drive the profits out of the print publishing industry in hurry. Of course, I used to have a subscription newsletter, and now I blog similar material for free -- but I'd like my wife the novelist still be able to get paid for her work, should she ever choose to add to her total of 15 published novels. Do you really think it's necessary to abolish that possibility?

I'll hold off on further comment until I see whether you really meant to be that extreme.

Re:WMA DRM

[in2mind]

winamp plays video.. but frankly I wouldnt buy anything encoded in WMV, as it's an inferior format, and anyone who encodes in it obviously must disdain their work =)

You're right.Neither would I willingly buy WMA. :)
But what about the content that you just come across.You spend hours downloading something from the internet & when you open the WMV file,it promptly refuses to play due to DRM.

Bypassing the DRM for the cntent you own is onething.
Bypassing the DRM for the content you do not own is another thing.

Re:WMA DRM

[plasmacutter]

But what about the content that you just come across.You spend hours downloading something from the internet & when you open the WMV file,it promptly refuses to play due to DRM.

Bypassing the DRM for the cntent you own is onething.
Bypassing the DRM for the content you do not own is another thing.

well.. then it's not really DRM, it's more along the lines of point to point encryption.....you were not the intended recipient.. the intended recipient has the key.. the circumvention device then has to break through the obscurity which is supposed to "secure" the key.

Re:I don't understand

[Eivind]

Yes you do. It's amazing that someone can manage to read slashdot without understanding something so mindbogglingly simple.

If you buy a copy of a copyrigthed work, you own that single copy. Plain and simple. You also own the physical media that it is stored on.

Even though it is your property, there are certain things you may not do with it, these things are listed in copyrigth-law and elsewhere. For example, you may not make and distribute copies of a book you own, nor may you use a book you own to whack a policeman over the head.

But you may do anything with your property not specifically prohibited by law. You require no "permission" or "licence" from the copyrigth-holder for this. You can read a book. You can listen to a piece of music. You can give away, or sell, a book you're tired of. You can microwave a CD. You can use Ann Coulter writings to wipe your ass. You can do all of these things, regardless of what the copyrigth-holder thinks about them. Copyrigth is (DUH!) mainly about the rigth to make copies. (what a concept!) and a few other things (public performance is covered for example).

In no way shape or form does copyrigth prevent you from owning books, cds or other copyrigthed works that you have legally aquired.

There's a difference between owning the copyrigth to a work (which you don't, unless you created the work or you bugth the copyrigth from the person who did) and owning a single copy of a work. (which you do if you legally bougth a copy of the work.)

"casual piracy"

[LittleBigLui]

This devious little term, causal piracy, actually refers to what should be our legally protected rights to fair use, and our rights under the AHRA for reproduction on recording devices.

No, "casual piracy" refers to "widespread small-scale copyright infringement by average users", like making half a dozen copies of a copyrighted audio cassette (remember those?) for your friends.

Which is (AFAIK - IANAL) perfectly legal (at least here in Austria), unless the music has been sprayed with magical uncopyable bits.

A media company called Fido

[Anonymous Coward]

A dog that constantly chases its tail may be funny for a while , but is ultimately useless for its intended purpose.

What are you alking about?

[MarkByers]

You are completely missing the point. Either:

  * The DRM is so strong that you have to remove the DRM before putting it on a P2P network.

or:

  * The DRM is so weak that you don't have to remove it before putting it on a P2P network.

In either case the DRM does *nothing* to prevent illegal copying. The only thing it prevents is legal use.

DRM is a ghost in the machine ?

[freaker_TuC]

which duty ? to tolerate or to smite DRM ? Because I still think as long there are people freeloading from other(s) resources because it "just can be done freely"; the market will always keep looking for better options to make one sale equal to be getting one product.

Still, too bad when you bought the product it's sometimes haunting you like a ghost; like the Beastie Boys cd crippled my PC into tiny lil shreds of void rendering it useless for +1 week for invoicing/serious use because the CD drive and the network card was affected by their DRM.

It's a tradeoff which the publishers -need to understand-. Don't bother your valued customers with it and for sure don't piss them off with it; because the result is ; like I did ; that I won't ever buy CD's anymore (because I'm really scared of them; now-a-days I need to check a on-line list before its SAFE to even PLAY a cd on your computer).

I used to buy 1-2 cd's / week ; from now on it'll be only vinyl records because there is no shitty DRM; just the needle on the record and instant music ; like it should be. No fuzz, not being scared, no problems afterwards.

Re:DRM is a ghost in the machine ?

[inject_hotmail.com]

which duty ? to tolerate or to smite DRM ? Because I still think as long there are people freeloading from other(s) resources because it "just can be done freely"; the market will always keep looking for better options to make one sale equal to be getting one product.

Smite....SMITE! Thou shalt cast thy DRM'd media into an abyss fitting only to the anti-christ! And your story is exactly why everyone should be aware of its reality. I have many clients I warn of bastardized media (not that I put it that way, but close enough). And you know what? Very few understand. The don't understand how omninous it is...how obtrusive it is...how invasive it is...until they get hit in the head with an iPod that they paid $100's for, loaded with music they paid decent money for, and can't do anything with on any other piece of technology...save and except the analog-hole.

Support your favourite artists/software companies/actors -- YES! It's when the creative beings (through their overlor...er...record labels/companies/distributors) stop supporting their fans that this becomes the abomination that it has.

I wonder if the big companies will see the err of their ways. If yes, when? 5 years? 10 years?

It's time for a revolution. Who's with me?

Re:DRM is a ghost in the machine ?

[freaker_TuC]

They don't understand because for "them" it's just the same piece of plastic; which is even called "Compact Disk" (although to my best opinion a CD **MUST** work in ANY player and not the newer because of breaking the CD standards).

I'd wish more people think and act like this; but most people are ignorant what happens to them; even with their very own property...

Re:DRM is a ghost in the machine ?

[inject_hotmail.com]

a CD **MUST** work in ANY player and not the newer because of breaking the CD standards

Yeah, no kidding. Did you notice that the Compact Disc logo doesn't exist on broken CDs? It's because it doesn't meet the red bood (or was that blue book?) standards....NOT that joe sixpack would ever notice.

You're right about the ignorance. Whenever I start talking about DRM to 99.9% of all (non-slashdot) people (even TECHIES!) I get ZERO questions, no stimulating conversation, nothing. Just "oh...that kinda sucks." Yep. That's it. I firmly believe people should think more critically about their lives, rather than surfing through on the wafer thin board of complacency and ignorance. Not just in computers and tech, but everything else as well.

Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Where to start? At the purple prose?

Like a creeping fog, DRM smothers more and more media in its clammy embrace, but the sun still shines down on isolated patches of the landscape.

It reads like a (bad) romance novel; at least he settles down to some better writing afterwards.
Will DRM someday be unbreakable? Do content companies care if it is?

No and yes. Duh!

Microsoft was able to update their DRM, which has not been widely breached since that time.

Key word here is "widely". DRM on a music file is impossible; all it takes is a cable and sampling software. Yes, there will be a very slight degradation, but so what? MP3s and WMAs are nowhere near CD quality.

Why should they invest the time and money into selling DRM-laden songs that only irritated customers when those same customers could simply drive to the local store and pick up a better-quality, unencrypted version of the same music?

Well DUH. The labels in their infinite stupidity didn't realize a) the cable hack and b) the fact that MP3s aren't CD quality. The answer wasn't to try to DRM CDs, the answer was to sell unencumbered MP3s. Most people are honest, but you'll never convince a crook of that; witness Warren Marshall, who fears having his games copied because he himself did it in college! You can google planetcrap.com if it's still online or maybe the wayback machine if it isn't; that's where he posted it. Warren was convinced that everyone on the planet was as dishonest as he was.

Copy-controlled CDs broke this long-standing compatibility for the sake of modestly increased security.

That's like substituting a plastic padlock for your paper one when the windows are all wide open.

Video, of course, is different. Yeah, you can point a camera at the TV or movie screen, but the results are all but unwatchable. When LOTR came out, the theaters were all sold out packed, so I downloaded it. I watched meybe two minutes before deleting it. I finally saw it at the theater (as I would have done anyway, I'd been waiting 30 years for this movie!) and of course bought the DVDs.

Stupid movie executives.

Both techniques show that a good hacker knows her technology, but she also knows when not to overengineer things.

This guy's watched The Matrix too many times! For every female hacker or cracker there are a hundred males doing it. You might as well say "a good car mechanic knows her technology". Fucking STUOOPUD.

How many times has this been discussed already on /.? Ok, I don't mind, I'm an anti-DRM zealot!

If we're talking about current cultural produce...

[sh4na]

... stored in DRM DVDs, then you might have just found a way to justify DRM after all!

'cause, really, do you really want future generations to see the crap being churned out today in the guise of "art"? Kinda makes me glad CDs only have about 100-year lifetime expectancy...

DRM legality?

[freaker_TuC]

I wonder how legal this is; I've downloaded almost all songs I've bought on 2CD's named "Solid Sounds" ; I burned them again; since some of the Solid Sounds CDs ("music for the new club generation") contains a DRM which doesn't even allow the CD to be seriously played on professional DENON CD equipment (it mostly hangs for +/- 1-2 minutes and then suddenly the CD gets read; in both my Denon 2500 as the new 2600 series). This cd serie is not one of its kind; there are more CD's which have the same problem (they all have an extra "ring (of data?) on the outer side on the CD; which I can identify already if they are going to work or not in my Denon and older car-cd player)

Also I wonder why I, as customer, must (1) buy the CD (2) put all the time in it to find/download those files to be (3) playing them whenever I want without being interrupted by their silly protections ?

As I explained here I am fed-up with all this DRM; and this not because I am technologically challenged but because it also interrupts my listening experience drastically and sure also interrupts my DJ work.

Re:WMA DRM

[IamTheRealMike]

That doesn't work.

WinAmp cannot strip DRM. Soundcard loops are disabled by the driver when playing back secure audio. Virtual soundcards require drivers that are not signed.

The only way to strip Windows Media DRM at present is to use the analog hole with a separate recording device.

Re:WMA DRM

[IamTheRealMike]

Attacking and defending DRM is like the martial arts. As a defender, you might win, or you might end up on your back.

In most cases, there are only a few defenders and many attackers - so it's like being mobbed. You are unlikely to win such a match.

But losing is not guaranteed. Can a Ninja Master fight off ten students at once? Yes, because they are good enough at what they do that it's possible. This is what has happened with Windows Media DRM - a lot of very smart computer programmers have built a system that whilst not undefeatable is so hard to defeat that so far nobody has managed to do it for any length of time. The secret weapon they have is "renewability" ... the system is designed with the understanding that it will be attacked and broken .... when a breach occurs the software is updated to fix it and all the media is re-encrypted automatically by the DRM servers. So the older, vulnerable players can no longer play new content, only old content. Over time therefore the breach is self healing.

The perfect example

[Anonymous Coward]

Vincent Van Gogh only sold ONE painting, in his entire (short) life, to his brother for a debt of about $20 in today's money. He couldn't get hung in the galleries, all the other artists of his time (Gaugan etc) sneered at him, the critics hated him.

If there had been some way to DRM his stuff, you would never have heard of Van Gogh.

Re:The perfect example

[cwsulliv]

Thanks for the example - I hadn't been aware of Van Gogh's history.

Another example in more recent years are the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, which after initial popularity went out-of-print and were ignored for decades. Imagine if he had been published only as uncopyable DRM-enabled ebooks.

Is DRM restricted to music ?

[RockDoctor]

I don't know anyone who's NOT Anti-DRM. All DRM does is make buying music miserable for the people who are doing it legally. People who don't care about the legality of it will just torrent the CD or get it off some other file sharing network.

What is it about DRM, and music in general, that makes people think that music is the only use for DRM? Am I allowed to care passionately about the effects of DRM despite having dumped my entire music collection in a rubbish bin about a dozen years ago because I was fed up with friends visiting to listen to my musinc instead of to talk with me?

The evil that is DRM is far and away more important than music. OK, I have some belly button fluff here that is more important than "music" too, but I think you get the point.

As an aside - how many other commentators on this story made a typo "musinc" for "music"? Isn't that poetic justice. Or is it subliminal suggestion at work?

Forgive my going off-topic for a moment, but...

[Atario]

...my curiosity is overwhelming me.

How is it you managed to consistently (nine times!) spell "copyright" as "copyrigth"? Are you making some subtle point that I'm missing?

Not trying to be a spelling-Nazi, I'm genuinely perplexed.

Re:Forgive my going off-topic for a moment, but...

[Eivind]

It's possible if you're a foreigner and never really grasped the general idea behind english (seemingly, to me) more-or-less random spelling of th and ht. This despite in general having a fairly decent grasp of the language. (I like to think so anyway)

Is it light or ligth ? Wait, less me guess, both, depending on if you mean low-calorie or not-dark ? Is it weight (probably) or weigth ? right or rigth (now that you told me, I'm gonna go for ht)

When I spellcheck my english (which I don't bother doing for Slashdot) I get more th versus ht mistakes than all other mistakes combined.

So, I've asked multiple english teachers and multiple natives of english-speaking countries what method there is to this (to me) apparent randomness. Until now, alas, I've not received an explanation that made enough sense to me that I do it right (or rigth :-) in the general sense.

Feel free to offer an explanation if you think you have one.

I do know *some* general rules, but they don't cover all the cases. For example, a word tends to never start with 'ht' but often (not always) end with it. So even if the words wheren't common enough that I'd remember it anyway, this rule would let me get 'this' 'that' 'the' and such correct. (those you'd remember anyway since they're extremely frequent)

Re:Forgive my going off-topic for a moment, but...

[Atario]

Hm. Ok, I'll see if I can help you out a bit.

The spellings are quite the opposite of random:

• TH is when you put the tip of your tongue between your slightly-separated teeth -- this, therapy, path, truth. Pretty simple. (Which would give your copyrigth a rather weird pronunciation ("caw-pee-rig-th").
• HT is the harder one:
  • Usually part of a ___ght (light, bright, right, knight, etc.), which usually can be replaced with "te" and look like how it should be pronounced (lite, brite, rite, knite, etc.), though there are, of course, exceptions (draught = "draaft", brought = "brot", probably lots more)
  • There are some that are the result of some other thing butting up against a t (watchtower = "watch" + "tower", diphthong = "diph" + "thong")
  • Some come from an unusual (for English) language (borscht = from Yiddish)
  • Some are just oddballs (yacht = "yott")

So anyway, a good rule is:

If you're doing that tip-of-tongue-between-slightly-separated-teeth thing (which seems to be fairly peculiar to the English language...?), then it's TH. Otherwise, do a HT.

Hope this helps.

(If someone is about to mod this down as Offtopic, please don't, and consider that (1) I'm helping out my fellow man, and (2) this thread is really old now, so who cares anyway.)

Re:Forgive my going off-topic for a moment, but...

[Eivind]

Englisch spelling is bizarre. I've been told the main reason is conservatism; the spelling have changed rather little over the last 3 centuries or so, whereas the spoken language has changed a lot more. Thus in english you can *not* assume that the same written letter (or sillable) is always spoken in a certain way.

I seem to recall that a word ending in -ed can be pronounced 4 different ways.

The pronounciation-rule don't help me much. To a Norwegian, it sounds as if Americans pretty much say caw-pee-rait, the 'h' is silent, or close enough to silent to make little difference, thus the problems hearing where it's supposed to be.

Words like watchtower are no problem, that comes down to knowing how to spell 'tower' which is trivial. light is actually normally not pronounced 'lite' in english, that is just an instance of applying a different rule, that an ending -e does not imply an e, but instead implies that the i be pronounced 'a'.

'Elephant' starts with an e. 'if' starts with an 'i'. 'announce' starts with an 'a'. 'light' is pronounced more like 'lait', which is a no-go for spelling in english since you guys don't use diphthongs at all. (well, atleast seldom).

Norwegian will tend to look funny to english natives -- we regularily change the spelling of imported words to match our rules for spoken->written mappings. Combined with different pronounciation, this leads to funny-looking but sometimes vaguely recognizable words.

• "juice" got imported, and turned into "jus"
• "tape" turned into "teip"
• "chaffeur" got imported (from french I guess) and turned into "sjåfør"
• "skateboard" however, did this far not turn into 'skeitbård' which would be logical. perhaps it will once it settles down.

The oposite happens, but more seldom. The scandinawian word 'daskebord' got exported and turned into 'dashboard' which makes no sense. It is originally (on horsecarriages) a board, but it does not dash anywhere, not even walk actually. :-) The Scandinawian original however makes perfect sense, according to the function it used to have. (preventing the back-hooves of the horse from throwing mud up in the drivers face.)

Anyways, thanks for trying. English is fun, even though frequently mindboggling.

Re:Forgive my going off-topic for a moment, but...

[Atario]

The pronounciation-rule don't help me much. To a Norwegian, it sounds as if Americans pretty much say caw-pee-rait, the 'h' is silent, or close enough to silent to make little difference, thus the problems hearing where it's supposed to be.

Well, the point would be that there's no "th" sound there, therefore if you're deciding between "th" and "ht", pick "ht".

Just remember that language is firstly spoken; writing is a hack. Proceed accordingly.