Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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.
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.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
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.
"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.
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.
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.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
"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.
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.)