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Is Interoperable DRM Really Less Secure?

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the throwing-away-the-key dept.

Crouch and hold writes "Are closed DRM schemes like FairPlay more secure than interoperable ones? Based on the number of cracks, it doesn't look like it. 'When it comes to DRM, what history actually teaches us is that one approach is no more secure than the other in practice, as they relate to the keeping of secrets. Windows Media DRM has had fewer security breaches than Apple's FairPlay, yet WM DRM is licensed out the wazoo: there are more than a dozen companies with WM DRM licenses.'"

3 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Re:+5 informative by Mr2001 · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's not a question of licensees choosing WM DRM because they trust it more than FairPlay - Apple doesn't license FairPlay at all, so Windows Media is the only choice for a third party.

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  2. Re:What a silly question by ajs318 · · Score: 3, Informative

    The only way DRM can work is if every consumer is forced to have a special DRM chip in their head and it would be interesting or horrifying to see if the consumer would accept this blindly or fight against it.
    Under Thatcher, nobody would ever have stood for such a thing. There would have been rioting in the streets, people burning effigies, punk rock benefit gigs and all sorts. People who had the brain chips fitted would be on the receiving end of flying bricks crudely scratched with "SCAB". We'd be out marching with placards, chanting "Maggie Thatcher's GOT one, [name of major Brain Chip proponent] IS one". Decrepit coaches would be brought out of retirement to ferry Flying Pickets around, and enterprising kids would be hard at it poking holes in old oil drums to make braziers to flog to the striking workers.

    Under Blair, there would just be a bit of polite tutting and moaning, followed by total passive acceptance. The Working Classes (who mostly think they aren't working class anymore just because [1] they have mobile phones and DVD players and [2] a whole new social class has grown up beneath Working) would even be saying things like "Well, it's probably a good thing. I mean, I've been looking for ages for a reason to cut down the amount of media I copy, or even give it up altogether; so I mean, this chip-in-the brain thing is a good idea really."

    Talk about licking your arse and calling it chocolate .....
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  3. Re:+5 informative by Eustace+Tilley · · Score: 4, Informative

    You have been answered twice already, but I cannot resist telling you again.

    Cryptography is used so that a message from A can be read by B but not by C. With DRM, B and C are the same person.

    The message from A (the publisher) must be readable by B (the consumer) but not by C (the consumer).

    I hope you understand now why DRM is a concept flawed in its fundament.

    DRM would be useful. So would a perpetual motion machine. It is wishful thinking to believe that the sheer utility of a function means it is capable of being produced.