Father of MPEG Replies To Jobs On DRM

marco_marcelli writes with a link to the founder and chairman of MPEG, Leonardo Chiariglione, replying to Steve Jobs on DRM and TPM. After laying the groundwork by distinguishing DRM from digital rights protection, Chiariglione suggests we look to GSM as a model of how a fully open and standardized DRM stack enabled rapid worldwide adoption. He gently reminds Jobs (and us) that there exists a reference implementation of such a DRM stack — Chillout — that would be suitable for use in the music business.

Comments

Re:Completely Moot

[briancnorton]

It has already been established that DRM is bad. It doesn't work and it hurts everybody.

Who established this? When? DRM is "bad" only when used in such a way that it impinges on the assumed rights of consumers.

Lets say that there was a magical, uncrackable DRM system that let you use your media where ever, whenever you wanted, but you couldn't copy it and give it to your friends. Is that "bad?" The arguments against current DRM schemes are valid and numerous, but the fundamental principle of protecting intellectual property from theft is an important one in a capitalist economy. It took money for Britney Spears to write, record, produce, market and disseminate her music so why should she (or her investors, record company, etc) not be able to profit from it? The *concept* of DRM is only "bad" for those that want steal. It's the implementation that has thus far sucked rotten.

Say what you will about the current business model of the music industry, but stealing music is not ethical, not legal, and not defensible.

Re:What's with the Pro DRM Articles?

[dangitman]

I don't think anyone here is anti-DRM. In that. DRM just means the artist gets paid for his work.

You must be new here.

The majority opinion on slashdot is that artists don't deserve to get paid for the work, as there should be no such thing as "intellectual property," which is apparently fraud by the state.

You see, artists don't produce any physical goods, or anything of value. So, they should get a job at McDonalds flipping burgers, and release all their music under a Creative Commons license, so everybody can have it for free. The notion of ownership of music is fraudulent, just like software patents.

More importantly, the notion of somebody making money for a creative pursuit is disgusting to the average slashdotter, who is jealous or dismissive of the work that goes into creativity. Programmers should be treated like gods, and any technical work that requires an anal-retentive memory of trivia should be showered with money. Artists should basically be rounded up and shot, because they are a bunch of hippies who know nothing about truly valuable things like C++.