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Jeremy Allison On Why DRM Will Never Work
eldavojohn writes "At the ZDNet site, Jeremy Allison (a well-known employee of the Google corporation) goes on a hilarious rant against Digital Rights Management. He compares the access restriction technology with underwear gnomes & Star Trek while ending with: 'Believing in a DRM business model is like joining Star Fleet security, putting on your red shirt, and volunteering to beam down to the new unexplored planet with Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Someone will be coming back from that mission, it's just not likely to be the security guard. Always a true engineer, Scotty had the good sense to stay safely on board the ship.'"
We launch the people behind DRM into space and watch them come crashing down! Scotty lives on in syndication!!!
Wasn't there a /. article about this same idea a little while ago?
Beam me up Scotty, there is no intelligent life down here!!
When Scotty did go down to the planet in Wolf in the Fold (for strippers, as a good engineer should), he was accused of murder. Lesson learned!
I know this was full of of nerdy references, and bashing evil stuff(tm), but I still didn't find it funny..
So I will hand in my nerd license and resign.
Sorry could not resist.
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http://echosphere.net/star_trek_insp/insp_expenda
http://echosphere.net/star_trek_insp/star_trek_in
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
... if it wasn't for DRM, I wouldn't be able to download TV shows from various TV networks online. DRM for no reason sucks ass, but if it lets me get content that I couldn't get before, how can I be upset? If it *is* a sucky situation, surely the problem isn't DRM but the economic structures in place that requires DRM to be used. I think it'd make more sense to get our society to a place where we don't need DRM than to a place where we shoot ourselves in the foot by not attacking the actual cause of DRM, and waste all our time and money screaming at acronyms.
I always felt this comment was a little rich coming from a series where spaceships travel using a magical warp drive, have inertial dampers that prevent acceleration and a device that allows them to teleport from one place to another.
The whole premise is based on changing the laws of physics.
The largest problem with DRM as I see it (except the impossibility issue) is that the paying customer gets worse service then the pirate.
Customer goes and pays $10 dollars for his album and notices the can't play it on any machine except the ones approved by the company that sold the album and he can't backup the album in case it breaks so he has to buy it all over again if it does.
The pirate on the other hand happily buys a cheap cd for $1, goes online and downloads the album, burns it to cd and now has a cd that can be played on any machine and be backupped easily.
The basic idea of successfully selling anything is to provide better service then you can get for free.
When it comes to music/movies/games bought online I propose that you let people download the items as many times they want at high speeds. This means that it will be alot faster/comfier then doing it illegally through the relatively slow pirate networks.
I'm currently enjoying this to a great extent with games I've bought through EA. After a format or whatever I just need to tell the EA downloader to download the game for me instead of me having to hunt down the bloody cd that is forgotten in some bookcase somewhere.
I think downloaded music/movies should do it similarly so I easily can move my collection between computers without any fuzz at all making all my movies/music basically immortal. Good service at a good price is better then pirating.
Easy answer: Attacker and receiver being the same person, and (and that's at least as important), one side of the deal, the receiver, does not want encryption to happen at all.
/., so I'll make it brief: Encryption relies on sender and receiver having the keys, so when the person receiving is also the one attacking, it's quite trivial to hack it.
The first part has been explained time and again at
But it all would not happen if the receiver at least had some kind of benefit from the encryption. If it's only that his neighbor can't "steal" his pay-tv, some would already welcome the "feature". But that's not even the case. I should be kinda thankful that the content industry has been selfish enough so far to make DRM a tool that only they benefit from, with no gain whatsoever for the receipient.
Hard to market something that gives you a decisive advantage over your business partner.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Time to go to work. Code all night. Building DRM, hey. We won't stop until we have DRM. Yum tum yummy tum tay!
Really, the answer as to why DRM (and such things) are doomed to failure lie in the hacker to security programmer ratio, which is probably something like 1000:1. Simple attrition overwhelms the code eventually. Not to discount either that some of the hackers are very good.
Worth noting that said "google employee" is Jeremy Allison, a Yorkshire lad!
He compares the access restriction technology with underwear gnomes
Step 1 : Make an underpants gnomes reference
Step 2 : ???
Step 3 : Hilarity
You just got troll'd!
Why is it the editors never seem to notice what they're posting. I mean... just put in the summary that this is Jeremy Allison of the Samba team... not just Joe Blow Google Employee #3248 writing the article... sheesh.
Oh, never mind it was Zonk.
I always envisioned DRM as a technology that people will get used to. Make it ubiquitous, and people will take it for granted. That is why the RIAA and others are trying to introduce DRM concepts into early childhood classrooms, so that people grow up thinking that it is normal.
Thats Jeremy Allison. Perhaps you've heard of him.
You can download a lot more TV shows without DRM than you can with. The biggest difference is that the distributors don't get paid if you download the ones without the DRM. Hopefully, iTunes Plus will start providing evidence soon that people are willing to pay for DRM-free content, just as the original store showed that they were willing to pay for digital content.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
They still believe in the businesses model of the "Underpants Gnomes" from the "South Park" TV show.
/.!
* Step 1: Create a DRM system.
* Step 2: ???
* Step 3: Profit!
Nope, this guy doesn't read too much Fark and
I don't think that means what you think that means....
Sure it was full of interesting points, but at no point was I in any danger whilst I drank my coffee and read at the same time. I did not snicker, nor chuckle, nor even hint at a guffaw.
I nodded once or twice.
There was no smirk.
Amusing, yes. Hilarious? If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times. DON'T EXAGGERATE!!!
If it wasn't for money, you wouldn'tbe able to download TV shows.
DRM does nothing to prevent someone from copying the content.
This issue is about society and the rights of citizens, not about one person.
It has become very clear, that people will pay for content, even when that content can be had for free.
iTune has sold over 2.5Billion tracks, all of which can be found for free.
The people selling to the market ned to provide it convienantly, and at the price the MARKET is willing to pay, not what they want the market to pay.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
- You imply that DRM is beneficial for the customer.
- You refer to some 'economic structures' that somehow 'requires DRM to be used'.
- You then widen the scope to imply that the society as a whole is a place where we need DRM.
- You imply that the fight against DRM is a waste of time
Are you on drugs? I must ask.I know that in a few minutes, this response is going way to the bottom because your post will be "0, Flamebait", but you bring up a good point regardless. First of all, why criticize DRM and not the consumer practices that necessitate its use? Second, what counts as "working"? People seem to have a MASSIVE change in their definition of what it means to "work" when talking about DRM. Laws against murder "work" even though murder still happens. Windows still "works" even though it has numerous security holes. For DRM to "work", it's not necessary that it make piracy impossible, only that it reduce it to sufficiently low levels that the production of the work is still profitable.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
"First of all, why criticize DRM and not the consumer practices that necessitate its use?"
You mean the fact that media companies won't make their products easily available to the public to download at a reasonable price?
"For DRM to "work", it's not necessary that it make piracy impossible, only that it reduce it to sufficiently low levels that the production of the work is still profitable."
But it can't work, because only one person has to crack the DRM on a file and put it on the Net, and the rest of the world's population can download it. We're not living in the 70s when people had to borrow records and tapes from their friends and neighbors, you know.
The only way I can see in which DRM can possibly 'work' is by totally crippling all the computers on the planet. Some people might just consider general-purpose computers just a little teeny bit more important than record company profits.
Steve Jobs, who is much more influential and important in this debate has already chimed in with his opinion.
Whether his motive was pure is irrelevant to the fact that Jobs has begun moving the industry away from DRM, so why is the opinion of somebody else who has little stake in it worth noting now?
Which would be a good point if all Mr. Allison was saying was "DRM is evil". However, that isn't his point. What he is saying is that it can't work, it's never going to work, and that trying build a business model (or an economy) found on DRM is a deeply irrational act.
The problem is that for DRM to work you have to hand the customer the encrypted data, the encryption algorithm and the encryption key. If you don't the DRMed work cannot be accessed. However, if you do, they have everything they need to circumvent the DRM.
But if the DRM has a fundamental logical flow, then the problem is DRM. That's the point.
A lot of people would agree with that. The two main approaches offered seem to be either move to a gift economy, or indoctrinate school kids to believe that copyright infringement is a Great Evil on a par with Rape, Murder, Genocide, and Britney Spears. Personally, I can see problems with both those strategies.
In the meantime, DRM still isn't going to work any time soon, and any exec who proposes spending serious money on it wants his arse kicking. Not for Being Evil, but for Being Stupid.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Kirk: Uhura, can you patch into their signal?
Uhura: I'm trying, sir, but they're using some sort of signal encryption...
Kirk: Mr. Spock, analysis.
Spock [leaning over viewer]: It appears to be a primitive form of encryption, Captain. It will only take me a few moments to break it.
Uhura: Sir, we're getting a signal from the alien ship.
Kirk: On audio, Lieutenant.
Voice: This is the RIAA vessel Enforcer ordering you to cease and desist your efforts to break our encryption. Our signals belong to us and you have not paid the appropriate fees to access them. Cease immediately or we will be forced to beam our lawyers aboard your ship!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
And if software engineers were true professionals with a professional code of ethics, they probably would. At the very least, it is their ethical responsibility to attempt to the very best of their ability to make management understand the futility of DRM.
...The personal accountability of consultants and technical experts is especially important because of the positions of unique trust inherent in their advisory roles. Consequently, they are accountable for seeing to it that known limitations of their work are fully disclosed, documented and explained."
For example, consider the ICCP code of ethics:
"2.5: Integrity: One will not knowingly lay claims to competence one does not demonstrably possess."
It seems to me that an engineer who, knowing that it is impossible to create a DRM system that does what it is supposed to do, nevertheless accepts an assignment to create one, is implicitly claiming competence he or she does not possess and is in violation of this point.
"2.7: Accountability:
"3.4: Statements: One shall not make false or exaggerated statements as to the state of affairs existing or expected regarding any aspect of information technology or the use of computers."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
If digital ever becomes unbreakable (yeah right) then people will resort to analog recording.
You know that Google has an inordinate amount of pull on Slashdot when an article summary like this comes out:
"a Google employee goes on"
A "Google employee"? Really? He has a name... it's Jeremy Allison. You know, the same Jeremy Allison that was described as "The legendary Jeremy Allison (of Samba fame)" when he resigned from Novell.
Hell, he was still Jeremy Allison only a couple of months ago when he wrote an advice piece for young programmers.
Now? He's a Google employee.
Yeesh.
You mean the fact that media companies won't make their products easily available to the public to download at a reasonable price?
Please. That justification for leeching didn't work when you were five, and it doesn't work now.
But it can't work, because only one person has to crack the DRM on a file and put it on the Net, and the rest of the world's population can download it.
Yes, the world *can* download it. But for that possibility to negate the goal of the DRM: enough people have to *know* that they can download it, and be willing to take the risk, and the distributors have to insulate themselves enough from law enforcement, etc. etc. etc. Please, try to put yourself in a non-geek's shoes. Not everyone is adept at P2P.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
I think it's pretty safe to say that by the time that sentence pops up, ALL less technical readers have given up trying to read the article.
That's an assertion with no evidence backing it up.
If it *is* a sucky situation, surely the problem isn't DRM but the economic structures in place that requires DRM to be used.
What are these "economic structures?" Until HBO, people asserted that advertising was a necessary prerequisite to television. Until the new free newspapers, people thought that "economic structures" demanded that daily newspapers cost money. So-called "economic structures" are often illusory.
DRM is going to KILL legal downloads of commercial video. Talk to people who've purchased and downloaded movies on-line. Or read reviews of legal download services. Certainly, there are satisfied customers. But all too often you'll read or hear about people who've paid money, spent the time downloading the video, and it won't play. Or it won't transfer to the Ipod (or other portable device). Because of faulty DRM. Legal commercial video download services are just getting started and they can't afford to alienate the early adopters. But because of flawed DRM (redundant), that's exactly what's happening.
[Insert pithy quote here]
What's the point of DRM in downloading free TV episodes from the TV network. There's no need to pirate it, if someone else wants it, they can just go download it themselves. If someone wants a high quality copy to pass around to all their friends, they can copy the DVD or record the Unencrypted over-the-air HD broadcast of the same show. All the major ways of getting our media CD, DVD, Cable TV have either no DRM, or DRM so weak it might as well not be there. So how does DRM actually play into the equation of you being able to get more stuff.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I've heard this argument that $X somehow gives consumers more choice before. In fact I hear it every time something stupid that restricts choice is forced down my gullet. What's more is that the media industry (specifically) is over-saturated and there may be choice but the quality has taken a nose-dive.
I have difficulty finding anything I want to watch or listen to now and DRM is going to give me more choice? No, it will restrict my choice further because I refuse to be subjected to it.
in the 1960s, a bunch of geeks invented a system to interconnect computing systems that could survive a nuclear strike. they did this by making it flexible and redundant
while not actually tested with a nuclear strike, their system has been tested by another form of damage: your DRM. we are happy to report that the Internet is still flexible and redundant. it has survived your DRM, and has successfully routed around the damage
please make note of your coming extinction. the internet as media distribution system is infinitely superior to your schemes, and is not yours to control. some of you apparently are not aware of this reality. you should try to be
the aztec and incan ruling classes were not happy at the arrival of new technology and unseen phenomena like the gun, the cannon, heavy metal swords, heavy metal shields, the horse, syphilis, and smallpox. the arrival was unplanned and overwhelming. but however unhappy they were at the arrival of such things, it did not change the fact that it spelled their quick and certain doom
so it is with you, dear media middlemen
all the best,
media consumers
xoxoxoxoxox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
and a fantastic rebuttal, as usual.
but what should i expect out of a fucktard who quotes himself in his sig?
Rights management can be made to work better than it does now. Not perfect, you understand. Just "improved". But only subject to a number of caveats. Let's assume I'm talking about a high-def film:
1. The medium on which the data is shipped to the customer must not be readable on any standardised hardware which is sold with an interface to plug into a PC. (See also: Sega Dreamcast GD-ROM).
- This immediately eliminates the percentage of the hacker world whose expertise doesn't stretch as far as "taking a hardware player to pieces and following paths".
- It implies that the design of the player is encumbered with so many patents that even if you did build such a drive, you'd have a hard time selling it in much of the world.
2. The device which plays the data has no output except for a built-in screen. Rationale: You can't trust anything you plug into the device. (See also: Portable travel DVD players).
- This prevents anyone from exploiting possible issues in any security which may be attached to output data.
- For best results, and to minimise the impact of the analogue hole, the screen should be sized such that lining up a camera is very difficult and even if you did it would be impossible to get very good results.
There's only one minor issue. I've just invented the Sony PSP, which we all know has been a runaway success as a media player and movie releases tend to hit the PSP first. </sarcasm>
>>It seems to me that an engineer who, knowing that it is impossible to create a DRM system that does what it is supposed to do, nevertheless accepts an assignment to create one, is implicitly claiming competence he or she does not possess and is in violation of this point.
All software can be hacked. All software has bugs. People just have an expectation that it performs at a certain level. Should everybody working on operating systems be deemed incompetent because there are still security issues?
Working DRM is shown in Mission impossible. Listen once then the tape catches alight.
But creating a blanket statement like "DRM won't work" is wholly false.
Non-DRM content is very important to have and DRM content will never encompass the entire market, that is true. But there is a market for DRM content. I'm sure most people here have been to a cafe or bar with the Jukebox sitting in the corner. The reason this gets used is because sometimes consumers are willing to only listen and not own the music they wish to listen to for a much discounted price. In the Jukebox example you never actually own the music, but the reason it gets used is consumers are willing to pay a quarter or so just to listen.
I agree that DRM in it's current form is very flawed and companies employing only DRM methods for transmitting "property" are seeing large backlash from consumers, but such backlash wouldn't exist if they employed both methods and gave DRM content at a discounted price.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
After reading the article (which is akin to blasphemy here on /. ), he hits upon a real concern about DRM: The effort to turn the US into a risky "IP economy", relying on DRM to protect our interests while outsourcing actual manufacturing and labor to cheaper countries.
The Pollyanna dream that western countries will be able to sit on ivory towers as "idea centers" while trying to sell DRM'ed Intellectual Property to newly affluent laborers in sovereign China and India is extremely misguided. Especially when these places are used to cheaper (and often better/unhindered) knockoff copies of movies/music/games already.
{ - Generic Guy - }
First of all, why criticize DRM and not the consumer practices that necessitate its use?
... zip. Nada. No music. It was one of those dreaded CDs that don't play everywhere, because they don't conform with the standard.
Let me tell you a quick story about a friend of mine. It was the Summer of 01 or 02, and he bought a CD. Like he used to do. He didn't know much about the 'net and he didn't download songs, he went to his local store and bought CDs. Simply because he didn't want to deal with P2P, considered it a hassle and didn't even want to look into it. What for? He bought a CD every few months, who cared that they costed 20 bucks? He can afford that.
He slipped his brand new CD into his car-hifi and
To say the least, he was pissed. He came to me and asked me what to do. Now, I didn't have any idea how to copy the "protected" CD to a CDR so he could play it in his car, but I knew that there are services where he could download what he bought. Funny enough, that was legal here back then, he had the "right" to "own" that music by buying that CD.
So he went and installed some P2P software. Was surprised how easy it is and within a few hours he had his CD on the computer, burning it to a CDR that works in his car was trivial.
From then on, he started using P2P more often and buy CDs less often, if he only found one good song on the disc, which is pretty much common today.
Conclusio: DRM was what turned him into one of those pesky pirates. He didn't (and still doesn't) care about the 20 bucks such a CD would cost him. What he does care about, though, is that the content works the way HE wants it. He doesn't want to distribute it, or remix it, or anything else the content industry fears so much. He just wants to listen to it. He just wants it to "work" as intended. That's his primary goal when it comes to content, being able to use it the way it's meant to be used.
He didn't care about DRM until this moment when his CD didn't work anymore as expected. They don't want me to copy? Cool with me. Don't wanna copy anyway. But what he wants is to be able to use his content. Such is the vicious cycle. DRM is deemed necessary because of the consumer actions caused by DRM.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Please. That justification for leeching didn't work when you were five, and it doesn't work now.
We're discussing reality not justifications. I mean really...think about it. You can get an expensive drm laden copy of X, or you can download a copy that isn't a pain in the ass to use. It just happens to be free that way also. Companies using DRM are shooting themselves in the foot. Finding such free content online is a trivial task now, unlike the old days when you had to go hunting on irc for ftp sites.
enough people have to *know* that they can download it, and be willing to take the risk, and the distributors have to insulate themselves enough from law enforcement, etc. etc. etc
It sounds to me like your idea is that instead of businesses selling things that customers really want, they should instead rely on draconian laws to keep the house of cards from falling. DRM just doesn't work, and only increases piracy. Forget the "rights and wrongs" of it all and just look at the reality of it. It doesn't work. It never will work. Why throw good money after bad? That's not good business.
Maybe he just worded that wrong, but if you can derive the secret key like that, you're messing up. Maybe he meant that messages can be encrypted and sent with the public key, and decrypted with the secret key.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
When someone introduces a piece using the words 'hilarious rant' you can assume he don't want you to take seriously the arguments presented therein. But lets see what the rest of it has to say.
.. an added restriction on what can be done with something they've paid for"
"DRM is
A clear and concice description of exactly what DRM is designed to do, if there ever was one. The hilarious bit is where DRM proponents sell it as secure, to either the media vendors or the enduser, for as Allison points the end-user posesses all the necessary information to break DRM. The recent release of the DVD keys being a case in point. No, the hilarious people are the ones who believe in DRMlithium keys.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Kirk: Sulu! Ramming Speed!
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.
The obvious conclusion is that if people aren't willing to pay enough to make it a viable business model, the entertainment industry should look for another business model instead of trying to create artificial monopolies with the help of broken technology to make the failed business model viable.
So if people aren't willing to pay enough to make car salesmen a viable business model, then they should re-think the model? I don't know about you, but I call those people car thieves.
A problem I've had with the whole issue of DRM is that it tends to be used to attempt to take away consumer rights/abilities that have been well established, whether the music or video industry (referred to collectively as "The Industries" from hereon) approves or not. For example, if I purchase a CD why should I be prevented from making a copy for my own personal use?
Despite what The Industries hope to accomplish with DRM, I think that it will lead to the death of any future formats. This, in turn, will cut off one of their biggest sources of income: customers repurchasing of items they have already bought (selling the same thing twice, or three times, or...) because of format changes.
I think this is one of the major reasons that the sales of CD has dropped greatly, and the sales of on-line music has not made up the difference. Simply put: I've bought an album on CD, why it again? I used to re-buy music on LP and cassette because they would wear out, but this isn't the case with CD.
For any music format to succeed like CD has, it is going to have to be as freely usable as CD has been. Otherwise, it is likely to remain a niche format at best.
Returning to the issue of Star Trek, although it is obvious, the reason the red shirts tend to get killed is because they are Security. They are the crew members whose job it is to put themselves in danger. In the same way, in Star Trek - The Next Generation, Worf tended to be the one member of the main crew who put himself into danger for the same reason (being in Security), and it is also the reason that Tasha Yar was the one most likely in direct danger.
It is also the reason that Riker tended to be in more danger than Picard. As second in command it was he, rather then Picard, who had the job to take on the dangerous missions away from the ship. Looking over the episodes, there have been at least three cases where Riker was put in personal danger that is directly related to his duties due to this. This doesn't include times when he was in danger along with the rest of the crew.
Even if it worked flawlessly, you'd still be left with a copy that is inferior to what is available for free on the P2P networks. When people who pay for your product get less than people who do not, you're business plan is in some serious trouble... you are essentially hoping to sell people on some sort of convenience.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
> For example, consider the ICCP code of ethics:
Full disclosure: I read this too quickly at first and found myself wondering why the Insane Clown Posse had a code of ethics.
It seems to me that an engineer who, knowing that it is impossible to create a DRM system
They also said it was impossible to land a man on the moon...
ME ME ME is *RIGHT*. If I don't look out for myself, no one else is going to. The media conglomerates are sure as hell not looking out for their customers (which includes myself) with their DRM infested crap, so why the hell should I look out for them?
BTW, I am not one of the users who never buys anything and leeches. An example: I pay for cable service, but will still download shows that I have missed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03E68F6599Q
And yet, that is exactly what is happening.
Eben Moglen said once that the wealth of nations in the 21st century will not be measured by how much steel they make or how well they make it, they will be measured by how much software they make and how well they make it. Presumably he was talking about software which had some purpose, not Quake.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The "Laws of Physics" are not the "Laws of Reality" herself. We have no means of determining what the latter might be in any fundamental sense, because all our probes are indirect and based on nothing more than observation and measurement. We can't "read the source code" of reality. All we can do is observe the behaviour of reality on a case-by-case basis.
:-)
More precisely, the "Laws of Physics" are the mathematics of the currently-best theoretical models in Physics. Those models vary all the time, and so it's no surprise that our "Laws of Physics" vary all the time too. Needless to say, the laws of reality don't change at all, as far as we know. I hope that explains it.
The "Laws of Physics" are just a human device. The next generation of physics models are absolutely certain to go beyond current ones, and if they're good models then our "Laws of Physics" will have become more powerful and we'll be able to harness even more out of reality.
And that's why warp drives seem "magical" at this time, yet cannot be ruled out as our "Laws of Physics" evolve further and further. We've only been at this game for a few hundred years --- it would be the height of folly to say that something is impossible over the next million.
With new physics models come new capabilities, and time and again we will be doing things that were impossible by our previous "Laws of Physics". A great future lies ahead.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I've been downloading DRM-free TV shows for a while now. And not paying anyone. I get them with HDTV quality, and at a speed of about 12MBits/second per show, all without tying up my internet connection. It's even legal, though the MPAA has been trying to change that.
Granted, there are disadvantages; rather than getting the show on demand, I have to wait until they schedule a "push". But generally the show is "pushed" before it is available through on-demand channels anyway, so that's not a big deal.
The problem with DRM is that it isn't really standardized and not everyone uses it. You have an mp3 player, it doesn't use drm, you download content it doesn't work because the drm won't allow it to be played. Now if you had one that was capable of DRM and the DRM allowed you to copy it to an MP3 player you own thats not so bad. Thats kind of like the ipod itunes music store. But then you have DRM systems that aren't compatible and players that don't use it. So these players won't work with something like itunes or other music stores. Distribution then becomes limited, the customer can't use the content the way they would like, and it goes to hell. The problem isn't DRM in general, it could possibly work for some media but it isn't implemented correctly with a standard. If I could download say a movie and make x amount of copies to any media because they all allow for drm that would be nice. But if DRM becomes standardized does it mean that it was basicly like music on a CD is now? What I mean is can anyone trade it? I'm sure theres a way to limit DRM on p2p networks allowing for only fair use trade of music and videos. Of course someone would/will break it but I would hope that it would be enough to make the RIAA and MPAA calm down, and at least consider online distribution more freely.
I personally hope DRM fails, and the way its going it definatly will/should. DRM as it stands doesn't help disribution, it limits it. It doesn't give a person a better experiance it limits it. It doesn't do anything for anyone, DRM free music would be able to be used on any player, so distribution would be better, better distribution = profit. Profit = expansion and advancement this = better user experiance.
Not a fantasy world. It's just that people in positions of authority are unbelievably ignorant. Like trying to truly fathom the trillions upon trillions of stars in the universe, we cannot hope to appreciate how fantastically, utterly ignorant they are.
To this day, there is a surprising number of people in our government who sit in important policy making positions who do not -- in fact, cannot -- use a computer. They don't use email. They've never visited a web site.
They rely on others for expertise and guess who the "others" are... corporations. Corporations with agendas.
--Richard
DRM is like Speeding Tickets. You can slow some people for awhile, but not forever. You can even get extra money out of them if they break the rules, but they'll view that as a small price to pay for doing what they want. You cause most good and safe people to slow down who could otherwise enjoy going faster and doing more.
But, in the end, everyone will see it for the profiteering racket that it really is.
libertarian: (n) socially liberal, financially conservative; neither left, nor right.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I watched a recent broadcast on C-SPAN of a House Science and Technology Committee meeting on P2P file sharing. I recall there was a recent Slashdot article on that same meeting (proof positive that few have ever watched C-SPAN, let alone that particular program) that I think is also relevant to DRM.
While I watched, two things struck me. First, that the committee members (some of whom sit on the all-powerful Judiciary Committee) invariably said, with a conviction typically reserved for occasions where one is required to place one's right hand on the bible, that they were very strong believers in intellectual property protection. The silence in the room seemed to suggest that the issue was a black and white one, somewhat akin to being against flag burning, or safe streets and neighbourhoods, or fighting terrorism, and the act of making such statements conferred patriotic bonus points on those who stood up to do so.
Second, despite the fact that all of the panel members (the IT heads of various universities) unanimously agreed (and went on at length to describe the reasons) that technological solutions could offer no guarantees of success, they were pressed upon by more than one committee member as to why they weren't placing a greater emphasis on technological solutions, given that it did offer at least some measure of success, even if it was temporary. After a series of "yes buts", the committee and the panel members agreed to agree that a coordinated technological/enforcement solution in conjunction with an education/policy-based approach was the ideal solution.
That last bit reminded me of what typically occurs in communities where crime is a problem and someone comes up with a New and Improved approach. The enforcement approach hasn't worked, but the police are asked to implement a crackdown. After enough heads are hit or enough people are arrested, the New and Improved solution is gradually put into effect and everyone feels good. It's worth remembering that people who vote typically vote for "law and order" candidates, and elected candidates who concentrate on law and order issues stay elected, irrespective of whether their actions have results, positive or otherwise. The scenario isn't unlike George Bush and his recent surge. The military approach hasn't worked, so the solution? More troops.
It would be satisfying if simplistic to state that DRM is a technological solution that's doomed to failure. You can be sure that the issue of DRM is discussed in boardrooms of media companies, in government, and in the board rooms of any technology company that has an interest in the matter. At those levels, the issue becomes a political one, and people are held accountable for what they do or don't do. Put another way, everyone needs to be seen doing something, even if that something has prior art in the form of a Dilbert cartoon.
So if DRM isn't working, the solution will ultimately be more DRM. Followed by a phased in New and Improved approach that, surprise, most likely won't involve DRM. In that regard, we can say that Steve Jobs may be the only smart guy in the room.
"Please. That justification for leeching didn't work when you were five, and it doesn't work now."
People want media files they can use on any of their media devices at decent quality with a convenient download rate at a reasonable price. Companies who provide that will make a lot of money, because users will be willing to pay that for something they could otherwise download for free.
That companies refuse to sell customers what they want is their problem, not ours.
"But for that possibility to negate the goal of the DRM: enough people have to *know* that they can download it, and be willing to take the risk, and the distributors have to insulate themselves enough from law enforcement, etc. etc. etc."
Your granny probably doesn't want to download the latest Britney Spears album from whatever the current P2P system is. Anyone who does want to download it probably already knows where to get it from.
I honestly don't understand why you don't get this. This is the same kind of idiocy the media companies were spouting about cassette tapes and VHS; which both turned out to be massive sources of income for the same retarded companies who originally opposed them.
The fact is that the DRM technology will never work, and I have a logic analyzer and disassembler tools that can prove it. If I buy something with DRM by mistake (I have, but would never intentionally do so again) I'm going to darn well use/play it anyway. Try and stop me, though I would never stoop so low as to 'share it' because that would be _almost_ as dishonest as the salesmen who sell DRM technology in the first place.
There is literally NOTHING these fraudsters can do that will stop honest people from getting what they pay for, and the sooner the Labels wake up an realize what they are doing to their own industry the better it will be for everyone. In the light of many new "disruptive technologies" available for media distribution their previous role in the industry is in great jeopardy at the moment, and the use of DRM is just making that reality more obvious with every passing day. They need a new business model if they want to survive the new market forces out there.
Economics 101: price depends on supply and demand. The supply of media on the internet is effectively infinite. Therefore, the only "reasonable price" is zero.
Incidentally, this is exactly what Microsoft (and its allies) intend to do with Treacherous Computing.
The people who care aren't the ones in charge, unfortunately.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Would what? Would turn their consciences over to a governing body over which they have as much influence as any other large faceless entity? One which would be far more likely to institute a rule forbidding software engineers from working on ways to circumvent DRM than creating it.
I think I understand what you are saying, DRM is not the technology that makes it possible to host TV shows on an internet server and make it possible for you to copy the content over the internet to your computer, but the false impression of control over the media content by the TV networks gives them a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that their content that is copied many millions of times off the internet is "protected" by DRM.
Of course this is exactly what the posted article was explaining. The DRM protection scheme is as much a fallacy as the props in the old Star Trek episodes, yes thats right, technical sounding words, blinking colored lights, and hard bodies don't make it real.
The economic structure that is in place never required DRM before it was created, its not needed now. The objective of DRM is to create a new economic structure where by new laws are passed to ensure that the masses follow sheepishly the economic demands of corporations. Ironically its like a cheasy sci-fi B-movie, as in HG Wells The Time Machine consumers are being conditioned through marketing to be docile and submissive to the demands of the Morlocks. And if you don't submit, there is always the DMCA.
The DRM in and of itself is no reason for concern because anyone who has a basic understanding of the technology knows it doesn't work. The problem with DRM are the laws that must be passed to ensure the DRM special effects work. That is the reason DRM should be an outrage to every consumer.
Very, very simply, here is the premise behind DRM.
1. I know a secret
2. I want to tell you the secret
3. I don't want you to tell anyone else the secret
4. I don't trust you
Perhaps you can see now why there's no solution to that scenario.
-- Association of Computing Machinery
In other words, the ACM lend their support to all DRM schemes, no matter how inconvenient, by saying that it is unethical to remove DRM for any reason. Including removal of DRM for "non-pirate" reasons such as interoperability, research and fair use.
Jeremy did not point out that DRM cannot work even if the encryption keys are protected. It is still possible for one hacker/pirate to make the content available. I elaborate this a bit on my blog post: http://gymnasmata.wordpress.com/2007/06/06/drm-is- broken/.
People want media files they can use on any of their media devices at decent quality with a convenient download rate at a reasonable price. Companies who provide that will make a lot of money, because users will be willing to pay that for something they could otherwise download for free.
That companies refuse to sell customers what they want is their problem, not ours.
Oh, sure, I'd quit shoplifting too if the man weren't exploiting me with his high prices. I promise.
Your granny probably doesn't want to download the latest Britney Spears album from whatever the current P2P system is. Anyone who does want to download it probably already knows where to get it from.
False (that would imply there would be no Britney Spears sales) but even so, *knowlege* of how to get it was not a sufficient condition: they have to be reasonably sure *in their own estimation* that they won't get caught. And if P2P were more popular, it would be more visible, and would likely be more heavily targetd.
The music industry currently thrives mainly because of the difficulty the average mouth-breather has with illegally getting music.
This is the same kind of idiocy the media companies were spouting about cassette tapes and VHS; which both turned out to be massive sources of income for the same retarded companies who originally opposed them.
They became massive sources of income because there were enough structural barriers (legal and physical) with duplicating en masse illegally.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Even by that standard, DRM doesn't work. If you look at studies of Internet traffic, you'll see that traffic on peer-to-peer networks has increased, regardless of DRM policies.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Huh? EE's create DRM and DRM-like systems all the time, you mean "true professionals" like that, or some other kind?
Also, you can always join the ACM if you want to buy into an ethics package.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
"Economics 101: price depends on supply and demand. The supply of media on the internet is effectively infinite. Therefore, the only "reasonable price" is zero."
Economics 102: there are costs associated with searching for a file on the Net, downloading it and then discovering that it's either crap quality or takes forever to download, or that it's actually a goatse video and not Natalie Portman porn.
The 'reasonable price' is the amount that buyers are willing to pay to avoid those costs. Which is rather more than zero... but much less than $1 a song.
"The people who care aren't the ones in charge, unfortunately."
They won't be in charge for long if they destroy the West's computers. I doubt China will be rushing to destroy theirs in order to make Western IP Barons rich.
Economics 101: price depends on supply and demand. The supply of media on the internet is effectively infinite. Therefore, the only "reasonable price" is zero.
*brain hurting*
Let's count how many things you got wrong:
1) Price depends on supply and demand, but supply and demand depend on other factors.
2) Supply and demand determine the observed, resulting market price, whether or not it counts as "reasonable". Tariffs can double the market price of a car, even though that's "unreasonable".
3) The supply of media on the internet is *not* effectively infinite. It is impeded by search costs and legal restraints.
4) The fact that an additional good can be provided at zero marginal cost does not imply that it would be desirable to require it to be so. Lots of goods have zero marginal cost. For example, many places produce hamburgers in batches such that it costs them nothing at the margin to provide you with one -- after all, if you don't buy it, it'll just be thrown away.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
That's a good point. "After" does imply "because of". For example, after a country defines and enforces physical property rights, it industrializes, there's more stuff to steal, and theft surges. Obviously, obviously enforcing physical property rights causes theft and is thus counterproductive.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
I think you're missing the point.
If I go shady and download television shows from P2P, I can watch whatever the hell I want, whenever I want, and usually find a very high quality version of show du jour. I can burn it to DVD and watch on the big screen, or dump it onto my media box and do the same.
If I stay legal and stream from CBS or pick from iTunes' shitty little catalog, I am restricted by time, location, quality and quantity.
DRM is causing the goddamn problem. So FUCK that.
The NSA does not distribute decryption devices or even decryption keys to people who aren't supposed to be able to read messages, now do they? Nor does any other nation's encryption groups. Umm, why do you think that is?
And never mind the fact that in the DRM world, you also know what the plaintext, unencrypted message is along with having the encrypted message, the decryption device, and the decryption key.
So, in the DRM business model, companies distribute millions of copies of encrypted messages where in each and every case the plaintext message is known, and they also distributes millions of copies of decryption devices with the decryption key.
And the encryption does nothing useful for the end user, and in fact probably reduces the value of the product to quite a few end users.
Yeah, that'll work. While they're at it, I hope the MAFIAA execs are looking for a good hypersonic wind tunnel so they can piss into the fan while it's running, too.
"DRM ensures that software is only used by people who are allowed to use it: Those who payed for it."
Can you name one piece of mainstream software which can only be used by those who paid for it?
"Instead, encourage DRM that works."
There is no DRM that works. The only kind of DRM that comes close to working is something like Steam, which provides real benefits to the users (e.g. download to any computer, auto-patching, easy purchasing)... and I believe that's been cracked for those who don't want to pay for their games.
Companies have been foisting DRM on us for decades, going back at least as far as the absolutely retarded 'copy protection' scams of the 1980s which required nonsense like sticking a prism over the TV screen to read some corrupted text. I'm not aware of a single DRM scam which hasn't been broken, and the 'toughest' have often been rapidly broken precisely because they were so freaking annoying to users who paid for the software.
Surely after trying and failing for decades, smart people would accept that the whole thing is stupid and move on?
With this in mind, your response is a non sequitur.
sigs are hazardous to your health
The point of the article is that DRM is impossible. Yes, you can improve the current ones, but it will never work. If you have the ciphertext and they key, you have the plaintext. Effective DRM requires that to be impossible, not just hard.
you are agreeing with the article when you say "not perfect". It's the "perfect" DRM that he refutes.
No, my response is not a non-sequitur. I was responding to the claim that "I wouldn't pirate if they sold [licenced] it for cheaper." I did so through a comparison to the claim "I wouldn't shoplift if they sold it for cheaper." Such an argument does not depend on the wrongness of shoplifting, or any underlying justification for shoplifting being wrong. It merely depends on the tenuousness of a person's claim that he would stop violating someone's legal rights, if that person sold those legal rights for less.
... because pirating doesn't deprive anyone of anything." Is the real non-sequitur.
Ergo, your claim, "It is wrong to reject someone's claim that he wouldn't pirate music if it were cheaper
But, since a lot of people like to make this argument from scarcity, I'd like to point yout to someone who did a better, and slightly more arrogant, exposition of it, followed by my response. See here. Enjoy.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
sigs are hazardous to your health
WTF does mouth breathing have to do with anything?
I think you'll find that copying a CD is perceived by most people as being closer morally to baking your own loaf of bread -- using your own flour and yeast that you bought and paid for -- than to stealing a loaf of bread from a store. And I think that most people, if it came down to it, would have fewer qualms about stealing a loaf of bread from Tesco or Asda than from some little village baker's shop.
You don't get the bakery industry running around complaining that home bread machines are ruining their sales. (In fact, it actually works out more expensive to bake your own bread; at least if you buy flour by the ordinary 1k5 bag. I don't know where to get a 25kg. bag of strong white flour, nor where I'd store it if I had one. OTOH, store-bought bread tastes like shredded paper so you're paying for quality.)
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
My point was that the OP's claim about what he would do if digital music were cheaper, was not believable, and just a cover for his desire to save money, not when the law should be followed.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
If you hate DRM as much as I do, and you're not just too cheap to pay money for anything, you ought to consider using one of several DRM-free music and movie download sites. Maybe if the industry saw some successful players in that market, they would follow the money.
Or maybe they're just dinosaurs after the meteorite that is the internet hit...
Actually, in the real world it is an excellent justification for leeching
1) If you can't afford it anyway, then no damage is done.
2) From their wild high lifestyle, it seems obvious they have gotten an unreasonable monopoly passed so I don't see why poor people should be bound to supporting them.
3) In the real world, I find most people are as moral as they can afford to be. If the products were reasonably priced, people would behave morally. Since the products are unreasonably priced, people both do not behave morally. Also, since the products are so unreasonably priced ($20 in USA/EU when they sell the same products for $2.49 in china and india *at a profit*) people do not even feel guilty about acting immorally (and even question if it is immoral).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Yes! Unlimited free access to droning speeches from our fearless leader downloaded via lossless compression over 300 baud high speed free internet! Maybe we can get statistics from 5 year plans that always match estimates, and when then don't: pay-per-view quality beheadings at no additional cost! Fully indexed and easily searchable, just don't search for the wrong thing...
No, it was supremely difficult to land a person on the moon. There were technological limitations that had to be overcome in order to make it possible, is all.
Working Digital Restrictions Management is not just supremely difficult -- it's impossible. As in perpetual motion machines, faster-than-light travel, or constructing with ruler and compass a rectangle with area equal to a given circle. It can be shown mathematically that there is no way to do it. And there is nothing that anyone could ever invent that would make it possible: the impossibility of DRM is a limitation of the universe, not a limitation of technology.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Claiming that [DRM] can ever be made secure ... is like believing you can create a secure bank vault by drawing chalk lines on the pavement, piling the money inside and asking customers to "respect these boundaries".
That might work in Canada. How do you get a bunch of Canadians out of a swimming pool? "Excuse me, would everyone please get out of the pool?"
There will always be an analog hole. There are only two things they can do about that. One is to degrade the analog quality. But this also degrades the user experience. That ultimately can't work. They can certainly go as far as making sure no analog connections exist between the playback source and the display. But to see it, you have to have a display. And that's a hole right there. The other thing they can do is restrict the ability to capture from the analog hole. But this ends up crippling devices that inherintly have to be analog, such as a camera. Watermarks are their best bet, but these have to be very subtle to avoid destroying the user experience. And the more subtle they are, the harder it is to make technology that can detect it in a variety of cases, and fit into a cheap consumer digital video camera made in China.
The real cause of the problem is not that content comes to us digitally. That's actually an advantage for the content providers. It's the fact that once a copy has leaked into the pirate world, stripped of its DRM encumbrance, there is no further loss of quality as there once was when everything was in analog.
Back when everything was analog, people put up with horrible quality just to get a movie cheap, or see one before they were otherwise allowed to for some reason. The fact that even today people try to sneak cameras into theaters to copy a major motion picture shows just how low a quality a lot people are willing to accept. Sure, some people today want their pirated copy to be perfect original digital reproduction. But the mass level of piracy will be quite happy with just the one generation of analog lossage that we have today.
The focus on stopping piracy needs to be at the distribution, not at the original capture. It only takes one leak and it's all over the internet. DRM would have to be 100% perfect to make a dent in piracy. It simply cannot do that. It won't work.
What DRM will do, however, is stop casual copying. It can prevent someone from making a copy for a neighbor. Now the neighbor will have to go to the internet to get a "real pirate copy". It will also cause people to have to buy more copies than they wanted, to be able to play on a variety of devices, of the most intrusive of DRM comes into being. But that is what the content producers are really wanting in the end, which would drive up sales because of this deprivation of fair use. That is ultimately what DRM can work for, and is what the content producers want.
DRM will also cripple many ways people can even play or watch the content they legally buy (or would legally buy if they knew they could play it). The number of such people affected is still small, and may well remain small (e.g. die hard BSD/Linux users). Because these people are affected, some of them will (and most of the rest will support) find ways to crack the DRM directly. So basically, DRM itself creates motives to crack DRM even among those willing to pay for everything they have (e.g. are not tha freeloader minority). So DRM will always be under attack. And big corporations have continually shown they are unable to make perfect technology, especially that involving encryption.
DRM will fail. But the prospect is that it could take as much as 20 years for big corporate executives to realize this. They are slow learners (as the internet itself has shown on a massive scale).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Or at least CD's didn't used to have.
And EMI made money despite no DRM.
Now, licensing DRM costs money and they can't increase the cost because that would break the free market and deflate their argument that it reduces piracy and that's why they're doing it (since if piracy is stopped and each "lost sale" really is lost, they get more sales and more profit). But if DRM doesn't work (and it never can), increasing costs to cover the failure of DRM will reduce sales (because they are a monopoly and price to maximum profit) and so they try better DRM which likewise doesn't work.
And yet they don't seem to realise that DRM CANNOT work. Yet still they try. Pissing off customers and reducing their profits to no avail.
Your car analogy has given me much insight. Good jorb.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
This is what happens when technology moves faster than the wealthy and powerful move.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Closest thing I could find to an entertainment article.
This is so pathetic. Millions of people serve out their terms in jail but Paris gets a by.
One more example of dual justice systems in america these days. One for the rich and one for the rest of us.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Really? Every piece of software ever created? (Yes, I know -- hyperbole to make a point. Still, we should at least try for bug-free, right?)
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
I know this point has been picked apart above, but I just want to throw in my $.02.
I have heard this statement many, many times before. Sometimes people actually mean it and follow through, many times their definition of "reasonable price" is far below what most feel is reasonable. (And yes, I know I'll get the "But distribution cost is near nothing on the net!" arguments. So be it.)
What I do not understand is how "I cannot afford it" turned into "I cannot afford it, therefor I am entitled to it for free." Yes, I get the whole "I wouldn't have bought it anyway so they aren't losing a sale" argument. And that is (for the most part) true. However, why do you need that one particular individual song/album/artist? There are plenty of other reasonably priced venues to get other music (Magnatunes, eMusic, etc).
To me, the issue is not publishers/labels/studios have a government granted monopoly on distribution of their work. The issues are that the original limited term of that monopoly is being continuously extended through the efforts of lobbyists and that there is now government protection in place defending the use of DRM (DMCA, etc). Many people seem to be confusing copyright with DRM. They are two different battlefields that need to be fought differently.
Concerning copyright... Labels, studios, and (in some rare cases) artists themselves have a limited term monopoly on their product and can charge what they wish. If you do not like the price, that does not entitle you to that work for free, but rather to search out different works at the price you are looking for. If you do not like the term of the copyright (which continues to be extend), take it up with your congressmen. (I know, I know... the system is broken, etc. So don't complain about it, do something to fix it!)
Concerning DRM... If a label, studio or artist wish to release their work with DRM fine. So be it. I understand why they want to include it (multiple purchases, slightly limited casual copying, etc). But I don't believe it should be a government enforced restriction. Copyright is enough.
These are just my opinions. Take them with whatever amount of salt you wish.
Slashdot: where repeating an article in a post is "+5 Insightful"
Um, my mom called. She wants her justification for making me eat my bread crusts back.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
"You mean the fact that media companies won't make their products easily available to the public to download at a reasonable price? Please. That justification for leeching didn't work when you were five, and it doesn't work now." That is not a justification. It is a complaint about the status of the music industry. When a CD I can buy here in Shanghai, China for $3 (real, licensed, and everything) costs $15 (or maybe more) in the States to buy (the CD I'm talking about is "Hikaru Utada singles collection vol. 1") something's wrong. They're not charging reasonable prices; they're charging the maximum that people in each market will pay for it. Here in China, they have to compete with counterfeits, so they *have* to charge a reasonable price or they won't get any sales at all.
OSx86 FTW
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syphilis#Origins
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
He didn't care about DRM until this moment when his CD didn't work anymore as expected.
I'm a little bit older. I became interested in backing up music when 8 track tapes appeared to come in two flavors, those which have tangled and those about to. Compact Cassettes suffered the same fate. I frequently made back-up copies. When I went into the service, I found I could replace many of the have tangled tapes by borrowing LP's in the barracks. I bought the best turntable and cassette deck I could find.
Videotape came out with very expensive pre-recorded tapes. I taped lots off TV and fought the ills of early videotape DRM (Magnaguard copy protection followed by Macrovision) Later CD's came out, followed by expensive CD burners which was followed by CD ripping software and internet.
Expensive content that was hobbled so bad it wouldn't play properly was the biggest reason to avoid DRM and Copy Protection. The fragility of the delivery medium and the inability to format shift and back it up was and still is the biggest reason to avoid DRM and Copy Protection. The iTunes croud is quick to point out that you can burn it to a regular CD. They fail to point out the cost. 1 conversion is not losseless. It's doubled if you convert again to MP3 to use in a MP3 player or burn a MP3 compilation CD for the DVD player. Don't forget to add in the cost of the blank media required and the time to re-enter the track metadata if you re-rip to MP3. Again high prices, restricted use, work-arounds, cost in time and money, and loss of quality to make a usable back-upable file.
All these restrictions make the free alternative a much better product. It comes in the desired format at better quality and can be used as intended in it's original format. No tweaking required.
So when is the industry going to release a reasonably priced quality product? Hey, RIAA, anybody home? RIAA, get rid of the lawyers and get some engineers. THX has set sound standards for film. How about quality standards for CD's instead of compressed to sound loud?
The truth shall set you free!
It can work... but you have to do it in hardware.
It is possible to make a tamper-proof encryption device. They aren't cheap (read: you'll never see one in a system under $500,000), but they are possible. They are used for situations where destroying the encryption keys and all access to the data is considered better than letting the data be viewed by a third party. Even these can be broken, but the requirements are significantly beyond those available to your average hacker.
I don't know how to build a DRM system for audio, but I have a pretty good idea how to do it for video.
The system consists of:
A.) The sender. We will assume the sender is secure.
B.) The encryption device on the receiver's computer. This is secure and tamper-proof.
C.) The receiver's monitor (also a decryption device, I'll get into this later.
Steps
1.) The sender A encrypts the original data D with the key of the tamper-proof encryption device B, and sends the encrypted data to B. Noone but the sender is able to determine the plaintext at this point, as the plaintext is known only to A, and the key is known only to A and B. This data is flagged with information on what B is allowed to do with it. In this case, it is allowed to reencrypt it for display on a monitor, but not to return it as plaintext or to reencrypt it for sending to another computer.
2.) B requests a public key from monitor C, which will be signed by some trusted third party which identifies it as a monitor. This key will be used to encrypt the data sent to C.
3.) After verifying that C is trusted, B decrypts the data D from sender A, and reencrypts it with the key for monitor C. None of this is observable, as it is all done within the tamper-proof device.
4.) Monitor C consists of a tamper-resistant decryption device that is an integral part of an LCD monitor. Part of the tamper-resistant device would probably have to actually reside on the same silicon as the pixels, to make tampering with the LCD itself impossible. Within Monitor C, the reencrypted data is again decrypted inside the second tamper-resistant device, and is displayed on the LCD monitor.
With this system the data is either:
a.) At the trusted sender,
b.) In an untrusted location, but encrypted,
c.) Decrypted, but in a tamper-proof or tamper-resistant device, or
d.) Displayed on an LCD monitor.
The only way to get the plaintext here is to read it DIRECTLY off the monitor. That isn't practical, would result in a fairly low-quality product, and is an understood weakness in any DRM system.
Building a system like this isn't practical for consumer DRM, because the costs of the tamper-proof encryption devices would be prohibitively expensive, not to mention requiring everyone to replace their TV with a new, more secure (for the movie companies) one. It could be feasible for distribution of movies to cinemas, to try and cut down on high-quality bootlegs of movies being made off of theater copies.
Another problem is that mass producing even a secure version would mean that a determined hacker would have access to not one but hundreds of the same type of device. Simply having significant numbers of them available would increase the standards for tamper-resistance significantly.
The failure of DRM (and the content industry altogether) is that they didn't realize how the market works. You cannot force someone to buy. You can only encourage.
When I buy a TV set, I have additional value compared to a stolen one or one that "fell off a truck". When the TV fails, I can claim warranty. I can go to the dealer or to the manufacturer and trade my faulty product against a good one. With other "hardware", you get other benefits. Often you have access to various services (support, installation, in case of computerhardware drivers...) or other added goodies that you simply would not have when you steal it.
With content it is exactly reverse. The stolen content has a bigger "value" than one bought. The value of content is determined by its usefulness. And you can't argue that content is worth more when it is restricted to one medium, impossible to shift and bound to malfunction when used with certain display devices that the manufacturer of the content doesn't approve. It doesn't even have the same "value" as content that allows me to shift freely and display in any way I deem appropriate.
So stolen content is "worth more" than content bought.
And that's the big fallacy of the industry. Not only do people save money by stealing it (which would be the same for stolen "hardware"), they actually get content that is more valuable than when they went and bought it.
And here's the big problem. It's not that people wouldn't buy content, despite it being overpriced IMO. What makes them copyers is that copying increases content value. Not in terms of its price, but its usefulness is vastly increased by removing restrictions.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The GD-ROM format isn't much more hackproof than the GCN format. (See also: Phantasy Star Online networking exploit)
They don't all let you redownload what you purchased, but even if they did it would be no real security because it's a policy that can change. There's nothing stopping any of these distributors from changing policy to restrict redownloading. Thus if you want to be sure you can play the audio you bought at any time on any device, you should make the effort to transcode each track into something portable and lossless (if you're not already buying such files) so the quality doesn't further degrade in the transcoding process. FLAC makes a great choice for this.
Digital Citizen
Who's Paris Hilton?
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
First off ... or course DRM can work. You know it, I know it. You just need to start with the *hardware*, and make sure that people who buy a computer cannot gain access to OS internals without first having to hack the hardware. And that's no cakewalk. Just remember that it took the resources of an MIT computing lab to hack the hardware of the XBox (see this link http://www.xenatera.com/bunnie/proj/anatak/xboxmod .html. Lesson learned: solder the BIOS chip on the motherboard for maximum security.}
That's called "trusted hardware". Really, does nobody remember Microsoft's Palladium scheme to make Windows work with "trusted hrdware"?
If the entertainment industry needed anyone to make the case that "trusted hardware" is really really necessary to protect their precious content, then this is it. What will your friendly neighbourhood lawmaker say when the RIAA / MPAA wave this rant under their noses and say:
"Told you so ... it's either mandatory Palladium and Trusted Hardware or we're dead. Now think of what that will mean in terms of your campaign contributions.
So here's the deal. We don't need you to actually outlaw non-compliant computer hardware, just to make "trusted hardware" and Microsoft's Palladium the standard for *all* Government applications. And make it mandatory for anything connected to the Internet that handles financial transactions, especially including anything that accesses Ebay or can order airline tickets on-line. That's all we ask.
The department of Home Security ought to like that, all banks and credit-card companies ought to like that, and we will bring out our content *only* for trusted hardware. We'll even throw in a 5-year price reduction on content for Trusted Computers. What's not to like eh?".
Crowing about how Joe Schmuck will be able to crack any DRM to illegally copy videos, songs or whatever is of a depth of stupidity that I never thought possible. Much as I respect Jeremy Allison for his work on Samba, there are some people in the Open Source software development that I would gladly do without. For example when they spout this sort of idiocy. Let him go back to writing code instead of trying his had at prose.
And doesn't he realise that with his rant he is indirectly positioning MS Windows as the *only* platform that the content industry can trust to protect it's content behind DRM?
Seriously ... doesn't he realise how close we have come {and the danger still isn't passed} of having "trusted hardware" shoved down our collective throats? Palladium anyone? Think that can't happen anymore??? Think again. Just look at Wikipedia and read up on trusted computing {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing}. It's not dead yet.
It's not that people wouldn't buy content, despite it being overpriced IMO.
Excelent point. It is overpriced. When pre-recorded VHS tapes were $35-$65 we went out of our way to defeat Magnavision copy guard protection and copy the tapes onto $15-$20 blank tapes. Now that I buy movies for 2 for $10 and less,and blank tapes are under a dollar, I don't bother trading with my neighbor to make copies of movies. The music industry hasen't figured this out yet along with some movie studios (Disney) who still try to price movies in the over $15 range. Get a clue.. I rarely buy over $15 movies. I buy lots of under $10 movies. Kids shows are the ones most likely to be mistreated, broken, lost, scratched, etc. Along with the high prices on Disney content, they are the first ones to be ripped to a server.
High priced copy protected content has little value. Improperly labeled packaging poisons the pool of content. There was no warning on some recent SONY releases. Open Season came with copy protection that blocked Acidrip. Even though SONY replaced the disk at their expense, the damage was done. Any future SONY release is viewed in the light of requiring online research to see if it is worth purchase. Enough Audo CD's are released with copy protection and high prices to simply prevent me from bothering to look at retail CD's anymore. So few of them have the Compact Disc logo to claim meeting manufacturing specifications for the Philips standard that I don't bother looking for it anymore. Also missing from most all recent CD's are the DDD or other quality indicators. So few people look for the indicators of quality, and just go for who the band is, that quality and compatibility is lost in the marketing spin.
I don't buy any popular under $5 CD's simply because they don't exist. I don't buy over $5 CD's because they are overpriced as well as overcompressed. I buy movies instead. Movies still have dynamic range and good S/N ratio for THX certification.
The truth shall set you free!
There's a book about this future - "Rainbow's End" by Vernor Vinge. It's fiction.
You have no sense of history. Remember the "Clipper Chip" ? People were frightned of that
for the same reasons you list here, and now all phones must come with an embedded Clipper
chip. Oh wait.....
You want to live in fear and think you can hide from a scary future by not talking about it.
I refuse to live in fear.
If the only way Windows will win is by being legislated, then I'm happy to be on the losing side.
Jeremy.
IF it has to be usable by a person, then DRM can NOT work.
grab the output and record it digitally. Hardware can be by passed.
DRM can not WORK. ever.
Smarter people then I have written books and papers about this, I suggest you read a few so you can stop living in your delusion.
The article makes several valid points. It's ST references was stretched way too thin.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
many. many people get released early. Some people don't even go to jail and instead serve their sentence in their home.
Relax, some whiny bitch you shouldn't even care about gets out of her massive few days in jail. Good, I didn't want to pay for that anyways.
Driving to a suspended license should only have 1 penalty, revoke the license permenatly.
If the get caught driving with no license, then fine them based on their income.
A much better use of taxpayers money.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Only at slashdot would a comment be modded "insightful" when not only does the comment show no insight whatever, but that had the commenter actually RTFM (eye muss bee knew hear looser) he would know that what he wrote was incredibly dumb.
DRM doesn't work!!! That was the whole point of the damned article! It explains WHY it doesn't work.
Jesus H. Christ, not only did the guy not RTFM he didn't even read the fucking comments and you bozos mod him "insightful." When did the m.a.f.i.a.a. get mod points, and how?
-mcgrew
(Yes, I read the article. Unlike the parent comment, it was very insightful, as well as a good read.)
you are assuming the pre-internet environment of nationwide pop hits is the only model to have
why not a fracturing of that model into a thousand subcultures? such that the emo subculture would get no exposure at all to the thrash metal subculture, which would know nothing of the hip hop culture, etc. and there would be no one big dominant pop culture that gets the most exposure. it just wouldn't exist anymore. the exposure bands currently get via radio, etc., would be done via certain internet portals various subcultures have come to depend upon to let them know what might be hot or not
so perhaps the days of one big monolithic music/ movie culture is dead. i don't really see why that's a problem. it's a golden age, and it's over. everything dies. let a thousand flowers bloom instead
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What he is saying is that it can't work, it's never going to work, and that trying build a business model (or an economy) found on DRM is a deeply irrational act.
This depends on the definition of "work". If you define "working" as "preventing all unauthorized copying", then, yes, he's right. But if you define "working" as "making unauthorized copying somewhat inconvenient", then he may not be, because DRM can do this. If this is the goal, then implementing DRM may be rational, even if it may only be partially successful.
For example, take multiplayer first-person shooter games. They suffer from exactly the same problem as DRM: A server gives a client a bunch of bits (the game state) with the assumption that the client will process the bits with a specific program (the official game executable). But the server has no way to tell that the bits were processed with the official executable or if they were processed with a hacked executable that automatically makes the player aim better. So just as with DRM, the server would like to control exactly what is done with its bits, but it fundamentally cannot. In the case of DRM, this means people can make unauthorized copies, while in the case of FPSs, it means people can cheat.
The solution many FPS companies have arrived at is to run a second program on the client to watch the game program and any other programs running at the same time, looking for cheating behavior. But this approach suffers from exactly the same problem as the original approach: a cheater could analyze the watcher program and build something that gets around it or replaces it entirely, and the server would be none the wiser. Just as DRM hands the user everything he needs to decrypt the content, the game company hands the player everything he needs to cheat. Since cheating is fundamentally unavoidable, is it irrational to create a multiplayer FPS?
Surprisingly, it turns out that the watcher program approach works fairly well (at the moment). It does not prevent all cheating, but it suppresses it enough that most people can enjoy the game. It works because it makes cheating inconvenient -- the cheater either has to have powerful computing resources or he must continually write new ways of cheating. Without the watcher program, cheating would be so easy that the games would be unplayable with all but the most trusted group of friends. (And if you don't believe that, you didn't play Diablo II in the early days.)
In the same way, DRM only needs to make casual copying inconvenient in order to be considered successful. The question is: does the cost (direct and indirect) of incorporating DRM offset the amount of money lost to casual copying? The answer may be "no", or "not at the moment", but FPSs show that there are situations where the answer is "yes". Which means Mr. Allison's reasoning may be incorrect: DRM may make sense even if the problem it tries to solve is fundamentally unsolvable.
Yep, but to continue the Star-Trek theme here (God, we really are geeks, aren't we?) he's now just a part of the Borgle.
See the iTMS .....
No, DRM cannot work. Even if you only deliver your content through glue-filled "trusted computing" black boxes, at some point you still have to play the music, show the movie, or print out the text. Even if it's just a matter of recording the analog signals passing through the air or something higher quality like reading out the digital signals from the individual pixels in the display, you fundamentally cannot prevent the recipient of a message from copying the message. You can make it really hard to do, but there's still the problem that only one person has to break your imperfect protection and then it gets much easier to copy the unprotected version they made. End of story.
The key is providing products that are convenient to use at a price point where most people would rather pay for them than go to the effort of finding the pirated version. Harsher DRM simply makes the legal version harder to use in the ways one wants to, and thus decreases its value relative to the pirated version which will always exist. Affordable watermarked content is the way to go, in that it's cheap, completely flexible, and discourages casual piracy through responsibility instead of restriction. It trusts the user by relying on post-infraction enforcement of rules instead of pre-infraction.
this guy is just preaching to the converted. those who understand all the red-shirt and miracle-worker references don't need to be convinced. unfortunately, they are beholden to people who don't understand any of it. worse, what those people remember about star trek was that scotty was kirk's bitch, and that he did work miracles.
Yes. Maybe then we'd finally get some OSes that are actually secure.
butter the donkey
Great rant, but a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of DRM, probably deliberately I might add, in order to highlight the fundamental misunderstandings of industry senior mgmt.
;^)
DRM is not implemented to end piracy, or prevent it. There is precious little that can stop that.
It is implemented to keep Joe Blow from handing out freebies to his Toms, Dicks and Harrys.
And that's all.
It keeps copying from being a *trivial* operation, and forces him to associate with absolute criminals if he wishes to get something for free. Most folks don't want to do that. Many don't make it past all the porn popups, in fact.
So DRM works, but should always be simple enough and unobtrusive. Anything more is a liability.
Trying to design a "watertight and unbreakable" DRM, of the kind discussed in this article, is the perfect way to end that balance and hoist content providers by their own petard. (c.f.: Starforce, Sony rootkit)
So that's the kind of thing engineers should be saying "no" to, for the sake of their own company's continued profitability.
--
Toro
Heh, you gotta love slashdot:
1) When I have one bad experience with Ubuntu, I'm a hard-headed moron for never trying again.
2) When your friend has has one bad experience with DRM on a CD (that will be remedied as technology adapts), that's conclusive proof that no one should never copy-protect data they sell.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
fines by income on the surface sounds like a great idea...
However... what about the person with no income, running around causing havoc all over the place? you can take 100% of his income and it wouldn't phase him...
then you give someone like like say... Randy Moss a large fine for a fake mooning... how does he pay the thousands in the fine? "straight cash homey." doesn't even make him think twice...
True, but I can try Ubuntu without making a nonrefundable purchase. The only thing it costs me to take a look is a bit of time, and maybe the cost of blank media if I choose to download a boot disk.
OTOH, if I go in an buy a CD, I know that there is no way that they will take it back even if it fails to play, short of legal action which will cost me far more time than trying out Ubuntu would.
So there is quite a different relationship...if you offer me the chance to try something for free I will cut you a lot more slack, and may well try again later if the first release proves unsatisfactory. If you demand a nonrefundable fee up front, you have to expect that I will probably not be back if it doesn't work.
DRM does cost them sales...I heard something I liked playing as I walked past a local record store, went in to see what it was. Turned out to be Sony-BMG, so I said no thanks and left. I used to buy lots of CDs and (earlier) vinyl, I have hundreds of both. I mostly don't even bother going to look now. And I don't download either. I do go to a lot of dances with live musicians who get paid, so I am still supporting the culture.
No, China will be doing it to implement totalitarianism (which is a secondary goal for most Western governments too).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
That's not "zero marginal cost." That just means that the marginal cost is the cost per batch divided by the number of burgers per batch. Or alternatively, since the burgers are made in batches, one batch is the margin, not one burger -- the burger only counts as a fraction of an item.
In contrast, the marginal cost of producing a "batch" of songs is zero* no matter what. A "batch" could be 1 song or 1 million songs; it's still zero.
*Give or take electricity etc.; technically I should say "negligible," but "zero" is more dramatic.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
That's not "zero marginal cost." That just means that the marginal cost is the cost per batch divided by the number of burgers per batch.
No, that would be the average cost. To provide one more customer with one more burger, costs nothing.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
The quote in the summary is wrong. The original says unexplored plant, not planet, which obviously changes what he was trying to say. It's just as easy to get these things right, you know.
I think content-providers who invest in DRM are really just investing in (illusionary) peace-of-mind rather than anything actually of value. I can't imagine that anyone who really understands DRM really believes in its feaseability, but as the article points out, most companies and governments continue to invest time and money in it to please those other, vocal people who believe the world will end if media is left unprotected.
In fact, the theory I've heard (can't remember where) in support of DRM is that it's good enough just to keep the media pirates of the world guessing, constantly, if inevitably, having to re-crack the latest and greatest DRM scheme, so that some, or some more, consumers are driven to buy the media legitimately.
In the minds of these people, the idea that they can make money from consumers just being honest is too unthinkable to try. There are some record labels who are giving non-DRM a shot, but I suppose it's a lot easier to sell FUD to intellectual-property owners than to sell them on the idea of trusting the consumer in the marketplace.
After a dissertation like that, so much geekieness must have passed through your body, you were rendered incapable of having children ...assuming you could find a date in the first place.
Part of the licensing of the images and information passed to Google Earth is that the Google Earth application would limit how it could downloaded and used. When work on a GNU/Linux client has gone far enough to show that Google technically couldn't honor their promises of information control, they ended up having to demand all work on the client be stopped and removed. It is so ironic that while part of Google's business model includes DRM concepts, they still have an employee speak frankly about the flaw in them doing so.
I think you made a typo... what you probably meant:
2. I want to SELL you the secret
Not to mention that the PSP has been hacked like crazy, and the only reason nobody has ripped UMDs is that nobody cares.
You forget about modchips though. You basically describe the DRM used to protect console games, but consoles are hacked in hardware. Sure, your average Joe can't do it, but they don't have to: the market takes care of that. The average Joe creates demand for a modchip since he is willing to pay; then real experienced hardware hackers do the really hard cracking, create the supply of modchips and get paid. Average Joe just takes his console down to the corner hack shop and gets it cracked for a small fee. The only way to actually enforce DRM is the law, i.e. suing people.
Actually, there is one way that DRM actually can be made to work. Microsoft has a very, very impressive DRM system in place on Xbox 360 (including hardware fuses in the processor which can be blown to prevent downgrading the system software after an upgrade), but it has still been cracked. The crack is not becoming widespread, however, because of one thing: Xbox Live. Microsoft can strictly enforce DRM on any Xbox as long as it continues to connect to Xbox Live. Microsoft can actively counter hacks as they occur. This only works because Xbox Live provides a valuable service that people want; otherwise you could mod your Xbox and never again connect to Xbox Live.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I did not read the article, but I guess it would be pretty hard to come up with non-obvious reasons, so I prefer to wait until the whole thing simply goes away, thank you very much.
over here in the uk we have what are known of as "points" on your license, get more than a certain number (how many depends on how long you've had your license) and you can lose your license for a period of time.
generally people are far more concerned about the points than the fines that go with them. Some even go to court to try and avoid the points even though the possible fines in court are FAR larger than the fixed penalties.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No, average cost is the average over all batches of the product. To produce one more unit (i.e., batch) of product has a non-zero cost.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Such is the human nature. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
All software has bugs.
DRM software no more has bugs than a Perpetual Motion machine has bugs.
Is it ethical to be a professional Perpetual Motion Machine engineer?
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
At least get the analogies right. DRM and speeding tickets are opposites.
Speedings tickets does not prevent you from going as fast as you like. Though they may make you choose not to, as you'll hopefully get caught and punished for breaking the law.
DRM ettempts to make it impossible to break the law in the first place. A car analogy would be some kind of gremlin stuck in the engine, which prevents your car from going faster than, say, 80km/h.
Sub-analogies for bonus:
- Gremlins can be removed by car engine enthusiasts, rendering it pointless.
- Normal people cannot speed, even for common-sense purposes. Need to get to the hospital in an emergency? Too bad.
- People will still go 80km/h on 30km/h roads, while not being able to go faster than 80 on 100km/h roads.
I lost my sig.
Despite the ACs arguing with your "spelling", I think you've summed it up very (+1, Insightfully).
Are content distributors not allowed to protect their rights?
Not if you or they think think that includes criminalizing non infringing people.
Not if you or they think think that includes outlawing legitimate non infringing products that can be used for both infringing purposes and legitimate non infringing purposes.
I agree publishers are perfectly free to use any sort of DRM scheme they like. The only problem is when they expect those DRM schemes to actually work. When they demand absolutely insane laws criminalizing non infringing people who circumvent or remove those DRM schemes and criminalizing non infringing products with the ability to circumvent or remove those DRM schemes in some misguided attempt to "fix" the the "problem" that their DRM scheme doesn't work.
You want to wish for a magical flying pony, an invisible pink magic flying pony, go right ahead. You want to try to create an invisible pink magic flying pony, go right ahead. But NO, you cannot have an obscene evil law criminalizing innocent people because it's not working.
Without the DMCA we wouldn't be having this argument. Without the DMCA there wouldn't even be a fig leaf trying to cover up the fact that the DRM schemes don't work. Without the DMCA you would have a hundred legitimate companies instantly creating and offering a hundred different valuable products that interoperate with iTunes and circumvent or remove the FairPlay DRM scheme, rather than a ragtag group of independent programmers creating and offering "underground" solutions like Hymn and other stuff.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
>>DRM software no more has bugs than a Perpetual Motion machine has bugs.
>>Is it ethical to be a professional Perpetual Motion Machine engineer?
I don't know. It depends on the situation.
DRM only has to be effective for the purposes of the client, it doesn't have to go against physical law. Maybe the client only wants a solution to keep the casual, non-tech user from sharing files with his friends. An effective DRM solution, in terms of the client's needs, is certainly possible. An outsider can only guess what people employing DRM truly want and expect in terms of outcomes.
Years ago I was involved with some software that used a commercially available hardware dongle for copy protection (aka DRM). In our case DRM was 100% successful. You can't make blanket statements about DRM being impossible, when there are many, many instances that would disprove this in practice. You can call the company that produced the dongles unethical all you want because it might be technically impossible for their DRM scheme to be 100% effective all the time, but they have been around forever making millions of dollars from many satisfied customers.
Ahhh, someone hasn't read their Schneier...
As one of those engineers that writes DRM systems, let me let you into a little trade secret. We, and our bosses, are well aware that any DRM schemes that we create will be cracked. We don't care. If it takes you 5 years to crack my system, then that DVD of Cars has already gone from costing $30 at Walmart, to costing $10. I win. Frankly, after 5 years, I don't care if you crack my system. Good grief, I probably don't care if you crack it in 1 year.
Jeremy Allison's analysis is false for this reason. It's not necessary for the system to be uncrackable for it to be secure. It just has to be sufficiently difficult to crack that the product loses it's value before being cracked.
Of course, none of this excuses the ridiculous efforts in the HD-DVD debacle, where the system was cracked in a matter of months, and the counter-measures in a matter of a couple of weeks. That reeks of a DRM system created by engineers that have never been pirates...
To give you an idea of state of the art DRM, here's how it's done by my company:
1) All DRM functions are done in a virtual machine that is based on a CPU of our own design, with it's own opcodes, ABI, memory management system, compiler, and debugger. We recreate this environment about once every two years.
It takes the pirates around about 2 years to reverse engineer the virtual machine, and then write a debugger for it. It then takes them another few months to reverse engineer the actual DRM program that runs in the virtual machine. Of course, at that point in time, we just download a different DRM algorithm, and it takes another few months for them to reverse engineer it. We play that game until our client gets sick and tired of having to update the DRM software all of the time, at which point, they cough up the money for the next generation VM - which stops the pirates for another two years whilst they reverse engineer and develop the debugging tools again.
The only products of ours that have been cracked, are products that are more than three years old - sometimes the client decides that financial losses due to piratage is less than the cost of a new DRM system.
All of that is just to say that DRM can in fact work.
some people like to root around in the details. i like to tell a story. being accurate is not as important as being entertaining. it's just a matter of understanding human nature. you may consider that wrong, but you can't deny it is also real
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The grandparent's point was that DRM doesn't have to eliminate piracy, only reduce it. My point is that even with that relaxed standard, DRM fails. Its like comparing the rate of theft with no enforcement of property rights vs with enforcement of property rights and finding out that enforcing property rights did nothing to curb theft.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it