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.'"

Comments

Simple math

[Bullfish]

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.

Correction

[geekoid]

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.

Re:Correction

[MightyYar]

The big problem is that there is an entire generation of college kids that think everything digital is free for the taking unless it is properly secured, and if it is not properly secured then it is basically an invitation to take it. The big media companies have only themselves to blame for this. If they had been a little more savvy, they would have started selling online a long time ago. Instead, they let the ad hoc P2P services pave the way and they lost control of their own product. I have no sympathy for them at all. Restricting your paying customers is a bad idea when no-cost alternatives exist, especially when most of your income comes from people with more time than money.

Not that you need an example, but here I go anyway. I have been downloading Southpark for years (I don't have cable, and Southpark isn't worth $100/month). iTunes started offering it, which is great because I value my time and think that $2 is money well spent. HOWEVER, I can't watch the episodes on my stinking TV! With P2P I could just burn them to a CD and watch the AVI on my $25 DVD player. So now I'm left with the situation where I can buy the episode for $2 and watch it on my monitor, or download it for free and watch it anywhere I like. Not to mention that the free version is higher-quality!

Tell me how restricting the paying customer is a sound business strategy?

"Engineers should refuse to create DRM systems..."

[dpbsmith]

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.

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: ...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."

"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."

Re:Yes, I know

[edraven]

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.

Re:This is going to get all kinds of responses, bu

[Opportunist]

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.