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The DRM Scorecard

Posted by samzenpus on from the guess-who's-ahead dept.

An anonymous reader writes "InfoWeek blogger Alex Wolfe put together a scorecard which makes the obvious but interesting point that, when you list every major DRM technology implemented to "protect" music and video, they've all been cracked. This includes Apple's FairPlay, Microsoft's Windows Media DRM, the old-style Content Scrambling System (CSS) used on early DVDs and the new AACS for high-definition DVDs. And of course there was the Sony Rootkit disaster of 2005. Can anyone think of a DRM technology which hasn't been cracked, and of course this begs the obvious question: Why doesn't the industry just give up and go DRM-free?"

16 of 543 comments (clear)

  1. Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. by Atlantis-Rising · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just because the ability exists to crack it, doesn't mean that the average Joe on the street can do so.

    It discourages casual copying, nothing more, but I can't imagine it was intended to do any more. Nobody's that stupid.

    --
    "It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
    1. Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. by Atlantis-Rising · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Never assume stupidity for what can be explained as malice.

      To do otherwise is naive at best.

      --
      "It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
    2. Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Just because the ability exists to crack it, doesn't mean that the average Joe on the street can do so."

      Ummmm, lets think about that:
      1) It only takes ONE person to "crack" and copy music, a movie, etc. and make it available to all the average Joes.
      2) It only takes ONE person to create a patch or an app and every average Joe can use it.

      Where do these newbies come from on here? Sheeez.

    3. Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, they really are dumb.

      "You mean you can supply me with uncrackable protection from unauthorized copying?"

      "That's right!"

      "Wow, and I don't really understand all this stuff, but when it gets cracked later this month I'll keep sending you your checks."

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    4. Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. by shark72 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's an interesting viewpoint.

      Are you also of the opinion that auto industry executives hold the naive view that auto theft-deterrent systems are infallible?

      When I first got into the Apple warez scene in the early 80s, I asked somebody older and wiser why, say, they bothered to put copy protection on Wizardry when clever guys like me could easily crack it.

      "Because," he pointed out, "if the copy protection prevents just one person from copying it, it's done its job."

      And that's why copy protection on CDs and DVDs exists today: to deter casual copying. Much to their disadvantage, most people out there just aren't as technically adept as Slashdot readers.

      Can you clarify why you believe that folks who use DRM don't understand this? It requires quite a stretch, but if you think you have solid evidence, I'd like to hear it.

      --
      Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
    5. Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. by ubermiester · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The question is not whether people can do it, its a matter of whether they actually will.

      To get DRM-less content, they need to:

      • know that a crack exits
      • know how to get it
      • khow how to use it
      • AND...feel as though it was really worth it to go through all that trouble so they can avoid paying for someone else's work.

      Each step filters people, and those people pay. Simple as that.

      The real question is how long the RIAA will take to realize that there are alternatives to this model.
    6. Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't think it's stupid as in having the intelligence of a slightly age slice of toast. It's more allowing themselves to be BS'ed.

      Here's music exec Joe Shmoe. He's fairly intelligent when it comes to business related topics. He has a masters in BA. He doesn't understand jack about all that computer stuff, but that's not his biz. His biz is music.

      Then here's Alex. He may or may not have a degree, but he sells Joe the DRM tools for his music. He knows both, commerce and computers.

      Joe realized that Alex' DRM tools were cracked. Alex knows that too, and he knows well that the spin of "we make it uncrackable" doesn't hold water. But he also knows how Joe thinks. His selling strategy thus is:

      1. Cracking DRM is another burden, which keeps a few more people from copying.
      2. Cracking DRM has been made illegal, which keeps another few more from copying.
      3. Our DRM solution costs less than the losses due to illegal copying.

      Joe understands that. And thus Joe buys.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  2. You mother fuckers are pissing me off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have this massive pile of digital rights that I really need to manage. Yet every fucking piece of management software I download has been hacked. There's not even any patches for this shit. How the fuck am I, as a concerned citizen, supposed to manage my rights?

  3. DRM isn't supposed to be foolproof by cavetroll · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The point of DRM isn't to hinder in any noticeable way the large groups that are responsible for most of the copyright infringement that takes place, rather the aim is to annoy and infuriate the average 'consumer' to the point where needlessly buying extra copies of $ITEM is the path of least resistance.

    The same effect has been observed in software for years, Windows XP had an activation thing built in, anyone who knew what they were doing would bypass it, anyone who didn't (and didn't know anyone who did) would eventually go and buy superfluous copies of software they already owned.

  4. Bad arguments and bad reasoning by timholman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Okay, let's try Alex Wolfe's argument in a different context:

    "When you list every major law implemented to "protect" life and property, they've all been broken. Can anyone think of a law which hasn't been broken, and of course this begs the obvious question: Why doesn't society just give up and go law-free?"

    DRM doesn't have to be perfect to do its job, anymore than law enforcement has to be "perfect". It just has to be effective enough to keep Joe Average from copying the file. Whether or not DRM is actually "good" or "bad" for media producers is a completely different argument, but Wolfe's sophomoric reasoning does nothing to address it.

    1. Re:Bad arguments and bad reasoning by Braino420 · · Score: 5, Funny

      "When you list every major law implemented to "protect" life and property, they've all been broken. Can anyone think of a law which hasn't been broken, and of course this begs the obvious question: Why doesn't society just give up and go law-free?"
      Oh what is this, a law analogy? What are you new here? Nerds don't understand laws, they understand cars. Watch and learn:

      When you list every major car safety feature implemented to "protect" life and limb, they have all failed. Can anyone think of a car safety feature which hasn't failed, and of course this begs the obvious question: Why doesn't society just give up and go seatbelt-free?
      --
      They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
  5. Re:All bank vaults and locks have also been cracke by langelgjm · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh that music on my MP2 player.

    Was someone a little strapped for cash?

    --
    "Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
  6. You know by SoulRider · · Score: 5, Funny

    one definition of insane is doing the exact same thing over and over and expecting different results.

  7. Re:HDMI by sssssss27 · · Score: 5, Informative

    From Wikipedia:
    "Cryptanalysis researchers demonstrated fatal flaws in HDCP for the first time in 2001, prior to its adoption in any commercial product. Scott Crosby of Carnegie Mellon University authored a paper with Ian Goldberg, Robert Johnson, Dawn Song, and David Wagner called "A Cryptanalysis of the High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection System". This paper was presented at ACM-CCS8 DRM Workshop on November 5, 2001.[1]

    The authors conclude:

    "HDCP's linear key exchange is a fundamental weakness. We can:

    * Eavesdrop on any data
    * Clone any device with only their public key
    * Avoid any blacklist on devices
    * Create new device keyvectors.
    * In aggregate, we can usurp the authority completely."

    It must be noticed, however, that for this attack you first have to break Blom's scheme (the linear algebra based key exchange system). In the case of HDCP you need a minimum of 39 device keys in order to reconstruct the secret symmetrical master matrix that has been used to compute all device keys.

    Around the same time that Scott Crosby and co-authors were writing this paper, noted cryptographer Niels Ferguson independently claimed to have broken the HDCP scheme, but he did not publish his research, citing legal concerns arising from the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act [1].

    The most well-known attack on HDCP is the conspiracy attack, where a number of devices are compromised and the information gathered is used to reproduce the private key of the central authority.

  8. To read my post by Geekbot · · Score: 5, Funny

    To read my post please enter the first word from pages 6, 27, and 32 from the manual.

  9. This is called "the Smart Cow problem" by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 5, Informative
    From Wikipedia:

    The Smart Cow Problem describes the method by which a group of individuals, faced with a technically difficult task, only requires one of their number to solve the problem. Having been solved once, an easily repeatable method may be developed, allowing non-technically proficient entities to accomplish the task. The term Smart Cow Problem is thought to be derived from the expression: "It only takes one smart cow to open the latch of the gate, and then all the other cows follow." [1]

    This has recently been applied to Digital Rights Management (DRM), where, due to the rapid spread of information on the internet, it only takes one individual to defeat a DRM scheme to render the method obsolete. [2]

          1. ^ http://www.wired.com/news/business/1,60901-0.html Buck a Song, or Buccaneer? , retrieved 2007-02-13
          2. ^ http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,67556,00 .html Give Your DVD Player the Finger, retrieved 2007-02-13