Is Copy Protection Needed or Futile?

Hugh Pickens writes "Columnist Saul Hansell is hosting a debate about copyright issues and technology on his blog at the New York Times . On one side Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal, says that anyone who is intellectually honest must 'acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content that is currently occurring in the digital world' and that we should be 'identify workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive and that fully respect other interests such as privacy and fair use.' Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, responds that 'locks will be broken, and so a business model that depends on locking is very vulnerable' adding that locks may form a part of certain successful business models but 'too much reliance on locking can seriously backfire.' Wu and Cotton will respond to each other and to comments by readers today." As for the man on the street, Panaqqa wrote us with word that the Question Copyright site has posted an interesting video of ordinary people explaining why they think copyright exists. It's pretty clear that most people don't understand it at all.

Comments

Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the text:

Monday's Question

Should creators insist on technology that will restrict the copying and transmission of copyrighted works? Any lock can eventually be picked. Do these restrictions provide speed bumps to help keep honest people honest? Or do they create a permanent war between creators and users that may hurt everyone?
Rick Cotton

Rick Cotton: Given our experience to date, it is clear that technology can be and needs to be part of the answer in many areas to protecting copyrighted works on-line. But this can be done flexibly, avoiding "war" between creators and users while respecting privacy, fair use and other reasonable concerns that too frequently are raised not as concerns to be addressed, but as excuses seeking to block any action at all.

It's hard, if not impossible, to have a meaningful discussion on this issue unless we can agree on the following premise: the broadband, digital world is awash in a tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content. As to the question at hand, it is entirely reasonable to explore technological solutions. A few key building blocks:

1. There may not be a single answer to this question. It may vary by medium, by technological environment and by groups of creators. Some media may be more susceptible to flexible, effective and commercially reasonable technology protections than others. Some groups of creators may have different preferences than others. Some tech environments may be easier to address first than others.

2. Many creators devote huge amounts of time, creative energy, and -- in commercial settings -- monetary investment to produce copyrighted works. Media companies, including NBC Universal, have made major commitments to utilize technology to deliver great content to fans in many new ways and to build new business models. Both fairness and the law (firmly rooted in the U.S. Constitution) support creators' right to control the use of their work and to be compensated for these efforts (if that is what they want). " In today's digital world, that includes taking steps to protect their works from indiscriminate, wholesale theft on the internet.

3. Those who suggest that technological protections are not needed must, if they are intellectually honest, acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content that is currently occurring in the digital world on the broadband internet. This indefensible massive trafficking simply must be reduced in any kind of law abiding society. We should be working collaboratively and cooperatively to identify workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive and that fully respect other interests such as privacy and fair use.

4. Another feature of this debate that should change is technologists disingenuously trashing technology. Too often, the same people who enthusiastically and unreservedly sing the praises of the infinite and wondrous capabilities of digital technology in virtually every other respect pretend that technology has nothing to offer and no ability to reduce the massive trafficking in wholesale infringements of entire works (certainly in the area of video, film, TV, games and software). It is categorically and demonstratively untrue and unworthy of tech champions. Current filtering technology, for example, now being deployed on video sharing sites such as MySpace, Microsoft's Soapbox, and even soon on YouTube work with a high degree of technical effectiveness, stopping unauthorized copyrighted material from being uploaded while permitting authorized material to be posted. There remain obvious challenges. But the tech community has demonstrated its capability to solve similar challenges in multiple other arenas. There is no reason to think that the challenges of content protection technology are any different.

5. The imperfect protection offered by anti-piracy technologies - "Every lock can be picked" - is no

Re:Irony?

[maeka]

5. The imperfect protection offered by anti-piracy technologies - "Every lock can be picked" - is no reason to give up on them. Despite the existence of lock picks, identity thieves, and hackers, cars and homes still have locks, e-mail accounts have passwords, and computers have firewalls.

Car locks, home locks, e-mail accounts, and computer firewalls all differ greatly from media DRM in (at least) one important way:
Not one of the security models used in his analogy depends on giving the key to the potential attacker. With media DRM you are given a restricted format and an obscured key to unlock it. This is its weakness, and has no corollary with the examples he gave.

Two - in the case of car and home locks - deterrence is enough. I don't need to secure my house against a perfect thief, unless I have the Hope diamond in my bedroom. I only need to secure my home better than my neighbor does. Even securing my house well enough to change the risk:reward or difficulty:reward balance is enough to greatly reduce the chances of a break-in.

Re:Irony?

[AKAImBatman]

That's not ironic. It's stupid and contrarian. This is how you add to a discussion:

Those who suggest that technological protections are not needed must, if they are intellectually honest, acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content that is currently occurring in the digital world on the broadband internet.

If we are truly to be intellectually honest, then we must address the problem of supply versus demand. Rampant piracy suggests that the demand for content delivered over the Internet is obvious. Yet digital content has traditionally been held hostage by physical media. In many of the instances that content is provided digitally, it is further held hostage behind walls of incompatibilities, digital restrictions, overpricing, poor terms of services, and other devaluing options. All in the name of "protecting" digital content.

The preciously few times that digital content is loosed upon the populace at a fair price and fair terms, it blooms and propers. Which (if we are to be "intellectually honest") means that the failure to prevent copyright infringement is a failure to provide what the average consumer wants. When the content producers fail, many consumers take matters into their own hands.

My dear Warner Bros., why has the DVD of 300 been available for over 6 months, yet it is impossible to purchase or rent online? BBC, why are you not catering to your international audience by providing quality shows like Doctor Who on services like iTunes? NBC, thank you for your website. We very much enjoy the television content you provide. Now why are you backing out of the lucrative iTunes deal? You don't need exclusivity in this business. Viacom, CBS makes a killing on promoting their Late Late Show on YouTube. Why are you cutting off promotion of your excellent Comedy Central series rather than embracing it? (And thereby having some modicum of control over it.)

No. If we are to be "intellectually honest", we must face the fact that content producers are afraid. The world has changed, yet content producers cling to any false sense of control they can find. Each of these walls crumble under the might of economic demand, for which content producers only call for a bigger wall. Your customer is not your enemy. As with the barbarians at the gates of Rome who only wanted the land and crops originally promised to them by the emperor, your customers only want easy access to the content you promise them. No one has proven that they are not willing to pay for that privilege.

Re:Irony?

[snl2587]

I only need to secure my home better than my neighbor does.

Or be considerably poorer than your neighbor. Either works, really.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

I only need to secure my home better than my neighbor does. Even securing my house well enough to change the risk:reward or difficulty:reward balance is enough to greatly reduce the chances of a break-in.
  Hmm, that gives me an idea for helping secure my home: A burglar is probably gonna have a quick look under the mat or pots at the front of your house for a key. Why not put a front door key under one of those pots, but not your front door key. And label the key with the address that it is for (probably best the key doesn't actually work at that address). A burglar would no doubt try the key in my front door, find it doesn't work, but be tempted by the address, so might then piss-off and stop trying to enter my house?

Re:Irony?

[russotto]

Car locks, home locks, e-mail accounts, and computer firewalls all differ greatly from media DRM in (at least) one important way:
Not one of the security models used in his analogy depends on giving the key to the potential attacker.

Here's a second critical difference: Breaking the lock on one physical item nets you one physical item. Breaking the protection on a copy-protected work nets you as many copies of that work as you care to make.

And a third difference: Sometimes breaking the copy-protection on a work allows you to copy many other works as well.

If breaking one auto lock gave a thief access to every car of that model, and perhaps every car of that model year, they'd be pretty useless. Such is copy protection.

Re:Irony?

[nine-times]

You're right to bring up the idea of deterrence. Anyone security expert worth their salt will tell you that security is really all about deterrence. You can't make something impossible to access, and even if you could, the only way to completely secure it is to disallow all access, even to the owner. Otherwise, the owner could inadvertently give access to someone else.

So the purpose of security measures is to make it difficult to get unauthorized access, risky to attempt to gain unauthorized access, and very likely to get caught if you do gain unauthorized access. That's all. However, a good DRM scheme has to be transparent to the authorized user, meaning it has to be simple to get access, without risk to gain access, and unlikely to suffer bad consequences from getting access. Therefore it's just incompatible with the idea of security. You don't secure things against authorized access.

Re:Irony?

[Maxo-Texas]

You are also ignoring the fact that other grossly overpriced items invite theft and law abuse.

There is such a glut of entertainment that there is no reason that Tom Cruise gets $20 million for a $100 million movie when a movie (and a host of people involved with the movie also get 7 figure and 6 figure salaries as well).

The fact is that a movie -- the hard technology of it, the writing, the editing, can be done at a 10th the cost it is currently done at (probably 1/100th).

Sane people do not pirate $6 dvd's. However $89 DVD is something different. Especially for a movie that made it's profits years ago and is in the "all gravy" phase.

Do people have a *right* to infringe (steal) creator's works? No.
But to think they will not when they can easily do so for $1 and two hours of their time is insane.

Also... I used to write software which was used to earn my company 8 billion dollars. Why are movie and television writers so special that they get paid for the rest of their life when they write yet another boilerplate television script?

Actors... writers... everyone in hollywood is in for a wakeup call. Multi-million dollar salaries are going to be unsupportable very soon. Already, I spend 30% of my entertainment time on free things like Star Wreck, Fan Movies, and so on. A huge chunk of my time goes to Mmorg's at $15 a month (maybe 50 cents per hour). And then DVD's of series like Mission impossible and Heroes run me about $1 per hour for entertainment. Why does a movie justify $15 per hour? It doesn't.

The compensation in the entertainment industry is grossly inflated.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the address of the local police station.

Re:Irony?

[FireFury03]

shouldn't they be able to deploy a wide range of ever-changing DRM systems?

This is significantly dangerous for the consumer since it means that the consumer's right to access their legally purchased content may be revoked at any time. For example - if the DRM server becomes inaccessible you really don't want all your content to be revoked (if the rights holder has gone bankrupt, for example, they aren't going to care that none of their customers can access their content any more).

Sadly many of the public who I have talked with about DRM seem to think this is a problem. Usually they say something along the lines of "I don't care if I lose access to my music in 10 years, after all it's 10 years old so not important" - I don't know about anyone else, but I still listen to music I purchased well over 10 years ago.

Punishing your PAYING customers

[sheepofblue]

DRM tends to punish your paying customers as much (or more) than those stealing it. When your business model punishes your customer the result will be decline and eventually failure.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[internewt]

It probably would have played in a normal CD player. The way this copy protection works, I think, is the WMAs are on a second session, with the music in the disks first session. I think they then purposefully corrupt the info on the CD about the session layout.... in a normal CD player the error correction corrects the session info, and finds the music. But a computer CDROM sees only the second session, so the user can only find the data: horrible low quality DRM'd WMAs.

I think the way around it is with software that can find that first session. Exact Audio Copy under windows has an feature to do this: action menu, detect TOC manually. Then you can rip the audio to WAV files or MP3s and ignore the data session at the end of the disk.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[suggsjc]

The fact is that DRM doesn't work on slashdotters, PERIOD.

There, fixed it for you. While I do agree with you to a certain extent, you are distorted by your own technical knowledge. I'm going to use my parents as examples (despite the fact that I would attempt to inform them of how to not get burned). If either of my parents purchased music through iTunes (and did not have me as a resource) then they would in fact be 100% constrained to any and all of the DRM for the tracks. My mom has dabbled with trying to learn/understand P2P, but in the end she actually prefers the convenience and intuitive interface of iTunes and some of the other on-line music stores. The only thing that she cares about is being able to either burn a CD or use it on her mp3 player.

There are so many things that we think are "easy" like things as trivial to putting attachments on emails or burning CDs, but to some they don't know how and they don't know where to turn. For those people, they just accept the DRM and its restrictions as part of the whole "computer experience." If they can't listen to their music on any/all of their devices (but be honest, those people probably have an iPod anyway), then they don't feel cheated...maybe a little frustrated, but for the most part it is just all part of the game.

Again, just because you are clever to avoid any/all DRM doesn't mean that it is completely ineffective.

It keeps being said

[FredFredrickson]

Price the content based on quality, and make it convenient. People prefer convenience.

People won't bother to steal if there's a quality, low-cost solution they could just pay for.

For example- I pay $15/month to subscribe to Yahoo Music with my MP3 player, because it's just easier than stealing. The catch? I don't even keep my music if I stop paying. But I don't care! I'm paying for convenience.

Re:It keeps being said

[Aladrin]

That's not exactly true. I believe -most- people would pay (if they could) rather than steal/pirate/infringe/whatever. There will always be those who get a kick out of not paying and will do it just for that little thrill.

As for pricing on quality, the 'quality' of all music on iTunes is the same, and all the songs cost the same... But I sense that isn't what you're talking about. I think you mean 'value', and that's a subjective thing. My value of any given song is probably lower than Random Joe's because I'm not that into music. It doesn't excite me.

I suscribed to Rhapsody for a few months for the same reason you subscribe to Yahoo Music... It's just easier. Then I realized that I mostly listened to internet radio and I could do that for free, legally. imeem.com also provides a way for me to sample songs I think I might like, find more like it, and listen to classics that I just want to hear again right now.

I think Amazon is doing a great job with pricing and convenience right now... Many songs are cheaper than iTunes, all are DRM-free, and it's pretty easy to download the songs. I still think AllOfMP3.com had more convenience (I'm ignoring the ridiculously low prices), but they didn't have any rules they had to play by.

Re:It keeps being said

[Andy Dodd]

The music industry completely screwed up with allofmp3 - It's a classic example of a dying industry trying to hold on with legislation instead of competing.

Rather than complain and moan about it, the RIAA should've figured out why allofmp3 was doing so well. It wasn't just the prices.

1) Selection as good as, or in many cases even better than many existing stores. About the only online store that does better is ITMS in my opinion.
2) NO DRM. Makes selection variety a bit less important, as there's less incentive to stick with a single store. (In some ways bad for a store if it's easier to go to someone else, but if your selection stinks and/or is niche, you're going to find that no one chooses you if you've got DRM.)
3) Not overpriced. Admittedly too cheap, but the RIAA could've made a store at twice the prices and still have been wildly successful. (Why? Legality = convenience, as far as "ease of payment", and twice Allofmp3's prices would have still been far below current RIAA-sanctioned stores.)

The RIAA wants to hang on to high per-track prices, but they should be thinking about sacrificing per-track profits to drastically increase volume. For example, if someone hears a track they really like on the radio or elsewhere, they're likely to buy the entire album at $3. But at $10+ for the entire album, they'll probably just buy only that track at $1, given the tendency for albums to have a lot of "filler crap".

Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[Blakey Rat]

Are the two options mutually-exclusive? Ask the PC Games industry whether copy protection is needed or futile. It's needed because retailers/publishers won't sell the game without it. It's mostly futile for the obvious reason (although I'm sure it snags some casual copiers.)

A more interesting question would be to ask a PC game maker if they'd release their game with no copyright, if their publishers/retailers allowed them to. Right now, they have no choice-- given the choice, which would they make?

Charge for the Media, or the License. Not Both.

[Alzheimers]

The problem with DRM is that the copyright holders want it to be a magic bullet to control exactly how a product is used by the consumer. Unfortunately for them, the consumer usually has a different idea of what they want to do with their own legitimately purchased products.

The Media companies need to understand that what they really need to focus on is getting customers to pay for the song. How they get it should be device agnostic -- a download, a CD, recorded off the air, etc. Once the "license" for that song is acquired, the consumer should be legally entitled to do whatever they want with it, including (but not limited to) space shifting, time shifting, remixing (for non-commercial use), transcoding, and demonstration.

While I don't agree with "file sharing" in a general case as a legitimate practice anymore (I think enough legal alternatives exist) the litigation-happy companies going after every last dime because someone ripped a legally purchased song into an MP3 that's on their iPod, desktop PC, Laptop PC, car CD changer, digital picture frame, gaming console, playing in the background of a youtube video of their kids, and their cellphone ringtone. Technology has made media accessible EVERYWHERE, and the rights of the consumer to use it as such should outweigh the nickle-and-dime dreams of the RIAA.

Re:Charge for the Media, or the License. Not Both.

[sm62704]

Licenses are for publishers, not end users. You don't "license a work" to me, you license the content to the publisher, who sells me the media containing the work. This is how it's worked since Gutenberg.

Now that the printing press has been invented, all the scribes will be out of business and nobody will write any more books!

Just like Gutenberg changed media, the internet changed media. The world is not as it was in the 20th century and never will be again. This is no more the time to invest in media companies than 1900 was the time to be investing in carraiges. Like that business then, the future paradigm is completely unlnown. What is known is that DRM doesn't work and cannot work. As has been said countless times before, making bits uncopyable is like making water not wet.

It's futile and everybody loses

[CaptainZapp]

Just assum that they indeed can figure out the super-duper-ultra-secure path

Let's also assume that they hand the secret crypto keys to Carol (the attacker) in an utterly unbreakable meanner

It's still totally futile. Let's take music as an example:

There comes that point, no matter how secure the path, they keys, the algoritm, etc where a digital signal must be transformed into an analog, human "readable" signal. That signal can be re-captured and re-digitalized (and with the right equipment in good quality too)

Thaat's also referred to as the analog hole and no amount of DRM will ever get around that.

If it doesn't play at all its's pointless

[edwardpickman]

The trend is to cripple them so videos can't play on computers. I've found Disney started doing this with DVDs and most Blu-Ray disks don't seem to play on computer drives. I live in my home office and the room is full of hardware but I don't have a DVD player in the room so I normally play them in one of my computers, the Mac mostly because it's wide screen and often available. If I can't play videos on my machines I won't buy or rent them period. I had planned to buy a stack of Blu-Ray disks but since it's a crap shoot if they'll play on my drive I'm not buying any. Bricking the disks so they can't be played is costing them sales. It definitely cost them a bundle with me because I've been wanting to get into a HiDef format and I have a brand new Blu-Ray drive and a nice big 24" screen that can play at 1080P res but the catch-22 is the disks won't play. I used to be a fanatic over Laser disk and I still prefer them to DVDs so I was hoping Blu-Ray or HD would be the next format to dive into. I currently have no plans to buy a dedicated player for either format so they definitely shot themselves in the foot with one customer. I don't care if they block copying but to block playing entirely is insane.

There has always been piracy...

[Gybrwe666]

No matter what the medium, service, or object, there has always been piracy, and always been people who will copy anything.

Counterfeiting is big business. As are knock-offs of Gucci and Chanel.

I've been using computers for nearly 30 years now, and since the day I started programming, I've seen piracy. In fact, I'm having a hard time coming up with an example of any protection scheme that hasn't failed. From early software anti-copying measures, to serial numbers, to DRM, to DVD encryption, its all failed miserably to stop the determined.

I've often wondered what the actual cost of these measures truly is to the companies that use them. If they create them internally, there's the development cost. If they license them, they end up paying per-use, I would guess. Either way, it seems to me that this is one of the ultimate excersizes in futility. I've often wondered if this was due to stubborness or simply stupidity. Either way, it ends up being a burden to the legitimate user, and hasn't, as far as I can tell, stopped the illegitimate users.

Take copy protection. When I was a 13 year old using an Apple IIe, everyone I knew was pirating software. We did it because there was no way we could afford to buy it, for the most part. While I acknowledge it was stealing, at the end of the day, it wasn't a loss, because we wouldn't have done it if we could a) afford it, or b) live without it.

So what did copy protection accomplish? It simply stopped people who bought it from making backups of legitimately purchased software. I remember once when I school I went to had a bad drive, and through stupidity ended up destroying multiple copies of AppleWorks trying to get it working on a machine. A "friend" of mine attempted to make duplicates of legitimate software so they had enough to go around for classes. Because of the copy protection, he ended up using cracked software to make copies so they could teach class for the two weeks it took to get Apple to acknowledge they owned the software and to ship it out to them.

As far as my own personal views, I can see the motivation for someone who is young and poor to make illegitimate copies of digital property. Mainly because you can't afford it. I know a few years ago, $20 made a differenc between eating or not. I sure didn't have it to spend on (software, CD's, etc.).

Now, however, I buy what I need to use. When I could afford it, I went and bought CD's to replace all the cassette copies of my favorite bands. I can afford it, and I recognize that if my favorite (artist, author, software company) doesn't sell their work, they won't make more for me to enjoy. Could I suck down my favorite albums off a Torrent? Sure. But I don't have a single desire to do so. I want that struggling band to sell enough CD's that they'll make the next one.

So, does any sort of copy protection benfit anyone at all? Maybe the guys who write/license it.

But everyone else loses, in the end.

Hopefully the negative feedback inherent in this system will rip it apart. One can only hope.

Bill

Here's one for you

[MikeRT]

How about proposals that don't destroy our physical property rights? Stop telling people what they can do with their DVD players and computers, and we'll have more respect for your copyrights. Our physical property rights are the result of centuries of common law and culture. They should get primacy over intellectual property rights because they are a tradition that has been with us, and worked for us, for far longer than intellectual property has been around.

Inform but do not block

[davidwr]

You need to tell people what rights they don't have so they don't violate the law without being put on notice.

However, copy protection is wrong if for no other reason that you may interfere with a person's lawful right to copy.

Books do this quite well: They have a notice inside that says "copyright... all rights reserved." Most books can be copied with a regular photocopier.

One thing books do not do right:
Many do not alert you that you do have certain fair use and other rights.

copy protection doesn't work (and may hurt you)

[Vellmont]

I've recently been recovering data from some 20+ year old Commodore 64/128 disks (mostly interested in old papers). They were written using the word processors of the time, and can't really be recovered without them. I still have the old disks, and for the most part the data is still fully readable. I legally purchased the word processor many years ago, and still have the disks. My methodology was to recover the data to a modern PC running linux to an image file, and then run the word processor off an image file using an emulator.

Of course, I was thwarted by the copy protection on the disks. I couldn't get a proper image of them because of it. I wound up having to find a cracked copy of the word processor on some website (which took me all of 20 minutes to find using Google), and can recover my old papers perfectly.

It's very amusing to me that the CRACKED version of the software is actually more valuable to me than the non-cracked version. Re-buying the software (even if it was available) is useless to me, as I can't run it on an emulator, and thus transfer the data to somewhere useful.

This may seem like a special case.. but I don't think so. Even 20+ years later I can STILL get the cracked, pirated version of the software. The software was cracked many years ago, so it didn't really prevent much of anyone from getting it if they wanted to. I suspect if I had used a proper C64 copy utility I'd have been able to copy the disk anyway. The only thing it prevented was ME, the guy who bought the software from using the product as intended.

Lets just be honest, shall we?

[Richard.g.k]

Contrary to what a few people like to say, the overwhelming majority of people downloading music off bit torrent/p2p are NOT doing it for 'convenience' and wouldnt pay for the music on ITunes even if it didnt have DRM. Most of the people downloading music are doing it specifically because it means they get it for free.

Note to Rick Cotton: copyright is a bargain

[Russ Nelson]

Copyright is a bargain, not an actual "right". A "right" is something you could stop other people from doing to you. Since you can't stop Alice from copying to Betty, nor Betty copying to Cynthia, you have no "right" to prevent copying. No, copyright is a *bargain*. The public gives up something (the right to copy) for a LIMITED period of time as an incentive for creators to create. Creators have unilaterally abandoned their end of the bargain by seeking to control copying forever. The public is, IN RESPONSE TO THE ACTIONS OF CREATORS, taking back its right to copy.

Don't like that? Uphold your end of the bargain and see what happens.