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Install Copyright Filters on PCs, Says RIAA Boss
Don't squeeze the Sherman writes "At a conference last week, RIAA president Cary Sherman said he didn't support mandatory filtering by ISPs, but in a video clip posted by Public Knowledge, Sherman offers a far more troubling 'solution': installing filters on users' PCs. From Ars Technica's coverage: 'The issue of encryption "would have to be faced," Sherman admitted after talking about the wonders of filtering. "One could have a filter on the end user's computer that would actually eliminate any benefit from encryption because if you want to hear [the music], you would need to decrypt it, and at that point the filter would work."'"
How the hell did these clueless fucks get so much power?
Oh yeah. Lobbying. God bless free speech!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Not out of touch with reality at all!
It's funny how the RIAA and MPAA both seem to be using a public forum for their brainstorming technique. Most groups would come to a conclusion in private and announce their final and ultimate strategy. Nope, these guys just come up with idea after idea and announce them before they've even contemplated what they mean or their reprocussions. If my company announced every brain-dead idea we came up with before bouncing it around in the brainstorming sessions we had- we'd kill ourselves off with bad PR alone!
If you read TFA he goes on to admit that it's unlikely to get people to install the filterware themselves, but maybe if they put it into routers and modems....It's worth noting that the decryption doesn't take place there, and it'd be no more effective.
It just seems like this guy has it figured out- he understands what won't work, but he still wants to move foward with the bad plan. If you're going to go down, might as well go down swinging..?
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Having implemented RSA public key encryption/decryption on my malleus, incus and stepdius, I listen to digitally archived music by dd'ing the GnuPG-encrypted files directly into /dev/dsp, deciphering the tunes on the fly, in-ear, using my memorized private key.
NOW HOW DOES YOUR FILTER WORK FOR THAT SETUP, SUCKERS???!11
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
Yeah you guys go spend a bunch of money on that.
We are so fast approaching the time when bands just have concert promoters rather than record labels. I think this is a very good thing.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
I'm glad the guy doesn't have a clue. It would be so lonely in that big empty head...
But to make this business model work, it requires that the entire planet changes the way it does things and I get to control when, how or *if* how you use the stuff I sell to you. Sound good to you?
I simply will not be installing that on my PC. Please feel free to not pocket my $$$ and to not sell me any of your product. Enjoy your unemployment Mr RIAA.
So we're talking ubiquitous DRM that is transparent (or at least, not terribly intrusive upon the overall user experience), doesn't piss people off, doesn't get broken, can be deployed everywhere, does not add too much complexity to playback devices.
So, is Mr. Sherman planning on buying every music consumer a pony too? That has as much likelihood of happening as the DRM.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
I think it's apparent that it's only their complete ignorance of how technology works--evidenced by these ridiculous statements--that lets them have any hope that their organization can possibly continue to be relevant in the face of the increasing numbers of technological workarounds for every countermeasure that they come up with.
One might get the impression that were they to receive adequate education in The Way Things Work, they might possibly lose all morale altogether...not necessarily a bad thing, methinks.
Perhaps we should sign them up for a correspondence course in basic computer science?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
this is total BS. just a worthless executive filling the people who pay his wage with a load of nonsense so they'll keep paying. stop funding RIAA now and the companies would save a hell of a lot of money.
If they manage to get this into Vista Service Pack 2, 2009 really could finally be the year of Linux on the desktop.
Beep beep.
They'll rip your ears off (or transplant them onto your a.... which they think they already own)
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Of course not. Linux is a "hacker" operating system that is only used by people who try to circumvent safeguards that are used only for the protection of the children and good of the economy. Anyone using such a nefarious operating system doesn't deserve to be entertained, individually, at the low low fee of 0.01c per frame, per eyeball, per single non-sharable viewing.
RFC2119
The Right to Read. If you haven't read it yet, read it now, while there is no filter preventing it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Does this mean that copyrighted Microsoft software won't run (assuming hardware-based encryption)?
ISP: Hello, how can I help you?
Advanced User: My Internet stopped working. I can't figure it out.
ISP: Hmmm... What version of Windows are you using?
User: Well, It's umm... It's not windows. It's OS/2.
ISP: Sir, if you read the contract changes we made last week, you would know that the Internet needs Windows now.
User: ???
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
...on his PR statements, and a bullshit filter on his mouth?
I have better things to do with my PC than protect your artificial and increasingly indefensible "rights". People and organizations buy PCs to conduct business, science and for their entertainment, not to put money in your coffers you greedy fuck!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Notes
a PC is not primarily a music recording device. thus it does not qualify for protection under HMRA. thus if I copy music to a PC I have committed a copyright violation.
now if I copied to a local directory probably no one will care
but if i copy to my web site or to a p2p share directory then my evil deed is presented in public ( bad move on my part )
now if RIAA has trouble locating copyright violation copies on p2p machines they could just hire some college kids to help them learn how
and when the find the offending material, just ask the owner to remove it from the public/share area. if the owner does not cooperate then take whatever action is warranted
this ain't rocket science kids and we don't need to stay up nights fussing over it
But in 1995 I honestly believed that no company would be stupid enough to automatically run code delivered in an email message, and in 1997 that Microsoft would be forced by public opinion to back down on the obviously absurd integration of the browser and the desktop, and in 2000 that people would reject an operating system with components to lock them out of their own computer... after all, dongles had proven to be a passing fad, surely people were wising up to things like this.
I no longer believe in any limits to the complaisance and naivete of the computer-using public.
Actually, it's not hard to visualize this happening. Most people connect with what, one of four major ISPs in the US, and there are usually no more than three competing ISPs, except in big cities? That's only four companies, each headed by a relatively few number of individuals whose motives are driven by shareholder (not necessarily customer) demands. If the MAFIAA writes a solid-gold check to Comcast, Qwest, Verizon, and Time-Warner, you can bet that find ways to impose an end-user filter on your PC as a requirement to connect, and with a limited number of broadband ISPs in the area, you can bet that people will suck it up and deal with it.
~SK
Furthermore, one of the partners in Sony BMG makes the PLAYSTATION 3 video game console that is designed to run GNU/Linux.
...but a friend of mine knows a little bit.
He tells me that lots of people already have copyright filter software on their machines. I think it was called bittorrent or something....
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
This boils down to tagging. A file would have to be tagged in some way that is has a copyright. It would also need to know who DOES have the right to listen and distribute. Don't forget that every work not 95 years old is out of copyright in the US and can be freely shared, copied, traded, etc. Also, there is the possibility that people may have been given the right to share, copy, trade, etc a piece of music that has a current copyright.
I'm just not sure how any filter could determine all of the characteristics without some sort of tagging. Following that logic, all that would need to be done to circumvent the DRM would be to remove/modify such a tag. DRM like this is easy to defeat and has been done.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
You want me to run your software? I'll consider it, but you have to remember that my computer is just that... MY computer. Time on it will cost you just like it would cost from a mainframe from IBM. How much are you willing to pay me to run this software that only benefits you? If this takes too much RAM, CPU the overflow charges may be... up there.
Your security is not my concern, and should not be expected to be my concern. Otherwise you also have a responsibility to make sure no one breaks into my house. (You should be happy to, they could steal my CDs!)
Of course, the conditions under which I'm willing to run your software may change without announcement from time to time but will still be considered binding, much like whatever the "licensing" consists of on a CD is this week. Like your CD licensing, the wording behind this agreement will never be readily available. Perhaps I'll add extra charges for running the software on weekends...
Analog hole.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
As IBM says themselves in their paper Clarifying Misinformation on TCPA :
The terms copy protection and DRM do not appear anywhere on www.trustedpc.org. They were not the main business objectives, and the resultant chip is not particularly suited to DRM, being poorly defended against owner tampering. The main goals are to secure the user's private keys and encrypted data against external software attack.They have more reasons in that paper why their chip won't work with DRM.
c++;
"yeah when it comes down to it, its illegal but they aren't going to enforce it"
Time shifting and fair use are both legal examples of non infringement of copyright. Just because you take a copy of something you own and put it on a device does not make you a pirate. That would most likely involve ships, murder, rape, and actual stealing, not any of this denying a sale crap....
Those who live by the sword, get shot by those who live by the gun...
> ...on his PR statements, and a bullshit filter on his mouth?
:-)
How do you expect to convince him to wear a ball gag?
I think it's the only way to end this nonsense. Defang the industry by striking at what gives them power -- profit. When the money dries up, the investors will force the company to change or it will perish. Or, they'll behave like the newspaper industry, deciding to favour biased political viewpoints over profit and they watch their subscriber base drop %20 year-after-year until they are no longer relevant. Any of these is an acceptable outcome.
That's pretty funny! But it's also very, very close to the totalitarian ideas of the ex-Soviet Union (a Worker's Paradise, dontchaknow?) The State owns everything, and controls the means of production, including the people. We saw how well that worked out.
Just like those survivalist types who have their own generators and water purification systems for when the world finally falls apart - I've got myself a ZX81 and plenty of cassette tapes for this post tech hell you describe, or as I like to call 'Armageekdon'.
I'll just fire that puppy up, change my name to Mad Betamax and ride out the storm. Yeeee haaaa!
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
"It looks like you are trying to copy copyrighted material. I have already called the police for you so that you don't have to." -Clippy
Table-ized A.I.
RIAA reports that new copyright filters will be powered by eating babies and cute puppies. Everyone else says, "I'd like to be surprised by this turn of events, but it's really perfectly in line with their past actions."
Read up on SoundExchange.
The RIAA, through SoundExchange, collects a toll on every song played on internet radio. But get this - they collect for music from bands who aren't RIAA members! They collect for every song, no matter what. Because nobody would ever play a song for free. And they hold that money until you come to claim it (you have to join SoundExchange to claim it, btw).
And if you don't ever claim it, they keep it.
Fucking unreal or what?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I can do one better. I had a friend that was convinced I was pirating DirectTV because I had a ReplayTV. After all it ended in TV and let me watch shows that it got from a DirectTV box. Now this was right after the ReplayTV was released, so it was the first DVR he had heard of, but still...
Here's what he meant to say: Most of the ISPs threw us out of their office but Microsoft thinks a filter on every computer is a great idea.
Does it run on linux?
So guess which congresscritters are taking the most from the entertainment industry.
Mods, please don't shoot the messenger.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I know some people might want to say that DRM is different then copyright protection and content filtering, but DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. If you think it's the consumers rights that it "manages", you would be a little naive. So copyright protections, content filtering, and DRM are all really the same thing. They are designed to forcefully protect IP rights, and at the expense of consumer privacy and fair use.
So he admits here that they need to get "behind" the encryption in order to filter the files. Forgetting the hugely clueless aspect about this, and the frightening implications about it for our privacy and peaceful enjoyment of our property, it is amusing to watch him admit it's futility:
I think a tough sell is putting it lightly, how about an impossible sell. But wait he has a plan!:
Tangible Benefit? That is really reaching there. I think you could sooner convince people to voluntarily accept cavity searches at airports since it would provide a "tangible" benefit to security and they would be patriotic in doing so. Of course he realizes his error immediately and admits that is not going to happen. Then he back peddles to an idea he already admitted was technically futile:
He already stated they need to be behind the encryption in order to filter, so why put it at the modems? Convincing the coders responsible for uTorrent to put filtering in is downright futility. That idea is about as ridiculous as Freenet and TOR coding in monitoring mechanisms for government intelligence agencies.
I don't know about anybody else, but listening to this guy is like watching a retarded kid continually try to get the square peg into the round hole. It might be funny, if this guy did not wield so much influence with the ridiculous amounts of money funding them and Senators getting wet everyday trying to "turn tricks" with the special interests like him.
I'm surprised that no one here is referring back to Peter Gutmann's paper on Vista. Yes, it contained some things that were subject to misunderstanding (that could have been construed as factual errors to sticklers) but the point of the paper was this: Microsoft engineered Vista primarily to benefit content producers, not the people who buy the OS. And if you will recall, their requirements for Vista certification mostly concerned arm-twisting on the part of Microsoft: Show that you support DRM in all of your hardware or you don't get Vista certification; Oh, and by the way, make sure that your hardware will disable itself in any OS that doesn't toe the DRM line.
Sure, in the case of Vista, the more egregious steps are aimed at HD content, but the lion's share of Vista technology was aimed at digital restrictions management, not end-user functionality. Which is one of the reasons why Vista has been less than a stellar success: Microsoft didn't engineer it for the people who buy it; they put most of the engineering into satisfying the corporate obsession with control. This ticked off all of the end users who had a clue. Sure, the OS has a large lemming constituency.
But Gutmann's paper made clear that Microsoft was unsatisfied with leveraging lock-in of simple computer operating systems. He may have gotten a few things wrong, but he clearly understood the main fact that their (Microsoft's) main motivation is the extension of their hegemony into the realm of content. They ignored older content, concentrating on HD stuff.
It's still an open question of whether this is merely the flailing of a dying dinosaur or not. It will take a few years to see. Dinosaurs survived for a long time after their extinction became inevitable. The real irony of Microsoft is that they, as a computer company of all things, haven't realized that we live in a postmodern, information-age culture. Microsoft is simply one more institution governed by modern, industrial-age assumptions.
In this period of cultural liminality and transition, there are plenty of institutions like Microsoft (and the RIAA and MPAA) who are bewildered by the facts of the new economy. The old economic formulas are based on scarcity of goods, and even according to them, price always approaches incremental cost. Digital content, however, is produced at an effective incremental cost of zero, and the flailing of the RIAA, MPAA, and companies like Microsoft reflects resistance not only to the new paradigm, but also to the prevailing economic rule that price ALWAYS approaches incremental cost. In an economy of abundance, different models must emerge, but media companies and would-be channel monopolies like Microsoft have not even shown the ability to apprehend, much less operate according to, the newly emerging formulas that govern an economy of abundance, and it is unlikely that they will read people like Eben Moglen, Larry Lessig, or Yochai Benkler in an effort to understand the emerging reality, since they aren't interested in understanding; they only view these thinkers as enemies.
But please don't miss the fact that the issue is larger than just the RIAA and the MPAA. The incremental cost of digital media is merely one of the first fields to be impacted by the emerging economic paradigm. It's already affecting publishing and the general field of knowledge and education. Look for industrial-age institutions across the entire economic and political spectrum to be just as resistant to change as the RIAA and MPAA are.
These institutions will fight to preserve their business model, just as the RIAA and MPAA are fighting to preserve theirs. The business models are dinosaurs, and are extinct already de facto, but it will take a while before the walnut-sized brain gets the word that the heart stopped beating some time ago.
Change will be disruptive, but what will drive it is not rage against the existing institutions. Though that will obviously play a role, the real driver will be the emergence of new institu