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How Important Is Protecting Streaming Media?
spaj writes "In the ongoing battle with the MPAA and RIAA, there seems to be an ongoing argument about who is to blame. If you leave a $20 bill on the sidewalk, can you report it stolen when someone takes it? Of course you can, but will you be taken seriously by the authorities? When my car was broken into, I was told by the responding police officer that I might have prevented it by keeping my seats and visible areas clear of junk that would entice criminals. So, who is at fault when it comes to users abusing their right to capture streaming media for personal use? According to Applian.com's Legal FAQ, the RIAA will not come after you if you make a recording for your own personal use. I have often been torn on this issue, and I am looking for input. Adobe recently released a new format of their widely used streaming protocol, RTMP, that includes 128-bit encryption (RTMPE). I can only interpret this as an attempt to prevent capturing of the streaming media content for personal use. However, Applian has already circumvented the RTMPE protection, and you can read about it on Adobe's forums, where some users seem quite dissatisfied that their content is not protected enough by Adobe's technology. I think the main question boils down to: Who is to blame? Can you blame Adobe for not making a better encryption? Or do you blame Applian for bypassing such security features? Or do you blame the authors of stolen content for leaving the security of their material in somebody else's hands?"
Why does this drone on and on about assigning blame.
This just isn't sensible because DRM can't work ever. It's just not mathematically possible.
Right, now you can go back to trying to stop people "stealing" images off web pages with crappy bits of javascript. Good luck.
Sound waves cannot be encrypted - where there is a will, there is a way. Certain people will always take pleasure from using whatever means necessary to make copies of music, or almost any art for that matter. Digital systems just make it more convenient and therefore it occurs on a massive scale.
Setting up a microphone and recording the output from the speakers might be the last resort and the lowest quality, but people will go to these lengths if it is the only way they can get something for nothing / they are not supposed to / what other people have or even because they like the technical challenge of getting the best recording they can using the tools and techniques they possess.
If you send a video stream to someone, they'll be able to record it. The VCR proved that once -- do these authors think digital media will be any different? Or should be any different?
Adobe isn't at fault for "not making a better encryption". It's not possible. You have to send someone the key if you want them to watch the video, and once they have the key, they can decrypt it for any other purpose. No amount of programming can evade that basic logic.
Applian isn't at fault for making a program that decrypts the stream, either. They're the VCR manufacturer of this era, making a tool that people can use to time-shift videos. What's wrong with that?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Idealism of liberal copyrights aside, if Adobe is selling a product that is intended to keep people from copying your wares, and it is in fact it's not stopping them, then it's pretty clear who is at fault. It's a faulty product, the blame lies with Adobe. Of course if they had any brains they'd know that what they want to do is impossible, but since they're selling the product, it needs to work as advertised.
The media companies are not content with the amount of profits they are making and even if they could stop piracy, it would cost them a huge amount of money to do so. Consequently, an easier way of making more profits is to make the honest buyers pay more, and a good way of making them pay more is to enforce a rental model on them.
So they go to the software companies to create the mechanisms that allow the creation of DRM (="Media with a built in time bomb) delivery mechanisms and of course it's great for Adobe and others to be able to put their logos up alongside Disney's or Paramount's.
But because no software is perfect, the DRM gets cracked & it's back to the drawing board.
As long as DRM is around, this cycle will just keep repeating itself because this is no longer about corporations giving consumers what they want but waging war on them. So DRM will fail.
All I'm waiting for now are for Apple to find the guts to drop DRM completely in iTunes (if they really are the "nice" company all the people on here say they are) and I think that will be the final death knoll for DRM.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
After searching around, it looks like RTMPE is nothing more than a transmission encryption that prevents a stream from being intercepted by a "middle man", analogous to wifi encryptions that prevent others from capturing your wifi network packets. If my understanding is correct, then this doesn't actually have anything to do with "stolen" content, right?
Respect the laws of physics, for the laws of physics have no respect for you.
7 years ago now I worked for a streaming media company in the UK who did pretty much all the promotional streaming for the labels. We'd put pre-release music on-line weeks before it was due for release; and, if the customer wanted it, made it available for download as well. All the tracks were free but DRMed to switch off on the day the record was released. Sometimes you'd have to enter some marketing details (although there was always an opt-out checkbox and we'd never pass details on if that was ticked).
One thing sticks in my mind. At the time Microsoft had just released the ability to DRM live streams and a particular heavy metal band wanted to play a charity concert with the proceeds going to a UK charity for a kids charity, I believe because one of them had a child afflicted by illness the charity was raise funds for. It was a small concert, tickets sold out partly because they have a huge following and partly because they were cheap, £5 if memory serves. The band knew there was a large audience for it; so they paid us (and we didn't take a profit on it) to stream the concert live. We discussed it with them and DRMed the live stream and made an archive of it available for a month afterwards. All at no cost to the viewer, not even marketing information, although at the end the band spoke about the charity for 5 minutes. When the month was up the band were going to release a DVD of the concert for sale; with all profit going to the charity. The DVD was pretty cheap too, I think around £8.50 including shipping.
The month expired and the streams were taken down, and the DRM kicked in (because stream rippers ripped the DRM as well *grin*). For the next month the band's official band bulletin board was filled with fans complaining that the streams they had ripped no-longer worked. It was pointed out the DVD was available, it was all for charity, and they'd had it free for a month, but no, lots of whining and sulking and demands that it should be free for ever.
Now you may argue that DRM is bad; and in a lot of cases I'd agree with you; but when it protects something that was free so after a while charities can make some money; well then frankly you can't complain and you're nothing but a freeloader.
Still annoys me now.
The only person who's ever to blame is the one who's doing something illegal such as violating the content owner's copyright.
The person designing the security is generally trying to do the best that they can to balance security against annoyance of said security of customers, knowing full well that it's only a matter of time before that security is broken.
You can't blame the person breaking the security either as they may only being doing so to enable fair use rights that were taken away by the security. Likewise, anyone who uses the security remove technique could only be doing so for fair use reasons. Fair use may seem sketchy when talking about streamed video online, but if you want to use parts of the video to form a rebuttal video to the points or opinions expressed in the original video I believe making a copy of the stream would fall within fair use. Also I believe it's considered fair use to use any video if providing commentary on segments of the video.
You really can't necessarily blame the content creator either. In some cases they're not even responsible for their works being available somewhere on the internet. Someone violating their copyright may have uploaded it to a video streaming site. Is lack of security on a video streaming site the fault of a movie creator if someone rips the movie from DVD and uploads it to a website?
Blame copyright violations on the people who actually commit them.
Who is to blame?
Why do we always need someone to blame? All the sides involved have their own valid way of seeing the situation...
The content creator wants to "protect" their work; The end user wants to keep a copy for a variety of reasons. The container/transport producer gets paid by the content producer (usually); and the crackers don't actually count as a separate group, they just reflect knowledgeable end-users who have the power to make sure they can keep a copy.
Who in that chain do we call "wrong" for what they do? The creator we can perhaps call "overprotective", thinking that once the baby grows up and leaves home they can still tell it what to do. The middlemen perhaps should perhaps advise their customers better, but at the end of the day they need to eat too. The end users should of course reimburse the creators for the content, but I would consider "free" the least of the reasons to have a local copy.
Or looking at it from a slightly different angle... At every step, the situation boils down to pure self-interest. And put bluntly, I value my interests above yours - just as you value your own interests above mine.
Sound waves cannot be encrypted - where there is a will, there is a way.
What happens when the work that makes the sound waves is interactive? In that case, the instructions to make the sound wave don't ever need to leave the player. Capturing the sound wave just captures one playing of the work, and replaying that over and over can get boring.
security thought who-the-hell-would-have-thought-of-implementing- something-as-dumb-as-that
;)
Any DRM scheme falls under this heading. If I can play it on my computer (or another electronic device), I can copy it.
OK, well, I probably can't, but there are lots of smart guys on Slashdot who could.
Put identity in the browser.
New Microsoft One Time Pad(tm) for WMA!
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
When my car was broken into, I was told by the responding police officer that I might have prevented it by keeping my seats and visible areas clear of junk that would entice criminals. So, who is at fault
If you'd listen to the police, you'd realize they're giving you preventive measures you can take to lower the chance your car will be stolen. They're not blaming you, just trying to educate. You could've put a million dollars on the front seat, doors locked, and something stole it, the thief would still be at fault, but you would definitely be the laughing stock of the police station.
I've got one that relates to the RIAA. I had my storage locker broken into with literally _every_ box (a lot -- think Rubik's Cube with U Haul boxes) opened and ransacked in '06**, but since I could not think of even ONE THING in the whole mess that was _missing_, the police couldn't think of what crime to pursue. So when a file is copied, what is _missing_?
** an entirely different discussion in paranoia in the year of our Lord Dubya, but I digress
Okay...let's look at this. Yesterday in my office, we had a conversation about a quaint method of distributin media that I had forgotten about....the public library.
The idea that a popular piece of media, in this case a book, has more than 300 readers or people on a waiting list to read a book indicates to me 300 lost sales for the book publisher. However, this notion of media distribution has long been supported by federal laws.
So we as a community need to ask, do the makes of music, movies, other media, work more than authors? Why are their works more protected than a lowly book that gets passed around like a drunken cheerleader with the publisher's blessing? There is only one answer that can satify this...greed.
Is this greed that has enveloped the movie and music industries likely to destroy this nation's information distribution system? Is the library a leak in the profit margins for book manufacturers? Do humans have an obligation to share information without profit for the continued growth of knowledge?
I think this was the original thinking behind the Open Source movement. People have tools, like computers, and need to be able to use additional tools, like software, to better ourselves. I believe that the same is true for media.
So guys...does DRM deny access to materials and put profit before the betterment of the species? (in the long term) And no, I am not saying things like an Ashley Simpson or Coldplay album can be used to help the human species evolve. Those items are best used for Olympic sports like target shooting.
Is it 5:30 yet?
Of COURSE content authors have to put trust in somebody else.
The key word there is "trust".
Basically, you have on one hand some people trying to extract as much money out of their "creation" as possible for the least cost. And on the other hand you have somebody that says they can help you do that, for a price.
There is no honour amongst thieves.
OK, maybe thieves is a bit strong, but the music industry isn't exactly "a fair days work for a fair days pay" is it. There is no DRM at live concerts, but that's too much like hard work, they want to record a song, let someone else sell it and then sit back and rake in the royalties for the rest of their descendants lives.
Now that is being a thief.
Now if the band were to get mugged as they were leaving a concert and all their takings were stolen, I would have some sympathy, but complaining because they "might" be losing out on an extra $1M somewhere due to filesharing is just plain greed, and deserves no respect.
Ultimately that is what the recording industry wants to stop. In order to stop it they would have to have all recording devices regulated, and under that scheme the big boys would once more be the gatekeepers to mass media.
You did look at MS's "trusted" computing platforms? Who do you think is going to be trusted? Who do you think is not?
Heh. Exactly.
DRM is an exercise in futility. Protecting streaming media is exactly as important as protecting radio broadcasts, i.e. not at all. Completely unimportant. It's a waste of time and money that could be better spent making higher quality programming. It does nothing to prevent people who are determined to capture the audio program, and no matter what they change in the DRM tech, it cannot prevent it).
Unfortunately, it does do lots of harm in other areas; it causes unavoidable compatibility problems, prevents average people from format-shifting to devices like iPods for listening at their convenience, prevents average people from time-shifting pseudo-broadcast content to a more convenient time, and in general, massively erodes at every aspect of legitimate fair use without actually providing any provable benefits in preventing "piracy".
IMHO, the Audio Home Recording Act should be expanded to cover digital broadcasts/streaming media in any sane universe. The term "piracy" should not even apply to non-purchased media that is freely provided for download or streaming, so long as that media is only copied for personal (defined as non-commercial) use. We need to nip this stupidity in the bud.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It's not difficult at all, fire up Audacity and set the recording source to "What U Hear", hit record.