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RIAA and MPAA Developing Domain-Based DRM
An anonymous reader points out news that the music and movie studios are attempting to develop a new type of DRM that would allow customers more flexibility in playing content on multiple devices. The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) would establish a list of devices in your personal "domain" (unrelated to web domains), and minimizes or removes restrictions within that domain. TechCrunch summarizes DECE and notes that many of the big corporations have decided to support it.
"The ecosystem envisioned by Singer et al revolves around a common set of formats, interfaces and other standards. Devices built to the DECE specifications would be able to play any DECE-branded content and work with any DECE-certified service. The goal is to create for downloads the same kind of interoperability that's been true for physical products, such as CDs and DVDs. Where it gets really interesting, though, is the group's stated intention to make digital files as flexible and permissive as CDs, at least within the confines of someone's personal domain. Once you've acquired a file, you could play it on any of your devices -- if it couldn't be passed directly from one DECE-ready device to another, you'd be allowed to download additional copies. And when you're away from home, you could stream the file to any device with a DECE-compatible Web browser."
Isn't that REALLY close to the permission system Apple has for Fairplay?
A few problems: /. et al) because of its downfalls in terms of flexibility. Take that away, DRM seems more reasonable to Joe College, his parents, and his little sister.
1. Co-Option! TFA: "it [DECE] could be a very good thing for consumers." Ever heard of the concept of a co-option? The anti-DRM movement has so much public support (outside of
2. More centralization, more big corporations, less privacy, and another chance for IE to redeem itself. TFS: "you could stream the file to any device with a DECE-compatible Web browser" And what exactly does DECE compatability mean? Does this mean my real identity is broadcast when I use a browser? If so, Will it be disabled by default?
3. Use your MP3 player/computer for storage of non-music files? Think again.
TFA: "The caveats: the devices have to be registered electronically to that user, and the copyright holder gets to limit the total number of devices customers may register."
Considering the history of DRM, I wouldn't be surprised if this means both corporations AND whoever cracks their methods gets to see everything.
Fuck that, I'll stick to the CD, which I can rip myself.
Yesterday I tried to rip Rolling Stones' "A Bigger Bang" using exact audio copy in burst mode. It didn't work, the drive kept speeding up and down. :(
The disc is copy controlled: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9a/Copy_control_logo.png
For once, an accurate phrase.
The fact that this DECE will be easily crackable (there is nothing that isn't, especially when hackers have an incentive to spite riaa/mpaa), and a complete failure, apparently has been neglected.
I mean haven't these guys learned that renaming DRM doesn't make it any less annoying? Did they forget about that "digital enablement" or whatever it was called?
Sheesh.
Something that always gets overlooked is how this is also an attempt to kill off the second-hand market. As has been said before, their ultimate goals are to get paid for every viewing and listen, and to cut those pesky greedy artists out of the deal entirely.
we will end no whine before its time
'So far, the list includes several big-name brands in computers, networking and consumer electronics, but there are some glaring absences, including Apple'
FAIL!
If the lipstick isn't even compatible with your favourite breed of pig, their silly little 'coalition' is just as doomed as all the others before it.
Thank you, but my devices already interoperate perfectly in my "domain": it's the free domain. Nothing beats freedom, you know.
Someone needs to spell it out for these guys: selling digital media will cease to be a business in the near future. The digital ecosystem does not need the middle-man, the printing press or recording studio of days gone by. You might keep some control over software or things like that by means of DRM (think consoles), but selling audio/video media is a dying business.
In addition, the iPod will never support it. There goes 70% of the potential users.
And the largest music store in the US. But that's exactly what this is about, isn't it? Reinventing Fairplay so they can re-establish their cartel... Too bad for them, since to do it, they need a vertically integrated solution like iTunes/iTMS/iPod. Apple makes everything from the hardware all the way down to the QuickTime file format. That's why everyone who attempts to compete with Apple fails. Tougher still: They not only have to make all the pieces to succeed, they have to do a better job of it than Apple. They will fail, miserably. The RIAA/MPAA might as well burn the money they're spending on this scheme. Who really needs the RIAA anymore anyway? With sites like TuneCore, why would you sign away most of your gross income to the record company? You can get listed on iTunes for a year for about $30. Make it $40 and you can get listed on all the stores.
Repeat after me: All DRM is inherently defective and bad for consumers. Consider the baseline: completely unfettered media. You can do with it whatever you want.
All forms of DRM add fetters to that situation without giving any additional abilities or functionality. There is absolutely nothing that can be done with DRMed media that cannot be done (in a technical sense) with unfettered media.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
You really have to think that after 10 years of consumers telling the labels and studios what they want, and then voting with their feet when they don't get it, it would have sunk into even the head of the thickest *AA dinosaur. In the annals of colossal stupidity, the last 10 years of IP wars will have to rank pretty near the top.
10 years? Try 100.
Radio will kill the live music industry. Vinyl will kill radio and live music. Home taping will kill vinyl, radio and live music. Copying CDs will kill music. MP3s will kill music.
It wasn't true back then and it isn't true now. People want to listen to music, plain and simple. The RIAA know that damn well, they're not that stupid. Quite why they're so keen to describe every new piece of technology as the thing that will eventually kill them, I don't know. Some sort of control thing?
The music 'industry' really needs to rethink their 20th-century mentality. Where one monolithic entity (posing as several individual global corporations) controls culture for everyone by distributing entertainment 'packages' from one central source. And by bringing the full force of state-controlled legal violence against anyone stepping outside of this Stalinist framework. There really is no difference in the mind-set between the RIAA and Soviet Orwellian Ministry of Culture. Neither of them work well in the real world; which consists of real people and real culture that can't be controlled by a centralized authority.
The only thing that government-controlled (or corporate-controlled) culture does is create a vast and illegal underground counter-culture. Artists end up imprisoned or spending all their creative energy hiding, fighting, or defending their work against the corporate Stalinist cement-heads. Society suffers, people suffer, other people and nations advance and your culture and people don't.
Culture and Art comes from the bottom up, not the top down. Especially in an era of inexpensive and widely available technology like high resolution digital video cameras, software audio mixing studios, and internet high-speed media distribution.
My advice is to stop sucking on Hollywood's Grand Tetons, get some gear, learn some literary and music theory, create your own works, distribute them discretely among your own trusted people, and ignore the RIAA/MIAA.
And for goodness sake's don't let the cement-heads steal your culture. We need to completely change our mentality from believing that artistic success is being a 'rock star' to a mentality where being an artistic success consists of being able to keep our important and meaningful works of art hidden from Hollywood.
One solution is to switch to a different business model -- make your money from touring, and treat everything else as promotional material.
If a few million people have heard your music because it was pirated, or because it was (illegally!) attached as a soundtrack to a funny YouTube video, well, it's hard (impossible?) to buy publicity that good, and you just got it for free.
In fact, there was a great article about this -- basically arguing that because of how ridiculously greedy the publishers and studios are, you're actually better off playing in bars and nightclubs than you are signing with a major label.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Yeah so their evil marketing attempt is to still make it seem like a bonus; they will eventually have reached their goal when we assume that we have no granted rights to begin with, from there on, any right will seem as a bonus. Maybe that's their idea of how this should continue.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.