Open-Source DRM Ready To Take On Big Guns

Barence writes "An open-source digital rights management (DRM) scheme says it's ready to supplant Apple and Microsoft as the world's leading copy protection solution. Marlin, which is backed by companies such as Sony and Samsung, has just announced a new partner program that aims to drive the DRM system into more consumer devices. 'It works in a way that doesn't hold consumers hostage,' Talal Shamoon told PC Pro. 'It allows you to protect and share content in the home, in a way that people own the content, not the devices.' When asked about the biggest problem of DRM — that customers hate it — he argued that 'the biggest problem with DRM is people have implemented it badly. Make DRM invisible and people will use it.'"

Comments

Re:How can it be both effective and invisible?

[Mesa MIke]

It's different because it's Open Source!

Re:How can it be both effective and invisible?

[ShieldW0lf]

How is this implementation different from any other DRM?

It's the shiniest turd of all!

Awww Man

[svendsen]

Let's not open source a turd...

Open Source DRM would be cool

[Rik Sweeney]

Just think what you'd need to do to bypass it:

Original Source:

bool isLicenceValid()
{
      (Implementation goes here)
}

"Hacked" Source:

bool isLicenceValid()
{
      return true;
}

Job done :)

Re:Open Source DRM would be cool

[An anonymous Frank]

That's okay, since they've already planned to bundle a piece of "software" that prevents you from using a text editor, called OpenSony.

Re:Invisible!

[Aphoxema]

Any code made by a person can be broken by a person. We should invest less in cheap control schemes and more into robotic overlords.

Re:Invisible!

[squiggleslash]

I've taken a look at the specs and it's pretty impressive actually. They're using ROT-26 encryption, and you manage copies using commands called "cp", "mv", and "rm". These commands look at a set of user rights before they operate - read, write, and execute permissions are set separately and the content owner can also assign permissions to groups or even the whole world.

The only major fly in the ointment is that apparently DVD Jon has already released a beta of a tool called "chmod" that can change all of those permissions.

Re:Invisible!

[MadKeithV]

ROT-26: TWICE as good as ROT-13!

Re:How can it be both effective and invisible?

[ciderVisor]

I wonder if the Marlin team are going to buy some DRM'ed songs from iTunes with their thirty pieces of silver ?

Re:How can it be both effective and invisible?

[genner]

I guess it makes them feel safer, like a child hiding under the covers to be protected from the monsters.

Hey don't mock it. It works!

My bedroom has been monster free for thirty years.

Re:Impossible

[m1ss1ontomars2k4]

Oh crap, here comes an...wait, your apostrophe is after your "s". I am confused.

Re:How can it be both effective and invisible?

[Kamokazi]

Personally I think it's a great idea. Make DRM invisible. Going by our current level of cloaking technology, we could make it invisible by removing it completely. I'm all for it.

Re:How can it be both effective and invisible?

[DeskLazer]

I guess it makes them feel safer, like a child hiding under the covers to be protected from the monsters.

wait, so you're saying that the blanket won't protect me? what about a towel instead?

Re:Full Digital Kit...

[da5idnetlimit.com]

I forgot...

My pc is digital. Wasn't there some talks of integrating something called Palladium (drm...) in all PC hardware ? And Vista (and possibly -lol- Windows7) integrates DRM by default.

again, ad nauseam...

Re:How can it be both effective and invisible?

[McNally]

wait, so you're saying that the blanket won't protect me? what about a towel instead?

Effective against the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. Against other threats, not so much..