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?

[ShieldW0lf]

How is this implementation different from any other DRM?

It's the shiniest turd of all!

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: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.