Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I don't get it... If DRM works, it restricts what you do. If it restricts what you do, it's not inivisible. How is this implementation different from any other DRM?
Bow-ties are cool.
Like it or not DRM restricts what you can do with your files. When you try to do something the copyright holders have forbidden, even the best DRM system will be plenty visible.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You can never make DRM invisible, since people are illegally sharing video and music files all the time today. If the point of DRM is to protect the content from being pirated, making it invisible to users will completely nullify its' original intent.
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
And that's by not having it at all.
I don't buy products with DRM, no matter how much they've tried to make it non-intrusive for me.
And backed by Sony? That puts it on my personal blacklist right away.
...allowing users to share content between any Marlin-enabled device in the home rather than on specific machines. "It works in a way that doesn't hold consumers hostage,"
So long as Marlin stays in business, and every device you want your music on is a Marlin device. So, if Marlin goes under and your computer crashes, you're out of luck?
"Make surveillance invisible and people won't object to it!"
Still, the implementation details would be interesting. How quickly will this be broken? Probably before it ever gets popular.
It will become visible as soon as Bob wants legitimately to copy the same song in his car player, his two desktops and his laptop...
Didn't Sony try that not too far back? And look at how well that worked out for them.
The only way to make DRM truly invisible is to effectively pwn the users' box.
I am officially gone from
Is that the kind that silently reports you to The Authorities when you do something naughty with information?
Doesn't open-sourcing a DRM implementation make it extraordinarily easy to circumvent? If you have access to the workings, surely you can remove it.
1. It can never deprive me of my media.
2. It can not restrict what devices I use my media on.
3. It can not restrict the storage format of the media.
In other words it is impossible.
Heck I do believe that copyright infringement is wrong. I just refuse to pay the price for others breaking the law.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The article doesn't seem to be very clear.
Will this mean I'll have to buy a new TV set, a new stereo receiver, a new DVD player, a new Cellphone, a new car stereo and reconfigure all of my PCs to be "Merlin enabled"?
Probably not, since whenever someone claims it will be "more difficult to circumvent then current DRM schemes", that seems to be a challenge to some of the more clever programmers to break it.
The Internet is generally stupid
They don't mean invisible to everyone. They mean invisible to people who aren't breaking the law. Frankly, that's good enough for me, in this case; if it doesn't interfere with my legitimate use of a game or my music, I don't have a real problem with it. Yeah, it'd be nice if DRM weren't necessary, but when you get right down to it, most people will steal digital media (as opposed to physical media) when they think they can get away with it. I'm not going to debate whether that's morally wrong or not, but it IS against the law.
Now, of course, I'm not convinced this company is going to be successful in creating effective DRM that doesn't interfere with legitimate use, but it'd be interesting if they managed it.
Surely each of the 3 commenters, who all phrase "if you can't copy yo shit, howzit invisible?" are intelligent to understand the guy clearly meant it's invisible during normal, fair use. Jesus Christ.
While I'm sure it's a load of BS, I don't think many people will hate "perfect DRM" any better than what we've got now. They'll just stop complaining about how it annoys them as legitimate license owners and start complaining that stuff costs too much. Because the people that are complaining are usually pirates.
Whale
One could make the argument that DRM, by its very nature, holds consumers hostage.
Also, I wonder how many slashdotters will be won over by the fact that this implementation is open-source. I'm sure it might make some feel warm and fuzzy inside, but not me.
Let's not open source a turd...
The biggest problem with DRM isn't that people hate it while they're using it. It's that they REALLY hate it when the company they bought their music/movies/games from turns their entire collection of "owned" content to dust because the company got tired of running their DRM servers.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"It works in a way that doesn't hold consumers hostage"
But that's the point of DRM - the content distributor gets to decide what happens to the content, not the consumer. Your purchased content is held hostage to the whims of the distributor. That's the point of DRM.
For an encore this guy will sell airplanes without wings that keep you safely on the ground, bladless knifes without handles, and a bucket of jumbo shrimp.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
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 :)
Summation 2
If it's open source, then I can go in, change the code and bypass the whole kit-n-kaboodle, right?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Based on their description, they seem to have built it from a better understanding of the human psychology WRT ownership of property. Most people instinctively believe that they own their music and movies and that their personal use shouldn't be restricted. This DRM seems to operate on the basis of restricting the ability to playback the content to the devices controlled by a customer, not to a set number of devices.
If this article turns out to be mostly right, it's a positive step. It recognizes the fact that most people will never get why it's infringement to share a CD or DVD across a family. So, the solution, is to focus more on how one user might give the data to a user that shouldn't receive it, than to focus on locking up the user's practical enjoyment of the product.
The key to making DRM work is to back off the user's day-to-day playback, and focus on making it so that devices won't receive content from users that don't have permission to give it to them. That's what copyright was created for: to prevent unauthorized reproductions, not tell the user exactly how they will use the IP once they buy it.
"With Marlin, any device that runs Marlin can run content on the home domain," he adds. "It's a level playing field [for manufacturers] - they don't have to go up to Redmond with a begging bowl or suck up to Steve Jobs."
So, open source DRM that works well (only) with other hardware also running the same DRM? Don't we already have that? How is this new, or better? The only thing I can see is that, vis-a-vis it being open source, it could be circumvented easier.
That's not quite right. Yes, the biggest problem with DRM is people have implemented it badly. The solution, though, is to make DRM out in the forefront of the feature list and make the DRM HELPFUL and CONVENIENT to users. Making it invisible will show that the companies are trying to hide something. Steam is always brought up as an example of good DRM. People know there's DRM on it but nobody minds because it's actually useful and makes it easy to transfer the games you've bought over to other computers quicker and easier than if you had an actual disk. Make is useful and people will use it.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Doesn't the latest revision of the GPL specifically prohibit DRM?
So I assume (withot RTFA of course) that the source to this DRM is published, but it isn't GPL 3? Is it GPL 2 or some pseudo "open source"?
Dumb Restrictions on Media can use any license it wants, I want no part of it. Anyone who has anything to do with DRM is either ignorant or a fraud, and I really don't like doing business with the ignorant or with frauds.
When information isn't free, neither are you. I think I'll make that my new sig.
Free Martian Whores!
The whole concept of DRM is flawed, because they give me the media, and the key, and the algorithm and then tell me I can not put the three together in any other way than the way they choose. Sorry, not happening here. You can keep your broken products to yourself and I'll spend my money somewhere else.
No, it's more appropriate to say it will be invisible to people who use the media in the ways the creators envisioned as the only legitimate uses. Those of us who are legitimate users who want to do something out of the mainstream (say, a home built media server; or putting a selection of titles on an inexpensive portable drive to take on vacation) are screwed.
Just as there is no way to determine what all the end users will want to do with the products they purchase, there is no way to place restrictions on a system without inhibiting some users.
It's not much different than the firearms issue in the US. There are people out there who will abuse the rights, but that shouldn't prevent the vast majority of users from exercising the right.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Doesn't open-sourcing a DRM implementation make it extraordinarily easy to circumvent?
Very true. I fully expect "Tivoization" where only officially signed binaries implementing the DRM will run on equipped devices, though.
More Twoson than Cupertino
From my experience its not so much the DRM itself, but rather difference of opinions between the implementation and interpretation of the spec among the various hardware vendors.
Case in point. My home theater receiver is HDCP compliant, however it doesn't play nice with Vista. This forces me to use gray market software just so I can watch video on my projector. For the record I am not talking about just DVDs and HD disc based content. I can record an AVI with my digital camera and I will still get errors trying to play that content on my projector.
My main point is that its not necessarily the DRM itself that is the problem. HDCP "looks okay" on paper. However when you have a multitude of manufacturers interpreting the spec and the logistical impossibility of unit testing against everything else out there, ultimately its left up to the consumer to do the testing which will ALWAYS end up bad for the little guy. And there is NO WAY an individual user is going to have any teeth when a manufacturer doesn't play by the rules.
My last point is this. DRM doesn't prevent piracy.
again...let me repeat that for the industry folks who are a little slow. DRM DOESN'T PREVENT PIRACY.
It's kind of like network security. The only truly secure computer is one that is sealed in concrete, has no keyboard, no monitor, no mouse, no network, and no power. If someone wants in bad enough, they will get in. Period.
The only truly secure content is that which is never distributed.
There will always be a better mouse.
Yeah, I heard this kind of promise from the FlexLM guys decades ago. Interoperability, you control the licenses, yadda yadda. It's a turd. Individual vendors couldn't get their client implementations working well enough to "play nice" with other competing vendors applications (yes, Altera and Xilinx, I'm looking at you.) If your network and license-server topology is slightly different from the reference one, nothing works properly. FlexLM is still a disaster. This form of restriction will be too.
It is a simple problem but very hard to get around because the problem used to simply not exist. Standards.
Get this and get this if you get nothing else. STANDARDS HAVE GONE OUT THE WINDOW in the digital age.
ALL VHS was VHS. A LP's were LP's. All cassette tapes were cassete tapes.
Sure, there were competing standards for a short time but by and large, to the consumer media tech had one standard.
Now, in the digital age, this is no longer true. iPod may be synonmous with MP3 player but the fact is that it barely got 50% of the market. The rest of the market is split by dozens of brands each with dozen of models. Each model has its own system, its own capabilities.
This is why iTunes is NOT the standard method to distribute music. Nor is MS fairplay. Hey, even zune didn't support that.
This hampers DRM (and don't we all feel sad about this), how are you going to get your DRM method on all devices? Apple doesn't even bother with it, that is why it is trivial to convert iTunes music to MP3's and they don't license their solution out. Why would a MP3 maker bother with supporting fairplay when nobody uses it? And when so few players support it, nobody is going to use it.
Sure, Sony is a big company, but we all know how succesful it has been in the MP3 market. The company that OWNS the walkman has totally lost its touch, choosing to push its own formats over making money.
Unless someone comes up with a solution of DRM that works with just the file and doesn't need any software installed on devices that can't have software installed it can't work.
This new system doesn't fix that. Why is going to buy a Marlin enabled device when there are no services that use it, and what service is going to support it when nobody is buy marlin enabled devices?
Apples DRM slipped in by accident. People didn't buy iPod's because of iTunes. It just came with it. MS has totally screwed up its own changes by dropping its own system on its own MP3 players.
Saying that Apple and MS are the big boys in DRM land says it all. THERE IS NO DRM INDUSTRY. The consumer not only doesn't want it, but has no need for it. The industry, the hardware makers only offers it if it thinks the extra checkmark on the box is worth the effort and increasingly, they don't.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
4. ...
5. CASH!
In my world, the real world, DRM is largely a necessary evil. People deserve to get paid for their work.
How dare you post such blasphemy on Slashdot. The next thing you'll be saying is Bill Gates isn't such a bad guy cause he gives away billions to poor people.
DRM makes stuff fragile, so the consumer will lose it more easily. This just makes it fragile in an open environment, which is not relevant once you lose the stuff you paid for.
I use it all the time. It works great, especially under Linux. (Commercial DVD players tend to be a bit crippled for some reason...)
If "Sins of Solar Empire" can do it, so can the others...
With your attitude may as well just crawl under the white sheet, curl up and wait for the beating.
and your customers won't realized they've been pwn3d until its too late, kind of like Sony making the now infamous root kit invisible by patching the OS?
They want to go to a license model for media, but they also want to charge for new media types (VHS->DVD->BluRay->)
I've bought Bladerunner now, oh, I don't know, 10 times, but if you believe the media folks I've never actually owned it, I've only had the right to view it......
making it open source might insure that you have a chance of using it everywhere and somewhat future proofs it, so long as the system uses a method that does not require external verification and/or an occasional phone home; DRM sucks, and the only way we are going get rid of it is to stop being ignorant consumers.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
but the GOV should force manufacturers to put a label on that says "This item is DRM protectd" It would save us the consumers tons of headaches from buying something and later finding out I can't take my music/movies/games/game consoles/etc... and used them anywhere I want for my own personal use or build a terrorist device with it. I could then avoid those item and be done with it. If I have to do without "new" digital format music so be it I'll get a cd or a product that I can use anyway I want with out breaking the law.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
There's no better use for a Rootkit in my opinion. Just ask Sony about invisible DRM. :D
And backed by Sony? That puts it on my personal blacklist right away.
You should have seen (well maybe you did) the rant I posted on my now-defunct site about XCP. My daughter worked at a record store (since bankrupt, labels say copyright infringement, I say boycott) and put a Sony-BMG CD in the PC, which had autostart disabled, but she trusted the label to not put nasty shit on her dad's computer and ran it.
I had wipe the drive (thankfully I keep data on a different drive from OS and apps) to reinstall Windows, and couldn't find my driver CDs for my video card or sound chip. The video card mfg no longer supported 98 so I had to buy XP, and an Audigy. It cost me almost two hundred dollars, plus an afternoon of my time.
The rant's title was (in caps, with the sord "die" in red) "SONY MUST DIE!!!"
If I did to their computers what they did to mine, I'd be in prison.
I think you'll like Uncyclopedia's take on DRM.
Free Martian Whores!
They mean invisible to people who aren't breaking the law.
No, they mean invisible to people who buy Merlin devices.
Which means not invisible at all. Just because they have raised the restrictions a little higher for one class of device doesn't make it any better for the average consumer.
If someone says a DRM is invisible pull out a portable digital video player and say "So I can transcode my video to this, right?
The degree to which the faces fall and the stammering begins indicates just how "invisible" it is.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Couple that with the entitlement mentality rampant today and you'll find without DRM people will just give other people's shit away for free without a second thought, and other people will download said shit for free without a twinge of conscience.
Except that it's not rampant. Sales of music and movies are still doing great in spite of piracy. Independent music is growing at faster rate than any time since the invention of recording. Furthermore, DRM does not prevent downloading which is the source of most personal copyright infringement, just copying among friends which has been going on since tape became popular in the late 1970's. If the music industry survived that just fine, then why is DRM suddenly a "necessary evil" today?
I don't like leechers that choose to download/copy media and never pay for it, and nothing I said should be taken as a justification for "piracy". I think they should be punished if caught, with the punishment proportional to the crime. But I am tired of people pulling out this "sky is falling" bullshit to justify punishing honest consumers (who are in the majority) with DRM, and draconian laws.
If it's Open-source, then all that means is that it'll be cracked and nullified several orders of magnitude faster than Closed-source DRM. DVD and Bluray DRM has been cracked, there's Fairplay for Apple iTunes, etc, and those were Closed-source. Get a clue Sony, and give the hell up on DRM -- because even if you make it bulletproof, we'll just re-record it in analog anyway.
The whole idea of DRM is to keep the decryption keys secret from the person who is using them. So how can you make DRM be open source?
MarlinPlayer(filename)
{
SuperSecretKey = "WhoWillWatchTheWatchers123"
GetKeyFromServer(SuperSecretKey)
DecryptToSecretPlaceNobodyCanFindIt("C:\temp\__secret\123.mp3")
PlayThatFile()
}
FAIL.
DRM and open-source do not go together. They can't. If it is open-source, you can circumvent the restrictions. You can simply look at the code and change it so that it accepts whatever you want to do. Even if they depend on some information you get from a system that isn't under your control. You do it once, and then you can get at the content, and then you can decode the content, and then you can do whatever you want with it.
Conversely, if you cannot alter the software to disable the restrictions, it's not open source.
Having said that, I suppose it is possible to slap an open source license on your software, and still have users be legally disallowed from circumventing the DRM that is in your software.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
There's a reason copyright law isn't clearer than it is, and that it because a lot of the uses are potentially infringing based on intent and effect. This is the four factor test of fair use:
What is the character of the use?
What is the nature of the work to be used?
How much of the work will you use?
What effect would this use have on the market for the original or for permissions if the use were widespread?
Of these, a computer could only know ONE, the nature of the work as that's already known when it's published. What am I going to use it for? Am I going to make one excerpt or 1000 covering the whole thing? What effect would it have on the market? Doesn't have a clue.
The only kind of DRM you'll find it the one that will block any use that may be potentially infringing, which means damn near everything. Please tell me how this DRM system will be magically telephatic and able to avoid this.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
No, it will be like the Tivo - the source is open, however the hardware will only execute code that is signed. So you can modify the software all you want but it won't run on the hardware. You won't be able to buy / make your own hardware device that isn't locked down because the managers of the DRM will not issue device keys to entities unless they sign a contract agreeing to lock down the hardware.
The benefit of being "open" is primary for the device manufacturers - they don't have to pay any royalties for use of the DRM, and have free reference implementation(s) to work with.
Doesn't open-sourcing a DRM implementation make it extraordinarily easy to circumvent?
DRM on music is trivial to circumvent no matter what media. It's a felony to tell someone how to circumvent DRM, so should I just turn myself in to the FBI?
Free Martian Whores!
Nope. Since it's Open Source, you just comment out the part of the code that says "If I can't contact the server, refuse to work," recompile, and then everything works.
Or if they use a decryption key downloaded from Marlin, then before they go out of business, go into the part of the code where it downloads the decryption key, and store that key somewhere. No, wait, even better: use that key to decrypt your content, and store the plaintext and delete the original. At that point, everything works flawlessly regardless of when Marlin goes out of business.
Now that's what I call effective DRM.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I can almost feel the heads of slashdotters exploding as they are simultaneously pulled by their intense love of OSS and their intense hatred of DRM. This is just someone's cruel plot to kill all the geeks isn't it?
How about the fact that an artist can release their album in FLAC format on their website, put a PayPal "donate" link there, and make ends meet? They probably won't get rich anytime soon, but if they are any good, they probably weren't in it for the money in the first place.
Your repetition of the RIAA's propaganda and your unrelated rant on completely unrelated topics makes you a troll.
When do I get to DRM my medical and financial records? Or does this still only restrict consumers?
The article linked here is the only place on the web that makes the peculiar, and false, claim that Marlin is "open source". Marlin's own creators make no such claim; they only claim that it operates on "open standards", which is quite a different can of worms.
No story here, just one careless reporter and one careless ./ submitter.
I have my own reasons to oppose DRM - I believe it is not a crime to crack it and distribute the content - but I am very surprise to see that most arguments against DRM on /. boil down to
It's evil *because* it sucks for consumer (understand, it sucks for me), I don't want to rent my songs, etc.
DRM is indeed evil because it is backed by DMCA
DRM indeed sucks for technology oriented consumers
But these are two different things and should not be confused. Making a defective product is stupid, not evil.
\u262D = \u5350
OK. Nice theory. Go rent a car and use it in a crash-up derby. Go buy a copy of Photoshop and post it up on your website for all to download. See what happens asshole.
In my world, the real world, DRM is largely a necessary evil. People deserve to get paid for their work. Software and entertainment content requires work to create and the producers have the right to compensation. Couple that with the entitlement mentality rampant today and you'll find without DRM people will just give other people's shit away for free without a second thought, and other people will download said shit for free without a twinge of conscience.
DVD movies are trivially easy to copy, yet people still buy and rent them. CD's even more so. Your jaundiced view of the general public is wrong. People still want a decent product - something they can put on their own shelf or give to people as a gift (would you give someone a hand-labelled CD-R for Xmas, even if you'd legitimately downloaded all tracks from iTunes ?). DRM'ed gifts could 'fail' after a time if the DRM can't be validated at the time the owner wants to play it. Nice 'present' !
Sorry, but I see all DRM as equivalent to those anti-piracy ads from FACT that you are forced to watch before you can access the menu on your PURCHASED movie. Pointless, and more annoying to legitimate users than to pirates.
Squirrel!
In my world, the real world, DRM is largely a necessary evil.
Really? That's odd. Records and cassettes were sold for years without DRM, and you could buy cassette blanks at the nearest Radio Shack if you wanted a copy. Heck, my old boomboox had a "high-speed dubbing" button to record at 2X. Was piracy rampant, and DRM a necessity? Not hardly.
DRM doesn't stop those that're determined to make a copy. Y'know, the ones technically proficient enough to put it online to begin with. The very "pirates" the RIAA is waving at Congress to solicit new IP laws. So if DRM can't stop the phenomenon it was designed to stop, what is the purpose?
Selling more copies. Having worked for numerous local bands and a national every so often, I can say I'm happy to pay artists for their work. I am NOT paying those artists, however, for each and every darn device I own.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
(Forgive Godwin's law here for a second but...)
Would you forgive Hitler if he suddenly started giving everybody money?
Being a philanthropist doesn't suddenly make you a good person.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I don't have the answer to your question, but you bring up a good point. Perhaps it is time to start a new form letter.
I'll get the ball rolling:
Your system advocates a
(X) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting copyright violations.
Your idea will not work.
Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws.)
(X) It will stop copyright violation for two weeks before it gets hacked
( ) Users of media will not put up with it
(X) Microsoft will not put up with it
(X) Consumers will have to buy new versions of all their gadgets
(X) Requires too much cooperation from device vendors
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many device vendors cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(X) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for media
(X) Asshats
( ) Not every device has a permanent connection to the internet
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(X) Susceptibility of DRM protocols to attack
(X) Eternal arms race involved in all DRM approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of copyright violation
( ) Identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(X) Extreme stupidity of consumers
(X) Dishonesty on the part of copyright violators themselves
(X) The Internet
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
(X) The customer is always right
( ) We should be able to share our own media all we want
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of private computers
(X) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) I don't want the government listening over my shoulder
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Well holy shit, brilliant argument. Shit, I suppose a construction worker can go build porches on people's houses for free then hope they pay him some pittance! Maybe Adobe or Apple should follow this path to riches and make all their software free with "Donate Here" buttons, I'm sure they'll recoup the cost of development.
Your repetition of Slashdot's tired propaganda and your overall indistinguishability from a puckered asshole make you a douchebag.
Seriously, did you just use the "they shouldn't be in it for the money if they're any good anyway" argument? What a jackass.
These are exactly the issues:
(1) It should never be possible for me to lose access to media I have paid for, period. Perhaps this could be solved with a consumer rights law and enforced key escrow for media.
(2) I should be able to play any media on any device I own which supports playing the underlying media. I should be able to convert between media types (ie, aac->mp3) for the purposes of using a media type on another device.
(3) I should be able to make and keep backups on any media. I should be able to restore out of backup onto any device I own. There should not be onerous measures required to 'activate' my media on new devices (I'm looking at you, EA!)
Ultimately, this is why piracy is attractive - piracy gives you a "better" copy - a copy you can use anywhere and move anywhere.
Ok. But how does DRM change anything? I can modify what you said to
and that statement is just as true. So why not reduce it to
and leave DRM out of it? Because if we have to leave DRM in it, and then you pay close attention to what actually happens in the real world, you get:
DRM prevents sales. It causes copyright holders to lose money. It might be worthwhile if it at least had some kind of upside for the copyright holder, but no one has found one yet, unless the copyright holder is also involved in the playback device market, in which case it can give them an advantage in selling playback software/devices. That's great for Sony, but not so good for musicians, movie makers, etc.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Is that it exists at all.
This is wrong, no mater what you pretend it is or isn't.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yeah, dubbing a tape is just as effective as publishing something on a torrent site. Piracy was even rampant back then, but the need to have physical media and the fairly noticeable loss of quality was a hindrance to it really affecting the studios.
What you people fail to understand, amazingly, is that DRM doesn't have to be perfect. Even the crappy DRM on DVDs stops the majority of people from copying them.
You all remind me of the people who want laws passed for "their own good". If DRM didn't work they wouldn't use it. It's as simple as that. I guess it's easy to assume that billion dollar industries are full of dummies who don't know what "UngleLoogie" on SlashDot knows, but the odds are they have very smart people, both technical and in finance, working for them.
That depends on how it's implemented. OpenPGP is open-source, but it is no less secure than closed-source PGP. Having the source code shows you how the encryption works, but without the specific key that the content was encrypted with, you're out of luck.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
In Sony's opinion, DRM that doesn't force you to repurchase all your content every time you buy a new player is DRM that doesn't work. Apparently this "open source DRM" guy is unclear on what the real purpose of DRM is.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Again, another SlashGenius who knows more than billion dollar corporations. Maybe you should notify these corporations that DRM doesn't work, maybe they'll pay you more than they pay their Ph.D technical people or their wunderkind finance people?
What you fail to comprehend is that the goal of DRM isn't to stop all illegal copying. The goal of DRM is to prevent copying and make it difficult enough such that the cost of the DRM (in customer anger and development costs) are outweighed by the prevention of day to day routine copying by Joe Schmoe.
And don't get me wrong. I dislike bad DRM as much as the next SlashDweeb. Bad DRM is...bad. I don't buy stuff with bad DRM. The goal of the studios is to maximize customer satisfaction while protecting their content. They haven't really hit that yet, though Apple is reasonably close.
Preventing unauthorised reproductions is the mechanism by which the public domain is enhanced. Without control over reproduction (be it legal or technical) copyright doesn't provide any incentive to create. Without the exclusive right to reproduce copyright simply cannot exist. That's the price we pay to encourage artists, authors and so on to do their thing.
I agree that current copyright law is too extensive in duration and fair dealing / fair use rights can too easily be trampled by DRM, but if you allow any and all reproductions you would destroy copyright, not improve it.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
I hate licensing. It's too much like renting. I want to OWN the device, program, song, whatever; not rent it.
Exactly, if I buy something then it is mine for personal use and I will not tolerate any DRM whatsoever. And when it comes to music I want to own it. However, there are somethings which I don't mind renting because they only have limited replay value anyway. DRM allows the concept of renting to be extended into the digital realm where things are easily copied, and can create some nice business models that wold not be financially viable otherwise.
It seems like most of the focus right now is on on-demand streaming of videos, which can be obfuscated to discourage most people from recording, but it has it's problems. For one, the bandwidth for high quality video really isn't there yet, and it would creates huge peaks in demand during prime-time if it ever became widespread. By using DRM'd downloads rather than streaming content, distributors and ISPs benifit by allowing downloads to be more spread-out and even intentionally scheduled during low usage hours if it's automated (using a Netflix queue model). Furthermore, not all places have fast internet connections, like subways, cars and airplanes. Being able to sync the movie to a portable device really makes the system more useful to customers. The only problem I have with existing services like this is that they are tied to specific devices, like the rentals on iTMS can only be used with Apple computers and devices. An "open" DRM system like is being proposed here would fix that.
And that's exactly what more and more people are doing, to the detriment of copyright holders who want to get paid for their work. I, too, wish we lived in a Utopian World where there were no guns, no murder, no rape, and no piracy, and I envy the child-like innocence of the mass media companies who are convinced that we already live in that world. God bless you, Hollywood. Too bad your actions are moving us away from your vision instead of toward it. Let us only hope that the stockholders in these companies eventually tire of them making decisions that are not intended to maximize profits, and start to demand that DRM be given up, so that these companies can once again enter the sales market.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
http://www.marlin-community.com/technology/how_marlin_works Draw three large dollar signs and a single direction arrow from the user to the web store. I see how they did that.
The only invisible DRM is NO DRM.
It's either there and it will get in your way, or it's not there and doesn't bother you.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
1. Now I'm against piracy, but claiming something as broad as "invisible to people who aren't breaking the law" is BS.
For example, from what I understand, you only need to try playing t on a device which isn't "Marlin-enabled", for it to become very visible right there. I fail to see what counts as "breaking the law" if I merely take my bought song and try to play it on my old car stereo. Care to explain?
2. How _do_ you enforce a DRM without locking access to certain parts of the "pipeline"? E.g., if I can use open-source sound drivers, what's to keep me from writing an un-DRM-ed .WAV to disk of their music? E.g., if I can play it in a self-compiled music player, what's to keep me from writing the decrypted stream from the player instead of playing it? Etc.
That's why MS's "trusted computing" insists on authorizing and authenticating every single bit of your computing, starting from the CPU. And you can't have a signed program that you can change, recompile and have it still stay signed.
So basically they _have_ to restrict what drivers, software, etc, you use, or they can't guarantee enforcing that DRM. And as soon as you, say, went the OSS route and recompiled anything, again, it _has_ to become very visible. Because as soon as the binary has changed at all, you no longer know whether it now has a backdoor which extracts the binary stream.
_But_, and here's the important part, the binary changes even if you didn't do anything devious there. If I, say, decide to play with these stupid drivers and make them able to play multiple streams like under windows (Gnome and KDE do come with daemons that do that mixing, but natively it isn't available) it necessarily produces a different executable.
So, again, care to explain what's illegal or "breaking the law" if I decide to tweak my sound drivers on this here Linux machine? I mean, FFS, even MS's FUD at its darkest hour stayed clear of claiming that doing any OSS work is criminal.
4. I thought that it was up to the courts to decide if a law has been broken? Just a thought. Deciding a priori that anyone running into trouble with a particular piece of retarded software is a criminal, is rich. The whole fundament of the western justice is based on such ideas as establishing exactly what happened, the degree of evil intent ("mens rea"), hearing the other side's half of the story too, etc. It seems to me that deciding a priori that, basically, anyone doing things differently than you imagined is automatically a criminal, goes against pretty much everything that justice stands for.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That's not really true, though. Apple has found a model that people will largely live with. Itunes is doing just fine. Personally, I won't use Itunes until Requiem works for Itunes 8. So despite being proclaimed a pro-DRM shill, I won't buy DRM that doesn't suite my needs unless I can crack it. But when I do crack it I don't share out the content. That's the difference between me a Joe Schmoe.
Nobody wants it.
Nobody is asking for it.
Nobody wants to pay for it.
Completely true where Nobody=="Copyright holder".
Take Paramount for example. They're coming out with a new Star Trek movie. They want Alice and Pete to go to the cinema and have a good time. They also want Alice and Pete to pay to watch the movie. A year or so down the road, Paramount will release the movie on DVD. They want to be sure that Alice cannot borrow Pete's copy and duplicate it. (Although, Paramount is probably more concerned that Alice, Pete, Bob, Sue, Charlie, Howie, Martha, Mary, Vijay, Carl, Mike, Henrietta, George, John, Leonard, Anistasia, Ellen, Heather, James, Sophia, Thomas, Gary, Tracy, Csaba, Julie, Trevor, Trey, Sasha, Leslie, Hans, Jose, Esteban, Carlita, Monique, Kevin, Lola, Nancy, Ruby, Victor, Frank, and Zuzu might go over to that place near chinatown that sells bootlegs, and get their DVD there.) Paramount can't rely on Alice and Pete's good will. They can't rely on their old method of being far too expensive to copy. The only way they, or any copyright holder can prevent copying, especially bulk copying, is by some DRM scheme.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
... then I should be able to build my own media playback device, using their source code, and it will work when I have the corresponding media and license key. If I choose to do such an implementation as a software "device" in my Linux based computer, will it really work? To me, that will be the big test.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
No, it will be like the Tivo - the source is open, however the hardware will only execute code that is signed. So you can modify the software all you want but it won't run on the hardware.
But, with open source, you can just build your own "device"...really.
See, the TiVo system is not truly open source...only the changes that they have made to the GPL code are available. Their completely non-GPL code isn't, and the DRM is all within that code.
For Marlin, you would simply compile the code and run it on whatever system you wanted, then have it acquire licenses, which I assume would be (in some way) personalized decryption keys for the content. You can't embed the decryption keys in the device, or you end up with CSS...break it once and it's permanently broken.
One way around this is to give each individual device a private key signed by the Marlin developers. Then, any "purchase" would result in encrypting the content using the device public key. This would allow revoking the device key which would only break one single device (not a class of devices). The problem then becomes how to allow movement of content between devices.
All these potential problems and ways to circumvent the DRM are just off the top of my head. A determined team would easily defeat this, just like they defeated everything else. So, like every other DRM, Marlin will be an annoyance to legal users of the content, and of complete unimportance to illegal users of the content.
I propose someone just create a single home domain, then everyone, every single Marlin devices just join to this domain.
"One world, one dream" right?
Well, depends on how it was implemented, if the domain owner could shutdown the domain, then the next step would be-
PROFIT!!
Forgive the meme, but DO NOT WANT.
No dice. Go back to fark.com and take your dirty meme's with you.
a software movement founded on getting around ip restrictions being used to enforce those ip restrictions
next you'll tell me the chinese communist party is actually hypercapitalist
ok now wait, bad example
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well holy shit, brilliant argument. Shit, I suppose a construction worker can go build porches on people's houses for free then hope they pay him some pittance! Maybe Adobe or Apple should follow this path to riches and make all their software free with "Donate Here" buttons, I'm sure they'll recoup the cost of development.
The construction worker expends resources for every porch built. Thus every porch needs to be payed for. The artist does not expend resources (bandwidth notwithstanding) for every copy distributed to every fan. Thus not every copy needs to be payed for. There will be enough people who will donate*, assuming the guy is any good, to make up for the costs. An artist who's not in it for the money, but rather for the love of doing it, will not care about getting every cent that could possibly be made under RIAA-style accounting**
Your repetition of Slashdot's tired propaganda and your overall indistinguishability from a puckered asshole make you a douchebag.
Too bad there is no douchebag moderation then.
Seriously, did you just use the "they shouldn't be in it for the money if they're any good anyway" argument? What a jackass.
Not quite, compare our wordings very carefully. Take a really good artist. He makes art because he loves to make art. If he does not make a load of money, he will continue to make art. As long as he has enough money to live off of his art, he will keep on doing it, and he'll get better. If you love what you're doing, chances are you're good at it.
Now take an artist who wants to make money more than to make good art. He makes the art that will sell. He is only as good as necessary to make money. No matter how much money he gts paid, he'll likely never get as good as the artist who loves the art first.
What if an artist loves the art first, but also wants to make a lot of money? Well, if he doesn't get rich, he'll still do art because he loves it. So he falls right into the first cathegory.
I swear I can't make it any more simple than that. And hey, don't be mad about getting modded down, it happens to the best of us.
* If you don't believe that, then you see art as a product and nothing else. Good art makes a strong impression on people who are not shallow. People who are not shallow will willingly do enough to keep the artist around, because of how the art influenced them. Not everyone is after "maximum financial efficiency", you know.
**RIAA-style accounting goes like this: "Every copy that somebody took illegally is a lost sale." That misses the important argument that somebody who took the copy in question may not have taken it if there were no way to take it for free.
Set your recording device to be "wav" or "what I hear" or something similar in your soundcard's mixer's "recording" view. Grab Audacity, hit record, then hit play on *insert_audio_source_here* No signal loss from using the physical outputs.
body massage!
What if the function of DRM wasn't to restrict what device or how many devices you could use it on, but instead it affected the quality for every generation that it was copied? Back in the days of vinyl and cassette tapes (and video tapes, for that matter) you'd lose quality of the recording every time you made a copy-of-a-copy, down to the point where the signal-to-noise ratio was low enough that it was basically garbage. That was regrettable -- but at the same time, the recording industry wasn't anywhere near as anal-retentive about it as they are now, and in fact they more or less turned a blind eye to it unless you were doing it on a commercial scale and selling the copies.
So the question is: Would you accept DRM that degraded the quality of the file every time you copied it, but otherwise let you do whatever you wanted to do with it?
Granted, the downside would be that there would have to be co-operation on a broad scale to make an idea like this work: you'd have to have a special utility to copy the song or movie, and P2P software would have to have the functionality built into it (most likely this would end up being built into the OS itself). The upside is that the song or movie could be copied freely and as much as you want. Naturally, someone would come up with a crack for even this type of DRM, and even as I write this I'm coming up with other implementation problems (like transcoding a song to a different, DRM-free format, like a plain .WAV file), but I'm accounting for that being part of the compromise that the industries would have to accept since I don't believe that you can completely and permanently stamp out all piracy.
The construction worker expends resources for every porch built. Thus every porch needs to be payed for. The artist does not expend resources (bandwidth notwithstanding) for every copy distributed to every fan. Thus not every copy needs to be payed for. There will be enough people who will donate*, assuming the guy is any good, to make up for the costs. An artist who's not in it for the money, but rather for the love of doing it, will not care about getting every cent that could possibly be made under RIAA-style accounting**
Not that it matters, but the studios do spend money advertising and publishing media. I say it doesn't matter because there's this thing called "opportunity cost". Let's say God comes down to earth and creates a perfect DRM model. Basically your brain refuses to distribute content you don't own. Now, how many people would buy Album X and what would they pay? The difference between that amount and the amount earned because people copy content is what DRM attempts to recoup. The "but it costs nothing for another copy" argument is just a distraction and not a real argument. I will agree that RIAA/BSA/etc.. style accounting is wrong. e.g. if I copy a $1000 piece of software and play with it, they didn't lose $1000 because I wouldn't have bought it anyway.
Not quite, compare our wordings very carefully. Take a really good artist. He makes art because he loves to make art. If he does not make a load of money, he will continue to make art. As long as he has enough money to live off of his art, he will keep on doing it, and he'll get better. If you love what you're doing, chances are you're good at it.
This whole line of reasoning bores me with its stupidity, frankly. You're making a value judgement on a profession and arbitrarily claiming they should have motivations you agree with or that their ability is dictated by their lack of greed. I could make the same argument for a software developer. Or a doctor. Or a lawyer. You can say the same thing about any profession. It's nonsensical. What if I have a really good voice and musical ability, I can't treat that like a profession and instead should "suffer for my art"? Laughable.
Gee, lemme guess.
- It doesn't actually prevent me from doing what I want to do with my media - therefore, it never appears, and is invisible.
- It doesn't require my intervention to buy, use, move, archive, or delete media - therefore, it never appears and is invisible.
- It doesn't alter my media experience - therefore, it never appears and is invisible.
So it doesn't show itself, and therefore to me it doesn't exist.
Got it.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Well, yeah no DRM system is actually secure. They all depend on obfuscation of the keys which is a flawed approach. The point is that having the source gains you nothing - all the exploits you mentioned come down to extracting the encryption keys.
My TV is digital and incorporates HDMI with it's nice, integrated DRM scheme.
My HD reader is digital, incorporates HDMI, with it's nice, integrated DRM scheme.
My TV tuner is digital, with it's nice, integrated DRM scheme (no record bit...ah yes, they said they would never use it)
My radio is analogic. But they are all pushing that DAB thing that is digital
My Ebook reader....
ad nauseam.
Now add a touch of ubiquitous Wimax/wireless in all of those pieces of kit. And they can revoke your licences at will.
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
if I can play it I can rip it to a unencumbered format.
Sure, analog reconversion ultimately defeats DRM on noninteractive works, such as music or movies, at some cost in quality. But it does not work with video games.
The public domain is dead and has been for the last 80 years or so. It will remain dead as long as congress perpetually extends copyright terms when the oldest copyrights are about to expire. Copyright duration is already longer than the lifetime of a lot of media that the works are stored on.
Even if that weren't true, DRM would kill the public domain anyway. Assuming that you could create an uncrackable DRM scheme, then what's to say in 120 years or whenever when the copyright expires that anyone still has the key to unlock the now public domain work? Unless the work happens to be in the top 1% or so of properties that are still profitable to keep in circulation over a century after its initial publication, it will be gone for good.
What a jealous twat. Learn to write, lose the hateful attitude (you sure are a twisted, angry little person, I feel sorry for you), and you might become popular too.
And if you'd read the K5 "Paxil Diaries" (they were very popular, even Rusty was a fan) you'd know that she didn't take me to the cleaners; in fact, she only got what Illinois law demanded. The bankers took me to the cleaners.
The teenaged girls stayed with me. Both were estranged from their mother for a long, long time.
Now get off my lawn, boy.
Free Martian Whores!
OK. Nice theory. Go rent a car and use it in a crash-up derby. Go buy a copy of Photoshop and post it up on your website for all to download. See what happens asshole.
Before someone mods you as flamebait, how about this:
I bought an old farm. I tore down the barn, and sold the salvageable parts.
What right would "Barn company X" have to come back and say that I used their barn in an improper manner?
The only time they could complain, is if I tore down the barn, and then blamed "Barn company X" for building a barn that fell down for no reason.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Without the exclusive right to reproduce
bit of a nitpick, but their are many (probably most) copyrighted works the author doesn't want any direct involvement, let alone a "exclusive right", especially for works intended to "enhance" the public domain.
I think their is room for DRM that does what many creators want (what I want anyway) , and that's 1) credit for our work, and 2) assurance our audience has the real thing, not some low quality spoof that devalues this, and any future works.
When I say "credit" sometimes that may be a path for money, but usually that is a BSD style "created by John Smith" or "derived from work by John Smith."
Also anything that is good for society in the long term is going to eventually default back to a mode where you can use the work by default, rather than a "someone no longer has a profit motive want to maintain a authorization scheme for this work, so you lose all access to it for good."
My TV is digital and incorporates HDMI with it's nice, integrated DRM scheme.
It has a display and a speaker. Use a camcorder.
My radio is analogic. But they are all pushing that DAB thing that is digital
It has a speaker. Use a microphone.
The one kind of digital restrictions management that you can't break with the analog hole is the DRM on a video game.
"The ones who are sharing files on the internet "
It also restricts people who want to loan a game to their friend(s). If you think about it, the current inherent DRM of console games is perfect in a way; it allows everyone to treat the game like a book. You can't easily copy it, you "own" it, and you can loan it, and you can sell it.
However, I think you'll find most of the game companies would prefer you couldn't do the last two, and they object strongly to the last item, since it puts them in competition with cheaper, legal copies of their own product.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
It allows you to protect and share content in the home, in a way that people own the content, not the devices.
Um, to play music you need a device. This means you own both the content and the device. You won't convince consumers otherwise.
Idiot.
how is babby formed?
Too bad you posted AC. Insightful post by my account.
Has anyone looked the the business models this product (and it is a product) looks to strengthen with moderate adoption of its partners?
How about "targeted advertising" for starters. not only does it provide DRM, but you can get ads as well either while you wait for your download to complete, or as part of the super-secret-encrypted-file itself!
In spite of the open source (which is probably just a bone to throw at /.ers and the like) the entire point of the company/product is to reinforce the record companies requirements first.
It made my blacklist rather quickly.
That, however, misses half the point of DRM. Or rather, what the media companies expect from a DRM.
Most of the point of DRM is, basically, "Thou shall not distribute unencrypted copies of our data." Because that's what a pirate would _do_. He wouldn't just distribute the encrypted file and urge the downloaders to purchase a legit key. He'd strip the DRM right out, and distribute the unencrypted non-DRM-ed version.
Now even the media companies realize that they can't prevent that _completely_. E.g., there's no way they can prevent you from recording from the analog audio output, or just holding a microphone in front of the speakers. So they've learned to grudgingly accept it, as long as enough loss of quality occurs in the process.
What they _don't_ want is you just decrypting the file and getting the same quality as the paying customers. That's where they draw the line.
And let me show you how that source of yours can be modified by a pirate to save a decrypted copy of anything it plays:
Original source:
Changed source:
That's it. Now I can take that decrypted file and upload it on P2P or whatever, and their DRM has no more power over it. The whole lock for that key has been removed. Best of all: it's of exactly the same quality as the DRM-ed version.
Exactly one person had to buy a copy there, and everyone else gets it cracked. It's no improvement over, say, just selling it on a CD. Anyone who doesn't want to rip it off the CD, has to have the "key" (the physical CD), everyone who rips it, doesn't need the "key" any more.
So, yes, it's as pointless as alcohol-free vodka. It removes the whole control that those media bigwigs wanted in the first place. It doesn't prevent piracy in any form or shape. Why bother with a DRM in the first place, then?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Assuming that you'll be able to rip whatever DRM they use is dangerous. With hardware that cooperates to undermine you, PKI could easily be used to encrypt data in ways that are unbreakable through software -- by ANYONE. All it takes is a chip that publishes its public key for the media source, and re-encypts data directly to digital monitors (IE, an LCD monitor, and speakers) which also publish their public keys. Short of breaking your OWN chip apart to see it's unique key, you're screwed. Moreover, it could well be unbreakable, if those chips used one-time pads.
Battling DRM and other abuses of power is a lot like the anecdote about battling the nazis: if they come for others and you don't speak up, there will be no one left to speak up when they get to you. Or, in other words, don't be complacent on the grounds that you'll survive. If you let the technology gain a foothold, you'll be up the creek too, just like everyone else.
What a wonderful world you all think you live in where you can just release digital content for all the wonderful people to share out for free and where apparently content is free to produce and content owners shouldn't worry about getting money for their work because they happen to work in a field where there's no perfect distribution model.
Nobody is saying artists shouldn't be paid. What we are saying is that DRM isn't the way to go about it.
Refute that point instead.
There are other ways to get paid. It's been discussed here on /. millions of times, so I'm not going to rehash them. Go and search and find them yourself.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
For example, from what I understand, you only need to try playing t on a device which isn't "Marlin-enabled", for it to become very visible right there. I fail to see what counts as "breaking the law" if I merely take my bought song and try to play it on my old car stereo. Care to explain?
Sure, it's easy: they failed in their goal, and their claims are pure advertising bullshit. Doesn't have anything to do with my original point.
How _do_ you enforce a DRM without locking access to certain parts of the "pipeline"?
Damned if I know. I don't design this stuff. Personally, I suspect it's impossible. That would be why there have been so many attempts, and zero successes.
I thought that it was up to the courts to decide if a law has been broken?
True. Tell you what... let's outlaw door locks. After all, no one can say whether someone who enters your house at three in the morning and loads your stereo, television, and other valuables into a truck is a burgler except the courts. And safe deposit boxes. And every other type of security device.
My point here is, as it has always been in these discussions (to stretch the definition of the word "discussion" to its breaking point), that DRM is the equivalent of a lock. If well designed, it should do what a door lock does: keep lawbreakers out, while letting in the people you want to let in. The fact is, no one has yet come up with a good design for DRM: it never keeps out the lawbreakers for long, and it generally keeps out some people you want to let in. That doesn't mean the concept is flawed; just the execution.
This DRM seems to operate on the basis of restricting the ability to playback the content to the devices controlled by a customer
Maybe they are trying to make it seem that way, but it is 100% untrue. It is absolutely no different than any other DRM.
It completely throws copyright law out the window, and it only permits the ability to playback on approved devices with approved restricted functionality devices in the limited approved pre-defined manners. No different than any other DRM. Any device that they have not pre-approved is prohibited, and any usage or activity that they have not pre-approved is prohibited. All of copyright and all devices and all legal uses and all technology is forbidden.
It is not copyright infringement for me to build my own record player to play the record I bought. It is not copyright infringement for me to independently create an innovative new record player with valuable new features and for me to sell it to other people to benefit from, to play the records they bought on this great new innovative independent non-infringing player.
It is physically impossible to make any other form of DRM. It is physically impossible to make "invisible" DRM. It is physically impossible to make DRM that does not prohibit legal non-infringing activities. It is physically impossible to make DRM that does not prohibit Constitutionally established Fair Uses.
Yeah yeah yeah, their intent for DRM is to combat piracy, but no DRM past or future can ever prevent or diminish the effect of a single copy making it onto the internet. Regardless of their reasonable legitimate desire for DRM, the fact is that the primary effect is to prohibit/criminalize non-infringing activities, and event worse, to prohibit/criminalize non-infringing technologies and products and innovation.
I absolutely positively will NEVER buy their defective-by-design DRM crap, except perhaps for the explicit purpose of cracking it. And I'm getting so pissed off at this entire evil delusional anti-technology war they are waging that I want nothing more than to insert a live lobster up Mr Talal Shamoon's anatomy - sideways - and to explicitly rip any and all content 'protected' under this deluded system and post it on the internet so that legitimate buyers can make full and proper use of the content they bought.... and oh well everyone else can download it for free and I'm GLAD and I have absolutely ZERO sympathy left for these asshats. I am just sick and tired of the whole war and I just want them to financially and physically die already.
Bah. I probably shouldn't post on this stuff when I haven't slept in more than two days. I'm tired and fuzzy and I have no patients for these evil abusive delusional DRM companies and no patients for these evil abusive delusional media companies and no patients to be calm and reasonable and polite and self-sensor the flamage, and most of all my sleep deprived brain is enjoying the the whole live lobster thing way too much.
These people have the fuxored notion that they can, should, and will criminalize noninfringing technology, and that they can, should, and will imprision an innocent non-infringing school kid for up to five years for doing some non-infringing constitutionally protected Fair Use classroom media project in some unapproved way or with some unapproved devices. If someone want to bitch about my flamish tone, fine, but I want to hear them defend this. I want to hear them defend that criminalizing non-infringing technology is good or reasonable or even tolerable, defend that criminalizing non-infringing school kid clss project is good or reasonable or even tolerable. Just becase someone would like to prevent bank robberies does not make it ok for them to go around shooting innocent people in the attempt, does not make it ok for them to rollback and ban valuable-but-inconvenient technology itself, does not make it ok to prohibit free market competition in legitimate valuable innovative
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Two swings, two misses.
Error the first - when you rent a car you do not own it. It's not yours to do with as you please. Buy the car, pay cash for it - and you can enter it in that derby all you like. It's yours. Do whatever you want with it. That's what ownership means.
Error the second - if you buy a copy of Photoshop you own that one copy. Putting it up on your website is copyright violation. You can sell your copy on eBay however. You can do whatever you want with your one copy. Install it, sell it, set it on fire. It's yours.
DRM? Not the same at all. You can't download a DRM crippled movie or album of music and then resell it when you are done with it. The seller sets the terms of the ownership. The seller can say ridiculous things like "It's yours, but only for a year in which case you have to buy it again. And pay us a nickel every time you open the file. And you can't resell it either." Or any other bizarre restriction that pops into their minds.
See the difference yet?
With DRM, you never actually own anything. All purchases become rentals of a sort, with the implicit notion that the original seller can change the terms any time they wish to anything they want.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Actually, standards are a late 20'th century issue. It's the standards that used to not exist, and the whole free market theory was based on, well, survival of the fittest.
The whole market-solves-it-all idea is, essentially, a genetic optimization algorithm. There are lots of companies and products competing with each other, and the best one wins, the worst ones die out. And then someone takes the ideas from the ones that did well, and tries to tweak them even further. And the whole cycle repeats.
The whole idea was that someone would get an idea, like, "let's make the wheels larger." Or, "let's try a thinner rope made of synthetic fibres instead of hemp." Or, "let's make a rope tightening device instead of using nails and screws to build a fence."
Standards are an attempt to prevent that from happening. Essentially now you have the sacrosanct standard that says exactly how thick your rope must be, and woe if you deviate from the standard. (Don't laugh, you couldn't have a wider VHS tape, for example.)
What nowadays is seen as "OMG, MS is evil because their JavaScript implementation isn't 100% standard" used to have another name: innovation. Roll that around in your head.
Now I'm not saying that MS is good or innovative, and their being a monopoly subverted the free market anyway in the first place. It's just a silly example to get the point across. And the point is: you used to be _supposed_ to try to take a good thing and make it even better. Then let the market decide if it's really better or not.
If you want a non-MS example, take cordite. (Modern smokeless "gunpowder".) Nobel's original idea involved a liquid solvent. Then someone figured out a way to make it all solid and still not self-ignite. And it was called innovation, not "OMG, they're evil because they make non-standard cordite."
The whole rise of standards and having any need for them at all, is something rather new. It's not some sacred tradition.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm sure the content owners would be willing to give you DRM free music, but they will probably want more money to cover the cost of piracy.
I definitely agree that having the keys are the attacks on all current DRM systems, but the reason this occurs is because the keys are so broadly distributed. In other words, many devices have the exact same key, and media has to have multiple keys embedded on it.
With a download-only system, you could conceivably have devices where every one has its own key, and media is encrypted in such a way that only that one key will decrypt it.
With a one device/one key system, gaining control of a key gives you nothing more than attacks like a debugger that grab the decrypted data off the bus (or out of memory) while the system runs, which can never truly be stopped.
But, along with having to decrypt/encrypt to send to another device, the major flaw with this system is no pressed media. To be honest, though, the only DRM system that might have a chance to work would be one that didn't support mass-produced read-only media.
The reporter would be reduced to taking photographs of each page. But the document display could have a watermark in it that would forbid the digital camera from capturing an image.
There are ways around this: the reporter could use an old camera, or an ordinary film camera.
But the problem is that if the document will only display on a corporate employee's computer, a whistleblower can't forward the document by email to a reporter; the reporter has to take pictures of the whistleblower's computer. And the DRM could be used to make every copy of the document look different somehow, so when the reporter publishes the story, the corporation can identify the whistleblower.
DRM means there's a cop in your computer, a hostile force that doesn't work for you. Sure, there might be ways around it, but there will be many traps to catch the unwary. Just say no.
Copy protection is not just DRM, it's DRM used stupidly. Copy protection involves giving someone an encrypted document, the key to decrypt it, and the algorithm to decrypt it. It only works because the code that combines the key and the algorithm is obscure. Either the location of the key is hidden, or the key is encrypted with a second key hidden in the code. Make the code visible, and there's no place left to hide it.
My problem with DRM is that (1) it takes away my control and (2) it risks my investment in whatever contents I have subjected to it.
I can see that with iTunes, I just had a laptop nuke its hard disk and presto, one less system "authorized" to play. The other laptop will never work again, yet the clock ticks further.
Leaving control aside, the other problem is that of reliability. For DRM to work it means every SINGLE component in a DRM chain from source to display/performance has to be in working order. One glitch and the chain breaks, which gives you an MTBF of at most the MTBF of the weakest component in the link. And it's still beta software, it's still beta hardware.
So, no thanks. Not for me. Ever.
Insert
There are a lot of people here saying that if by making it open source, you can strip the DRM.
This is true, but it doesn't mean that the file will be anything like the original. What do I mean by this? Well, if they were to use a lossy encryption algorithm, then the decrypted copy will be uncompressed. Of course, it would be playable, but at a significantly larger file size. It would be practically the same as the "CD workaround" in iTunes, or recording and recompressing the line-out from your sound card when playing from any existing DRM scheme.
Personally, I see this as being the best way for someone to implement an opensource DRM scheme, as having the source in no way "enables" the user.
3... 2... 1...
Bingo: that's actually the point of most of us. It's not even possible, but in the name of it we do get saddled with stuff that does only harm and no good. If you were wondering why so many people are against DRM a priori, that's why: because nobody offered yet proof -- or even reasonable suspicion -- that it might actually do what it says.
Tell you what: you come up with an analogy that isn't that melodramatic and actually is relevant, and then we'll use it :P
Seriously, these things are not like a lock. Locks exist, are known to work, keep more bad guys out than owners out of their own homes, and don't infringe on anyone's rights on their own property. And you're free to remove or change your lock if you don't like it. DRM so far is just the opposite: it's an idea that never worked, (and likely can't even theoretically work,) it never kept pirates out, it routinely keeps people from using their own bought stuff, and is even bragged about as a way to defeat first sale doctrine and other consumer rights.
And I don't even propose to flat out outlaw them. Rather: let's see one that actually works like that, before I'm saddled with yet another dysfunctional idiocy in the name of that idea.
Well, that's a bit like saying that the following concept is sound: a Santa Claus who doesn't spy on you.
But in practice it's an impossibility within a contradiction. It's not even theoretically possible, and it's internally contradictory. Yes, it would be nice to have something like that, great concept, but I'll cheer when/if it actually works that way. I see no pragmatic need to debate the merits of concepts like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or a DRM which magically keeps only law-breakers out and doesn't hold anyone's media or computer hostage ;) I'll be more concerned with those who try to sneak in some nasty surveilance scheme disguised as Santa, or yet another annoying bit of snake oil disguised as "keeping the law breakers out". Especially when it (or at least the latter) has already happened a dozen times verbatim.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Inaccurate. Remember that HDMI is based on shared-key encryption, with a totally public algorithm. Unless you're arguing that shared-key encryption is security through obscurity of the private key.
(rot13) rpbzbab@tznvy.pbz
"It's simply invasive, untrusting, and unnecessary for adults..."
Unfortunately, most of the participants in file "sharing" act more like greedy self-absorbed two-year-olds than adults. Adults at least tend to have at least some perception of the consequences of their actions. Children simply demand they be given MORE! MORE! MORE!
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
And you've precisely missed my point. DRM does not grant limited rights, it restricts rights already given to you during the sale.
And as for the cost of copyright violation, that is also a myth. The people who demand their content for free, who are unwilling to pay for it regardless, would never be a sale in the first place. The industry loses nothing when they download something for free.
Also, it's *very* questionable accounting to count a future sale from a potential customer as cash you already have in hand. It may be a missed opportunity, but it cannot be a loss.
To illustrate, let's say someone gives me a Ferrari for free. I'd drive the daylights out of it - you bet. I'd drive it everywhere. But you know what? Even though I'd love to have one, I'd never buy one. Someone giving me a Ferrari would not deprive them from a sale.
It's much the same with copyright violation. These cannot count as losses. At best, they are a missed opportunity. But you cannot assume that because someone will take something for free, use it, and even enjoy the daylights out of it - that they would also be willing to pay for it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
As I understend , DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. As a great open source project, this implementation should allow us to manage digital rigts - for example allow my son watch my porn on his iPod or not, allow my brother to play my songs (or not), and allow my neighbour to read my digital ebook - right? If so, then I love the idea, finally DRM that will be useful :P.
AFICT:
1. This is *not* Free Software. You are correct in thinking that Free Software is fundamentally incompatible with (software) DRM. There's just no way to make it work. The user freedom that's part of the very definition of what constitutes Free Software means that anyone with half a brain could reverse-engineer the DRM implementation, extract the key, and generally have their way with the content. This isn't a bug, it's a feature.
2. This is only "open source" in the most minimal, literal sense. Basically, if you sign some sort of (presumably very restrictive) license agreement, they'll send you the source code. I'm sure that they prohibit you from redistributing the source to anyone who hasn't also signed on to the license agreement. I would not call this "open source," since the source is not really "open." It's more like "source available" software. There are quite a few high-end commercial software packages that are like this: when you buy the package, they give you the source as well, so you (or the contractors who come to install it) can tweak it. But you can't redistribute the code afterwards, any more than you can make copies of the whole software package and redistribute it. Generally you only get the code after you've signed a whole stack of NDAs and license agreements.
I think Windows actually has an option for some buyers where they give you the source, under an extremely restrictive license. So in a very real way, this "open source" DRM project is about as open as Windows is. Which is to say, not at all.
The only way a FOSS DRM system would work would be if it relied on hardware features to hide the keys, and basically was nothing more than a wrapper around that hardware. It would 'work' because it's pushing the obfuscation that's so critical to any DRM implementation down from the software level to the hardware level. But since DRM can't exist without hiding things from the user, there's no way to implement it on an open platform.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Do you make a living exclusively from producing copyright works? I mean personally, not as work-for-hire. I bet, for example, very few working composers share your view. Exclusive rights are what pays their bills.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Make abuse of IP law invisible, and people will tolerate it.
As for fair use, it's a defense against copyright infringement allegations not a right. They don't have to enable you to utilize fair use as _you_ see it. If they sue you for using a 3 second clip or making a personal backup copy, though, you can use fair use as a defense.
Are you kidding? Perhaps it's been a while since you actually read a book, but I have a Safari subscription and the content there shits all over the stuff you can get for free on the internet.
I'd be fascinated to see the free version of Lord of the Rings. I bet it's way better than the multi-million-dollar professionally produced one which wouldn't have existed without copyright law.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Doesn't that fish have a long pointy snout?
I wonder which bodily orifice they intend to ram that into, if they don't just create their own.
"Sony the Impaler", why does that have a familiar ring to it?
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Some time ago I've stopped buying anything with the Sony brand on it because their lack of standards support and bully behaivor. Now I guess I'll have to add Samsung to that list too...
I only disagree that all copyrights have to be exclusive. That is a very small portion (but necessary part) of copyright.
Composers as a example is good for me, the study I found showed out of a survey of 15,000 registered composers, 200 of them made over $20,000/year from that job (10 over $200,000); for most composing is not a job to make a living at.
so those 2% of composers should want exclusive copy control of their works, the rest likely have a first priority of getting these non producing works out their; under their name without corruption of their work, so they can get known.
no one is producing a system for use by this 98% (of composers), lots of solutions are being worked on to protect the privileged 2%. The 98% who are making next to nothing, wont pay for a system to make sure their works are not heard for free, let alone creating hurdles for their potential audience.
They wouldn't be copyrights if they weren't exclusive, the copyright is the exclusivity and vice versa. People who want to freely distribute their works can already do so under current copyright law and frequently do - the exclusive right includes the right to choose how freely people can redistribute the work. If you want to let people copy it freely but keep attribution there are a number of canned licenses you can use - CC, BSD etc. The extent to which exclusivity is exercised is wholly under their control. I don't really get what your point is, as far as I can see everything you want exists under the current system.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
If your VM system was clever and simulated the hardware well enough, the virtualized OSes might not be able to tell they're not running on actual metal
Virtualization is exactly the sort of attack that Trusted Computing Group's technology is intended to prevent. If a VM's implementation of a TPM were to fraudulently claim that the VM is bare hardware, software publishers would revoke the VM publisher's TPM certificate.
Firstly, where is the queue? Oh, you mean cue.
Couple that with the entitlement mentality rampant today and you'll find without DRM people will just give other people's shit away for free without a second thought, and other people will download said shit for free without a twinge of conscience.
And how does DRM stop that from happening? The answer: it doesn't. People already strip the DRM and give stuff away online. DRM does nothing other than reduce profits, because you have to pay the DRM vendors to license the DRM (and pay for increased support costs from DRM-related issues). Seeing as it does nothing to protect you, wouldn't you be better off just keeping that money in your pocket and skipping the DRM?
... and then they built the supercollider.
The 7digital.co.uk started toying with providing MP3 downloads a while back. I don't now how they did it, but they have managed to go fully MP3.
From the site:-
"Folks, the day has come: 7digital is officially 100% MP3. This means that all of our 4 million strong catalogue is now available in this fine, fuss-free format - making ours the largest collection in the UK. MP3 is compatible with almost anything, including your iPods. Itâ(TM)s how things should be. Weâ(TM)ve worked long and hard for this but you should fight for what you believe in, right? Enjoy your freedom..."
PS. I don't work there. I just emailed a few times about the DRM, it must have paid off!
throw new SignatureNotFoundException();
An oxymoron is a moron with too much oxygen
Firstly, where is the queue? Oh, you mean cue.
No, I meant queue. As in form a line, asshole.
And how does DRM stop that from happening? The answer: it doesn't. People already strip the DRM and give stuff away online. DRM does nothing other than reduce profits, because you have to pay the DRM vendors to license the DRM (and pay for increased support costs from DRM-related issues). Seeing as it does nothing to protect you, wouldn't you be better off just keeping that money in your pocket and skipping the DRM?
So explain this to me. These large corporations, they have a lot of money, right? And they can afford to hire very smart people - both technical people and finance/business people, right? So here's my dilemma - if DRM doesn't provide them some benefit, why do they use it? Is it really true that "dangitman" from Slashdot knows more than they do, has more access to finance numbers, revenue streams and projections, etc...?
Or..hmm.. I'm formulating a crazy idea. Maybe..hmm. OK, still thinking. OK I have it. Maybe DRM doesn't need to be 100% effective to greatly reduce casual copying of content?