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Lala Invents Network DRM
An anonymous reader writes in with a CNet story about the record label-backed music company Lala, which claims to have invented "Network DRM." Lala has filed for a patent on moving DRM from a file wrapper, like Windows Media and FairPlay, to the server. Digital music veteran Michael Robertson has quotes from the patent application on his blog. (Here is the application.) Lala describes an invention that monitors every access, allows only authorized devices (so far there are none), blocks downloads, and can revoke content at the labels' request.
I cracked it yesterday. Next.
...you can record it. Case closed.
With a little luck, this DRM will end up on the entire network of a major corporation (we could only dream it's IBM or Microsoft!) and lock up their operations so BADLY that the entire corporate world will lash out with lawsuits. The resulting backlash could spell the end of DRM for good.
We have had DRM in streaming audio and video back to the days of RealAudio. This doesn't seem like anything new, other than something like Flash to allow cellphones to stream music too.
Thank God! I have been clamoring for this for years! Where can I buy one? forget that... where can I buy seven!!!!11111!!!!
In other words, it's a patent on how to not distribute content.
This "network DRM" seems to be a combination of old news and new buzzwords.
The notion of conditional access to a server, or aspects of a server is decades old and utterly ubiquitous. If you have the credentials you can log in, access some file, do SMTP, whatever. This aspect of "network DRM" simply seems to be a renaming of password protected downloads.
The second part of this system, which they seem to want to gloss over; but is obviously there, is some sort of client side DRM. Again, utterly non-novel. They claim that it is all on the network, and you can't download and copy; but that makes no sense. If your computer is playing it to you, you obviously did download it, and it obviously resides somewhere in your system's memory.
This is pathetic. It's just a streaming service with client side DRM added on. Useless; but hardly novel.
This technology isn't exactly DRM, although it plays a roll similar to DRM. Essentially what they've done is put a access layer on a streaming server, which isn't really anything new. It's not exactly DRM as DRM is used to manage (cripple) what you're allowed to do with a file, where as this system is more like putting a tollbooth on a road. In theory once you've sucked the content down you could just rip it to a file much as the previous attempts at controlling streaming media were circumvented. Also, due to the streaming nature of this approach it's more or less doomed to failure as it won't work on anything that doesn't have a permanent internet connection (IE iPods, by far the dominate portable media player out there).
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
You see, when I buy something, I like to own it. If I buy a car, I like to know that the car won't be taken away from me just because I lend it to a friend. If I cannot own something or there are stipulations, then I will not buy it. If there is no alternative than "piracy", I will obtain it. Simple as that. Why am I not buying Blu-Ray discs? I cannot be sure they will be playable for all time on my Linux computer. If I download a pirated mkv high def movie, I know that it will always be supported.
In conclusion, this won't stop illegal downloading. The only thing that can stop illegal downloading is treating your customers with respect and offering something of value, not the latest in a long line of DIVX/DRM garbage.
Then again, maybe the rest of the world isn't like me. Maybe most people in the world are stupid enough to pay for something they won't actually own.
Not after the Linspire debacle. Plus:
http://kevincarmony.blogspot.com/2009/04/michael-robertson-wants-to-fool-you.html - which is about this very issue.
Yeah, I know KC has a huge thing in for MR, but rightly so. Anyway, I can't be bothered to read all of both articles, but this is Slashdot.
Let me get this straight, they've patented having a server that controls access, logs activity and allows content to be deleted from the server?
starting to think "D" in DRM stands for "Doomed" and "Dickheaded" more than "Digital". Customers may on average be pretty fucking dumb, but even the truly dense will feel themselves getting screwed if you do it hard enough, and the content cartel just can't ever quite seem to figure out how far they can push things. If by some outlandish chance this moves from "patent application" to "products on shelves", I expect that it'll die on the vine just as badly as the movie industry's attempt at obnoxious tetherware (DivX) did ten years ago.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
...you can record it. Case closed.
Yeah, but this amazingly intrusive technology was planning for that:
(i) scanning storage files of the user's computer to identify any digital media content files stored therein,(ii) uploading a list of any identified digital media content files to the host computer system, and(iii) adding to the list any digital media content files that the user purchases from the purchasing component of the host computer system
You would think it would end at notifying the mothership that you are in possession of that file. Nope, from the details:
For each digital media file on the list, the Uploader finds the matching source file and transcodes the media into a format supported by the system components, if necessary.
Man, I can't wait to install that uploader only to find my entire MP3 collection has been transformed to .lala and no longer works unless I pay for it. Sounds a bit like my medical records.
My work here is dung.
Yeah, people are SO going to purchase content that can be revoked on a whim. Those Divx players sold so well.
Corporatism != Free Market
It'll keep companies from implementing this utterly asinine idea!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I wish I were making this up - seriously. But's true - check out how nefarious these assholes are and how stupid people that they are still in business. For your dining and dancing pleasure, I submit, from TFA (emphasis mine):
The patent proves Lala is trying to develop a new type of DRM, according to Robertson. Instead of wrapping individual songs in DRM, Lala's plan calls for a network to act as a fortress that surrounds an entire music ecosystem. Lala CEO Geoff Ralston confirmed that Lala filed the patent but denied the company is trying to wrest control away from users.
"It's a patent around Web Songs," Ralston said.
Web Songs are one of the cornerstones of the company's latest business model. Lala, which has switched focus from two prior models, now offers three main features. In the first, MP3s unprotected by DRM can be purchased and download for rates comparable to iTunes. A second option offers users unlimited, ad-free streaming access to music they already own. The way this works is that users allow Lala to scan their hard drives and preserve a list of the songs the person owns. Lala's system will then stream its own copies of the songs to the user. This way users don't have to worry about losing their music to hard-drive meltdowns or misplaced music players.
Lala's last feature allows people to listen to streaming music--that they don't already own--for 10 cents per song. Lala calls these Web Songs. One of the ways Web Songs is different than MP3s is they can't be downloaded to a portable device.
"A Web Song by definition has a limited set of rights associated with it," Ralston said. "One right you don't have is the right to take it with you. It's not a portable song. Another right you don't have is to copy it. Everything has limited rights, even an MP3. You're not allowed to take an MP3, copy it, and sell it."
Here's another slice, for those who'd like to avoid RTFA (emphasis NOT mine):
"A network-based DRM system manages digital media assets stored in the network," states the document from Lala, which has been praised by music labels and has financial backing from Warner Music Group. "The system provides consumers with access to the digital media from any device connected to an electronic network such as the Internet, while enforcing the intended uses by the copyright owners."
"The Web restricted nature of the offering," Lala writes elsewhere in the filing, "means that the digital assets are at all times controlled by the system and thus result in minimal piracy."
Love the language - minimal piracy. Think about it.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Evil overseeing, please inspect all activity on user's computer and approve or disapprove the following:
1. downloading of the digital media content file from the host computer system to a user's media content device.
2. adding to the list any digital media content files that the user purchases from any of the plurality of sources for purchasing digital media content files.
3. sending of email to granddaughter about not listening to that crap music pushed on her by the lame music conglomerate seeking to resurrect Paula Abdul's singing career with new techno-voice-warblator.
How insane is the music industry? This is a patent for a product that would give the music industry control over the inner workings of a user's computer. It has very little to do with an "electronic network," as most people would think of it.
How is this different than a password protected website or RealMedia servers that were broadcast only?
That yellow teletubbie is smarter than I thought. Minds are being poisoned at such a young age though.
Sure, they can try again. But like all the others, after some time the consumers will notice what thay are getting and the business model will die, like all other DRM based ones before. And by now there are people that lost or nearly lost media collections because the DRM servers were shut down. Just like these here will.
Face it, the modern content distribution is P2P without DRM. Direct downloads can only compete if they are without any DRM and offer things like high quality, good selection and low prices, i.e. if they are a bit more convenient. For that people are willing to pay a bit, but not a lot. Anybody that ingnores this fact is just going to vanish fast...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Lala...
You got me on my knees
Lala....
I'm beggin' honey please
That pretty much sums it up. Get on your knees and beg to gobble some music industry cock if you want to listen to music.
(with apologies to Bill Hicks, of course -- but I'm sure he wouldn't mind the sentiment)
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
How do you call the fact for someone to sell a good, then later take it back from the buyer ? "can revoke content at the labels' request" ?
The basic idea is that content is encrypted with a per-user public key, where the private key is held ("securely", for some definition of "securely") in display and playback devices that the user owns. When a private key is issued to a user, it is delivered in a secure (again, for some definition of "secure" key store, from which a limited number of copies can be imported to "authorized" (using some PKI mechanism) display and playback devices.
This has the benefit that content can (a) be copied for backup and archival purposes, (b) played on a "reasonable" number of devices a user owns, (c) played on other devices via temporary "secure" key export and import functions (so you can watch your movies at your friend's house, but not on your TV at the same time, unless on an "extra" TV -- within the limits of key copies), (d) lent to a small number of friends to access your library, and (e) allow anyone to make content for your display and playback devices (remember, the encryption key is public).
This is not rocket science, and to "someone practiced in the art" of PKI, strikes me as sufficiently obvious as to invalidate any patent claims.
It suffers from two problems:
First, the concept of someone having possession of a decryption key and not access to it are at odds. Like I said, "for some definition of 'secure'" Tamper-proof crypto chips are not cheap. Of course, the cost of extracting a key to allow access to one person's licensed media probably makes it sufficiently impractical: if media are watermarked as well as encrypted on a per-licencee basis, tracking back to who's key was used to crack some content would be easy, as well as an individual who licenses excessive amounts of content (to crack, and illegally redistribute in plain form, or encrypted with others' public keys).
Second, and more troubling, is that it does not allow for arguably fair uses: mashup videos, for example, because one can't extract some of the content, and how much could be extracted as a fair use would depend on the use. Some arguably legal fair uses could be prevented, and others abused by a group of indivuduals to reproduce the whole from the sum of arbitrarily small parts.
The issue of what happens when one loses a device holding private keys to one's media also deserves consideration. Of course, content providers could form a consortium that provide key escrow services so that lost keys could be recovered.
In Liberty, Rene
There, fixed that for you ;)
So, this is simply a user account system. You upload items to your user account on the server. How they're stored is determined by the server, see any system (eg. SourceForge) that allows users to upload things but doesn't expose the physical internal storage architecture via the UI. Access to items is determined by authorization data associated with the user account, controlled by the server and the server administrators. If the administrators revoke your account's access to an item, the server won't let you access it.
None of this is new, we've been doing it for decades. Even in the Windows world this goes back as far as NT 3.1. And once you've got this, the rest of their stuff is horribly obvious.
I, the evil doctor doofensmirtz, have invented the most eeeevil computer program. It takes complete control over computers and prevents them subverting my will. I haaaaate freedom!
Perry, the platypus, what are you doing here and who is that penguin you are with?
Can't get much more secure than that! Next step: unplug the network cable.
Dark Reflection
Lala .. Layla - I see where you're going - then I found out that they have financial backing from Warner Music Group - and at that point, for some weird reason, all I could hear in my head was the theme to Rawhide.
At first I thought that maybe my subconscious was thinking of Warner treating people like cattle. But then, I realized that what I was really thinking was that it's the music industry that are all animals - and not the scary kind - just the stupid bovine kind.
You know, the kind that will stampede over a cliff to their death if that's what the rest of them are doing.
Say ... are we on top of an escarpment (Balcones, to a few of you Texans out there)? "Rowdy! Give me a hand over here!"
Rollin', rollin', rollin'...
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Many, many thanks!
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
You can certainly say this whole idea came out of lala-land.
... they want their floating licenses back.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Also, due to the streaming nature of this approach it's more or less doomed to failure as it won't work on anything that doesn't have a permanent internet connection (IE iPods, by far the dominate portable media player out there).
It would be for iPhone, not iPod Touch.
"RSS is just a clunky high-volume replacement for web browsing. Rather than making it easier to consume information, it makes it easier to drown in context-free news, inducing that panicked feeling we all eventually learn too well when you see RSS is stuffed full with hundreds of unread posts." - someone that knows
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
...and so on. I'd continue, but have to go eat lunch.
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
I fail to see the problem with this. It appears that the issue is just that you can't download the web songs or songs that you uploaded.
Lala has filed for a patent on moving DRM from a file wrapper, like Windows Media and FairPlay, to the server... Lala describes an invention that allows only authorized devices (so far there are none)...
Can someone tell me what the difference is here? From what I can tell this is just enabling streaming of the "wrapped" files (wrapped with proprietary Lala wrapping technology of course). Unless I'm misunderstanding completely, there will still need to be a Lala client unwrapping the data before playing, like an encrypted hulu. Characterizing this as moving "DRM to the server" seems incorrect, since the encryption always needs to go all the way to the device to be effective.
The reason that the labels want this so much is that they can take over Lala and control the wrapping technology, where it currently resides with Apple (mostly) and to a smaller degree MS, Real, etc. It also allows them to sell to a much broader variety of devices since there is no requirement to "unencrypt, then reencrypt" for each device (as currently happens when you move a song from itunes to ipod for example). I wonder how they're going to get device and software manufacturers on board, seeing as how they're basically asking them to relinquish control of a very powerful and profitable resource.
It would be interesting to see if the "approved devices" are required to have TPM modules. Obviously it is trivial to crack without it. This could be advantageous to crackers as well, since they can rely on the Lala servers to transcode the content for them.
Of me not wanting to listen to their new music.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Wow, finally! I've been looking for a way to make my music listening situation drastically more cumbersome and painful!
Sounds like they finally listened to all those people that kept calling for more restrictive listening scenarios!
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
What'll you do when it gets quiet
and nothing's stored on your hard drive?
You've been renting not owning all those songs.
You know it's just a foolish buy.
Lala, I'm typing on my keys.
Lala, I need my MP3s.
Lala, darling please release my music files.
I tried to tell you not to do it,
that the server would go down.
Like a fool, you used their music tools,
Now you're left without your sounds.
Chorus
Let's store all of our own information,
you know it saves us from the pain.
Please don't say you've found a better way,
we've tried things in the same ol' vein.
Chorus
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
If you had a TV viewport into your digestive track, you'd be concerned about DRM too.
Table-ized A.I.
The program "Safety" published by Glenn Everhart back in the mid to late 1990s (first implementation was done by 1993), published with full source code, supports access controls based on what software is used to access files, who is accessing, where they access from, and a variety of other things. If the file protected is some video and the access is a streaming-sending program, access can be different from access granted to some player and so on. This all runs on VMS, but does the kind of access control described if you want it to. Since it was published long ago, with complete sources and documents, the code to do this and the notion of discriminating in access control this way can hardly be called novel. Also the Safety program allowed a non-permitted access to be given access to something else; in this kind of case the something else might be an advertising video or trailer. But the technology has been in the public domain now for over a dozen years.
File a patent on a business method involving patenting all the really bad ideas we don't want to see implemented.
As if we needed proof that the teletubbies were evil!
captcha = teletype
They use open-source and Linux mainly, for now.
Didn't Adobe Content Management Server provide server based DRM like 10 years ago? Was that only for PDFs? Can't remember.
Didn't Sun have a DRM project a few years ago called DReaM and wasn't it network/identity centric? I wonder if they filed any patents in that domain because if they didn't there's a good chance that the methods can be now considered to be public domain.
I would think that it's full name would be: "Lala I'M NOT LISTENING!" because that's about how well received something like this is going to be. Additionally, they're forgetting the immutable fact: Whatever it is, it'll be cracked within a matter of DAYS of going live. Not to worry though: NOBODY is going to get roped into this shit. MEMO TO MUSIC INDUSTRY: GIVE UP already!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
and alienate people.
This has 'FAIL' written all over it.
Dooby dooby do baa!! Dooby dooby do baa!!
Agennnnt P!!!
Lala describes an invention that monitors every access, allows only authorized devices (so far there are none), blocks downloads, and can revoke content at the labels' request.
DRM reaches its epitome, with a system that has no authorized devices and can revoke all privileges.
Perhaps, the record industry will be happy when they are out of business, the perfect DRM.
Tell my again why any consumer would actually want to use a system like this? Centralized servers and after-the-fact revocation of use are the next-to-the-worst bad things.
The worst is pay-for-each-play, which is the Holy Grail of the entertainment industry's wet dreams - which I suspect this system will also support.
Kill it now before it can spread and become entrenched.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Am I to understand that they got a patent for a server that ignores all incoming requests?
"This idea was invented by Shampoo."
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
To having ALL your content controlled by an external entity.
Want to read that PDF of the 'communist manifesto'? You wont if its no longer on the approved list, and since non DRM files wont open any longer either you are stuck. Remember only terrorists/pirates/etc have non DRM files.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
that Windows and certain other apps "call home" to get verified... I'll be damned if I want music that does it, too.
Hello Moderator -
I have garnered a lot of mod points expressing displeasure against Lala.
In the interests of fairness/equal time, please mod parent up - they are a Lala employee.
Thanks,
EarlyMon
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Good to see at least one other parent of a 5 to 9 yo in the /.-torium.
You know, we could just forget about this DRM crap if you guys would get off your lazy butts and write Linux GUIs that cream MS & Apple. chop chop
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
"allows only authorized devices (so far there are none)"
So they invented a server that does nothing?
Damn, I'm way ahead of the ball! I've had onna those for years!
If you look at this from outside the business-first religion and see how this affects society, you'd see this differently. Software patents are inherently bad for all software developers but software patents pose predictable and particular disadvantage for FOSS developers because they restrict the development of software that respects user's freedoms. DRM is always anti-social; DRM gets directly into the lives of users who are willing to work with some organization (do fair business with them, help them develop their goods and services) but that organization treats the users badly by default, targetting users who have not done anything wrong.
Digital Citizen
Uncle to a 2 year old actually. I love the show. I was kind of upset when I couldn't find any shirts or plush toys at Disney World when I went last month.
Lala .. Layla - I see where you're going - then I found out that they have financial backing from Warner Music Group - and at that point, for some weird reason, all I could hear in my head was the theme to Rawhide.
Our records show that you are not authorized for Rawhide. Please submit your head for installation of the Lala chip. You will be retroactively charged $1.05 for each play of Rawhide. Have a nice day, and remember - we care.
Yours,
Music Industry
Lala Land
Please mod parent up, he is exactly right: The whole concept of pay-per-use is flawed with infinitely durable or immaterial "goods". Recorded music and art aren't "consumed", they have been recorded for a purpose, namely so that they can be enjoyed and shared forever.
Requesting an irreversible payment for temporary access to an infinitely durable good seems like a scam. Considering that Islamic Banking frowns upon the concept of "interest" payments, I wonder how they'd take to this idea... methinks Islamic thought, foreign as it may be, could be our ally when it comes to DRM and extorting money for listening to recorded music.
When this day comes, of course there will be a few people that get around it as there are always hardcore dissidents, but the mainstream user, which is the majority of the market, will be up the creek.
I also see one day that you wont be able to find anything commercially available that wont have the controls built in, or any content. And the same theory applies, sure there will be some of us that will just build our own ( or hang on to legacy hardware like it is gold ), but the grandmother down the street cant do that and will get stuck with a DRM-Media box and have her view of the world controlled and filtered.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
First, I think this so-called invention is not new and probably is obvious to any serious practitioner in the field
Second, I think it's invalid because of prior art: this sort of system sounds exactly like what Valve Software does with its Steam content delivery system, which is in use for Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episode One and Half-Life 2 Episode Two.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Ah! :-)
What I would class as a 'mix tape', or some such.
Okay, thanks for the info. The 'whole mashup' thing is similar to my expectations, sort of.
The concept is similar, but the times/name change thing is 'in effect', and makes sense now.
Thanks for the modern definition.
Not trying to be 'obtuse' here, but sometimes a 'generational thing' does not span the generations as is expected.
I now 'get it', and thank you for that.
Really!(basically it's the same thing we did with 'best of' cassette tapes in my youth that we made to pass around...legality not considered at that time/age, just 'the facts')
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Suckin' Satan's pecker...
Suck it!
It will be a lot easier and cheaper to just shut down the server.
I'm sick of lol inventions.
Would the copyright industry please just die already and stop trying to take away our internet freedom.
So when the network doesn't work, how do you know if it is a problem with the network, or a problem with the DRM?
...someone who proves that it does not work (which should be obvious, as it can't work by definition), and thereby is no invention. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.