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DRM Take II — Digital Personal Property
Diabolus Advocatus writes "Ars Technica has an article on a new form of DRM being considered by the IEEE. It's called Digital Personal Property and although it removes some of the drawbacks of conventional DRM it introduces new drawbacks of its own. From the article: 'Digital personal property (DPP) is an attempt to make consumers treat digital media like physical objects. For instance, you might loan your car to a friend, a family member, or a neighbor. You might do so on many different occasions and for different lengths of time. But you are unlikely to leave the car out front of your house with the keys in it and a sign on it saying, "Take me!" If you did, you might never see the vehicle again. It's that ability to lose control over property that is central to the DPP system. DPP files are encrypted. They can be freely copied and distributed to anyone, but here's the trick: anyone who can view your content can also "steal" it irrevocably. The simple addition of a way to lose content instantly leads consumers to set up a "circle of trust" that can be as wide as they like but will not extend to total strangers on the Internet.'"
Yeah you know me!
Even though the encrypted shared file is freely copyable, the key file to unlock it is "tamper-proof" so it has it's own DRM to make it "un-copyable".
You know me, the anonymous coward. I have been posting to Slashdot for years! Anyway, I just wanted to let you guys know that when I am included in your circle of trust, you can trust in me.
what are they trying to achieve?
surely after years of being beaten to a pulp they MUST have learned that any attempt at controlling is more than futile?
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
All right, time to start the ol' betting pool up. Let's guess how long it'll be before someone hacks that and just permanently steals everyone's DPP. I must say, however, it's awfully nice of them to make theft easier than ever. Why bother to leave your house when you can do it from the comfort of your office chair? If you'd like to ransom their belongings you can use the Internet for that too! Thanks Internet!
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
When are the people going to get so fed up as to burn these controlling motherfuckers to the ground? Be them "Big Record" motherfuckers or "Big Government" motherfuckers. I'm already there, but (obviously) I'm too big of a pussy to do anything on my own.
Seriously people, what do we have to do to legally destroy these people and their businesses? LEGALLY DESTROY. I kinda like the sound of that...
Right now, it's easy to include DRM while only upsetting we, the minority, because the average consumer never tries to use their media in a way that runs afoul of DRM. They buy song off iTunes and just use it there on iTunes, never knowing the limitations of the "product". (I use iTunes merely as an example, I know there's DRM-free music there now)
With every new push, however, the average consumer comes closer to running head-first into these limitations. When you have people's files start disapearing off their hard drive when there is no physical product, they might finally join us in asking: "Why the Hell is a collection of ones and zeroes being treated this way?"
The harder DRM advocates push, the more the consumer becomes less ignorant of their questionable ownership philosophy.
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This new development in the copyright arena is going to raise several important questions. Do we refer to this as "Dippy" or as "Da peepee"? Do we change the acronym to "Digital Pretend Property" or "Digital Property Penalties"? Will this technology never really take off, or will it only die after a multi-billion dollar campaign and several dozen slashdot debates? Only time will tell.
It's only a matter of time until it's cracked and shared.
On a side note... I would think that "stealing" mp3s would open up a whole new can of worms. What are you going to do when your "buddy" down the street refuses to "return" your music library, call the police?
what they want, he tells Ars, is for digital property to "complete the emulation of the physical world."
One would think they would eventually see the change of paradigm that's been going on for... 30 years?
Ya know, these companies bitch and bitch and bitch about how they arent making the money they used to... Maybe they should stop wasting their money on file formats and DRM schemes that will NEVER take off and focus more on the quality of the product they are producing.
I wouldn't leave my car outside my house with the keys in the ignition for all to steal (well, actually, my car is terrible so I have contemplated it). However, if I could 'burn' a new car from a car 'blank' for the price of a few pennies every time I left the house I would. I would also drive it over to my friends house and not worry if I found a different way back - I'd just leave my car there and create a new one. There is no reason to treat digital media the same way as physical media unless you're trying to force people to play by your old rules when the world has moved on.
I stopped buying CDs, tapes & stuff a number of years ago, when the record companies started suing their own customers. I used to buy 9 or 10 CDs a month, but haven't now for over 8 years. Their loss :-) I still have an extensive, dust collecting, collection, it's just old & will never be added to.
They can add whatever DRM they like, I don't give a stuff. Bring it on, it will only hasten their ultimate demise.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
"For instance, you might loan your car to [...] But you are unlikely to [...] If you did, you might never see the vehicle again."
Yeah... that's because I can't copy my car.
Consumers will never treat digital media like physical objects.
IEEE, you fail again.
Digital personal property (DPP) is an attempt to make consumers treat digital media like physical objects
That's great, except for one small problem. Digital media have none of the characteristics of physical objects. Build business models that recognise this, or go out of business. Those are your only two choices. Trying to force consumers to treat digital media like physical objects is no more likely to work than the car industry trying to persuade people to treat the sea like a road.
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Dear IEEE,
No thanks.
Sincerely yours,
Everybody
to keep from having to back down from DRM as it gives industries draconian control over software and hardware that keep the closed business model in operation well after the digital age has dis-proven its usefulness. DPP (dare i acronym) is just one more way to "buffer" the concept of DRM socially against known issues like the spore failure and windows vista problems. This asinine and redundant technology doesnt do anything that hasnt been done by FOSS for 20 years or so already. i look forward to seeing it fail.
Good people go to bed earlier.
And people who want to pay for it will, and those who don't won't. Fucking DRM doesn't work.
The point is, for most younger people: I have it, you have it, we all have it. All the time, and for free.
Anything that doesn't encompass that usage model will get bypassed in favor of stuff that will adhere to that model.
The problem is for creative types that this means they get one sale in an efficient market. The first buyer then makes their purchase available to the rest of the world for free. Why would they do that? I don't think anyone is completely sure, but a reputation or status built by sharing is part of it.
The "one sale" idea pretty much pushes things back to a patronage system. Instead of recording a song and selling copies of it, a band is paid by some rich guy to play. The rich guy gets to tell them what he likes and what he doesn't like - and if the band wants to continue living off music they will play that way. They can then distribute their work for free without any worries about compensation.
The problem is, as quite a few creative types found hundreds of years ago, a patronage system quickly ends up where everyone is trying to be just like Elvis because the people with money to spend on the arts really, really liked Elvis. Or whomever was the big favorite. So in 17th Century Europe you had playwrites coming up with pretty much rehashes of the same theme over and over again because that is what the patrons of the arts liked and would pay for.
Sounds sort of like what has happened with music recently. But the problem is while the record labels have (somewhat) learned that an endless series of "Boy Bands" aren't going to cut it any longer with a patronage system it isn't up to the marketplace - it is up to a very small number of patrons. Is that really where we want to go?
And no, I don't see the Internet making much of a difference. If the Internet lead to broad-based financial support it would. But the Internet is a way to distribute stuff for free. There is no "financial support" involved. iTunes is a myth and you might as well get over it. Nobody is making money off iTunes, especially Apple who created it as a music supply for iPods. And as many sales as iTunes has it occupies maybe 3% of music downloads today. No, no money that way.
In essence, they propose to solve the problem of making bits uncopyable, which is intractable; but not making those bits uncopyable; but making bits magically uncopyable. Wow, way to solve the problem guys. Perhaps you'll be able to go into private sector space exploration next, with an "own-bootstraps" based propulsion strategy.
Second, of course, is the strange idea that we should be striving to emulate the physical world. The physical world sucks. Scarcity sucks.
"Your" data looks a lot like what we could want as "privacy". This are my personal data, my email account, what i did somewhere, etc, and dont want that anyone could use it (you know, suing, with DPP excuse now) and much less share it with others
... if you can play it you can copy it.
There's no way in hell that any sort of DRM will be ever successful.
The IEEE fails to take into account something rather major here:
First, that sounds like a royal goddamn pain in the ass and I'm a freaking software engineer. There's a reason the iPod has been so popular.
No it doesn't, it instantly leads to people who quickly and repeatedly lose access to things they pay for, as malicious script kiddies get into their machines that they've added to the latest and greatest botnet, copy the files off, and snag the key. I can see people jacking those keys being as popular as sniffing for world of warcraft accounts.
And it gets even more confusing:
So this key is moved into a tamper-protected circuit (irrelevant, no?) that is device exclusive. So you stick it in your phone so your music files only work there, or on your desktop and they only work there, or online and it's not even in your hands (but useless if you're not online) and this license can easily be moved around and if taken, fucks you permanently. But also somehow is magically secure enough that I can't just use it to decrypt the files and strip the DRM? And I can't somehow duplicate this key? What about key backups?
As dumb an idea as ever, I suggest the IEEE leave this one to rot in the dustbin, and stop letting the media companies push the tech industry around.
I head out of the house and want to listen to the latest Lolcats album, "I cn haz Whyt Album?", which I've paid my $22 for ($1 to the artist, $6 to the studio, $15 to the Centralized Playkey Authority). Because I want to listen to it at the beach, I take my playkey for each song in the album and transfer it to my music player. Let's assume the transfer process is always perfect and you never get a "sent but never received" issue.
So I'm sitting on the beach, and decide to take a swim. Forgetting, in the process, that my MP3 player is in my swimtrunks. Instant flash memory destruction, and the playkeys are no more.
Now I have to go buy the White Album all over again. Or somehow recover those playkeys.
Thanks, but unless they make CDs illegal, I'll stick with those, and rip them as unencumbered MP3. And if they make CDs illegal, I'll just stop buying music. If I started playing the collection I've already legally purchased on CD, I could play it continuously and not hear the same song again for a couple of weeks...
I can imagine a black market in playkeys, except of course that in reality anyone who wants to bypass the system will simply have their neighbor's 12-year-old kid hack the playkey nonsense off the songs.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
This is a great way to keep some idiots employed for another six months. Let me ask you this: are you actually modifying peoples' brains to supply the key? Do I need a licensed neurosurgeon? Didn't think so. It's another fail by the content whores. Fix your business model or perish: your choice, but we will have unencumbered digital content regardless of whether you nuke yourselves to high heaven.
Peace.
Or, to protect against loss, can I insure it for a penny on the dollar and the recover my losses if something happens to it?
The problem with most current schemes is that are extremely consumer hostile. I might have a CD stolen, but I can buy a used one very cheap. Digital music must be cheaper to distribute, no loss, no theft of the CD, but we still pay the same amount for the music, and have not option of buying it again in the secondary market.
Likewise, if some steals a car from me, I can have the cops do something about it. If someone steals my iPod, nothing is likely to be done. Not the cops, not Apple, not the labels will help me recover my property. They will, however, happily profit off the crime. OTOH, if I put a few songs up for people to copy, I will be liable for millions. Go figure.
In articles like this, the conclusion is often not the interesting item. Very often the conclusion is impractical and ineffective. What is sometimes interesting is the process they went through. For instance, one of the IEEE mags recently published a methods of secure offsite testing. As far as I can tell, while it prevents the cat from getting a degree, it does not protect against feeding answer to the traditional students. So it is not 100%, but the methods they use are interesting. It would be nice if the summaries would include some interesting bits, rather than just a naked conclusion, which is rather useless.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It might be more "intuitive" (and I'd dare to say it only seems to be on paper, most people would find it less intuitive unless carefully explained and would probably not listen to the explanations anyways), but it still doesn't change anything...
What exactly is making that protection any different? Just like BD+, FairPlay and any other DRM, it will be cracked, it will be exploited and we'll just end up with a slightly fancier but ultimately useless DRM that does what all older solutions did: harm the actual consumers while not bothering the pirates.
Plus, regardless of any form of cracking, there's still that little thing called the analog hole...
It's still another attempt to make reality match "legality" instead of the other way around.
'If someone else copies your file, you will be punished by loosing that file'...
Fuck. That. Shit.
The current (and as it has always been) paradigm of free copying of data, is the best and most honest way of dealing with data.
"He who lights his taper off of mine does not diminish mine"... Jefferson, IIRC.
Whoever came up with this idea should lose their computing licence.
With DRM, the media companies tried to prevent people from sharing their music. But cracking the DRM led to the same problem as before.
With DPP, the media companies are offering an easier dishonest way to get music: instead of cracking the DRM, just steal other consumer's songs...
Basically, DPP means: Don't steal from me, steal from my customers instead!
Car analogy would be a manufacturer making cars with great anti-theft systems that are to be removed when the car is first sold in order to discourage thieves from stealing a product before it was sold the first time.
Ok, by now everybody hates DRM. So here is what they do, they change the name.
I don't know if they are stupid or smart, either way it will penalize only the legal buyers, as always.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
The core idea here is quite clever, it's kind of a Prisoner's Dilemma situation, where if you decide to be non-cooperative with whoever gave you a piece of media content, you can gain exclusive control over it... but if everyone decides to be cooperative, then everyone has shared access to it. This would provide a strong incentive for people to limit the sharing of their purchased content to people they trust, which would prevent unlimited sharing.
Very clever.
However, it ultimately suffers from the same fundamental problem as any other DRM scheme: Bits are too easy to replicate. While the idea specifically allows for unlimited replication of the content, it still requires strong DRMish control over the "playkey". Effectively, it just replaces the problem of controlling access/ownership of a large pile of very-copyable bits (the content) with the problem of controlling access/ownership of a small pile of very-copyable bits (the playkey).
While reducing the scale of a problem does sometimes make it more tractable, I don't think it really helps in this case. You still end up with some bits that must somehow be moved and shared, but without the possibility that they may be copied. How do you do that? No one knows. You can try to lock it up in secure hardware (effectively a dongle), but even if you succeed, you've just created a major hassle for end-users -- which is exactly what this scheme is supposed to fix. And, of course, really securing that key is very hard, and doing it cost-effectively darned near impossible.
And I don't see any possible way this could work without some sort of on-line interaction. When I "take ownership" of a playkey that I've been given access to, how is it that everyone else loses the ability to use that key? Obviously there must be some sort of central system involved, if not for each usage of the key, at least periodically, to check in to see if the possessor should still have access to it.
Perhaps there's another even more brilliant technical idea underlying the rather clever social hack, but I doubt it.
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It's that ability to lose control over property that is central to the DPP system. DPP files are encrypted. They can be freely copied and distributed to anyone, but here's the trick: anyone who can view your content can also "steal" it irrevocably. The simple addition of a way to lose content instantly leads consumers to set up a "circle of trust" that can be as wide as they like but will not extend to total strangers on the Internet.
You mean they not only copied my files, they deleted my copy as well?
So this is for nude pictures? Now what excuse will young stars have when they leak such pictures for publicity.
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Any, repeat any DRM will inconvenience legitimate users far more than copyright violators.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Since it obviously involves some type of key server to check against there are several ways from the very simple to very sophisticated. There are also several problems with it:
1) If the DRM permits on failure then that would be the simplest way to hack it, just block the server or specific queries to servers. If the DRM disallows on failure then a lot of people would be affected when a DDoS or a firewall/router 'problem' blocks the server somewhere upstream. This can off course be mitigated slightly by only disallowing after a certain time period, but that would require the keys to be stored either locally in the media file or locally in the media player. Both issues are simple to solve.
2) If the DRM uses a very central key server (hosted by the RIAA) that keeps track of all the 'stolen' keys then just distributing and submitting a rainbow table (easily accomplished through a botnet) of keys would be enough. If only few hold access to the key server, then there has to be some type of mechanism that finds and blocks the 'stolen' keys (where stolen is defined according to their dictionary, not the Standard English one, we would say copied to a public place). That mechanism will be very simple to either avoid (like blocking/allowing Google Bots) or mislead. Manually would be too time intensive and thus not work either.
3) If the central keys are held by the media sellers (eg. iTunes, Amazon, Microsoft) then it only takes a media seller to go out of business to have millions of files disappear. Also if the system has to be upgraded it will be very much fun to watch a) all systems synchronize their updates without downtime and b) maintain backwards compatibility. The option to 'hack' it in 2 is still valid especially when said sellers are big enough (Amazon and iTunes come to mind)
As with so many schemes for DRM it will not work and it will piss off the customers usually sooner than later. It will not be implemented and it will not be compatible with millions of devices/users out there. It is dead before it was even started. DRM does not work. It's akin to somebody making a perfect copy of your car (and/or license plate) and then driving off with the copy, you won't care, you won't know and/or you'll get in trouble for the other persons actions while you were the one that legitimately bought the car or applied for the license plate.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Here's the thing... DRM, DPP, whatever, are attempts to technically impose the physical world onto the digital world. The physical world naturally has the notions of exclusivity of ownership and scarcity, whereas the digital world doesn't. Trying to graft a simulation of the physical world onto the digital is cute, but won't be successful. Because of the nature of the media, it will be bypassed by those who wish to do so. The morality and desire to apply the economics of scarcity to digital media simply don't matter with regards to whether someone will or won't copy the information. In short, it's a waste of money. Attempting to find ways to use the nature of digital media to make money would probably result in a better return on investment.
Excerpt from Stallman's The Right to Read:
And there wasn't much chance that the SPA - the Software Protection Authority - would fail to catch him. In his software class, Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing. (They used this information to catch reading pirates, but also to sell personal interest profiles to retailers.) The next time his computer was networked, Central Licensing would find out. He, as computer owner, would receive the harshest punishmentâ"for not taking pains to prevent the crime.
They propose solving the "problem" of files being copyable by encrypting them, and making a key that somehow can be moved but never copied.
How do they plan to do this key? Any time you decrypt the file to use it, you must have the key to it, and at that time you can make a copy of it. What ensures it'll be irrevocably lost when transmitting it to somebody else?
So, the answer is to make things worse? Yeah, I'm sure that's gonna fly.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Digital Personal Property? Why the fuck is anyone trying to apply real-world realities to something that is fundamentally different? What would be productive, and for the long-term benefit of society, would be to educate people about the differences, the reality of digital information, and the inescapable reality that duplication costs are zero.
Copyright is a social contract which has time, and time, and time again been abused and violated by large corporations and their lobbying groups. This DPP nonsense is a sop to their war on the public domain and the rights we are used to enjoying.
This proposal? Well, let's smoke some MPAA/RIAA crack and spend a fortune making computers work in a way that suits their old business models.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
Legality and what is best for the creator of creative works aside. It never fails to amaze me how the industry keeps trying to strip the internet and digital world of all it's benefits, to make it more compatible with their age old business models. It seems clear, even to an average Joe like me with no education on this matter, that trying to screw your customers over instead of adjusting to their habits is a terrible strategy. Instead of spending millions on limiting our ability to share and distribute media, they should spend that money and manpower on developing new solid business models that awards and takes advantage of this pattern. It has been done in small scale, but because the majority of the industry clings to it's ancient ways like a samurai in a 21st century gunfight, it will need a few more bullets to the chest before it is defeated. Whoever then remains with a new and customer friendly business model is gonna get really, really rich.
When you boil the matter down to its essence, digital content is simply a bunch of very long numbers. You can't treat numbers like property. Imagine trying to treat the number 17 as property. It doesn't work.
The study group's mission statement makes the same point, saying that it wants to give consumers true ownership of content while still "preserving business models based on the sale of private goods where the number of items in circulation equals the number sold and the number of users of each item is naturally, reasonably, and unavoidably limited."
Why would we want to preserve these business models? Given that it is everyone else who is being asked to shoulder the burden of propping them up, what good are they to us that they deserve it?
Copyright may be desirable under the right circumstances (i.e. a copyright law that produced social benefits greater than those produced by any alternative, or no copyright law at all), but at least it can be easily changed according to the needs of society, assuming the government is legitimate and not corrupt. DRM -- which is what this quite obviously is, just with a different name -- is too subject to the whims of creators and publishers, rather than the public, and too fixed once in place. Attempts to push DRM need to be strangled as soon as possible, although we must respect that free speech includes the right to use DRM.
So a better alternative would be a copyright law promulgated by a legitimate and non-corrupt government, which put the needs of the public first (i.e. the need for more works to be created and published so that the public can get access to them, and the need for such works to be as useful to the public as possible, which means uncopyrighted, or at worst, minimally copyrighted, in both scope of rights, and duration of term); where the grant of copyright on a work would be conditional on neither the copyright holder, nor anyone authorized by the copyright holder, applying any sort of DRM to copies, performances, or displays of the work made available to the public; where if DRM was so applied, the copyright would be revoked; and where the government would cooperate with the public to crack DRM systems and freely republish works which had been protected by DRM, and were therefore, in the public domain.
It'll take some work to accomplish this. Various treaties (WIPO, Berne, the UCC, etc.) set up minimum standards that interfere with meaningful reform efforts (e.g. legalizing the breaking of DRM, terms shorter than life+50, resurrecting formalities so that an author must opt-in to copyright for a particular work or else forgo it). We'll have to withdraw from these treaties, but to be honest, they're not really that important anyway; it is in the interests of each country to unilaterally offer national treatment (i.e. a country should not discriminate on the basis of nationality with regard to any aspect of copyright law), without minimum standards that compel two differently situated countries to enact the same laws as though they were perfectly alike.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I know! Let's come up with a way to break digital content, simply because it's digital! Not because it's a technical flaw!
Why? For social reasons!
HEADDESK
HEADDESK
HEADDESK
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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Want to join my circle of trust?
Yours,
Nick
call me FOSS im the boss with the sauce and the source
#104052 +(12518)- [X]
<NES> lol
<NES> I download something from Napster
<NES> And the same guy I downloaded it from starts downloading it from me when I'm done
<NES> I message him and say "What are you doing? I just got that from you"
<NES> "getting my song back fucker"
You know it makes sense, a little reminder from jointm1k.
The car analogy doesn't work here, yet again. I've seen what happens when someone leaves the keys in a car, puts a sign on it that says "Take Me." Nothing. That's what happens. No one touches the damn thing.
A friend of mine did just that, as well as place the title on the dash, in an attempt to get rid of the pos. This was at least 10 years ago, so no CARS program, and he was too lazy to do much else with it. Our theory was that he made it too easy, that anyone who would potentially acquire a car by such means would be too suspicious. That, or it was such a pile that not even potential car thieves would touch it.
Never start vast projects with half-vast ideas.
I think the main issue here is copying. Copying does not equal stealing. In the example, I can lend someone my car and they will eventually (hopefully) return it. However, if I supposedly lend them my copy of Led Zeppelin IV in .ogg or .flac format, they can "steal" it by making a copy.
Well, if they take my car - i.e. they steal it - I don't have it back.
If they "steal" my copy of music/software/games then I still have it. There's no difference to me, as I still possess what I purchased/obtained.
I think the powers-that-be need to get their minds around this concept.
Oh, I wonder if there's a crack yet for Windows 7...
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
It's like when a five year old tells you he can't find his shoes because he lost them. But he doesn't want to get in trouble so he'll say a gypsy took them. And you know the kid is lying but when you press him - he'll start to describe the gypsy. "He had purple pants, a gold shirt, and a moustache. He had a little monkey with him."
Much the same with DRM. They've lobbied for it, they've pushed it, they've gotten people to buy it and then yanked the key servers and left them high and dry. It can't be a swindle, they just haven't found the correct solution yet! So we go around and around with the industry talking about how to do this the right way. The truth is that there is no right way. The truth is that DRM is a lie. It can't work. Ever. Whenever you hold both the lock and the key, it stops being about cryptography and starts being about how to game the system.
Read up on how people beat DRM systems. Like DVD Jon. He's not a gonzo cryptographer. He didn't break DVD by his sheer mathematical skills. No. He was a kid with a machine code monitor who found the decrypted key in memory.
But like any good lie, you have to keep telling it once you start. Because the minute you say "well as it turns out there wasn't any gypsy" that's when you get in deep trouble. Imagine the class action lawsuits that would result! No, telling the lie over and over is much cheaper. So let's hear it for DRM2. I'm sure it'll buy the industry at least six more months before the next bored kid from the Netherlands comes along.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
First, it is not correct to assume that patronage is the only alternative. There are many other models. But I want to focus on this claim:
Something like this actually happened in the 1950s. But it was resolved without the law. Musicians, fans and the industry decided against imitation.
Up until then the market for music had focused on songs, not particular recordings. There were many recordings of each song, and listeners did not mind a whole lot which one they bought. But with R&B music, the particular arrangement of a hit became more and more important. Instead of simply producing covers of popular songs, labels started to clone them, imitating everything they could, from using the same arrangement to hiring the same backup singers. Musicians protested, calling the clones "theft." Labels and radio stations said they would have nothing to do with them (though they didn't always follow through).
But what really changed the situation was the listeners. They wanted to hear the real thing - the original they had heard on the radio, not a knock off. The clones - and the covers simply faded away.
If you are sponsoring a musician (maybe you're Coke looking for music to use in advertising, or maybe you're a group of fans who have pooled their money for a sequel to Firefly), what would you rather do: pay for something that people will see as a cheap imitation, or put your money into something different?
Sure, people like things similar to what they already know. This is part of cultural change. My description of clones in the 1950s is drawn from Elijah Wald's How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'N' Roll, where he also writes:
A lot of the best innovation comes from taking something old and mixing in something new. Is the Mac GUI just a rip-off of Xerox? Is it bad that Linux is a reimplementation of UNIX? Was it bad that Shakespeare wrote his own versions of other people's stories?
Frankly though, I don't know that I'm really disagreeing with you. As you point out, the culture industries already put much of their effort into retreads and sequels.
Any DRM will fail in the end. Why? Because all it takes is one person creating an identical product to a DRM'ed product without DRM, and they have just 'built a better mousetrap'. Implimenting DRM costs time and money, and isn't a 'feature' that an end user benefits from, so not doing something is a way of improving a product and lowering its cost.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
This won't work because the media companies won't go for it, because it still dilutes their pricing.
They want to milk each and every one of us. But if you set up a shared repository of 50 of your friends (as the article suggests) then only one person needs to buy say, the song, and all 50 share it.
So now instead of an iTunes song costing about $1, 50 people will share that $1 purchase and iTunes gets only $1 instead of $50, and the song effectively costs 2 cents each.
Nice try fella, but there's no way the media cartels will go for this.
This Playkey idea is just plain stupid. It solves nothing and changes nothing. Now instead of not being able to transfer and/or backup the mp3 file to play several different places (all mine) the issue will be not being able to transfer and backup the playkey to several different places. Same problem different file extension. The only real market based solution to the problem is to lower the cost of obtaining the MP3 file from a reputable source (the producer) to a level where no one will bother to look for a free source when the free source could be contaminated with malware. At that price point the profitability of selling the songs illegally becomes a non money maker at a big risk of getting caught. When the risk reward ratio goes negative the crooks find some other method of making money. The thing the media companies have not yet realized or learned to cope with is that the cost to manufacture and distribute media has dropped so dramatically that it is nearly zero. They are still trying to market media like it is still made up of CDs and books with the same impediments to entry in the market.
...why?
"Digital personal property (DPP) is an attempt to make consumers treat digital media like physical objects."
When we see things like this, we need to sit down and have a hard look at the intent here. The fundamental nature of digital media is that copying is essentially a zero-cost event. The entire point of "DPP" is to break the nature of digital media.
Why? Why are we breaking the natural advantage of this new format? This isn't much different than pouring ink all over the pages of a book, so that they can't be read. Ultimately, we have to realise that we're doing it to make digital media fit the mold of traditional media.
Yes, I know you're thinking "but that's exactly what it SAYS! Make consumers treat digital media like physical objects." No revelation here--just repeating the blindingly obvious.
My point, though, is that the digital media breaks the economic model. We need to fix the model, not break the media. DRM is backwards. DPP is backwards. They're making the media fit the model (by kneecapping it), not making the model fit the media.
Reality is that digital media are here. A model that doesn't change to adapt to reality is one that HAS to die eventually.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
My car is out front with the keys in it. Same with the pickup, truck. tractors, motorcycle ..... But I live in the country. I don't have the sign saying "take me". I am sure all my neighbors act the same. Of course I have a shotgun by the door so you may want to be careful if you come for the car.
And I thought my job was hard before? Now I have to keep the songs stocked! Every time someone downloads one it comes right off our shelves.
Isn't the whole digital revolution the result of information not following the laws of physical objects?
We technically as a society have the capabillity to archive and distribute for free nearly all information and culture we have, and these incompetent, closeminded fools are trying to take it away from us. How can we fight this? How can we get past simple civil disobedience and actually influence lawmakers and corporations to stop this nonsense?
All these questions lead to the million dollar question: How can we get the general public outside of our digital circles to actually care about these issues and make informed opinions without being brainwashed by the media?
Anyone who can answer this question should recieve the nobel prizes of peace, technology and culture in my opinion, and maybe a little worship as well. :)
Seriously, hear me out. I've been wondering for years when an implementation like this would finally come along. I think it's a really good compromise between the big corporations and the free peoples, and here's why.
1. Legitimate use is easy and non-annoying. In other words, if you purchase the product on iTunes or Steam or any service implementing this protocol, you can use the product where ever and whenever you want, on whatever devices. There's no "Kindle 1984" scenario looming and no need to buy special "DRM-ready HDMI" cables. Granted, this particular implementation (DPP) may have some annoying aspects, but if the idea catches on hopefully those can be engineered away (that thing about a "file which can not be copied" is stupid, but could probably be replaced with a good private-key scheme).
2. Infringing use is easier to prove/disprove. This assumes that the files are watermarked with your account identifier and digitally signed in some fashion (not difficult -- iTunes does something like this already). A naive user who puts the file up on BitTorrent with their metadata still in it becomes a target for the legal apparatus. (And if there's less infringement, that legal apparatus may shrink from the horrific monster it has recently become.) OTOH, though, if the FBI seizes your hard drive, and all the files on it are properly watermarked and digitally signed, they have no case.
Obviously, some hackers will find a way to crack the file format pretty much the day it is announced, and the BitTorrents will continue. That's OK; a little piracy never hurt anybody. The idea is to protect regular people -- folks who just want to buy or rent a song or movie and play it without a big hassle and without giving control of their computers over to some other company -- and to help the big publishers feel comfortable about moving towards digital distribution.
-- 77IM
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
I have a friend who shared his Steam account like this, I think two accounts filled with games were stolen by "friends of friends".
Given that digital content just isn't like physical content, I ask Sweazey why we might want to force it back into that model; why not provide truly open files for download, perhaps reserving traditional tethered DRM for rentals and streaming? His answer is that such freely-copiable goods breaks the basic business model of human commerce by making goods nonrivalrous; it no longer has aspects of a private good, and this makes it difficult to sell.
It's not a bug; it's a feature
A quick Google search brings his Linkedin profile, along with his current job position:
That leads us to his company homepage, Telebind Inc. Not surprisingly, their sole product is "technology and tools to create ownable Digital Property".
This is nothing but a pitiful attempt to pass astroturfing as a peer (or standardization group) reviewed article. And it is more probable that not even he believe on his product, but want to suck a few into his scam, just like the ones who sold the rootkit to Sony.
to think where we'd be if the financial sector had been monitored and fretted about half as much as "digital property". I'd call it penny-wise and pound-foolish, except that it's really across-the-board-foolish.
at some point, they will have to admit it can't work.
You haven't been keeping up on your SCO/Darl McBride stories, have you?
I assure you it's possible to tell a straight faced lie for years on end. Once you're in that deep, sometimes the only play you've got left is "keep digging".
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Current Windows DRM scheme: You have an encrypted music file, and you have a key file. The software sends the key file to a server, which checks the key file, and if it is valid, it returns a key that can be used to play the music or video. The problem is that the DRM has to prevent you from copying the key file, and that is difficult.
With this scheme: You still have an encrypted music file, and a key file. The software still sends the key file to a server, which checks it and returns the key. Two differences: They don't mind if you copy the key. And anyone in possession of a key can click on a button which sends the key to a server, which takes note that this key is now invalid, but sends a fresh key back to that person. The effect:
1. You can backup the key files without problems and restore them on another computer if the first one crashes.
2. You can copy the key files to all your computers at home, at work etc.
3. You can sell your DRM'd music without problems. Just tell the purchaser to get new key files.
4. You can share with good friends.
5. You can't share with the world, because some greedy bastard will grab it.
Number 1 to 4 would be what you reasonably want, probably exceeding what the RIAA would want to give you. Number 5 would be what you shouldn't do anyway. The DRM would be a lot easier, because all it has to do is to design key files that cannot be generated except by the copyright owner, and keep the actual encryption key safe while the music is being played.
I might if I knew that after someone took it, a magical copy remained in its place. And I definitely would if everyone did this, so that cars were essentially shared, I definitely would.
It would be pretty cool...relatively few original cars would multiply many times until everyone had a car. Then, undoubtedly, some would tinker with cars they got at little to no cost, whether for fun, or because of special needs or tastes. Hopefully they would produce better, faster, higher mileage, more luxurious cars...which would then multiply since people would like them better. Eventually there would be a great variety, each catering to individual tastes, and constantly improving too. Some people would almost certainly band together to support particularly complex tinkering, or even wholesale re-creation, where the more casual tinkerers couldn't support, and their needs were great enough. Soon...flying cars, submarine cars, space cars! Yeah...this would be a pretty cool universe to live in.
I'm writing a game for Xbox right now and I will do everything in my power to protect it. I want every person who plays and enjoys the game that I've spent many hours writing to pay me for my hard work.
I am not evil, I do not want to hold people back, I am not much more greedy than the next guy, it's just that I've spent a lot of time working through engineering textbooks and learning cryptic shader code to write this game and to me each copy of that game doesn't represent the effort it takes to ctrl+c, ctrl+v. To me that game represents the work that I've put into it
.
I pay for music that I listen to, not for the record companies, not because it takes great effort to copy the data, but because the artist have put their heart and souls into the music. They have put a lot of work into it and deserve to be payed.
If you don't like the big record labels don't listen to the music they produce.
If we're going to make this about personal property then let's go all the way. I want my financial and health information DRMed.
*sigh* So now IEEE is getting into the buggywhip business too?
All these futile attempts to put the digital genie back into some kind of analog bottle are starting to get rather tiresome.
I wouldn't leave a sign that said "take me" but I might leave a sign that said "copy me" if people were walking around with car copying machines...
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Regardless of what they're calling the "system of control" of our legally-purchased music and other media these days, it's irrelevant -- because by tomorrow there will be a way of stripping it all away, leaving nice, unencrypted content that we can do what we like with, which is the way it should be.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Digital Personal Property already exists... In MMORPG games.
Someone "steals" it, hacks it, and re-posts the un-DRM'd copy so everyone has it.
Not advocating that, as I'm against it. But how is this protocol gonna stop the thing they actually wanna stop?
It's kind of like outlawing guns. The law-abiding citizens now have no guns, but the outlaws still have theirs.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I.e. nobody has the music except the "outlaws" since the DRM clobbered it from all their hard drives.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
If you can't copy it, you can't play it (without proprietary software).
DRM mean no sale; the user must either do without your product, or they must pirate it (get a non-DRM version). Either way, your revenue is zero dollars and zero cents. That's not a way to do business.
we could of course go through life freely enjoying the cultural output of our artists and our artists enjoying free and easy advertising and exposure, to earn reams of cash from concerts, endorsements, ancillary revenue streams...
but why do that?
its obviously far better that every minor exchange of recording nuance involve 10 page contracts and a team of legal experts to accurately interpret and negotiate the proper legal status quo, right?
get a copy from a friend, make a duplicate backup, downsample to a lower bitrate, transfer to another device, convert to another file format, transfer to another media, transfer to someone in another country, play loudly and in public where other people can hear the recording "without authorization"... let's insert a lawyer into every scenario, right?
ip law is so fucking functionally defunct
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm not familiar with DPP, but I do work in the music industry and have a few thoughts on the subject.
While this may not be the most receptive forum for this perspective, I thought it was worth responding to a few points. One is that the music industry is filled with suits who have their head in the sand while "the world has moved on" away from DRM. The reality however is that average consumers (but perhaps not the typical slashdotter) are shackled with all sorts of DRM everyday whether it's movies, videogames, software or even eBooks. However, any mention of DRM for audio products seems to be a lightening rod of criticism (and perhaps with good reason). I'm not making any assertions as to whether it's right or wrong (at least not yet), but I wanted to make the point that DRM is alive and well in the world around us.
My next comment is that I believe that people deserve to get compensated for their work. If you can't come around on that point, then there's not much else I can say to convince you of anything. You see, I believe that the idea that people should get compensated for their work is concept that average person would agree with. I believe that DRM has, up to this point, been a very poor execution of that concept.
I believe that users should be able to make backups of products that they have purchased. As a corollary to that, I believe that it should be simple to restore their backups when needed. I believe that people should be able to play their music on whatever device they own wherever they happen to be. I believe that people should not lose the music that they paid for (along with the money that they spent) if the retailer that they bought it from happens to go out of business at some distant (or not so distant) time in the future. I don't believe that honest customers should be penalized with restrictions while pirates get the same quality of product with no restrictions. I believe that paying customers shouldn't be treated like criminals. I believe that paying customers should be rewarded for their loyalty to the artist.
These are the things that DRM should have enabled and these are the reasons that DRM has failed us all.
You see, I don't believe that DRM was the antithesis of these ideals. I think that the deployments of DRM were poorly designed and executed. I don't know a thing about DPP, but I know that there is a lot of deserved distrust against DRM and that it will take a massive effort to overcome that hurdle.
TFA is rather vague about how the playkey is meant to be protected from copying. The first thing that comes to mind is "stealing" it with a device that purports to be another DPP supporting device, but really just emulates one and will dump the key to a freely available log file.
Without a convincing specification on how to prevent this, I call DPP wishful thinking.
C - the footgun of programming languages
At least, the bare-bones concept isn't bad. This is what Steam does for games, and I like it. I buy a game, I can back it up locally, I can even play most of them offline, though some multiplayer games (like TF2) wouldn't be much fun offline with juts bots. I can play my games on any computer anywhere I go (as long as there's an internet connection through which to download the games locally). I live in Texas, but my in-laws lived in Washington State and when we went up to see them I got onto my Steam account up there, downloaded my games locally, and played them. Also, if I want to let a friend use my account to play my games, I can do that, but I can't be on at the same time - just like if I'd really loaned a physical game to him. One semester in college I was so busy that I didn't play any games at all, and my friend wanted to play Counter Strike, so I let him. When I was ready to play again, I "took it back".
The flip side of this is that publishers feel safe when they publish to Steam because they know the chance of piracy is way down. Treating digital media (songs, games, etc) like physical property, something that can be used by one person at a time, loaned out, and accessed from anywhere, is the way to go, in my opinion.
I am not interested in playing a game of "let's pretend."
I don't want to pretend that digital data obeys the same laws of physics (conservation of matter, for example) as physical objects. I would rather face the reality as-is, and find good ways of maximizing the utility of digital data based on this reality.
I have heard every single argument as to how I benefit from accepting these strange controls over the data on my system, and after carful consideration I find them all to be bunk. The best application of my own understanding of economics, my skill at critical thinking, and plain-old logic, all lead me to the conclusion that the human race would be better off (as a whole) if we treated digital data according to how it actually works, rather than how physical objects work.
And for those fond of the fallacy of excluded middle (or slippery slopes), I am not saying that there should be no laws regulating digital commerce. I am merely saying that these specific proposals are bad ones, and that the laws we should be using are of a different character.
I won't bother going into the details of what good digital-data laws might look like...they have already been given a million times on slashdot, and are more-or-less obvious to anyone who is intelligent and educated on digital-data issues.
Sounds like something Douglas Adams would dream up.
Of course, the writers on Star Trek have been envisioning this feature for years - what other explanation do you have for all the episodes when software or other data is sent from one place to another and mysteriously lost at it's source.
The most scenarios involve the Voyager EMH.. he seems to be forever in peril disproportionate to his status as a piece of software.
It sounds like LCARS has been designed with a particularly viscous strain of DRM. Whether this has been designed into the system by Starfleet engineers or 21st century intellectual property lawyers is unknown.
Take this to the basest level. At some point, the interaction of the playkey and the media is reduced to a TRUE or FALSE. So, ultimately, they are trying to control a single bit of data with all of these convoluted schemes. This one requires a strong central authority of some sort to verify ownership of the keys. Who arbitrates the ownership? (and this is not simple thing; for some of us the worth of our legal music collection is above the felony threshhold. Will the courts then deal with this?)
I think the powers-that-be need to get their minds around this concept. Oh, I wonder if there's a crack yet for Windows 7...
Yes, the powers that be are smoking it right now, so I doubt they're going to get their heads around any concepts.
Free Martian Whores!
And none of the advantages of digital stuff, with all the complexity of DRM. This is going to be wildly successfull, I can tell already.
Quoting the Article:
The playkey, unlike the title folder, can't be copied
Says who ?
This does not seem any different from any current system. Its all about protecting the content key in some way. Thats always where it fails at some point.
Bad idea, as it will just validate the crap the entertainment industry is pushing about IP 'rights'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The playkey, unlike the title folder, can't be copied--but it can be moved.
It's a very simple rule, it applies to every digital device sold.
Bits cannot be moved.
They can be copied. They can be erased. But you can only simulate a move.
If it looks like a move, either the bits were copied and deleted or the link to the bits was.
Bits cannot be moved.
You can't stop the signal, Mal.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
But the truth of the matter is, I will put on my wizard hat and robe and change any DPP content to a proper collection of bits.
The reason digital content is different from physical property is that, unless the content is unique private data, I don't care if someone else gets a copy. That is why digital content is better than physical matter.
These crooked engineers can make all the dishonest metaphors they want. But if we want to give away stuff for free, because we don't have any less when we give it - indeed we often have more, because we now have something in common with more people - then we're going to.
My fair use of a CD includes lending it to someone who plays it whenever they want, or playing it at a party for a bunch of strangers, even if I leave the room. That's protected by law, which mostly recognizes that copyright restrictions are exceptions to our free speech rights, and our rights to use our property however we wish (so long as it doesn't actually damage someone - and no, depriving them of a sales opportunity isn't damage). Copyright was a compromise with our rights back when it was sometimes necessary to promote the progress of science and useful arts". That compromise now backfires, holding back progress more than it promotes it, and the exclusive rights now exceed the "limited times" allowed by the Constitution.
They can reinvent digital handcuffs as often as they want. I won't buy them for myself.
--
make install -not war
Look here.
I've described exactly the same thing at length before.
In Liberty, Rene
Actually, I see the general trend towards copying but not as much "claiming". Except fragments of webpages, wholesale ripoffs get slammed pretty hard by the net collective.
Now you didn't get into derivative works. I have no interest at all a claiming your exact item as my own. What I do like to do is do ugly hacks to songs. At worst you might catch me being lazy forgetting to tag your name in the metadata, but you won't find me claiming the original.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Sorry, I can't tell you my name, someone's using that data...
P.s. I have some ideas on this. You can email me if you want to start some thrashing on the topic. But ultimately nothing is unbeatable... just how hard to break vs. how lazy the general populace is.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Damnit! You people and your "If I take your car, now I have it and you don't" analogies have ruined it for everyone! Now copyright infringement really WILL be theft!
I know you were making a joke but don't you see the irony? Now taking something WITHOUT infringing copyright will be theft, whereas if you do break the DRM it won't.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Social engineering. They want to change the way in which we understand data.
If that is the case then they are doomed to failure. A basic understanding of how easy it is to copy data is now ingrained in just about everyone: both by 70 year old parents and my 4 year old son understand it. They can restrict that copying - which is exactly what this is - but it will be an artificial technological restriction placed on the data. The only time that those are successful are when the public at large do not know that this is what is being done and so accept it as a technological limitation. Without that acceptance it will either get cracked or will cause the product to fail e.g Sony Minidisc.
So as distribution costs for data approach zero...
The problem isn't entirely that the distribution costs have reduced it is that the manner of distribution has radically changed. Instead of buying prefilled packets of data we now just hook up to the net and download what we want. The media companies are like battery manufacturers in a world that has just discovered power transmission lines. Even if buying batteries were as cheap as electricity from the mains why would anyone want to be continuously shovelling batteries into all their appliances?
To make certain portions only available to a chosen set of people is a feature I always wanted to see with GPG picture ID's. I want my Mom, my GF and certain other family and friends to be able to see my picture associated with my key, but not the whole Internet. There's gotta be a way to encrypt the picture ID to specific people('s keys) so only they can decrypt/see it just like any other content. That way you could add your picture ID to your public key and upload to a key server and still be reasonably sure, that only some hand-picked people see that you're a dog...
How is this easier than copying?
Why, yes! I AM new here.
...from the all-time kings of defective merchandise. Not surprising. The cure? Refuse to use. Don't make purchases of any type which feed the MPAA/RIAA vampires. At the same time, don't steal them either. There's lots of good free stuff to be downloaded and redistributed LEGALLY under Creative Commons. It won't matter what kind of copy-protection scheme they come up with next, if you don't buy their stuff, don't borrow it, don't listen to it, etc., and enough people do this, they will eventually shrivel up, and blow away. Too many people are whining about abusive policies, and laws passed by politicians owned by BigMoney, while at the same time supporting and feeding BigMoney (in this case, MPAA/RIAA and their corporate friends) by paying for their products. I am proud to say I have recently eliminated all proprietary BS from my life: I wiped out my old music and movie collection, and replaced them from, for instance, Jamendo.com in ogg format, and installed Fedora 11, overwriting Visuck from Micro$haft, (which came with my computer) and am happily free of proprietary interference in my e-life. IT CAN BE DONE! Let's all do it together!
DRM was supposed to be used to prevent people from "stealing music". But DRM has just made the problem worse. I don't mind paying for music, but I can no longer use the music from sources where you have to pay for it, as the DRM has prevented me from listining to my own songs. So I have been forced to steal music, rather than paying for it. Since DRM does not allow me to listen to my own music, I have been forced to not buy the DRM music and instead just download an unlocked copy of the music.
Just like when government creates a laws, and the laws end up making a situation worse rather than better, it is the same with DRM. DRM DPP is the same thing, DPP is just a meaner badder DRM with a new face. We must boycott all DRM and anything that is not open source!
Right now my digital property can't be stolen from me.
You want to make a system that will allow it to be stolen from me?
And you want me to pay for it? .... hmmm ....
Thank you for contributing your idea. Please make use of birth control.
Blackjack and hookers.