Microsoft Awarded Patent For Peer-To-Peer DRM

An anonymous reader writes "Music DRM might not be as dead as previously thought. InformationWeek reports that Microsoft has been awarded a digital-rights management patent for a distributed DRM system that works over peer-to-peer networks and uses encrypted public and private keys as the licensing mechanism. The author claims that patent number 7,594,275, entitled simply 'Digital rights management system,' is significant because, while centralized music stores like iTunes don't use DRM anymore, the Microsoft patent makes it possible that peer-to-peer networks could reemerge in the future as a viable, albeit protected, source of content."

Comments

idiots

[Tom]

"embrace" and all that?

Look:

it possible that peer-to-peer networks could reemerge in the future as a viable, albeit protected, source of content."

re-emerge? they're already here, and not going away
viable? check, they are today
source of content? check, massively

protected? who wants that? There's no demand on the customer side. Unprotected will always win. Heck, I've downloaded cracks for games that I bought and I'm sure if I were to ask for a show of hands, it would be huge.

How about making content more convenient instead of more troublesome? Maybe then you'd stand a chance, you know?

Re:idiots

[Tynin]

Maybe this is what you were getting at with your

"embrace" and all that?

but perhaps they are getting a patent on this in order for them to bring suit against any other bittorrent client that uses encryption, effectively making them to remove the encryption "feature" or face imminent pestering by a small horde of MS lawyers. Sure, they couldn't do much, at first to developers in other countries. But as the Pirate Bay trial has shown us, other(and more over time) countries tend to be making pro-IP choices. Thankfully, MS hasn't gone all RIAA on the world of software on a grandma by grandma basis... yet. But who knows, maybe they have a serious, long term, view(war) on the nature of how bittorrent and other p2p software will no doubt develop. So perhaps they are seriously going the road of the 3 E's yet again.

Getting the traffic your client makes to be encrypted, especially now p2p is so prevalent, simply will become a good idea if net neutrality doesn't come about. Or even just to finally flood the internet with so much encrypted traffic to give a big middle finger to all the intelligence (and no doubt ad) agencies of the world trying to read what we do and profile us on our own tax dollars.

I am kind of concerned with this development, but I guess it is just one concern on a pile of many. We really need to do something about software patents...

OK, no more to drink tonight... to paranoid ;-)

::refits tin foil hat::

filed years ago

[QuantumG]

Are blog drooling morons not aware that patents take YEARS to go from filing to accept to grant? You can't tell anything about a company's strategic direction from their patent portfolio. Engineers get bribes for filing, and lawyers get paychecks, and that's about all the motivation needed to file a patent - any old shit will do.

Re:DRM Keys

[Tom]

Didn't RTFA either, but there are several distributed key systems where you can send a key to X people and if Y of them (with Y=X, and it can be a specific number) come together, they can decrypt. Something like that could work in a P2P system where you could have several distributed points of authority instead of one, none of them holds "the key", and some of them can go down and you can still assemble the key from the remaining ones.

So what? It won't be much P2P

[Kjella]

Not anymore than the Internet is P2P anyway. It'll be a slight more advanced form of distribution from someone in control of the DRM to those without control of the DRM. The whole point of peer-to-peer is that it's millions of peers sharing all sorts of shit. Everything from the mainstream to the obscure. of course not all the obscure things are on TPB but there are much more specialized niche sites. There's usually something for everyone. That's what makes it popular, who cares what this is?

Is there anybody that think that iTunes don't have the server capacity? Bullshit. If you're paying you might as well pay another 5 cent so they host the bandwidth. That's cheap central bandwidth, unlike your expensive last mile bandwidth. What peer-to-peer did was to distribute that already low cost from one server to all the peers, so that people actually operate torrent sites without killing themselves on bandwidth as opposed to the old ftp servers. That way you didn't have to start with micropayments, and just share.

So yeah whatever make a DRM'd P2P network. It won't have any of the appeal of free P2P or any real advantage over centralized DRM. Good luck on that.

iPlayer

[mccalli]

Re-emerge? BBC iPlayer, in its desktop not Flash-streaming form, is already a DRM'd p2p distribution system. Has been very successful though not as much as the straight Flash-based service from what I can tell.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Simple question

[IBBoard]

There's no place for DRM in the world. It's fundamentally flawed at its principles.

Just to play devil's advocate, there is a place for DRM in the world, just not in the consumer space. While I hate DRM on my music/games (especially since I use Linux and other alternate devices) it could be suitably applied on corporate documents to enforce access controls. In that situation it could still be cracked, but you've then got a very obvious and often quite large legal entity to point the finger at and sue for breach of confidence or contract or whatever, which means that they're far less likely to crack it (plus you're likely to trust them to some degree anyway, since you have a business relationship with them). For "B2B" situations it would provide extra protection on top of a contract that would stop accidental leaks (or at least make the leaked document less usable)

Re:Question

[thejynxed]

You need to get out of your mother's basement more often.

I -always- purchase retail Windows. Why? Because OEM versions can't legally be installed on more than one original system, making it totally useless for those of us who build our own computers. I want to be able to install it on my machine, and when I build a new one to replace the old one, I want to be able to transfer the license over to the new machine.

I thought this was quite common? (Completely ignoring pirated installs here - it isn't worth the bother to pirate Windows anymore).