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

[Shikaku]

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.

*Raises hand*

Needs slashdot poll. And a citation too, but a scientific poll would be nice too.

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::

Re:idiots

[Tom]

People usually do things for reasons, you know? :-)

We all have our reasons, and if anywhere then you'll find the "because I can" quite an ok reason among IT people. Who here has not spent several hours writing a script to automate a process that takes a few seconds each time, and thus will not recoup the invested effort in your lifetime? :-)

Re:idiots

[Kjella]

If you talk pure implementation time, that's one thing. But having scipts that do things consistantly - hopefully consistantly RIGHT - can be a huge timesaver for everyone. Just today I had another case of those merry-go-round emails come to me because someone didn't fill out one value, and so nobody could do what they were supposed to do and kept going in circles until it ended up escalated to me. I'd say in 90%+ of the cases, 90%+ of the time is connecting the problem with the right person who knows the solution. The support system isn't exactly helping, but without it noone would get anything but support done.

DRM Keys

[EnigmaticSource]

Perhaps I missed this in the TFA, but how exactly do they plan on actually releasing the keys? The whole point of DRM is to keep the keys out of your reach. I cannot think of a single, viable way to hide the key exchange without some black-box single point of distribution. Sure you can distribute the encrypted content via P2P... but unless the keys are decentralized as well... calling it a P2P system is just a touch disingenuous.

The key-servers still will represent a single point of failure, and a single point of ownership. Now we'll just pay for most of the bandwidth instead of them.

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.

Re:DRM Keys

[IBBoard]

And, of course, that kind of key system isn't going to suffer from the "insufficient seeders" problem at all :D

So let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

Up until this point I have two ways of downloading content: Quick and easy from a dedicated server, but DRMed, or slowly and unreliably from peer-to-peer networks, but DRM-free.

So now Microsoft kindly offers me a service that has all the slowness and unreliability that peer-to-peer networks, while keeping all the restrictions of DRM? Brilliant!

Re:So let me get this straight...

[pearl298]

I find that downloading Ubuntu releases via BitTorrent to be about 5X faster than FTP or HTTP downloads!

Much slower for something rare like the 1964 Dr. Who TV series, but hey ...

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:Question

[Tom]

Because so far, they've been very successul in forcing expensive shit down people's throats while free alternatives were available.

Except that they still haven't adopted for a world with Internet. :-)

Simple question

[dascandy]

Do you want me to have the content or not?

If you want me to have the content, you can't make me unhave the content.
If you don't want me to have the content, *just sod off already*.

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

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)

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.

I thought the customers had spoken already?

[miffo.swe]

I believed the customers had spoken out clearly enough about DRM. All sites i have seen lately that sells music are totally into mp3.

I dont think people will take it up the shute any more willingly just because its movies thats DRM tainted. Especially not now when movies is getting into all sorts of gadgets like mobile phones, media players, netbooks and game devices etc.

DRM only do one thing from the paying customer perspective, severely limits the portability of paid content. It does not bring any benefits whatsoever. It also makes pirated/cracked content better than bought content and thats really not a good selling point. My kid really hates Microsoft because of how bad the DRM in GTA4 was and how many hoops he had to jump through to get it installed and working. He actually d/l a pirated version even if he has a legit copy, just to avoid the DRM stuff. I have a really hard time explaining to him why he should pay for his games after stuff like this.

The reason Microsoft is so into this is pretty obvious. They want to be the gatekeeper between people and their content so that any content will demand Microsoft licenses to be usable.

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:iPlayer

[jonbryce]

They've ditched the p2p version. You can now either download .wmv files directly from their servers, or use their Adobe AIR interface to download flash video directly.

Channel 4 have also pretty much ditched their p2p offering in favour of flash video. ITV never had a p2p offering, but they've ditched their silverlight video in favour of flash video.

That leaves Sky. They did at one point have a Kontiki p2p offering. They might still do.

Peer-to-Peer banned in Brazil.

[freedom_india]

So, Microsoft is breaking the law in Brazil

Re:Peer-to-Peer banned in Brazil.

[buchner.johannes]

That article and the ban was based on making money on illegal content (with advertising) and only for that specific website. RTFA, not just the headlines.

Re:Question

[tsa]

I never heard of anyone ending a friendship over an operating system. I'm glad I don't have you as a friend.

They can have it

[VanillaCoke420]

That's one patent they can keep.

Look on the bright side of it...

[jonaskoelker]

Let me be the first to say:
This sucks donkey balls!

On a more optimistic note, if this patent is enforced, nobody (except Microsoft) can make DRM'ed peer-to-peer networks---that is, you'll get less DRM.

Right? ;-)

Re:Look on the bright side of it...

[Dekker3D]

i'll tell you what people told me the last time i made this mistake: microsoft will just license it to everyone who wants it. for a hefty sum, of course. money for microsoft and new drm stuff for others.

nothing good about this, sorry man.

Is it something in the water?

[westlake]

I mean, I have only twice ever heard of someone buying MS software. Once, when someone bought Vista. I ended the friendship, because he thought it would be the greatest OS, and that MS is a nice company.

1 Open Amazon.com.
2 Search for software best sellers.
3 Case closed.
 

Re:Question

[ciderVisor]

Needles to say, he was... *cuckoo*.M/quote>

Sounds more he was a drug-dealer with wads of unlaundered money.

Maybe that would account for the needles.

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).

Re:End software patents!!!

[V!NCENT]

Well... it sure as hell won't be a patent that Linux will ever infringe on...