DRM From the Viewpoint of the Electronic Industry 374
mike449 writes "The cover story of the Oct.16 issue of EDN magazine is about the recent trends in DRM. It is not just a technical article. The author tries to convey what people who are supposed to design and implement access restriction measures think about their feasibility and associated economic, legal and moral issues. 'Of course, you can always try charging a reasonable price and trusting people to be honest. Just think of all the money you'll save not having to implement DRM'."
Interesting line ... (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder just how many people actually *do* a cost-benefit analysis these days, or is it just a 'tick-box' item ?
The world might be a better place, if people would actually *think* more, it's not hard... "Actions" => "consequences". "Actions" => "Consequences". Repeat as necessary...
Simon.
Good stuff! (Score:1, Interesting)
Get it through your thick skulls! (Score:2, Interesting)
Which leaves lots of room for money making endeavors, as lots remains to be made. Of course, if you can't make, but only wish to "own", DRM is not going to change the fact that you are, ahem, fucked.
How will small content creators cope? (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, a small time music producer or a small time comic book creator will have trouble in this environment, especially if they're just doing it because they love the art.
In an ideal world... (Score:3, Interesting)
yeah, there are some situations where this need not apply, but things like electronic voting and how i get to use my stuff under legal fair use doctrines should have auditable code.
Example: microsoft comes out with longhorn sometime around when i build my first Megaman unit in 200X. it has code that checks for unauthorized movies, in the form of digital signatures it downloaded as part of Windows DateRape (the new, forced windows update). some day you decide to watch episode 3 for the second time to laugh at how terrible it is.
the movie, since it was a divx rip of a dvd you own, has the same signature as a pirated copy floating around the internet. so of course, people still use kazaa in the future or something like it, and the people with movies on their disks that match the signatures have their dossiers sent in MS Word format (twice...maybe three times) to local law enforcement.
After local law enforcement is done scanning the files for macro viruses, they send out a squad, bust down your door and throw you in jail. Even though it was just a divx rip of a DVD you already own.
bad, bad, bad! people need to know if things like this exist, but can't because only Russia, Micronesia and Paraguay can see the code. don't get me started about republican-controlled buddy-buddy electronic voting.
WHY HASN'T THERE BEEN A CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION INTO ELECTRONIC VOTING IMPROPRIETIES YET?
another topic for another thread, i suppose...
p.s. the signatures wouldn't be something complicated like MD5Sums (however easy that would make evasion), but filesize and a soundex title match. or something like that.
trust hasn't been given in the first place (Score:2, Interesting)
The content providers (CPs) have never trusted their audience. If you trust your audience, screwing them over is not an option. Instead, CPs have raised the prices of their content while lowering its quality and making it harder to use. The defenses (warranties) that users have for other products don't work for music. Do I own the physical disc or licence its content? CPs say both and neither - essentially whatever protects them at my expense is their answer. The people who infringe copyrights are wrong, but they are not betraying any sort of trust - by their actions, the CPs have shown no respect for or willingness to give trust. The CPs are now receiving the fruits of their labors. Paybacks are a b**ch.
Re:I say it time and again... (Score:2, Interesting)
Therefore, saying 'the bands you should be for' is ridiculous.
scary.. (Score:2, Interesting)
firstly tonight i read about Trusted Computing, and that Phoenix plan to put all sorts of weird and wonderful things into the BIOS (supposedly for our convienience and privacy, etc) Phoenix's BIOS Roadmap [deviceforge.com]
and then i read about this DRM crap. It all seems to be tied together quite nicely, and results in a general lack of rights, ease of use, and privacy for the end user.
they are literally stripping away our choice, with this stuff. subtly making it more convienient to use proprietary things, (eg windows media player 9: you have to buy the mp3 encoding plugin, or your stuck with WMA... M$'s own audio thing, which does funnily enough have some crappy DRM "protection" in it)
hardware will become the same, im sure: maybe even Linux will refuse to run on certain hardware, or more realistically, the hardware will refuse to let linux run on it as its not trusted / secure enough, or doesnt have such and such a thing.. / cant do the encryption / decryption and all sorts of
i dont like it one bit...
anyways, im sorry for any typos, bad grammar, bad layout, presentation, etc.. i was never good at english, plus its my first
Re:Interesting line ... (Score:3, Interesting)
The right one would be:
Action: The RIAA members produce 20% less new releases than before
Consequence: The RIAA members sales figures are 20% less than before, but they blame pirate for less sales.
Not to mention that MPAA member DVD sales are up, gaming consoles and games sales are up. But consumer have roughly the same (or less because of the economic downturn) amount of money in their pocket so they spend less on music.
Re:Just don't buy it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that the Six-Pack family doesn't even notice the war going on (for now), so can't take sides. And by the time they notice, the "wrong" side will have won.
How many people, if they understood the idea that their new media purchase could simply vanish at the whim of companies with less interest in them than Enron had in its employees' retirement funds, would still plop down the same (or more) money as for an unencumbered and semi-permanent product?
Not a whole lot, I'd wager. In my experience, people have NO clue about the implications (or even the presence) of DRM. Just last week, for example, I had to explain to a friend (and not even a tech-illiterate one at that) that all the music on his computer, ripped by him from his own CDs, would no longer work simply because he had used WMP to rip and encode them, and had never turned off WMP's "rights management". Granted, WMP lets you back up your keys for a planned migration, but major crashes rarely bother popping up a dialog warning "This installation of Windows has died, and five minutes from now, will never boot again. Please back up your music library at this time".
So yes, I believe "Joe Sixpack" should have less say in matters such as this, and should listen more to those of us who do understand that "enhanced" and "restricted" do not mean the same thing. But calling that a power-grab strikes me as a rather egregious twisting of the facts. For an analogy, do you believe that fire codes should result from the whims of the market, or from those who've spent thousands of hours studying how fire propagates through your house? Or do you just consider your greatly increased likelyhood of living through each night a power-grab by those in the know on that particular topic?
Re:good?! (Score:2, Interesting)
On a side note--I've always wondered how many people who say they have tons of MP3's (all legal) really are totally legal.
I have about 5,000 MP3's on my computer--only three of which I actually paid for...but when it comes to ranting about DRM, I always say my collection is totally legal...
Re:good?! (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, I do understand their complaint and somewhat sympathize. But it's hard to find much more sympathy when they are proclaiming this from multi-million dollar offices.
List of requirements to make DRM real (Score:3, Interesting)
The average consumer who purchases a DVD, CD, multimedia device, television, or computer system really has no "upfront" knowledge of why DRM is bad. Nor, do they particularly care. There will always be exceptions to the rule, however, the majority of consumers will not be able to tell (unless the package is marked) whether the brand new Sony DVD player they bought contains DRM capabilities. The criteria that the average consumer uses when making their product selection is not as "robust" as the tech savy or politically aware consumer would use. DRM acceptance by the general public really boils down to satisfying a few key requirements.
One, the hardware device which utilizes DRM should not cost anymore than the device which does not utilize DRM. Certainly, the addition of the DRM components will raise the price of the product. Therefore, it is necessary for the consumer to perceive a benefit which justifies the additional cost. This will require slick new features that are available only on the DRM enabled model and suitable advertising of the device. Thus neutralizing the issue of product price increase then becomes a marketing exercise.
DRM enabled equipment should be able to conduct the authentication/verification of the user and their content with NO user involvement. If the new DVD player becomes more difficult to use, people will not purchase the new DVD player. DRM hardware must become innocuous to the user and must be backward compatible with previous releases of content.
DRM enabled hardware will need to have a single industry standard that is used to encode and decode the content. There can be no competing standards such as DVD-R and DVD-RAM. The price of content that supports decryption on all DRM standards would be quite a bit higher than a non-DRM enabled content. There would also be considerable difficulty in creating content to meet all standards. There is also no guarantee that competing standards would work interchangeably.
DRM enabled hardware must be presented as a positive component by such consumer product publications as popular as Consumer Reports. If DRM is rated as being considerably more costly and painful to operate, the hardware will not be bought.
Finally, the "cut-over" for releasing only DRM enabled content, must be worked out. A large enough majority of the consumer population must posess a DRM enabled hardware device so that the DRM enabled content can be consumed. It wouldn't do for all of the LOTR III DVDs, to use as an example, be released as DRM enabled. There wouldn't be enough people with the correct hardware who would purchase the new LOTR III DVD. The content providers must work with the harware vendors and create a plan to "roll-out" content that by design will only be consumable on DRM enabled hardware.
In conclusion the DRM enabled hardware/media must be competetive in price with the non-DRM enabled hardware/media. The DRM enabled hardware must be as easy-to-use, if not easier, than current hardware. There must be a single industry standard on DRM implementation that allows for backward compatibility. The popular media outlets that consumers consult to build their "criteria of product selection" must present DRM in a "positive" light in order to build public support and neutralize any "negative press" in regards to the DRM product. Finally, the content providers will need to work closely with the hardware vendors to determine how best to implement DRM "roll-out" to the consumers.