Intel Stands Up For Consumers in Next-gen DVD War 332
Sanity writes "According to a Macworld story, Intel is standing up for the interests of consumers in the war between Blue-ray and HD-DVD, by making its support for either format contingent on support for 'mandatory managed copy', the ability to copy content to 'home servers' so that it can be accessed from around the home. While it is refreshing to see someone consider the (often ignored) interest of consumers in the world of DRM, it appears that 'mandatory managed copy' will still allow content producers to limit what consumers can do with the content and equipment they own well beyond the limitations imposed by copyright law. Thus the question over DRM remains: should we be policed by our own property?"
DRM will never work (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DRM will never work (Score:4, Funny)
I wish they'd understand that.
I'm kinda glad they don't...
DRM is effectively pro commercial piracy (Score:3, Insightful)
If DRM inhibits the casual, non-profit copier, but does nothing to stop organized crime from making and selling copies by the hundreds of thousands, then DRM is on-balance favoring organized commercial piracy.
But it goes even further than that. By reducing private copying, DRM creates a much larger market for the copies made by organized crime. There is nothing the high volume criminal piracy rings must love more than the RIAA/MPAA's strong curtail
Re:DRM will never work (Score:4, Insightful)
If all the ins and outs are protected digital your "if i can see it I can record it" will be bunk. Unless you're talking shakey cam pointed at your TV
(and yes sure, drm can be cracked... but that's hardly the point)
e.
Re:DRM will never work (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:DRM will never work (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DRM will never work (Score:2)
Show me this mid-level analog 720p/1080i capture device... It might exist on a prosumer level, or broadcast level... but not so much on the consumer level. but prove me wrong please!
Re:DRM will never work (Score:4, Informative)
Re:DRM will never work (Score:2)
Re:DRM will never work (Score:2)
Re:DRM will never work (Score:5, Insightful)
(and yes sure, drm can be cracked... but that's hardly the point)
If I cannot do with the content what I want to do with the content, I will not buy the content. If I cannot buy equipment that will let me do what I want with the content, I will not buy the equipment. DRM cracked or not, if the products (content and content players) restrict me from doing what I want, the producers will lose me as a customer.
There are vast numbers of ways to spend my time that I will not sacrifice my freedom at the alter of entertainment. Maybe I will end up in the minority from the mindless masses. That's my choice. But they (entertainment industry companies) face two dilemas getting this to come about.
1. The content producers and content player companies will always be at odds. The producers want more enforced control but the player companies know that less control will increase sales. This will not change. Even Sony's movie and music arms can't fully bring the electronic side in line.
2. Even "average" users expect to be able to move content around and watch it without having to jump through hoops. There are no examples of content and products with hard DRM that have been a success. iTunes and DVD do not have hard DRM. No one I know, for example, wants to buy a song that can only be played on one computer and not moved to a player or a new computer like some music services do.
I, therefore, feel pretty comfortable that full control DRM will not succeed in the marketplace. This is why those that want it are trying to get laws passed to mandate it.
Re:DRM will never work (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:DRM will never work (Score:2)
Re:DRM will never work (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, this is only approximately the case. Indeed, you can record any analog output they produce. However, high-quality output is going to be via digial channels, and they have total control over these (imagine a DVD player that doesn't output a picture unless the TV produced a digitally signed certificate).
Now, as long as no-one forced you to by DRM'ed media (i.e. it's private industry doing whatever they want with their product), it's difficult to argue against -- exactly because it has nothing to do with copyright law. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the ??AA will try to get Congress to pass a "DRM is mandatory" law (e.g. in response to the recent ruling on the Broadcast Flag).
Till then, expect to pay more for a Trusted-Computing free PC (think of it as your "??AA cartel tax").
Re:DRM will never work (Score:2)
Ever heard of challenge-response authentication? [wikipedia.org]
Re:DRM will never work (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Buy cheap TV/DVD player/Tuner/etc... that legitimately decodes the signal (or eventually simulate it in software)
2. Remove signal decoding hardware/software from cheap device
3. Output perfect digital copies to your own blank media in order to give/sell them to others to copy
4. ??????
5. Profit!
DRM just raises the dififculty level of making "perfect" digital copies, it doesn't actually prevent it as long as anyone can buy a cheap device that decodes and provides an output of the information.
It's the old "you can't have your cake and eat it too" problem. You can't let someone play something, then expect to be able to prevent them from re-recording that play of it.
What DRM does do in the long run (IMHO), is reduce the ranks of IP piracy to those who are willing to go to greater efforts to break the DRM, thus empowering the professional pirates in it for the money at the expense of their normal customer who would just copy it for themselves instead of setting up a whole worldwide internet business based on it.
Re:DRM will never work (Score:2)
The system doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to "work" most
Re:DRM will never work (Score:4, Insightful)
Joe Schmo should be able to make copies, but can't. In fact, the black market pirate should also be allowed to make copies, but is not allowed to sell or otherwise distribute them. Trying to prevent the crime from happening is the wrong approach in this case. The individual is responsible for obeying the law, and it's up to the law to catch him if he commits a crime.
We don't have governors in our cars to prevent us from speeding, so why should we have DRM on our media to prevent us from copying it? In the end, DRM prevents legitimate use of data, but does nothing to stop the illegal sale of that data by criminals with the means (and motivation) to break the DRM.
In that sense, DRM does not work.
Re:DRM will never work (Score:2)
Challenge-response offers no protection from a
man-in-the-middle attack. If I control both ends
of the connecting cable, then there's nothing you
can do to stop me.
Re:DRM will never work (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think you understand what digitally signed certificates are or how they work. The point of this idea (mostly encountered under the 'public key cryptography' umbrella) is that I can prove to you that I am who I claim to be without allowing you to impersonate me. In brief, the idea is as follows:
There exists two functions, "encrypt" and "decrypt" which are inverses to one another. The "encryption" function is publicly known, but only specific people (the TV in our example) knows how to "decrypt". Now the DVD player generates a random message, "encrypts" it, and gives the result to the TV. The TV "decrypts" it and returns the result, and the DVD can compare that to the original. Note that capturing the data in transit will do you no good -- the data was random! The "certificate" consisted in the ability to do something.
This depends, of course, on the encryption function being "one-way", in that it is very hard to compute the decryption functions from it. All modern cryptography depends on such functions. Finally, in case you were thinking of learning the secret ("decryption function") directly from the TV hardware, there exist tampre-proof chips that break when you try to do that.
Re:DRM will never work (Score:2)
Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet. -Bruce Schneier
Re:DRM will never work (Score:2, Informative)
Re:DRM will never work (Score:2, Insightful)
Case closed.
Record it with what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Record it with what? (Score:3, Insightful)
coincide with the interests of the content producers.
At least for now.
Re:DRM will never work (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:DRM will never work (Score:2)
The subject said it all (or most) (Score:3, Insightful)
If we don't own it, then don't bother *selling* it.
If you wish to call it renting, or leasing, then call it that.
FYI- there is *NO* such thing as Intellectual Property. It doesn't exist. It's not a material object.
No such thing as Intellectual Property? (Score:5, Funny)
I just bought 40 acres of Intellectual Property on ebay and got an incredible 1.9% finance rate!
Re:The subject said it all (or most) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The subject said it all (or most) (Score:2)
Re:The subject said it all (or most) (Score:2)
And, not to disagree again, but there's also a large body of law that says it does.
Re:The subject said it all (or most) (Score:2)
If we don't own it, then don't bother *selling* it.
If you wish to call it renting, or leasing, then call it that.
FYI- there is *NO* such thing as Intellectual Property. It doesn't exist. It's not a material object.
It isn't YOUR content, even though I don't really care for most of the DRM crap myself.
And they can sell it, it is called selling 'usage' - so you are bound to the terms of 'usage' by any type of media you purchase.
If it
Re:The subject said it all (or most) (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you'll find that most of us gun "nuts" are not at all opposed to technology, not even that technology. What we're opposed to is the mandatory use of the technology. In other words, I'd like to know that my wife, or a friend of mine, can pick up my gun and use it with needing to cut off my fingers first, or having the Magic Bracelet on. For that matter, I'd like to be able to pick up my own gun and use it with gloves on, or whether or not my Magic Bracelet's batteries work in sub-zero weather.
I can think of some occasions where I'd like to know that only I could use my gun. But more importantly, I can think of endless circumstances when I'd want the choice to not rely on such technology. Completely aside from the fact that such tech could be highly unreliable under rough circumstances, it's the principle of the thing. And we already have trigger locks, gun safes, parents, and brains to prevent misuse. You know, the same brains that parents use to talk their kids through not killing themselves by drinking drain cleaner or driving the family car off a cliff.
You'd think, for as much as the left wing talks about choice and freedom, and bitches about the Bush administration and the Patriot Act, that the left would be the very first group to stand up and keep the government from forcing loopy personal tech into use on a simple metal tool. The murders in my county this month have been by gang members with knives. I suppose the cure for that is Smart Knife Technology(tm)?
Mandatory Smart Gun tech isn't any more appropriate than Smart Lawn Mower tech would be in really saving lives. It will, though, be a shining monument to government control in place of personal accountability. Where were the high number of gun deaths back when you could mail-order a gun from Sears and have it shipped to your house? What's changed since then... then lethality of guns, or the culture? Fix the no-consequences culture, and leave the machetes, knives, baseball bats, guns, flammable liquids, garden fertilizer, and family cars out of the personal behavior regulation equation.
Damn! Wish I had mod points. (Score:2)
Kinda makes me feel like I'm not in Slashdot anymore, but that's a different movie...
No? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, but the moment someone breaks fair use and delves into full-scale copyright violation, they lose their right to honestly answer in the negative. However, for those who do follow fair-use laws, we should not be limited by our technology by treating us as guilty until forced (by way of DRM) to be innocent.
Re:No? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
it appears that 'mandatory managed copy' will still allow content producers to limit what consumers can do with the content and equipment they own well beyond the limitations imposed by copyright law.
I cringe. You do not own the content. You bought specific use rights. They sold you the content contingent on certain usage standards you agreed to. Ergo, you only
generously, a tool (Score:2)
Re:Well... (Score:2)
Re:Well... (Score:2)
It doesn't "simply" do anything. It's capable of doing a lot of things I may never even know about.
And, what contract are you talking about? In my experience, the distibutors do their best to keep consumers from knowing what it is they do and don't have the right to do. Can you explain how that could be considered a contract?
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM attempts to enforces a superset of restrictiosn above and beyond copyright law: That I can't play a DVD in an 'unauthorized player', that my DVD player refuses to activate its high-quality digital outputs, that I cannot fast-forward past commercials. That my DVD player refuses to play dvd's purchased on vacation. And then the DMCA makes it illegal to bypass these controls.
Worse, there is no limit as to what other controls may be applied by DRM, controls far above and beyond what copyright law allows.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm, what you seem to be implying is that upon purchase you are entering into a contractual agreement with the dvd manufacturer. I dunno where you buy your DVD's at, but, I've never signed or even had a gentleman's handshake in binding agreement as to what I would or would not do with a DVD I purchased. I never agreed to anything but
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
And what usage standards exactly did I agree to when I last bought a DVD? As far as I recall I agreed to nothing, the cashiere did not make me sign a contract nor did I click through some "ageement" when I first played it. The only thing governing my use of this media I PURCHASED is copyright and now (unfortunately) the DMCA.
Anybody who tells you otherwis
What's even worse... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
DRM is intended to stop the consumer from exercising many of his/her fair use rights (see "copy it" and "remix it" above). DRM does *not* stop the distribution of copies, which is actually illegal.
Down with the DMCA!!!
absolutely false (Score:3, Insightful)
I really, really hate the word "consumer" (Score:2, Insightful)
Intel protects business interests! News at 11. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Intel protects business interests! News at 11. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Intel protects business interests! News at 11. (Score:2)
They're not standing up for consumers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Next you'll be telling me that they're standing up for my rights by including mandatory DRM management at the hardware level and putting a serial# on each chip to uniquely identify a PC.
Somehow I doubt it... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Somehow I doubt it... (Score:2)
Because, of course, there are no "people" working for Intel, investing in Intel, driving Intel's marketing studies, or purchasing their products. And there are no people working for AMD or anyone else that competes with them. *sigh*
Companies like Intel don't exist to "help" people in the charity sense - they exist to provide customers (the market) what they want, and to be competitive doing so. If they can't do that profitably, they'll cease to exist.
Re:Somehow I doubt it... (Score:2)
So... what's not to like? Everyone that works for that company gets the benefit of a thriving company to work for, and the people that purchase or use what that company produces benefit. I guess your tone just sounded negative.
Never-ending Battle (Score:5, Insightful)
Stand up for consumers??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stand up for consumers??? (Score:2)
More like it will fit into their deal with Apple on processors & chipsets for their forthcoming media devices.
Damien
Re:Stand up for consumers??? (Score:2)
Sometimes it's gets pretty stupid around here (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, since it's only your property if you choose to buy it, then YES. Not because it's right or fair, but because YOU ACCEPTED THE DEAL.
If you don't like it, don't buy it in the first place.
Re:Sometimes it's gets pretty stupid around here (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sometimes it's gets pretty stupid around here (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, since it's only your property if you choose to buy it, then YES. Not because it's right or fair, but because YOU ACCEPTED THE DEAL."
While on principle I agree folks should boycott DRM-laden devices... you sometimes don't know you've been crippled by DRM until it's too late.
You bring home your uber progressive scan DVD player only to find out it won't do anything other than 480p out of the analog component inputs (i.e. 720p,1080i, 1080p ONLY through the digital "protected" outputs!) For the sake of argument lets say you didn't figure this out until after the return period passed.
And let's not start slurping on intel's knob just yet, after all thanks to intel and the like we won't have much choice but to be computing on a "trusted computing" platform which will probably only allow approved DRM laden media software to run on it (yeah that's a little FUD'ish on my part, but I don't think it's too far off the realm of possibility)
e.
Re:Sometimes it's gets pretty stupid around here (Score:2, Funny)
If you don't like it, don't buy it in the first place.
Exacly why I'll download it.
Re:Sometimes it's gets pretty stupid around here (Score:2)
Usualy were a boycot works well is were you are attempting to generate emotion for some court proceeding. Boycots generate alot of publicity and if your cause is verbal enough you can sway the minds of a potential jury. A lawsuite forcing the DRM people to place all sorts of warnings about thier products on the package and a mandated return peri
What if DRM were for regular products... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What if DRM were for regular products... (Score:3, Insightful)
DRM is not a good thing, but not because it's unique to digital media.
Consumer Interest or viiv's future? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just my 2 cents
drm simply doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
when you pit the well-funded r&d department of a major corporation against a million highly motivated, poor teenagers who want their media fix, the teenagers win, every single time
you can't control the consumer
listen again, very carefully, dear corporate megalomaniacs:
you can't control the consumer
make it too constrictive, and no one will buy
give them no other option than to buy you, and it will be hacked
that's really about it
so give it up
Re:drm simply doesn't matter (Score:3)
Re:drm simply doesn't matter (Score:2)
a lot of things are illegal that shouldn't be (Score:2)
now go look at your average highway
now there's no slippery slope here in my argument: i am not saying murder is ok, i'm saying people speed on open highways: there is a difference, and there is NO slippery slope on the issue
now, you tell me if armageddeon level moral invectives is appropriate for talking about ripping off record companies on your living room computer
is it like speeding? or is it like murder?
if i pass a law in your town saying your hedges have to be 18" hi
Argh, DVDs suck (Score:4, Interesting)
stand up for consumers? (Score:2, Interesting)
don't like DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
it really, really is that simple.
if people don't buy DRM, companies will make products without it and lobby to remove laws stopping them from selling the products people will buy.
however the chance of Joe Consumer giving a shit == null.
Re:don't like DRM? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:don't like DRM? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? Why limit the contracts under which a company can sell its product? It is not like we need DVD players to eat or breathe, or that there is only one provider of DVD players. Some people will trade not being able to copy a DVD for a lower price or higher quality.
Buy the products whose contracts you like if you care about contracts. Joe Consumer should not be legally protected from ignorance when purchasing a non-essential item such as a DVD player.
Re:don't like DRM? (Score:2)
Intel and Microsoft (Score:2)
Same business interests sure but Microsoft probably has a little more clout here than Intel does. For me, this would be the deciding factor between HD DVD and Blu-Ray.
Wrote a bit more about this here [stevex.net].
No I should not be policed by my equipment.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Write your congressman (or whatever you have in your country) tell them you want Fair Use to be made word of law not just implied. Tell them what you believe "fair use" means and that you want that to be law. You want all the anti-fairuse tech, in fact all tech that limits you in anyway even similar to this made illegal.
Re:No I should not be policed by my equipment.... (Score:2)
Managed copy and attack trees (Score:5, Insightful)
But managed copy allows movies to be trans-DRMed into Windows Media DRM (and possibly others, like FairPlay), thus introducing an OR into the attack tree. To access the content, you only have to break AACS or WMDRM (or FairPlay or whatever). This makes the overall system much weaker (which is good or bad, depending on your viewpoint).
And BTW, why isn't Intel lobbying the DVD Forum/DVD CCA to allow managed copy for regular DVDs? It'll be a curious world where you're legally allowed to copy HD-DVDs but not "inferior" DVDs.
Never will I buy DRM-hardware (Score:3, Interesting)
If it ends up with Intel, AMD, IBM, ARM, et.al. only producing DRM hardware then I'll stay with my current hardware (I'm not a gamer). I'd rather wait an extra second/minute/hour for some piece of software to do it's processing than being robbed of my rights given to me by eons of trade traditions and by law when I buy hardware or software - If I don't own what I buy then why am I paying for it as if I an buying it and not renting it under some strange company's oppinion of what I can and cannot do with it???
I am a huge fan of F/OSS, but never ever will I buy hardware that only works with DRM or software for that matter. Might I add that I havn't bought a piece of software since '97 when I made a total switch to GNU/Linux!
By the way, DRM stands for Dumb, Ridiculous Monopoly.
I'm Sorry; This is Guff (Score:3, Informative)
Intel is talking out of both sides of their mouth. If they really gave a damn about the rights of citizens, they would tell Hollywood to cram it, repudiate CPRM and CPPM, and lobby for copyright reform.
I'm not impressed.
Schwab
Standing up for whom? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, MacWorld reporting such favorable news towards Intel is no kawinki-dink either.
Oh well, I suppose all news is biased in some way or another. Excuse me while I go watch Fox News now.
DRM circumvention (Score:2)
Re:DRM circumvention (Score:2)
"Remember that circumventing DRM is not forbidden in many countries yet."
Intel wants unification, not dual support (Score:5, Informative)
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051004-538
As you can see from my coverage here, Intel isn't hinging support for Blu-ray on Managed Copy support. They're going to have to support it either way. Rather, Intel is trying to get the two parties together again to talk about unification, but they're stressing the importance of managed copy to the whole discussion.
Own? (Score:2, Interesting)
Dude, I don't think we own those properties. We purchased the right to use the content. If we own the properties, shouldn't we get a share of the royalty?
Fair Use. (Score:2)
Question is misleading (Score:2)
This question begs that the property would prevent us from violating law. In truth, none of the DRM solutions do that - they simply make it extremely difficult to NOT purchase redundant licenses, licenses that ARE NOT DEMANDED by the law.
That is not policing, and is merely a tool to produce a new revenue stream. In the immortal words of Steve Wright... "I bought some batteries, but they weren't included... so I had to b
Copyright is fruitless for both sides (Score:2)
In this situation, copyright doesn't make sense. Copyright uses coercion to supply an author with zero reason to police the distribution of their work. The laws also use coercion to give the consumer a loophole to an author's "property."
Honestly, without copyright law, we'd have two situations I forsee:
1. Authors develop copy protection schemes to control access.
2. Authors can freely distribute the work
Re:Floppy copy restrictions? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, because the internet grew up and people got used to getting stuff for free.
Re:Floppy copy restrictions? (Score:5, Informative)
Some more expensive programs came with 'dongles' that were even worse. In order to run the software you had to reconfigure your parallel port with a hardware device. If you ran several of these high end programs such as Autocad you had all these dongles daisy chained - it was insane. Plus it caused problems with certain software / printers.
Despite the so called copy protection, people still defeated it, yet everyone suffered. I just don't think DRM works - its costs are way higher than its benefits. I've got 6 machines here at home, I can see DRM restricting me to one machine or only working under windows despite that I dual boot XP / Linux.
I love to read all the free marketeers here tell us that the free market will fix this - it won't. All the large studios who control the content are supporting this en block. The consumer doesn't stand a chance. Any concessions that are made might allow me the 'privledge' of copying only on a machine running on an Intel(c) Trusted Computer under Microsoft(c) Longhorn but thats it.
should we get to read before we sign? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they're going to sell a DVD, they should have to list any kinds of user limitations up front. Can't skip the FBI screen? List it. etc. If you don't agree, you don't buy.
I'm sure that the MPAA could develop a standard, so announcing this info would be as simple as a short acronym on the label or in the ad.
If they're going to revoke my rights to the unlimited use of a product, it needs to be spelled out before they sell the thing to me, NOT afterwards. None of this 'well, what did you expect?' nonesense. The burden is on them to be upfront. Shrinkwrap denial of rights should be illegal.
You are correct, sir (or ma'm) (Score:2, Interesting)
Then, the product cannot be returned for a refund (most places will only exchange for the same product).
This is why I no longer purchase their products.
Re:should we be policed by our own property? (Score:2)
Fine, but if that's what they want to do, then they have to actually do it. If they want to sell viewing rights to a DVD but retain ownership of that DVD, then why don't they? I'll tell you why. It's because they want to commit fraud.
They want to give every appearance of selling the whole unit..
Re:Our own Fault (Score:2)
No. We haven't. YOU may have, but not me. So, it is entirely YOUR fault.
Re:Blockbuster and NetFlix (Score:2)
Re:summary of pro / con (Score:2)
Your flat out wrong on that. They are directly interested in taking away our freedom in every possible way. They want devices which are artificially single purpose and crippled. They want a constant stream of revenue based on purchasing the same material over and over. These scumbags are actively spending millions upon millions to make sure that in 5 years you don't hav
Re:summary of pro / con (Score:2)
And you're not allowed to cut those tags off mattresses.
If I want to jigger my microwave to work with the door open or my nailgun to work as a real gun, I can do it. If I NEED to do it, I have that option. DRM doesn't give you that option.
(as for the money matter... I classify THAT as DRM)