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The Choice Between DRM and Security
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jan 13, 2006 09:53 AM
from the no-choice-at-all dept.
from the no-choice-at-all dept.
gormanly writes "Victor Yodaiken has an article up on Groklaw in which he discusses how DRM may decrease security and reliability. He raises several questions that the developers of DRM technologies ought to answer - because not all computers are merely personal entertainment systems for 'content' consumers." From the article: "Sony BMG put DRM software onto CDs that broke the basic system security and made the entire system slower and less reliable. Imagine that your children put such a CD on your computer and opened an avenue for hackers to make copies of your business memos and personal email ... We are entering the era of ubiquitous and safety critical computing, but the developers of DRM technologies seem to believe that computers are nothing more than personal entertainment systems for consumers. This belief is convenient, because creating DRM mechanisms that respect security, safety, and reliability concerns is going to be an expensive and complex engineering task."
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The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listeners (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps these new DRM actions overstep the bounds of consumer rights so far that it ensures copyrights will always be in place? What I mean is that the focus and question seems to not be, "What are the artist's musician's rights?" so much as "What rights do we even have as consumers?"
Have I angered the mod gods with my slightly offtopic (and idealistic) Bowie quote?
Re:The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listener (Score:3, Funny)
Probably not. You probably just reminded them of the babe.
Re:The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listener (Score:3)
Re:The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listener (Score:3)
Re:The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listener (Score:3)
Re:The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listener (Score:3)
Re:The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listener (Score:3)
Re:The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listener (Score:2, Funny)
I disagree... especially with crusaders like the Bearded RMS [slashdot.org] rallying troops against the encroaching evil DRM-Empire.
Re:The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listener (Score:5, Interesting)
When I buy DRMed music by downloading it to my own PC, then (some implementations of) DRM will bind the downloaded music to a licencing key on my machine. So if the bought and downloaded music is intended as a birthday gift for someone else, how will he/she be able to play it on his/her PC? Or how will I be able to play it on my laptop, if I downloaded it on my desktop?
While DRM is intended to increase music sales, the implementation of DRM technologies that binds a DRMed tracks to a license key on the downloading PC will prevent this track from playing on other (peoples) machines. So buying DRMed music as a gift for someone else won't be an option if DRM prevents playback on other PC - which isn't very good for music sales.
Rootkits and security holes are just one kinf of pain that comes with DRM. The inability to playback bought tracks on the OS of your choice (say Linux), or a different PC than the one used for the download, is another pain.
Parent
Re:The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listener (Score:3, Insightful)
But to address some of your points:
So if the bought and downloaded music is intended as a birthday gift for someone else, how will he/she be able to play it on his/her PC?
iTunes, and I would guess other music downloading services, offer gift certificates that you can give instead of the actual music itself. Or, you can always download the music and make an audio CD to give.
Or how will I be able to play it on my laptop, if I downloaded it on my desktop?
Once again, iTunes, and I would as
Re:The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listener (Score:3, Insightful)
An important correction: you can currently download the music and make an audio CD to give. You don't know that will be true in the future, and if the RIAA gets their way, it probably won't be.
Re:The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listener (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know about you, but most people would consider a BURNED CD somewhat of a cheap gift, regardless of if you paid for the tracks or not
Re:The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listener (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, if you suddenly lose access to all your accounts, contact Apple.
Re:The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listener (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Download illegal copies that have been cracked. We're already starting to see this.
2. Buy fewer CDs if they don't work "correctly," i.e. you can't transfer them to an iPod or r
Re:The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listener (Score:5, Insightful)
When that executive of a recording industry association in Europe (I forget which one) said that 'being able to listen to the music you bought off us on a Mac or Linux is a privilege and not a right' he was entirely wrong. No, his association companies receiving my money is a privilege and not a right, and a privilege I can revoke at any time.
If you don't like DRM, be a customer not a consumer - revoke the offending company's privileges and buy your music elsewhere. Musical ability is extremely common in the human population, and the internet has made it easier than ever for people to distribute their work. What the record companies put out is in the main the cult of the personality.
Parent
Re:The Rights of Artists Vs the Rights of Listener (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Electricity and running water (Score:3, Funny)
Once something is digital, it flows free (Score:5, Interesting)
1. One goal of DRM developers is to prevent "digitization".
That first point sums it up. How do you stop something in its raw digital format from being copied?
You can't, David Bowie is correct in his assumption about music flowing freely like electricity or water.
Maybe one possible scenario is that a digital tax will be added to all machines that can play digitized music/games/etc. in order to make up for the lost revenue.
Another idea is to package the music/software/game with something that is above and beyond what you would normally get from just a plain disc. Add something to the packaging that makes people want to buy the product and not just download it. You could add writing, pictures or objects that people could enjoy that can't be easily reproduced with a copy program.
Re:Once something is digital, it flows free (Score:2)
Re:Once something is digital, it flows free (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Once something is digital, it flows free (Score:3, Interesting)
And how the hell do you quantify this lost revenue?? Company A: "hmmm, we signed up this crap music act, processed the shit out of their performance and spent a gazillion dollars marketing it trying to make out gullible target market, i mean valuable consumers, go out and buy it. But nobody is buying it because they're all pirating it. So please can you give us a gazillion dol
Responsible software? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Responsible software? (Score:3, Interesting)
One last Rally (Score:5, Insightful)
The media industry is about to die the same way the blacksmithing and wagonsmithing (?) industries died with the advent of the car.
They're desperately trying to hold on and to make themselves work in the new order, but it's just not happening. The cat's out of the bag. The genie's out of the bottle, etc.
Some companies are very openly embracing the new reality and adjusting their business models-- Apple, for example. They use DRM as a watch word to make the others feel safe and secure as Apple slowly digests their dying corpus. But Apple *IS* digesting them.
DRM is the media industry's last rally before the old dinosaurs die and the young, swift mammals take over. It sounds bad, but will never be anything but a minor annoyance.
Re:One last Rally (Score:3, Interesting)
Currently there is no "CONTENT
No! Wrong! (Score:5, Insightful)
It is an "impossible" engineering task.
Repeat after me.
There is no such thing as DRM.
There is no such thing as DRM!
There has never been a functional DRM system, and there never will be, because it is impossible to create one. You can cripple your products, annoy or even imprison your customers, and shut out OS/FS competitors from compatibility, but you cannot "manage" your "digital restrictions." Not in this universe.
It's a jail. Things only need to escape once. Once they escape they're on the internet in open formats and the game is over.
Re:No! Wrong! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:No! Wrong! (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in the days of Shakespeare, when copyright didn't really exist, there were people with trained memories who would go to the first night of one of his plays, make notes, and then later r
Re:No! Wrong! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No! Wrong!; correct but wrong reason (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with your position but I disagree with your reasoning. The failure of DRM is in that you have to give the consumer both the lock and the key. If you don't give them the key then they can't use it...ever!
Plug the analog hole. Make circumvention illegal. Etc. Etc. All it is is restraining how the user can use the key. There's no way, in this case, to have your cake and eat it too.
This ga
DRM is avoiding the underlying issue. (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM is what the industry is using to avoid the real issue at hand. The real issue is that movie and music industry have become too greedy and see the consumer as a revenue source and not a customer. They have come to expect a certain amount of money without adapting to a changing marketplace. People expect movies and music to be of high quality and freely transferable to other devices like iPods. The industry won't except that because their business model has worked for decades without problems. With the growing digital media revolution, they have found it difficult to adapt, so out of fear and ignorance they have chosen draconian DRM measures to safeguard their empire instead of pleasing the paying consumer. While it may work in the short term, it is destined to fail in the long wrong because the consumer's dollar has the final say... I hope.
http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]It's really quite simple - virus scan! (Score:4, Insightful)
I know, I know - if the DRM wasn't there to begin with it wouldn't be an issue. But like virii and malware, it is probably here to stay. Just give me reliable tools to crush this stuff.
Steve
There are no answers (Score:2, Insightful)
And how likely is it that they'll ever be forced to answer these questions? Considering the deep pockets of both the music and video industries and how much pull they have via their lobbyists, it's likely they'll never be pressed to answer these types of important questions. Without some more high profile issues like those witne
Why not use DRM for security (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Because *you* are the threat (Score:3, Interesting)
Bingo. You've gone straight to the heart of the issue.
For security today, on most desktop machines, that premise matches reality. Most desktop machines are compromised Windows boxen. Most are run by people who will download and install hostile software. The problem of DRM is a lot like the problem of keeping transactions secure on a compromised box, and not just because both are impossible.
T
DRM vs. other goals (Score:5, Insightful)
The most convincing argument the article brought was, what would happen if the 'analog hole' gets plugged, and every analog recording device has to comply with DRM. Imagine the bad boys robbing a store just taking a portable video player first and start playing a movie in front of the surveillance camera: According to the potential law the camera has to stop recording, otherwise it would record an illicit copy of the movie! But if surveillance cameras are taken out of the law, who hinders the bad boys to buy one and take it to the cinema to record the movie?
DRM is not orthogonal to other computer tasks. It gets in the way of everything. It has to audit every piece of information moved. And it is not able to take in account the importance of the movement or the effects it has if it stops the movement of information. It can't decide from the context if it should shut down the task or let it run. It's all or nothing. If it encounters a trigger, it will shut down the task anyway, may the data stream be generated by the underage son trying to rip a CD or by the brake sensors telling the brake to stop the car immediately.
Freedom of Choice (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end, it's not about DRM software, system security, greed or anything else. It boils down to this: am I free to do what I want? To listen to the music I want when I want, to watch the TV programs I want to watch, to download the internet content/software I want to have on my machine. To quote the phrase, "freedom isn't free," nor is it profitable.
If "consumers" (and that word should become an epithet) are allowed to have true choice, free access to everything, they will choose the things they want. If the companies providing those things charge a minimal fee for the privilege, they will make money. The conflict arises because "consumers" want something for nothing and producers want more money than is reasonable for their products, beyond the mere expense of producing them.
It's all going to come to a head eventually. Things can either be free or they can be metered, like electricity and water. And don't forget, the power company can cut you off at any time. Of course, if you're smart, you can generate you're own electricity. In the end it's a battle of wits between producers and consumers; I think it's safe to say the consumers hold the ultimate edge, for if they don't consume, producers will not have the resources to produce.
A new approach to intellectual property (Score:3, Insightful)
This kind of myopia is all too common (Score:3, Insightful)
ATTENTION NOKIA: YOUR PROGRAM IS FOR MY FREAKING PHONE YOU SELF-OBSESSED MORONS!!! Why the hell should it take up valuable resources and screen real estate ALL the time? Sheesh.
"Impossible DRM" (Score:3, Interesting)
The real problem with, say, the Sony/Sunncomm DRM is that it's trying to prevent you from copying files that are written in an open format. Doing this means removing functionality from a system. Therefore the DRM must damage your system, but fortunately can only work on specific systems.
The type of DRM I described in the first paragraph is what the record companies really want. And if there must be a DRM system, I'd really it rather be one that wasn't going to try to harm my computer.
I guess the problem is that as long as the model persists in which albums are sold in physical form in stores and have to play on a variety of "consumer electronic" devices without hassle they will always have to be protected by the harmful type of DRM if they are to be protected. And yet this type of DRM is also doomed to failure (anything released on a CD that can be read in anything resembling a CD player will be on the Internet within a few days of its release, regardless of the DRM attached to it). It appears that DRM that degrades a CD's quality has been rejected, and we seem to be in the process of loudly rejecting DRM that tries to modify users' computers. I don't know if there are any more steps beyond creating a new encrypted music format and protecting the secret better than they did with DVDs.
Re:"Impossible DRM" (Score:3, Insightful)
DRM undermines the system _by design_: its sole function is to prevent people from accessing data that the copyright owner refuses to let them access. It's impossible to do that effectively without 'undermining the system' by preventing the user from using it in the way they want to use it: to be effective DRM has to be built into the operating system at the very lowest level.
It also opens up plenty of new opportunities for the 'b
The outcome is in out hands (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.stockmarketgarden.com/ [stockmarketgarden.com]
Format change (Score:3, Insightful)
The music industry thrived on the big format changes from LP to tape, and from tape to CD. Now, CD can easily become the new format without having to go back and buy it.
Their solution? Make the conversion cost you money. It's just the latest degradation of fair use.
Felten on CD copy protection and spyware (Score:5, Informative)
Unrealistic expectations (Score:5, Interesting)
Next came 78's. These were cast in a mold and made of the miracle plastic bakelite. Since the recording machinery was expensive and complex, as was the disk manufacturing process, the door was opened to both rights management and mass production. Improvements in technology lead to the 45 and the 33 &1/3 LP & EP albums.
While the technologies which used mechanical force were dominating the marketplace, a competing technology, based on magnetic recording also existed. Magnetic recording was less expensive, and much harder to mass-produce, but it was capable of making copies fairly easily. The new difficulty was that a small portion of the magnetic image was erased every time it was played.
Finally the digital technology emerged as the primary vehicle for copyrighted audio materials. At first it was not a problem, because individual users were unable to afford the technology to duplicate and/or create recordings which were theoretically perfect copies. But today it's hard to get a computer that can't accomplish this feat. So the audio industry turned to the promise of DRM. Unfortunately, though it will take many more incidents like Sony's debacle, we will reach a level of understanding where we realize that as long as the technology is in the hands of everyone that can duplicate these forms of media, that they will be copied.
The only way that we will see any form of successful rights management will be for the audio industry to develop a technology which is as popular and as acceptable as the LP. It may take the form of a holographic crystal or some other 'futuristic' media. But as long as the ability to manipulate the bits is available to end users, DRM will continue to fail. IMHO it is an unrealistic expectation on the part of the audio industry to believe that there will ever be a digital solution to a digital problem. In the meantime I believe that any damage to computers and infrastructure brought on by companies who cannot accept the fact that DRM will never work should be punished to the full extent of the law.
"personal entertainment systems for consumers" (Score:3, Interesting)
Worse than that, they seem to have this impression that it's okay to modify my computer to work how they think it should. This isn't even just DRM, I'm getting incredibly fed up with programs which automatically install themselves on the desktop/quick launch bar (the Quicktime player, as an easy example, which I almost solely want to launch by double clicking on a file), and/or auto-run at startup (Creative used to be terrible for this - install soundcard drivers, and suddenly it plays an intro movie on the desktop at login, and you have an application launcher stuck to the top of your screen).
</rant>
Re:DRM = liberty (Score:2)
I did not realise that ration argument had become a disciple of text substitution.
Don't need a why. (Score:2)
I liken this problem to speeding. Everyone speeds so
Misquote (Score:3, Informative)
Most people don't even know what a ROOTKIT is, so why should they care about it?"
-- Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG's global digital business division
What makes you think you get a choice (Score:3, Informative)
Unless you have a pretty impressive lab in your garage, capable of stripping an IC layer by layer and e-beaming the results to detect stored charges, you don't have access to the hardware. Next!
They'll have to discount it heavily, or have some pretty compelling content (which is nowhere to be seen) before I buy.
Hate to break the news, but it's in all o