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The DRM Scorecard
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Aug 01, 2007 07:26 PM
from the guess-who's-ahead dept.
from the guess-who's-ahead dept.
An anonymous reader writes "InfoWeek blogger Alex Wolfe put together a scorecard which makes the obvious but interesting point that, when you list every major DRM technology implemented to "protect" music and video, they've all been cracked. This includes Apple's FairPlay, Microsoft's Windows Media DRM, the old-style Content Scrambling System (CSS) used on early DVDs and the new AACS for high-definition DVDs. And of course there was the Sony Rootkit disaster of 2005. Can anyone think of a DRM technology which hasn't been cracked, and of course this begs the obvious question: Why doesn't the industry just give up and go DRM-free?"
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Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
It discourages casual copying, nothing more, but I can't imagine it was intended to do any more. Nobody's that stupid.
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
To do otherwise is naive at best.
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Funny)
"You mean you can supply me with uncrackable protection from unauthorized copying?"
"That's right!"
"Wow, and I don't really understand all this stuff, but when it gets cracked later this month I'll keep sending you your checks."
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that assuming everyone in the entire media industry has the combined intelligence of a bowl of fruit is irrational and unreasonable, malice (although not exactly the "Buwahahaha evil" type of malice) is the most reasonable explanation.
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they determine that the cost of adding DRM (licensing fees, lost sales, etc.) is less than the benefit (more legal purchases in place of casual copying), then they can say that DRM helps them (in the short term). I think that they have believed this to be the case.
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Keys work locks (Score:5, Insightful)
Locks are a good way to keep honest people honest, but they should be simple and unobtrusive. The reason why we have key locks on our front doors instead of complicated biometric systems (this may be the wrong audience for this comment) is that they are simple, cheap and less prone to failure.
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's music exec Joe Shmoe. He's fairly intelligent when it comes to business related topics. He has a masters in BA. He doesn't understand jack about all that computer stuff, but that's not his biz. His biz is music.
Then here's Alex. He may or may not have a degree, but he sells Joe the DRM tools for his music. He knows both, commerce and computers.
Joe realized that Alex' DRM tools were cracked. Alex knows that too, and he knows well that the spin of "we make it uncrackable" doesn't hold water. But he also knows how Joe thinks. His selling strategy thus is:
1. Cracking DRM is another burden, which keeps a few more people from copying.
2. Cracking DRM has been made illegal, which keeps another few more from copying.
3. Our DRM solution costs less than the losses due to illegal copying.
Joe understands that. And thus Joe buys.
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's an interesting viewpoint.
Are you also of the opinion that auto industry executives hold the naive view that auto theft-deterrent systems are infallible?
When I first got into the Apple warez scene in the early 80s, I asked somebody older and wiser why, say, they bothered to put copy protection on Wizardry when clever guys like me could easily crack it.
"Because," he pointed out, "if the copy protection prevents just one person from copying it, it's done its job."
And that's why copy protection on CDs and DVDs exists today: to deter casual copying. Much to their disadvantage, most people out there just aren't as technically adept as Slashdot readers.
Can you clarify why you believe that folks who use DRM don't understand this? It requires quite a stretch, but if you think you have solid evidence, I'd like to hear it.
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
So take this "deter casual copying" crap and smoke it. If the residents of MySpace can work out how to copy and trade DRM'd stuff then anyone can.
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is not whether people can do it, its a matter of whether they actually will.
To get DRM-less content, they need to:
Each step filters people, and those people pay. Simple as that.
The real question is how long the RIAA will take to realize that there are alternatives to this model.
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you also of the opinion that auto industry executives hold the naive view that auto theft-deterrent systems are infallible?
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:4, Insightful)
And that's why copy protection on CDs and DVDs exists today: to deter casual copying. Much to their disadvantage, most people out there just aren't as technically adept as Slashdot readers."
'Cept most are adept enough to just download a copy from someone whose already cracked and transcoded it.
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummmm, lets think about that:
1) It only takes ONE person to "crack" and copy music, a movie, etc. and make it available to all the average Joes.
2) It only takes ONE person to create a patch or an app and every average Joe can use it.
Where do these newbies come from on here? Sheeez.
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
The point was that the RIAA/MPAA is taking a dual-pronged approach, as is visibly obvious- they are targeting torrent sites with an offensive barrage of lawsuits to prevent downloading and they are targeting the media with an offensive barrage of DRM to prevent casual copying which is decentralized and untraceable.
Is this approach effective? To some degree, yes, it is. Will it ever be 100% effective? No, it will not.
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is indeed the root of any high-distribution system and is applicable to several domains--piracy, drugs, airborne diseases. It only takes one copy on a viable transmission medium to start the ball rolling.
Parent
All bank vaults and locks have also been cracked (Score:4, Insightful)
A mechanism that is difficult to crack (whether that is a physical lock or DRM or password) makes it harder for the cracker and reduces the likelihood of someone actually doing the cracking. That removes casual crackers from the equation.
It also makes the cracking act more deliberate and makes it far harder for someone to claim: "That diamond got in my pocket.... I just found it on the sidewalk and thought it had been thrown out." or "Oh that music on my MP2 player... I thought it was free!"
Parent
Re:All bank vaults and locks have also been cracke (Score:5, Funny)
Was someone a little strapped for cash?
Parent
Re:All bank vaults and locks have also been cracke (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say that DRM schemes are like having one giant bank vault. Yes, it will eventually get compromised, and once it is, everything inside is trivial to take.
Parent
This is called "the Smart Cow problem" (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:All bank vaults and locks have also been cracke (Score:5, Insightful)
Fundamentally, you're spot on. It is a hell of a lot worse than bank vault security. You can't have the party it's secured against also the one it decrypts for. It just makes no sense! All DRM is crackable by definition, they know this, they just want to make it as much of a hassle as possible.
Parent
Re:All bank vaults and locks have also been cracke (Score:4, Interesting)
We already have copyrights to protect the producers of works. DRM is going too far as it restricts the users rights to use something for their own private use, for which they have legally purchased.
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't. (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course not. That's why the MAFIAA and similar parties use the legal system to fill the holes that technology can't. If you can't actually stop everyone from doing it, simply make it illegal, and sue anyone who gets past the initial hurdles.
DRM and IP law, the technological and the legal - the two work in tandem, but I would say that the end goal is perfect control over content. Anything less than perfect control is, after all, simply an unexploited opportunity for profit.
Parent
The only thing not cracked yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
You mother fuckers are pissing me off (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You mother fuckers are pissing me off (Score:4, Interesting)
They know how evolution works. The most draconian systems they come up with today will be childs play eight years from now. So in reality, for as nasty as they look now, they will be almost pointless 10 yrs from now. (look at CSS...) So what they're doing now really this isn't any worse than CSS was when it was made, relatively speaking. Six years from now we will look at this and yawn, as we feed a spindle of old blue rays into a reader (at 25 seconds each) and download our entire collection to our data cube.
Parent
The only thing really not broken... yet (Score:5, Funny)
Is Blueray. That's going to last another decade.
DRM isn't supposed to be foolproof (Score:5, Insightful)
The same effect has been observed in software for years, Windows XP had an activation thing built in, anyone who knew what they were doing would bypass it, anyone who didn't (and didn't know anyone who did) would eventually go and buy superfluous copies of software they already owned.
Bad arguments and bad reasoning (Score:5, Insightful)
"When you list every major law implemented to "protect" life and property, they've all been broken. Can anyone think of a law which hasn't been broken, and of course this begs the obvious question: Why doesn't society just give up and go law-free?"
DRM doesn't have to be perfect to do its job, anymore than law enforcement has to be "perfect". It just has to be effective enough to keep Joe Average from copying the file. Whether or not DRM is actually "good" or "bad" for media producers is a completely different argument, but Wolfe's sophomoric reasoning does nothing to address it.
Re:Bad arguments and bad reasoning (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
DRM is doing it's job (Score:5, Informative)
DRM works under the same concept as locking your car. IF someone really wants in, they will get in. But it certainly cuts down on the casual person who will take an easy opportunity, but doesn't care enough to put in the effort to get around the measures you put in place.
Cable HDTV DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cable HDTV DRM (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Why DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a well known saying "Locks secure you against honest people" (or words to that effect).
The hard-core/organized/professional criminals have the skills, technology and motivation to bypass these "security measures".
Remember people, locks aren't about making you secure, they're about making you FEEL secure.
s/locks/airport security screening procedures/
s/locks/the department of homeland security/ (well, that and political empire-building and creating a police-state by stealth)
Smokey The Bear Says: Only YOU can prevent the violation of your civil rights "in the interest of National Security".
Certainly there are some things which come to mind (Score:4, Informative)
or some of the Synchrosoft dongles. Logic Pro 7 is not really something that has been cracked yet either, to my (admitedly limited) knowledge.
From what I recall reading, when H2O did manage to [k] Nuendo, it took them so long that I think they said
they were not going to bother doing it more, as the process was just too annoyingly time-consuming.
Theoretically, these systems could probably be made to protect anything which is a software-based application. Not sure if this qualifies as DRM, rather than just some 'copy-protection'
technique but certainly it has helped ensure that many small developers of quality audio plug-ins survive because their creations cannot be cracked.
Z.
A Long-Standing Illusion (Score:5, Insightful)
There's only one copy protection system I know of that hasn't been (meaningfully) cracked, and that's MediaCipher, created by Motorola for the cable TV crowd. Ironically, it was one of the first ones ever created. (Of course, it helps that the boxes implementing MediaCipher are only rented -- never sold -- to end-users.)
Copy protection next showed up in a major way for computer games, most notably for the Apple ][ computer. This fetish briefly spread into applications software as well as games, until the users thundered, "No Fscking Way." It took about four to six years for this to shake out.
Despite the fact that there is no conclusive evidence that copy protection has any meaningful impact on sales, anti-copying measures are still used extensively, but by no means universally, throughout the games industry. In particular, Unreal Tournament's initial anti-copying measures are little more than perfunctory, and are later dropped entirely.
Near as I can determine, copy protection advocates claim as axiomatic that unsanctioned copying will depress sales to livlihood-threatening levels. They cleave to this axiom with a fervor usually associated with religious fundamentalists. However, every time this axiom is honestly examined, mitigating or even entirely contradictory evidence is discovered. Yet the myth persists.
It's not the technology we need to combat (since Turing proved it can never work). It's the defective thinking.
Schwab
Apple iTunes Video (Score:4, Informative)
So ya can't yet burn that episode of "Lost" you bought on iTunes to a DVD.
You know (Score:5, Funny)
To read my post (Score:5, Funny)
The Answer: Greed Makes You Stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
The entire entertainment industry is so consumed with greed that they are no longer able to think clearly. The failure of DRM is so painfully obvious, but the MPAA, RIAA, BSA, etc. are so blinded by greed that they can't see it. To them, the failure of DRM is proof that they need bigger badder DRM along with bigger badder laws to punish people. This is what greed does to you.
The secret to success is simple: make a good product and sell it at a fair price. But when you are bkinded by greed and convinced that you're losing billions of dollars to "piracy", you think that the secret to success is to control your precious "intellectual property" with the most draconian iron-fisted methods possible.
It has nothing to do with content protection (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29161 [theinquirer.net]
-Charlie
Re:DirecTV (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:HDMI (Score:5, Informative)
"Cryptanalysis researchers demonstrated fatal flaws in HDCP for the first time in 2001, prior to its adoption in any commercial product. Scott Crosby of Carnegie Mellon University authored a paper with Ian Goldberg, Robert Johnson, Dawn Song, and David Wagner called "A Cryptanalysis of the High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection System". This paper was presented at ACM-CCS8 DRM Workshop on November 5, 2001.[1]
The authors conclude:
"HDCP's linear key exchange is a fundamental weakness. We can:
* Eavesdrop on any data
* Clone any device with only their public key
* Avoid any blacklist on devices
* Create new device keyvectors.
* In aggregate, we can usurp the authority completely."
It must be noticed, however, that for this attack you first have to break Blom's scheme (the linear algebra based key exchange system). In the case of HDCP you need a minimum of 39 device keys in order to reconstruct the secret symmetrical master matrix that has been used to compute all device keys.
Around the same time that Scott Crosby and co-authors were writing this paper, noted cryptographer Niels Ferguson independently claimed to have broken the HDCP scheme, but he did not publish his research, citing legal concerns arising from the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act [1].
The most well-known attack on HDCP is the conspiracy attack, where a number of devices are compromised and the information gathered is used to reproduce the private key of the central authority.
Parent
The Alice and Bob analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
In cryptography, we have an explanation using Alice and Bob [wikipedia.org]. Alice is communicating with Bob, while Eve (eavesdropper) tries to decrypt the message. Alice and Bob have the key to decipher the message, but Eve doesn't. She wants to decrypt the communication *without* the key.
A --- E --- B
Alice in this case, is the Digital Media producer (or encrypter), and B is your DVD. You're Eve. The problem with DRM is that Eve *HAS* the key. By cracking the DVD software (some disassembly, debugging and you're done), Eve can obtain the key from Bob.
A --------- B E
This is the problem with DRM. It's flawed by design. The DMCA is a legal "patch" to this algorithm, punishing Eve if she gets the key from Bob. The problem with DMCA is that the punishment doesn't apply to all countries, and trying to enforce it results in attacking freedom of speech.
Parent
Re:Locks are for Honest People (Score:4, Funny)
George Orwell just called and said he owns the IP to "newspeak", and he's giving you permission to do the right thing and stop stealing it.
Parent