DRM and the Value of Honesty

Digital Rights Management (DRM), has been the topic of a great deal of controversy these past several years. Whether it is legal to copy a CD or DVD, ownership versus licensing, the Patents and Copyrights, DMCA, DVD-Jon. If you remember, one man's court battle over his right to decrypt DVD's and help others do the same turned the software world upside down as his "deCSS" code, the programming which foils the DVD "copy-protection" scheme, was prominently displayed printed to his shirt as he entered into court. A touch of Brilliance on his part, in my humble opinion.

DRM

DRM has been the brainchild of the recording industry who for years has been looking for a way to "stop the bleeding". Their continued efforts to use technology to protect that which by nature must be available for use by everyone is incredible. The only thing they have to work with is some "super-secret handshake" between the storage media and the media player. DVD's use CSS, which is basically little different than unencrypted DVD's except the player has to figure out the keys for decryption before playing. The method to do so was held secret, only allowed out to "licensed companies" for the purpose of making media players and such. The problem is, the encryption wasn't the key to said DRM. The method for determining the keys was, in the security world this is known as "obscurity" and is shunned outright for many and lengthy reasons I will not delve into here. One key problem has been that encryption was never intended to keep a participating party from accessing the information. Doing so if futile, as proven by DVD-Jon and his buddy(ies?), who wrote the code to unprotect DVD's so we, the owners of DVDs, can make backup copies, store them on our hard drives, and compress them for use in a media-center (like MythTV). The point is, the end user must be able to watch their favorite DVD's, not just look at them on the shelf... there is no reasonable way to protect the data when end users need to have simple access to it.

Rather than explain to the recording industry that they were stupid for their attempts to misuse the technology, the courts actually banned the deCSS code from being linked to from US sites! Granted, you simply need visit a particular site in France to download and install the code on the Linux operating system.

Why then, since the recording industry is not made up of too many dolts and idiots, do they continue down this path? Several reasons in my opinion.

1) There is money to be made in licensing, and it's difficult to build a hardware component and expect to use technology without appropriate licensing. Software is much easier, since the end users can be provided the means to install this themselves.

2) DMCA violations - somehow the government has been allowed to criminalize anything that breaks DRM-attempts, however weak they may be. The problem here is that even consumers with integrity see little problem with violating this law since fair-use (the idea that a purchaser should be able to make a backup copy, etc... of their media) has been completely removed by the DMCA. There was legislation a couple years ago called DMCRA, which countered the DMCA and retured the balance to fair-use, but it was never passed.

3) Price justification - One big excuse people have been using to justify sharing CD music and (to a lesser extent) DVD movies has been price. There is no reason to charge $14-20 for CD's anymore. DVDs fall less into this category, since the cost of goods lies in the many $millions.

Remember, though, that if the recording industry "spends millions on DRM" regardless of soft-money they will be justifying their high-prices. Perhaps not in our eyes, but in their own, and likely the courts....

Microsoft and the DRM revolution: The P Problem

Paladium was the big push a couple years ago, when Microsoft set out to solve the worlds insecurity problems. (BRB-recovering from laughing pains). The idea behind Paladium was to have DRM hardware incorporated into PCs and licensed software and OS which could talk to it. A lot of smoke and mirrors, and of course, no opensource OS (like Linux and BSD) would be allowed legally to play. What ever happened to Paladium? Perhaps Microsoft realized it needed to focus on the inadaquacies of its software rather than dazzle the public with more PR nonsense. "I'm sorry, Microsoft, I knew we need but involve you and all our troubles would disappear!"

DMCA

Wow, what a piece of work. Otherwise known as the RUN! DMC Act, it is a joke with teeth. It is located at http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf and should be modified immediately to allow us, the paying consumers, reasonable rights to back up and utilize our media the way we see fit. Sharing is an issue, but should be approached by indicting the offenders, not damaging fair-use for all of us law-abiders.

Should IP be this way?

Intellectual Property (IP) is quite a concept in the digital age. When a creation is able to be copied without any degredation, there is certainly a difference. I'm still not clear in my opinions on this topic. Perhaps creators not expecting their IP to be copied should invest in paint and canvas. Technology, to date, has not found a way to perfectly copy a Picasso or a Dali.

Or perhaps we simply must continue to crack down on people unwilling to abide by the copyright laws... or redo them. While Copyright is not as awful as Patents, there is certain room for improvement. Since I'm speaking of the USA, we are supposed to be a government for the people, by the people. Does the amount of dissident behavior warrant a vote on the subject? Perhaps we should do away with digital copyrights. There would definitely be repercussions, like diminished quality in movies or condemnation of digital media altogether... but it would be a good vote anyway. Perhaps we must pay a price before we realize we must be good netizens...

Patents and Copyright?

Patents are very scary to Open Source advocates. The reason is simple. FOSS (Free/OpenSource Software) is created by anyone who has a desire, need, or ego. These individual "grass-roots" projects don't start out with a marketting plan and legal team covering the bases, so there are potentially obscure (and undeserved) patents they are violating without knowledge.

That is not the issue, however. The PTO (Patent and Trademark Office) seems bent on granting patents to any big name company who applies for them. Perhaps they think the courts will sort out the difficulties or determine stupidity of a Patent. Many patents have no merit as patents. For instance, Microsoft applied for, and was granted a patent for how to group like applications on a toolbar. Give me a break! This has been happening for longer than Microsoft thought of it. And it will continue to happen, because it makes sense. There wasn't a lot of ingenuity that went into that decision. Hmmm... limited taskbar space, many apps... hmmm.. How about we group applications of the same type to save space? wow.

Integrity.

Alright, all. Here's my soapbox.

Pay for the stuff which is worth paying for. Lord of the Rings, for example. It was exceptionally done, there were many folks to pay, and many millions of dollars spent to create an exquisite experience. It's well worth the $20-40 (depending on whether you bought the Extended version).

Find a way to pay for music which is worthwhile. Many artists are going online, which I can get behind, particularly because I have some assurance that they are actually getting paid something. Going through the whole CD channel has proven they don't get much of that cash. Paying them directly gives me a better knowledge that they're being taken care of, and of course the artist (and mixers) is the reason I like the music... not the marketters.

If you don't wish to pay for media not openly licensed? Don't have it. Delete it immediately or pay for it. Some will rip a CD or DVD for temporary keeping or trial period. I can get behind that... but if you've had it longer than 30 days (15 even?) it's time to delete it or pay for it (or find someone and borrow it,etc...)

I can't support paying for junk. But paying for entertainment has always been a staple of generating entertainment worth wasting your time on.