Last Day for Comments on Digital Rights Technology 10
Syre writes: "On July 17, 2002, the Technology Administration will host a Public Workshop on Digital Entertainment and Rights Management.
This Workshop will bring together leaders from the information technology and content industries to address the status of technical standards that provide the framework necessary to enable legitimate digital media distribution and the present state of strengths, weaknesses and availability of current and imminent technological solutions to protect digital content, barriers that are inhibiting movies, music and games from coming online." Read below for the scope of this meeting, and to find out where your comments might aim.
"In preparation for this workshop, the Technology Administration invites public comment on the following topics:
- The effectiveness of efforts to pursue technical standards or solutions that are designed to provide a more predictable and secure environment for digital transmission of copyrighted material;
- Major obstacles facing an open commercial exchange of digital content;
- What a future framework for success might entail;
- Current consumer attitude towards online entertainment."
Forerunner to the CBDTPA / SSSCA ?? (Score:2, Interesting)
All it takes is for Hollywood/Hollings to pack the forum with supporters of the CBDTPA, and the questions that the forum is supposed to answer are NOT going to be appropriate.
Of course, the topic "The effectiveness of efforts to pursue technical standards or solutions that are designed to provide a more predictable and secure environment for digital transmission of copyrighted material" is probably going to emphasize "piracy" aka exercising fair use such as making a tape of a TV show.
I can just see the CBDTPA supporters claiming that "Current consumer attitude towards online entertainment" is strongly supportive of DRM, and that "Major obstacles facing an open commercial exchange of digital content" are "uncontrolled software platforms" - in other words, the GPL and open source software.
And I'm very much afraid that the conclusion will be that "What a future framework for success might entail" will be the CBDTPA + DMCA
Consumer attitudes to... (Score:1)
The stupendous price of CD's? The price [£16?] is almost pure profit. Get fucked [collective CD distributors]! The same goes for DVDs: £25 a disk? Err...no!
At the end of the day the thing that they just do not realise is that if it can be played it can be copied!
You'd have thought this would have hit them by now...
Ali
Re:Consumer attitudes to... (Score:1)
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Are they really interested? (Score:2, Insightful)
Note that every topic on the list directs the discussion towards "how to make DRM a success".
There is no topic called "Does the implementation of DRM benefit the consumer?" or "Is DRM worth the cost to society?"
My comments, if I can ever submit them... (Score:3, Interesting)
BACKGROUND COMMENTS
The notion of gratuitous intellectual property theft by technical means has a long history in the United States, and this history has been one of copyright owners grossly overstating the effects of technological advancements. Let's look at the high points:
a) The development of high-fidelity tape recording equipment at prices affordable by individuals led to the belief that people would stop buying audiorecordings in the retail channel. Instead, so went the belief, people would tape the music they liked from public performance over the many radio stations in the United States. This belief was so strong that the recording industry assumed that consumers were guilty until proven innocent, which led to the imposition of the "recording tax" on blank recording tape. When the cassette tape was developed, a tax was placed on this media as well. This tax model continues to this day, with governments around the world placing a tax on all recording media that can be used for music, including CD-ROM media. As a professional recording engineer, I paid that tax without ever receiving any of that tax that was supposed to compensate me for any illegal duplication of my copyrighted works.
b) The invention of xerographic copying, which permitted the creation of high-quality copies on plain paper, generated fear that publishing was going to go under. The book industry, in particular, became worried that widespread use of xerographic copying would destroy their industry. Before xerographic copying, photocopying and thermal copying were the principal methods of making copies without re-keyboarding. The cost of the former and the poor quality of the latter kept either of them to be a perceived threat. With the development of plain-paper copying, the book publishers feared that there would be widespread copying of books and other written materials, with a reduction of revenues and disruption of the royalty system. I have never seen credible evidence that any such revenue impact or royalty impact ever occurred. As an author of a book, I find that the lack of royalties paid to me have far less to do with illegal copying and more to do with "creative" accounting.
c) The development of video tape recorders and media inexpensive enough and simple enough to be used in the home cause the movie industry the same panic that the audiotape development did to the record industry. The problem as perceived by copyright owners here went beyond illegal copying: the television broadcast industry was very concerned about "time shifting" and the impact on competition between TV networks and stations within a market area. No longer could TV executives schedules the presentation of shows to weaken the performance of a competitor's show -- people would watch one and tape the other, viewing the second show at a later time.
d) The development and deployment of DVD video took the movie industry's fear of rampant copying to another level. The claim is that with analog video you are limited by the number of generations of copies you can make before the copy becomes unacceptable to the potential consumer. With DVD, however, you can make any number of copies without any degradation in the quality of the copies. There is a parallel fear with DVD-audio within the record industry. (Note that none of the technical solutions offered to date for "protecting" DVD and DVD-audio address bit-copying of disks by content-ignorant hardware.)
e) The evolution of the personal computer and the Internet gave birth to peer-to-peer sharing networks, in which a small but sizable number of consumers placed copyrighted works "in play" so that people could obtain exactly what they need. This is a packaging issue: if you like one cut of a CD, the sharing network let you ignore the other 20 tracks you didn't like. The problem here is that the sharing completely bypassed all existing mechanisms for compensating the artist(s) as well as the production companies. This factor appears to be the root cause for this workshop to be held.
f) The expressed desire for recording companies, movie companies, and even book publishers to move away from the first-sale doctrine, and instead enforce a pay-per-play model on consumers. In this environment change, you would be required to pay for each viewing, hearing, or reading of copyrighted material. Proposals range from imposing time limits on access to actually charging per play/view/reading. This effectively tries to place the same kind of turnstile on material in the home or private automobile that currently exists for material performed in theatres and concert halls.
g) The Founding Fathers of the United States made it clear that the Constitutional grant of limited monopoly was to benefit the generator of intellectual property. The current business models do not reflect that intent, nor do they reflect the further intent that the monopoly is to be a LIMITED one.
With this background in place, let me comment on the four questions.
1) The effectiveness of efforts to pursue technical standards or solutions that are designed to provide a more predictable and secure environment for digital transmission of copyrighted material:
Both government and private-sector organizations have shown that the current technology can provide very effective technical solutions designed to provide a secure environment for digital transmission of material. Some of the solutions are even made available without a requirement for payment of royalties; see in particular the availability of OPENSSH as a protection vehicle for secure transmission of data over the Internet.
The problems I see in the efforts to date are these: expectations of protection, competence of the people who develop the "solutions", a failure for the protections currently in place to protect the root source of the copyrighted property, the authors, composers, screenwriters, performers, and others involved in the creative aspects of the copyrighted works, and a failure to acknowledge the time limits of copyright.
The DVD Content Scramble System (DVD CSS) was broken because the system used a flawed cryptographic scheme for protection. Interestingly, the failure of a vendor to properly encode keys affected not the ability to "crack" the system, but the amount of time required to do so. As more details about the scheme were published, the more the CSS system was shown to be flawed, both as a "protection" scheme and as a digital rights management scheme. Indeed, the CSS scheme did nothing to protect a DVD from being copied by a bit-by-bit copying of the disk. The CSS scheme did get in the way of any Fair Use of the copyrighted material, although with existing equipment in 2001 it's possible to extract an analog equivalent of the material so that Fair Use isn't severely impacted.
Nothing in the Content Scramble System or any other DRM system protects the original creator of the material, only the publisher. When the publisher goes out of business, what happens? When the publisher violates a copyright assignment agreement with a creator, how does DRM protect the creator?
Finally, the solutions proposed to date appear to be an attempt to circumvent the expressed intent of the Constitution that copyright is a LIMITED right, subject to term limitations. The DVD CSS scheme, for example, has no provisions for getting out of the way when the copyright term period has expired.
Any solution needs to be accessible to ALL creators and publishers of copyrighted material, with equal facility. This requirement has not been addressed to the best of my knowledge and belief. Also, independents such as myself have not been "invited to the table" to participate in DRM standard/solution creation.
2) Major obstacles facing an open commercial exchange of digital content
From my viewpoint, the biggest obstacle facing the commercial exchange of digital content is the lack of a means of exchanging electronic value for electronic content with high security and low transaction cost. There have been a number of efforts to deal with the so-called "micro-payments" question, but none of them have been successful at reducing the cost of transaction sufficiently to make low-cost (nickel-and-dime) transactions feasible, while maintaining acceptable security.
Another related obstacle is the unnecessary complexity surrounding compensation of the content creators. The existing business model calls for the publisher to make infrequent royalty payments on purchases of copyrighted content based on some publisher-imposed formula. A better business model would be for the consumer to pay the publisher and the content creator separately, With a low-transaction-cost payment system, any number of creators could be paid from the retail sale of the copyrighted work. Instant payment would eliminate the need for advances, and the fancy accounting that surrounds them. Marketing expenses could then be shared between publisher and content creator in the open, with all parties sharing the risks and enjoying the spoils.
In the music business, the reason that an album has a collection of songs is that it's about as expensive to produce a single (actually a "dual" in the old 45-RPM record days) as it is to produce a larger album with 10-20 songs on it. This continues to hold true with CD releases. The result is that many second-tier content providers produce one or two good songs and a bunch of mediocre ones for a given album. In the peer-to-peer sharing systems, consumers would "rip" the one or two good songs and make them available, leaving the remaining songs to languish (to my ear, in all too many cases justifiably so) in the limbo of non-play. In electronic distribution, there is absolutely no reason to continue this practice -- a content provider can publish a song when it's good (perhaps after test-marketing in concerts) and not make people buy the filler junk. Again, this is a business model issue.
Finally, in another business model issue, publishers charge more money than necessary for electronic delivery, at worst to wring every dollar of profit possible and at best to "protect" the retail outlets and their forty-percent mark-ups. Those mark-ups are necessary for the store to be able to pay the expenses of running a brick-and-mortar establishment, as well as carry inventory. If you have 1,000 record stores across the United States, you could have $800,000 per month in rent alone due. The comparable rent for an e-delivery service is around $16,000 per month -- yet the retail price of the e-distributed music doesn't reflect this difference. Such behavior encourages piracy because of the disgust it creates within certain members of the buying public, and to "redress the wrong" the consumer engages in a form of civil disobedience by making the content available to others, thinking rightly or wrongly that s/he has paid for the privilege.
3) What a future framework for success might entail
Responsibility. Responsibility both on the part of the consumer and on the part of the publisher. People won't steal if they feel they are getting value for their dollar or peso. Right now, the general feeling is that the value isn't there, that the executives are demanding guarantees that they aren't willing to offer their partners in content.
Recognition that 99 percent of the customers should not have to pay for the dishonesty of the one percent who will steal content no matter what. Recognition that no scheme will be perfect. Banks have resigned themselves to a certain level of loss in their credit card operations; entertainment publishing companies will have to live with the same realization.
Show that the content providers get paid for their efforts. How much of my fifteen dollars did the Doobie Brothers get when I purchased their CD? From the information I have at hand, I have to say zero dollars. The thinking then goes like this: "So if the record companies steal from the performers, then why shouldn't I steal from the record companies? Tit for tat." The entertainment press continuously tells us about how movie actors don't get paid unless they are big enough and nasty enough to demand a percentage of the gross revenues; the actors do the work and get none of the gravy?
Universality. Any system should be equally available to Fortune 50 and the garage publisher. The current dichotomy, especially as exhibited by my inability to receive anything from the "media tax" as a content creator in the audio world, is galling to anyone who keeps up with this sort of stuff.
4) Current consumer attitude towards online entertainment
I believe the attitude towards online entertainment have been shaped by the issues I bring up in my answers above: the entertainment industry is trying to gouge the consumer. When market forces don't work, the moguls run to Washington DC and demand marginally-enforceable laws be passed that assume that every consumer is guilty until proven innocent. A buggy-whip in every automobile?
The recent implosion of Web sites on the Internet has driven home the idea to Web-heads that "TANSTAAFL: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." The surfers now realize that the content they see has to be paid for in some way. Unfortunately, that venue is hurt by the lack of a low-transaction-cost system of small payments. Once we have a way to make millicent payments, much of the problem of funding content disappears and people will expect to pay something...but not pay excessively.
If I purchase a concert ticket for $35 for a three-hour show, I expect to see and hear 120 minutes of music. That works out to roughly $0.30 per minute of song, or just under $1.00 per song. That includes visuals, a roof, seats (maybe), and the ability to hear fluffs by the performers. (Not to mention the chance for autographs after the show, if I'm so inclined.) When I purchase a CD for $15, I get 20 songs, or roughly $0.18 per song, of which $0.08 goes to the retail outlet, so the money to the recording company is $0.10 per song. Over the Internet, I'm paying for roughly half of the delivery system, so if I charge this delivery cost back to the publisher it reduces the retail price per song to around $0.07.
Anyone selling songs for that price over the Internet? How can you possibly? Every single transaction system on the planet would charge more than that just to carry the charge, and a check through the mail costs $0.37 for postage, about $0.15 for the envelope, and $0.25 to clear the check through the Federal Reserve System.
And what is the royalty, per song, to the content creators? I thought so.
Signed,
Stephen Satchell