CRF Reveals Draft of New DRM Technology 197
scubacuda writes "PC Advisor and others report that the CRF (Content Reference Forum), a new, cross-industry standards organisation that boasts Universal Music Group, Microsoft, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) and VeriSign among its members, has unveiled a new specification for a DRM technology.
A draft of CRF Baseline Profile 1.0 is available for public review and comment." According to a report on CNET News, the "the [CRF-created] file would set up a process that automatically delivers files in the right format and potentially triggers an automatic payment system that could be changed moment to moment by the content distributor."
Intelligent File (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, people are going to download executable code from kazaa and execute it. It ain't hard to guess what the follow-up news stories are going to be like. (Dammit, why haven't I bought stock in the anti-virus companies yet?!)
Automatic Payment System? (Score:4, Insightful)
If we ever get to that point, i for one wont be using a PC device of any kind...
Cheap music... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, I'll sell you a music file for only 1 cent.
On second thought, make that $100
Bouncing accounts everywhere.... (Score:5, Insightful)
virus?
Ok, let me also say this. The whole thought process around the word automatically is really starting to scare the hell out me. We live in a society where folk have a hard time keeping track of written checks. How the hell do we expect them to keep track of all the automatic deductions being taken from them?
Oh wait, we don't. Just another way to enslave the masses I guess.
No thanks. I will stick files that might sound like crap, but I don't get charged for until I buy the cd (let the flames begin).
ummm (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody? (Score:4, Insightful)
If I'm right, this seems dead before it starts, since the only real shot it has (IMHO) is being able to provide all songs, where some online sales places can't.
Am I wrong?
Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people who don't read places like slashdot would be equally concerned if they knew what was going on. They need to be educated, its why democracy works, and why it fails when it doesn't occur.
Prices... (Score:2, Insightful)
urk (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Intelligent File (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Intelligent File (Score:1, Insightful)
>>>>>> HAA HAA Sucker - i just got a micropayment for $100 Thank you!!!!!!!
Goerge O. Was Right (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's 2003, but why does it feel like 1984?
it just don't add up? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Everybody? (Score:2, Insightful)
This doesn't really answer your question (maybe it does, but I'm very dense). I don't know how they will prevent you from copying the file when/while you retrieve it, though.
Re:Intelligent File (Score:3, Insightful)
I call that pretty dangerous.
WE NEED THIS BECAUSE...? (Score:2, Insightful)
Customer Reaming Facility (Score:3, Insightful)
Fun for the whole family, have little billy click it twice for twice the fun!
Seriously, I was eating in "Dennies" (rellay, my fault, I know) and the eight of us each had the all-you-can-eat breakfast bar. When the bill arrived we had been charged for ten. When we said, "hey, there are eight of us, but you charged us for ten" the servers response was, "oh, so do you want to go back and eat some more?"
If you don't understand what is so wrong with the server in this example, then "automatically" and "changed at any time" are happy fun words for you and yours.
Someone please save us all from the popular culture that would make people think anything like this CRF could be given a "popular and positive" spin...
"Automatic" (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine a virus that downloads tens of thousands of songs to your computer. Then imagine the automatic money transfer. Then imagine the lawsuit you'll have if they won't give back the money.
Re:Automatic Payment System? (Score:3, Insightful)
well by that point in time I will be using macs and linux pc's, So either I will be immune, or just won't be upgradeing any more hardware. It will suck, but I will be free, to do as I live, as I desire.
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
I love automatic programs that bill me. Honest. (Score:4, Insightful)
"the [CRF-created] file would set up a process that automatically delivers files in the right format and potentially triggers an automatic payment system that could be changed moment to moment by the content distributor."
Oh yeah, that sounds like a great idea.
Remember, these are the people you keep reading about that leave their servers open and have lists of credit cards stolen from them. Regularly.
Just imagine DRM and auto billing mixed into that. This will be a nightmare of epic proportions. You heard it here first.
Weaselmancer
Re:Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Not at all. If copyright were as it was two centuries ago few, if any, Slashdotters would be complaining. The problem isn't that these groups want the law to revert to some earlier incarnation, they want to be allowed to continue mutating copyright into some hybrid form favorable only to themselves. Remember, the RIAA and sister organizations have been "adjusting" copyright law for a very long time: it was largely back-room stuff. They've just gotten a lot more overt about it recently and people are starting to notice.
But this comes back to enlightened Capitalism, or the lack of it. Absolute control does not guarantee an eternal revenue stream, in spite of content holders contrary beliefs. Put this way: even before peer-to-peer raised its (to them) ugly head, music sales were falling off. Well, at least the industry's growth rate was dropping. And that was the period where they had substantially more control of music distribution and production than they have now. Being able to restrict content distribution with an iron-clan DRM system can't force people to buy a product that they do not like and for which they have no use. The music companies and the RIAA figured that, if they could control all the music available for purchase or on the radio, they could sell us anything they want and we would buy it. That approach worked for a while, but eventually the public wised up and demanded more. And when Napster came along
Whatever genre of entertainment floats your boat, the two things the buying public wants are a. variety and b. quality. Variety is probably the more important of the two. In any case, the entertainment industry (the music studios in particular) has been providing us with progressively fewer choices, along with a general degradation in quality. All the DRM in the world won't make me buy crap. Sometimes you just simply have to provide a quality product for a reasonable price
The music industry's monomaniacal absorption with peer-to-peer file sharing is interesting. They seem to be operating under the delusion that eliminating or corrupting these primitive networks will assure them of their due. And even if it were actually possible to enforce a global ban on file sharing
The point is that there really isn't any way for the content people to recan this particular can of worms. People with get what they want, which is a large selection of reasonably priced (or, if necessary, free) music and if it means going back to SneakerNet that's exactly what will happen.
Re:Intelligent File (Score:4, Insightful)
can someone explain to me why i'd want to host files for other people's profit? if i'm gonna have to pay for a file, it damnwell better be hosted by someone else, and not by me.
DRM by any other name (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright eventually expires, DRM doesn't.
Same as it always was (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting that no one since has been deemed better in those particular categories.
Re:"Automatic" (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't going to be their business model.
A Big Brother Ver. of The Old DivX Standard (Score:4, Insightful)
So what is your response to this Mega-Corporation virtual theft? You call up their 1-800 number based in some 3rd world country and sit on hold for a day or so. When you finally get someone online they know nothing plus you can't understand a word they say.
God this sounds fucking great!
I can't wait! Where do I sign up?
Seriously these mega-corps can institute this standard or whatever they want to call it and sell it to the masses but we DO have a say so. I hope it goes the way of the 1st incarnation of DivX from Circuit City and burns out oh so quickly.
We as consumers can reject this outright and not buy into it. Money talks and bullshit walks. Money is the only thing these companies understand and that's the genesis of the entire drm/dmca argument although they would like to convince us it's just the ability to innovate.
With groups wanting to tie a drm to hardware and now this I really think the day is coming where we will actually want to stick with yesterday's hardware (today's) and forgo the next gen with all of the mega-media money protections built in.
I will stick with the hardware that I can control and not let it control me.
WTF (Score:2, Insightful)
What kind of fantasy world are they living in. The problem is that almost everything is encoded in well known formats that can be handled by most machines. The powers that be wish that content on P2P networks were in proprietary protected formats, but except for a bit of windows media crap, it isn't.
Whats the problem again? (Score:3, Insightful)
And they plan to correct that by providing files to download that are specifically designed not to be readable by people who lack the appropriate software or hardware
These people don't actually use the English language. Or at best its a version of English that has been taken out the back, given a good thrashing and been convinced to do what its told or there'll be more of the same.
How do they handle the monopoly aspect (Score:3, Insightful)
There is inherently nothing wrong with that. That is, as long as they define infrastructure that will be universally applicable. So if it only runs on an Microsoft platform it has failed. If it only protects data by companies associated with the RIAA it has failed. If the only security it allows for is the security as provided by Verisign it has failed.
When content, of a type protected by the mechanisms to be worked out by this committee, become available, the content is the copyright of the issuer of the data and as such it is entitled to the protection offered by the infrastructure. This means that music is secured at the time of publication within the infrastructure. This allows for people to create their own content and do with it as they like and, if at all it is secured, it is secured within the same infrastructure as is the commercial content as published by the organisations associated with the RIAA.
* Linus Torvalds has said before that the inclusion of DRM is not a problem as far as he is concerned.
* Music Midi and computers have a long history. It cannot be that the use of computers connencted with music or photo's or video will cease.
* There is nothing inherently wrong with DRM but it has to be open and it must secure my data as much as the data from a commercial entity.
* Given the pedegree of the people in this committee THEY have to prove their bona fides. Microsoft is a convicted monopolist and the RIAA wants the law to grant them the right to be a monopolist. They have one good thing going for them; Microsoft is one of the greatest marketing companies ever.
Thanks,
Gerard