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Censorship

3G phones: Send Anywhere, But Not Anything 134

Posted by timothy from the euphemism-nation dept.
glengyron writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting the success of an Australian company in developing Digital Rights Management for the next generation of mobile phones. Imagine if you could only forward email once, or not at all: these are the kind of restrictions being built into the next generaion of mobile phones. Read the article here. ODRL? Orwellian Digital Rights Language."
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3G phones: Send Anywhere, But Not Anything More

3G phones: Send Anywhere, But Not Anything

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  • Disney has something to teach RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by anagama ( 611277 ) <obamaisaneocon@nothingchanged.org> on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:29PM (#5747639) Homepage
    From the article:

    "If we don't provide consumers with our product in a timely manner, pirates will," Eisner said.

    This after Eisner was quoted as saying Disney will not let "the threat of piracy keep it from aggressively pursuing business strategies based on new digital technologies, even if that meant rethinking its current business models."

    Someone should forward this to our friends in the music industry.

  • Hey, disney supports it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by lily alairia ( 664353 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:29PM (#5747640)
    If Disney supports it, you better believe that I will. It must be secure and built with the customer's best interest at heart.I'm sure it will be ultra secure, and not rely on things like the DMCA to protect a poor security model, and support all conceivable forms of fair use.

  • forward (Score:4, Funny)

    by coreyb ( 125522 ) <coreyb@j2t.cjb.nEULERet minus math_god> on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:29PM (#5747641)
    I for one would be glad if forwarding were harder. I really could do without getting pseudo-religious right-wing pro-bomb-the-hell-out-of-country-X email from my grandparents that's more header than text.
    • Well, you could use some of that header info to your advantage. Just send some pink-o, commie, left-wing, government conspiracy drivel to those at the top of the header list and make it look like it came from your grandparents.

      Poof!! They get removed from some of their friends' forwarding lists. At the very least, they stop forwarding stuff to you.

      OK, at the very, very least, you get written out of their will, but I can see that you're a man of principles and you won't let that deter you from doing what i

    • Problem is if the person who created the original pseudo-religious right-wing pro-bomb-the-hell-out-of-country-X email didn't limit forwarding then it won't help you. Seems to me most people making that kinda thing wouldn't set the "no forwarding" flag.

  • Actually... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ELCarlsson ( 570500 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:30PM (#5747645)
    "Imagine if you could only forward email once" Then I wouldn't have to deal with all those damn annoying chain e-mails.

    • Re:Actually... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Pyrosophy ( 259529 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:38PM (#5747677)


      I don't know, think of all the money Microsoft would save not having to send checks to everyone who has forwarded their email.

    • Re:Actually... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by NewbieProgrammerMan ( 558327 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:35PM (#5747986)
      If I RTFA correctly, they are using ORDL instead of the MS XrML standard because they only have so much bandwith available. I can imagine that aggressively preventing ad inifinitum forwarding would be almost necessary in that situation. I'd hate to not be able to call or check my email because Bubba wanted to forward that cool 1k email (with 15k of headers) to all 50 of his friends so they can get their check from Microsoft.

    • Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:Fwd: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by freeweed ( 309734 )
      Interestingly enough, until this year I never found the need to use spam filtering. The couple every week or 2 wasn't a big deal.

      However, I at one point was getting several dozen a day of the usual chain letter/joke/picture Fwd:Fwd:Fwd (ad naseum). Putting a filter to delete anything with more than one Fwd: in it cut my junkmail down to virtually nothing. I used to complain that users were worse than spammers - some 'friends' were in the habit of sending me a dozen of these 'gems' at a time.

      Of course,
      • and stupid 'OLD' crap someone just DISCOVERED on the net far outweigh the spam I get as well. I've opened another account and keep it for my friends to bombard me with useless crap that I haven't the heart to tell them I saw 2 years ago. I just smile and say that was funny...

  • yawn, information wants to be free . (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Can we just have an "information wants to be free" section and put about half the stories away there? I get the damn point already.

  • proper definition of "DRM" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:34PM (#5747658)

    Can we please stop defining it DRM as digital rights management, and start referring to it under the more proper name of digital restriction(s) management?

    I got this new definition from Robert Thompson [ttgnet.com].

    • Well, it depends. For the music industry, they would rather call it Digital Reprobate Management.

      But for most slashdotters, I believe we would call it Digital Reproach Management. :-)

    • Sure, as soon as geeks universally drop the use of 'cracker' and only use 'hacker' :)

      Co-opting someone else's term for your own use cuts both ways.
    • It's both... by applying restrictions, DRM manages content rights. "Rights" in this case means the rights that the content provider bestows on you, it has nothing to do with any legal right you may have.

      The rest of the world refers to DRM as Digital Rights Management. Spending your energy to try and get people to assign a different meaning is like trying to get people to use words like "womyn" and "freedom fries". It's wasted energy

      • Spending your energy to try and get people to assign a different meaning is like trying to get people to use words like "womyn" and "freedom fries". It's wasted energy

        Not necessarily.

        Although not the exact same thing, remember the deal with Apple and SCSI...they wanted it pronounced "sexy". That didn't go over too well. Probably because everyone else didn't like it, so they called it "scuzzy".

        With DRM being something no-one will like, if enough people will refer to it as Restrictions, then they'll

  • imagine (Score:1, Troll)

    by cheese_wallet ( 88279 )
    Imagine, somebody builds a phone with features you don't like. Gee, what a horrible atrocity.

    • Re:imagine (Score:2, Insightful)

      by buyo-kun ( 664999 )
      I don't mind companies making a feature I don't like.

      I mind a company cutting out ablities of a product and calling THAT a feature.
  • 3G buisness... I don't think I'll worry too much about something as stupid as that... as if any 3g-network provider would build a system that didn't generate traffic... they want traffic, that's where they make their money...

  • Take it a step further (Score:4, Funny)

    by eap ( 91469 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:38PM (#5747675) Journal
    I wish someone would offer a mobile phone package that had no messaging capability at all. Imagine how great it would be to not get bothered constantly. I would pay extra for such a service.
    • I don't have a lot of experience with mobile phones, but I did have one for about a year or so. It wasn't anything fancy, just a very cheap introductory phone. It had separate options for calls and messages, so you could have calls ring but make messages be silent. And nothing says you have to read them, so there you go.

    • Re:Take it a step further (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Preach on. Why is it that there is no such thing as a new phone that doesn't attempt to be everything at once? My Nokia 5100 series is in dire need of replacing, but I refuse to spend a fortune on things I will never use. Does anyone make a phone that --

      -Is just a phone, with no games, web access (peh), text messaging or 16.3 million ring tones.
      -Has a nice big display that is not bright blue.
      -Is small, but still large enough for me to know it's in my pocket.
      -Has a menu system that makes any sense (t

    • I have a phone like that. It has no call making ability, no call receiving ability, and no messenging of any kind. At first my freinds laughted at me, asking how much I payed for that brick, but they're just jealous that theirs are so small that they can fit between the seats of thier couch and weigh less than 10 pounds. The name of it is "Brick" and it only comes in a dark red color, but it's worth that small sacrifice for the privacy.
    • I've got a brick I can sell you for $499.95 plus tax.
    • I have my phone set to forward all my messages to my brothers phone

  • Holy crap! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Flamerule ( 467257 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:41PM (#5747694)
    Did anyone else notice this?
    PR's four engineers built the Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) language in about two years before version 1 was commercially adopted by Nokia and others in preference to Microsoft's XrML standard, in part due to political reasons, says chief scientist Renato Iannella. [emphasis added]
    A (semi-)major news outlet ran a story with DRM defined as Digital Restrictions Management, with "Restrictions" replacing the original "Rights". That is extremely fucking cool.

    At least, I've never seen this before. Is it just me?

    • OpenIPMP (Score:3, Funny)

      by merriam ( 16227 )

      Similarly, I find myself involuntarily transposing OpenIPMP [openipmp.com] into a form that is easier to pronounce.

    • Did anyone else notice this?

      Yes I did - I was going to express a similar reaction, but I found your comment. Here is a case where the truth has started to win out, perhaps?

      I know Stallman advocates the use of the alternate and more accurate term, but does anyone know who originally thought it up? Maybe it's just 'obvious', and entered the collective conciousness spontaneously.

  • imagine (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:46PM (#5747718)
    Imagine if you could only forward email once, or not at all


    I don't have to imagine it -- I've used Lotus Notes. They've had that feature at least 2 versions ~6 years. It's an important feature in the corporate world. get over it.

    • Re:imagine (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ZeeTeeKiwi ( 615374 )
      And when that restriction annoyed me I just hit 'Print Screen' and pasted it into a new message. There is NO point in this type of restriction.

      I can forsee the day when we will all be running a monitoring program which detects when a time/forwarding/other stupidly restricted deocument is being displayed and automatically snaps the image to a proof database.

      Even if palladium etc stops such an app running on the pc, a digital cam (or better, analog!) will still suffice.

      • There is NO point in this type of restriction.

        That's not quite correct. Take the security biz. I mean, you know, [CLASSIFIED] type stuff. There's a real requirement for making certain certain types of data don't escape security management. The overlap between fulfilling security requirements and "digital rights" is actually pretty large.

        'Course, the problems are no less intractible. Don't bother me with minor details. :) :)

        C//

      • All that means is that the system was app level, not OS level.

        Go use a real trusted computing system for a while; Trusted Solaris is a good place to start. Security is built into the hardware, and no, you can't copy from a high-level window and paste into a low level one. And so on.

      • "Prevent copying" in Lotus Notes is only a deterrent not a security feature.

        You can just create an agent and use this code to remove it from emails:
        FIELD $KeepPrivate := @DeleteField;

    • If you know a little about Lotus Notes, you don't actually need print screen.

      At least in V4 (and I think V5), any developer worth their salt new that there was a particular field, let's say $NoCopy that held a flag on whether you could copy data or not or print data or not.

      But in certain circumstances (yes, I am being a little vague here on purpose), you could manipulate that particular field. The words "replicate", "local copy" and "macro/agent to delete field" seem to vaguely come to mind.

      And then ....
      • Ah, but then the developper would have enabled "consistent ACL", and "user may not create agents".

        And any users who have the Notes-Fu to use API calls to disable the ACL flag you hire into the Notes dev team.

        It's win-win :)

  • This could be a Good Thing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xeger ( 20906 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMtracker.xeger.net> on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:50PM (#5747739) Homepage
    The introduction of cameras and multimedia SMS in the 3G market has given rise to privacy concerns, as we have seen in recent Slashdot coverage.

    Consider for a moment that when people could be taking pictures of you with their cell phones at any time and at any place, some basic rights management within this very limited domain of cell phones and messaging might be extremely beneficial.

    Let's say I take a quick snap of myself and my new girlfriend, and send it off to my pal across town so he can see how much fun we're having. Do I want that image to reach my parents? Do I want my ex girlfriend to see it? How about my co-workers and enemies? I'd rather not, thanks.

    By giving the sender some basic control over where the content goes once it leaves his phone, we would be enhancing the sender's privacy. And, of course, all such "DRM" technologies must be taken with a grain of salt, because you and I and any other techie worth his weight in 3.5" floppies knows that any copy-protection scheme is breakable. The DRM technologies introduced to date have been far from confidence-inspiring. So DRM within this domain is more of a basic privacy tool than an Orwellian move to own your cell phone.

    As for my preferred intepretation of the DRM moniker -- I've always been fond of "Digital Rights Removal Mechanism."

    • Re:This could be a Good Thing (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Why would you send an image you don't want people to see, to a friend you don't think you can trust?

    • Re:This could be a Good Thing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kien ( 571074 ) <kien.member@fsf@org> on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:12PM (#5747874) Journal
      Consider for a moment that when people could be taking pictures of you with their cell phones at any time and at any place, some basic rights management within this very limited domain of cell phones and messaging might be extremely beneficial.

      I agree. But they could also be abused and, honestly, do _WE_ really need them?

      Let's say I take a quick snap of myself and my new girlfriend, and send it off to my pal across town so he can see how much fun we're having. Do I want that image to reach my parents? Do I want my ex girlfriend to see it? How about my co-workers and enemies? I'd rather not, thanks.

      This is one scenario where laws and DRM are not needed. If you send a snapshot to a friend and ask them not to forward it to anyone and they do it anyway...that's not a bloody friend and you would be wise to avoid sending them anything sensitive again. :) Now, if you just sent the snap to your mate without any request to keep it close, I think by most laws you would have no expectation of privacy and if they sent that photo on to an enemy or anyone else you'd be up a creek but (of course) IANAL so YMMV. :)

      So DRM within this domain is more of a basic privacy tool than an Orwellian move to own your cell phone.

      In a perfect world, I'd be thrilled to agree. But in the world I live in, large bodies of people whose job it is to make money have a nasty habit of adopting an "embrace and extend" attitude towards technologies that could potentially benefit most of us. Maybe I'm overly cynical or paranoid or maybe I just read /. too much.....or maybe there really are deep-pocketed interests in the world that want to control every aspect of your life.

      I hope I didn't come off sarcastic because I don't mean to be. You make a great argument for the legitimacy of this technology and I agree with it. I just worry about the potential vectors for abuse by those who don't have the best interests of their customers in mind.

      --K.

      • I wish I could make a blanket reply to all of these posts, because many of them make a good case against my argument. I've chosen to respond to yours because it has the most addressable points, the most coherency and the highest score (leading more people to read it, hopefully).

        The most vocal rebuttal thus far has been If your friend is willing to forward private material, then he's no friend at all. Along the same lines is If you don't want your friend to forward private photos, then tell him as much.

        • A most insightful reply, and informative as well. I believe that we agree on most of these issues on an ideological level, but I think you're more pragmatic than I am...which is fine. And maybe our social backgrounds and/or beliefs are different...which is probably even better.

          But even my best friends have been known to suffer momentary lapses of judgement. And there are numerous other cases where I might send something to my friend, and it would be unclear to him whether he's allowed to forward it or

    • Re:This could be a Good Thing (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mosch ( 204 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @08:22PM (#5748225) Homepage
      Let's say I take a quick snap of myself and my new girlfriend, and send it off to my pal across town so he can see how much fun we're having. Do I want that image to reach my parents? Do I want my ex girlfriend to see it? How about my co-workers and enemies? I'd rather not, thanks.
      I've got a really good solution to this problem. It's called 'trust your goddamned friends'.
    • > Let's say I take a quick snap of myself and my new girlfriend, and send it off to my pal across town so he can see how much fun we're having.

      "Hi! Me and my girlfriends had this great new idea - a webcam in our dorm! Check it out!"

      Yup, restricting forwarding of that would be good, IMO.

      Restriciting sending it in the first place would be even better :-)
    • Let's say I take a quick snap of myself and my new girlfriend, and send it off to my pal across town so he can see how much fun we're having. Do I want that image to reach my parents? Do I want my ex girlfriend to see it? How about my co-workers and enemies? I'd rather not, thanks.
      What if your pal across the town would be with your ex when he receives the pic?
    • If you have some info you don't want to become public, you simply don't make it public. You can't trust any technology to keep your info private for more then some time. Sending the pic to your best friend is the best way to make
      it public and well known in seconds.

      And if you don't want your ex to see, maybe she isn't your ex at all, otherwise why should she care about your new girlfriend :) ?
    • Geez. If you don't want your pictures being seen by lots of people, just do not send it over such an insecure media! DRM should not be a substitute for lack of personal responsability, IMHO. I think that technology can actually make life better but it is being widely abused by media compaines. Later, legislators will come up with ways to control the abuse, requiring more abuse on our privacy rights. There should be laws controlling the production of such technlogy instead of their use.

  • restrictions != legal permission to forward (Score:3, Interesting)

    by redcane ( 604255 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:51PM (#5747744)
    >Iannella says users of devices such as Nokia's >3650 multimedia messaging service mobile phone >benefit by having explicit rights to forward >media once it has been consumed. Actually no, they might be able to have a copyright notice saying "You may forward this to one person" But they haven't given us that "right". They've restricted us to that right, even though it used to be at our discretion. Now you can't use the material for "fair use" in any way even though you should be able to! >"The advantage is that the terms and conditions >that they acquired the content under can be >managed by the handset. They need not worry >about an infringement that may occur. Therefore >they will legally be allowed to forward content >on. Of course you don't need to worry about an infringment occuring, because you no longer have that option. REstricting us from copying stuff doesn't legally allow us to forward content on, we must have already been legally allowed to, just now they're making sure we only forward it their way.... In fact even if we're legally allowed to forward it, we might not be able to now.... I *really* wish they'd stop pretending that DRM has *any* advantages for a content consumer...

  • I can see it now... (Score:4, Funny)

    by nickgrieve ( 87668 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:52PM (#5747750) Journal
    Alice receives a memo from Bob, tries to forward it to Charles and the phone denies her. Alice then calls Charles and tells him she just got a memo form Bob at head office, tried to send it on but her phone would not let her, she then relays the contents verbally. Alice then calls Bob and tells him to get on to the communications guy, these new phones are a pain in the arse, can she have her old one back please.

    • Re:I can see it now... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Whyaduck ( 140952 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:15PM (#5747886)
      Alice receives a note from Bob skewering Charles' new toupee. Alice is a two faced shit, so she tries to forward it to Charles. Bob had set rights on the email so that it can't be forwarded, and it can only be read once. Alice can't send the email, doesn't realize that she can only read it once, but tells Charles about the message anyway. When Alice tries to show Charles the email when they're both in the office the next day she looks like an idiot because she can't show it to him. Charles fires Alice and gives Bob her job. Voila, digital rights management has benefits for content consumers (who are also, on occasion, content producers).

    • Re:I can see it now... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by flanman ( 2247 )
      I don't think that this is the scenario that's envisioned with DRM. If you create content, then you OWN the content.

      What DRM wants to do is protect people who make their living creating content ( like music and images ) and allow them to make a living at what they do. If they choose to open up the content to the world, then that should be their choice.

      The challenge to telco's and content creators is to price this stuff and facilitate the distribution of the content so that you WANT to share it and you do
  • This is just crazy. I'll never buy, or use a DRM enabled phone. This is part of reason I won't get a Verizon phone, they won't allow you to download any applications to the phone unless its through them, and you pay a subscription for it.

    • This is just crazy. I'll never buy, or use a DRM enabled phone. This is part of reason I won't get a Verizon phone, they won't allow you to download any applications to the phone unless its through them, and you pay a subscription for it.

      Unfortunately, in that case I believe you won't be able to buy or use a phone at all, at least not a 3G phone. Currently working for a major mobile phone vendor, I can assure you that DRM is a cruical part of the platform.

      When it comes to downloading applications, ther

  • GET THE NAME RIGHT! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:56PM (#5747776) Homepage Journal
    Sorry for shouting, but its Digital restrictions management. ODRL is Orwellian Digital Restrictions Language. Please. If we don't get the name right, who will?

  • Great idea!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Wench ( 9309 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:04PM (#5747818) Journal
    Cuts out all the chain letters and those lame jokes you get 17 times over; the ones with the >>>>>>
    >>>>>>>>> markings...

    (Yah, so there might be some teeny weeny unwanted side effects. Whatever.)

  • Hello...? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by vonsneerderhooten ( 254776 )
    Imagine if you could only forward email once, or not at all.

    Hello.. am I the only one that's ever heard of copy- and- paste?

    -D

    • Re:Hello...? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by colinmeek ( 166885 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:54PM (#5748069)

      The important distinction between what is legal and what is possible... As a musician, I can undertand the appeal of a DRM language that would allow me to specify, for instance, that a recording can be forwarded arbitrarily, but only listened to once at each site.

      As an engineer, I understand that methods for enforcing this kind of contract are either overly intrusive or ineffective. Suggestions are welcome, except from the "we-listen-and-decide-how-much-it's-worth" crowd, since this crowd seems to decide - conveniently enough - that a recording is worth listening to only if it's free (the whole "I-wouldn't-buy-the-album-anyways" argument).

      I am intentionally playing devil's advocate here. Please offer me reassurance that the honor system can work in cyberspace, as it does at (for instance) traffic lights...

      • Ok, so this may be considered "offtopic", but...

        Please offer me reassurance that the honor system can work in cyberspace, as it does at (for instance) traffic lights...

        You obviously don't live in Denver, Colorado. Or San Francisco, California. Or San Diego, California. Or anywhere else on this earth.

        Say, how are you getting to /.?

      • well traffic lights seem to be a completely different situation.

        where i live, we have cameras at most of the busy intersections.

        you run a red light and later that month you get a pretty high-rez picture of your car (good enough to see your grumpy face) and a hefty fine

        I cant see any sort of legal way of enforcing that people get paid for music. there is no equivilent of police patrols for red lights that will stop someone paying zero dollars for music.

        unless you accept DRM... which wont happen. we ac

    • Ah, but that will now count as circumvention and you can be sued under the DMCA =P

  • phone features (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by Doppler00 ( 534739 )
    I'm still waiting for a phone that will actually tell you how many minutes you've used peak/off-peak instead of forcing you to go to there website. It's obvious why they don't have this feature, but still I'd rather have something useful like this than cameras or DRM.

    Oh, and why to some companies still charge $0.10 for you to send a 100 byte message when one minute of phone time is several kilobytes?
    • billing tip 101 the billing sytem determines whats peak, and off peak, not your phone. so the phone has no way of telling you how many mintues of peak, or off peak youve used. you could get the billing system to send you an sms with this in it *shrug* as for sms's, well someones gotta pay for the sms gateway. voice and data are not the same... well in 2g anyway.. ;) packet switched voice is, as the name suggests data, but people dont like to be slugged 5c/kb for voice now do they? dms0
      • i forgot html formatting was on... GRRR

        whoops

        dms0
      • With all the bullshit, useless gimmicks built into phones these days, why not a programmable "peak/off peak" timer to take into account the fact that different carriers start evenings and weekends at different times? Then again, I suppose that would take valuable memory space that is better suited to, what, a "your weight on Jupiter" calculator that is probably being offered soon.

        God forbid that phones actually do phone-related things.

        • HAHAHHA

          yeah thats not a bad idea, some of the new phones come with j2me (JAMiD?) compatibility so you could maybe roll your own..

          getting an sms from the provider is probrably the best way to do it.. at least then you know exactly when the boundaries are.

          timezones, billing systems, and time bands are a bitch ;)

          dms0
    • "I'm still waiting for a phone that will actually tell you how many minutes you've used peak/off-peak instead of forcing you to go to there website"

      That would be hard to do technically. Phone charges are determined by the rating & guiding system, not the phone network. The network tells the rating & guiding system when you called and for how long; this system then assigns a fee to be charged and "guides" the charge to your account for billing.

      Letting the phone know when peak hours start and e
    • I have Sprint PCS service and all I have to do to find out how many peak and off peak minutes I have left is dial *4. It has worked well for me and I have not gone over my minutes just by checking that every once in a while.

  • What a phone is designed and good for (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tyrione ( 134248 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:34PM (#5747981) Homepage
    TALKING. All the rest is mental masturbation. Give me a Wireless phone that doesn't drop connections is all I ask. The companies should fix their backbones before they release pointless WOW factors that only 'sort of work' as billed.
  • Think about the following scenario.

    Girlfriend/wife/significant other sends you a 'hot' voice/video message for your eyes only.

    If her parents / colleagues / friends / family got a forwarded copy (possibly by accident) it could ruin her reputation, cause her to lose her job, etc.

    DRM would be effective in this scenario.
    • But we all know that DRM is useless, as it will be cracked as soon as it's unleashed.

      And if all else fails, take a picture of the phone with another camera-phone-thingy and send it on it's way.

    • Re:DRM is a good idea for this usage (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What about just erasing the fscking things you don't want others to see/hear/whatever?

      Want your things safe? Put it into a safe!

      I don't see why I must drop my rights to protect your lazyness!!
  • Can they inhibit people from using these phones for pr0n0graphic uses now? I wish. I think that 3G phones will do very little except make the pr0n co's even more money and make sick stuff more prevalent in our society/generation :( makes me sad. PZ
  • I could see why they might want something like this for lets say......images. Whats to stop someone from using someone elses phone (or if they're like Ice T they have 3, and yes i did see him have 3 phones open on a table in a restraunt in front of him), taking a picture of your screen with the image, and then sending that, with no DRM. Now, granted with that kinda reproduction, you'd most likely have some pretty big image degradation issues, but the principle is sound. Its the same idea as recording a D

  • Bad move (Score:1, Interesting)

    by CowardNeal ( 627678 )
    My first concern would be to grow the 3G market. Internet usage proliferated cos we could all copy stuff and it was free.

    I don't know how 3G is going to be taken up in great numbers if they don't let it proliferate with free and adult content.

  • You have the right to read this message (spam). You do not have the right to delete it, nor do you have the right to ignore it. You are circumventing the Digital Rights Management otherwise, therefore hacking (and thus a terrorist). Very un-PATRIOTic of you!

    Hmmm... Wonder what we ought to do with all these new "hacker terrorists"? How about sending them to be gassed? At least involuntary servitude for life - c'mon.

    The point is - Support the Electronic Frontieer Foundation (EFF: http://www.eff.org).
  • Would email be capable of being forwarded once. Oh, how I wish that were the case.
    • I disagree, but only at work. If a VP sends something to his direct reports, who then forwards it to their managers (adding their own spin to enhance the message a tailor it to their staffs) and eventually it gets to me. And then I forward it on to the people actually involved with the project. If I just make my own message, it loses the sense that one of the 'gorillas from the mist' has spoken about their project.

  • They're not getting rid of e-mail forwarding (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ilan Volow ( 539597 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @01:58AM (#5749413) Homepage
    They are actually adding a feature called "e-mail backwarding". It's like e-mail forwarding, only the complete opposite. Instead of being limited to sending the message to anyone, you now have the full ability to send the message to no one.

    Once you learn the quirky syntax of ODRL this will all make sense.

  • ODRL - Rights expression language (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cesther ( 65813 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @02:43AM (#5749538)
    ODRL is a XML based rights expression language. So it will allow you to express a license of rights that could be considered Orwellian.

    It could also be used in many positive and creative ways (an exercise left for the reader).

    But it is not an access control technology (DRM) in of itself.

    There is another XML based rights expression language being pushed by DRM vendor ContentGuard called XrML [xrml.org] - which they own but 'freely' licence.

    The real question is: Can a rights expression language express unregulated uses?
    What should the defacto position on which an instance of expressed rights (in ORML or XrML) be?
    Can a rights expression language express that the content is no longer covered by copyright in the EU?

    Larry Lessig's Free Culture [randomfoo.net] discusses the unregulated side of this issue.

  • DRM - Digital Rights Management
    DRM - Digital Restrictions Management
    ODRL - Open Digital Rights Language
    ODRL - Orwellian Digital Restrictions Language

    All these references to Orwell... all this altering of acronyms is very... Orwellian in itself.

    I count not less than 4 comments rated 4+ on this thread which are deliberately attempting to mislead the public over the above acronyms in order to alter their perception of that which the acronym denotes. How the hell can we sit here and pretend shady men in suits
    • You got it backwards. "Digital Rights Management" is Orwellian. It sounds as if it is the opposite of what it actually means.

      "Digital Restrictions Management" is a more accurate term.

      • You got it backwards. "Digital Rights Management" is Orwellian. It sounds as if it is the opposite of what it actually means.

        "Digital Restrictions Management" is a more accurate term.

        So you say, but I disagree. It protects the *rights* of the authors (as defined by law) but also *restricts* the user... either definition is correct. My comment did not attempt to establish the "correctness" of either version of the acronym, just to point out that there are multiple viewpoints, and that a huge number of pe
  • Then this is the right way to go about it! On one hand we have 802.11x which is multiplatform and rich with many forms of software, as well as innovations such as Apple's rendezvous. On the other hand we'll have this, restrictive, closed and limited. I know where my money (already) is....
  • If you want to provide content under your own licence, its your call. This DRM scheme is an open standard is not mandatory, and is not built in by default to 3G phones. You are free to use it or not.

    Make your own mobile content and services and licence them in the way you see fit; its your business. The market will decide who is the winner.
  • phone companies wanting to ensure pr0n companies can protect their revenue streams on picture/video phones.

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