UCB Researchers Critique DRM, Compulsory Licensing 158
An anonymous reader writes "
In this
paper, Berkeley researchers critique a host of cockamamie DRM schemes, and
they also question the compulsory
licensing approach recently being promoted by the EFF. They get into some
of the practical details about compulsory licensing that no one else seems to
be talking about like technical feasibility, incentives to cheat, monitoring for compliance, efficiency of collection and distribution of funds,
privacy, fair use, feasibility of legal enforcement... Anyway, it's worth
a read and is a useful contribution to the debate, whatever side you're on.
"
YRO? (Score:2, Funny)
I got one DRM system that's ... (Score:4, Funny)
UNIX File Permissions.
It should be obvious by now (Score:3, Insightful)
As for the RIAA, I strongly disagree with their methods and their tactics. But, in the end, they are protecting the companies who fund them. And quests such as not buying CDs in order to protest the RIAA only result in more justification for the RIAA to encourage cracking down.
In my opinion, the only legitimate option that the RIAA is pursuing is litigation. Litigation is where the Copywrite battle is fought, and it should have remained in the first place.
Re:It should be obvious by now (Score:2, Interesting)
MY thoughts....no way they are going to stop people from getting music for free. Encode everyth
Re:It should be obvious by now (Score:1)
Yeah, if you want an extremely clunky solution that relies on the user specifically encrypting and decrypting files he wants to protect, but still be able to use once in a while. While you're at it, why don't you run a firewall by having every incoming or outgoing packet pop up on the screen with "yes" and "no" buttons?
I prefer code so
Re:It should be obvious by now (Score:3, Interesting)
Encrypts a file which then mounts as a drive letter when decrypted. Pretty handy! All my sensitive files goes in there (mounts as drive s:\ ) and it stays mounted until I unmounted.
Re:It should be obvious by now (Score:5, Insightful)
No proposed technical protection measures are strong enough to sustain a determined attack. Only in combination with models where the incentives to circumvent are limited, can technical solutions succeed.
So, I read that to say that if you don't allow for reasonable legal alternatives (like, say, charging less than $20 for one decent song amidst some filler and/or providing some handy online distribution system), nothing you can do technically to prevent copying will work in the long run. Of course, that leaves legal recourse (as we've seen from the RIAA lately), but the fine article also addresses the (in)feasibility of that option.
Of course, I'm guessing the *AA will read it more along the lines of: we've gotta use the opposite approach by providing an incentive to NOT circumvent: (1) try to convince everyone that file sharing is the moral equivalent of eating the baby you just molested, (2) utilize ridiculous and broken copy protection schemes that hassle the honest-end users, thereby creating a peer-pressure factor, and (3) emit a constant barrage of shotgun-style lawsuits to maintain a nice atmosphere of fear.
I dunno why these nice smart folks bothered to make this fine paper. For some of us they are preaching to the choir, for others their words fall on deaf ears.
Re:It should be obvious by now (Score:2, Insightful)
3 words: publish or perish
It's how you get a job in academia and it's how you keep it. But, it IS interesting... often the results of research seem really obvious - but someone had to take the time to put it in such a way.
Re:It should be obvious by now (Score:1, Troll)
Re:It should be obvious by now (Score:1)
Re:It should be obvious by now (Score:2, Insightful)
Amen
There are places that could use that level of protection I am sure. But lem them choose for themselves!
DRM is nothing more vender lockin on a grand scale. Be it software or a distribution channel.
All this talk of DRM and IP are giving me heart burn. I remember when people in the "computer biz" and "software game" wanted to be better then then the common 1900's busin
You don't need to boycott them to hurt them (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It should be obvious by now (Score:5, Interesting)
Bullshit. Perhaps you mean to say DRM is unbeneficial in its current form to consumers? Even then bullshit.
DRM has benefits right now, ask Apple, they seem to be making a few million dollar benefits out of a system which includes a form of DRM.
Want to stop users running as root or deleting your files on a shared system? That's a form of DRM, which has benefits?
Want to stop recruitment agencies chopping your CV into pieces, editing it around and submitting it for jobs for which you are unsuited and wasting your time? Produce your CV as a PDF which stops that. There's a benefit for you.
Want to produce a game for the PS/2, the XBox or any other console? Want to make sure that people buy it and you actually make some money from your effort? DRM again, woah, profit as a benefit? How unlike slashdot.
Just because something annoys you does not make it unbenefical to everyone, nor does making blanket statements of your political beliefs as fact provide any benefit to an arguement.
Re:It should be obvious by now (Score:4, Interesting)
DRM should have the name- Digital Restrictions Management. I do not want further restriction on my stuff. The Doomsday project in England would be completely dead instead of resurected if DRM had been in place then.
We let DRM happen and we are going to forget the past.
Re:It should be obvious by now (Score:1)
Compulsory DRM may or may not be a bad thing, and I would agree that many of the schemes being thrown around are not good, but not all DRM is bad.
Re:It should be obvious by now (Score:2)
Re:It should be obvious by now (Score:1)
If DRM can be implemented that will give added benefits to the producer without taking much away from the consumer, so that a net benefit has b
Re:It should be obvious by now (Score:3, Insightful)
If people don't buy CD's long enough, the companies funding the RIAA shall go bankrupt and noone is left to fund the RIAA. Then the RIAA shall no longer have money to buy politicians and laws.
Re:It should be obvious by now (Score:1)
I don't think this is correct. Some of the companies funding the RIAA make money from other sources so won't go bankrupt if CD sales go down.
not necessarily (Score:2)
Not necessarily. If you buy CDs from independent artists instead, the word will get around and the message that it isn't that people object to buying music, it's just that we won't buy it from scum.
Shifting our buying will give the music industry and the politicians the message we want to send. You are right that simply refusing to buy won't do it, this gives the labels
I haven't read the article (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I haven't read the article (Score:1, Insightful)
moderators, troll this luser.
Re:I haven't read the article (Score:1, Funny)
Re:I haven't read the article (Score:1)
So which meaning of proprietary are you using?
Re:I haven't read the article (Score:5, Informative)
which is GPL'd.
So you probably won't go to GNU/Hell for reading it, in your friendly local xpdf or konqueror or whatnot.
have a free clue (Score:2)
Google is your friend, I don't know which OS you run.
Re:I haven't read the article (Score:2, Funny)
And what high standards they are too.
Re:I haven't read the article (Score:2, Funny)
That has to be one of the worst cases of trolling I've ever seen. The trick is to be subtle, to make it not look like your trolling.
Bringing MS into a discussion that has nothing to do with MS is a bit of a give away.
Try again and this time remember subtle
-Alex
Re:I haven't read the article (Score:1)
Oh, I don't know about the worst, really. I've seen some pretty clumsy trolling in my day, although I agree that this one is pretty inept.
I have to admit, though, that I'm almost hypnotized by his use of the word "fractious." I assume the poor word just got caught in the crossfire between a freak-ass typo and his spellchecking program, but it's hard to say. Nevertheless, "fractious" is a delightful word that simply doesn't get used as of
Re:I haven't read the article (Score:2)
Re:I haven't read the article -- from the Author (Score:1)
I don't care, I use Win2K and Adobe Products, but I just thought I'd tweak the usual crowd here a bit.
In 100 years, it won't matter what OS you used or what computer language you authored software in... hell in my career none of those have mattered more than 4 years!
UCB (Score:1)
That makes sense.
I'll laugh at you before you laugh at me because your pennies have been in my ass!
Re:UCB (Score:1)
Like (Score:1)
like totally man
You mean I actually need to read? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:You mean I actually need to read? (Score:1)
That and i'm reading it at work, and I'm tired of looking at PDF's, since my job revolves around opening them, looking at them, exporting them.
Re:You mean I actually need to read? (Score:1)
Which is, if I'm not mistaken, being promoted by Microsoft, which in turn is the master in bloating.
So some bloating is bound to happen.
betrayal is betrayal (Score:2)
Yes, (Score:1, Funny)
Text of the PDF paper (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who hates that disgusting Adobe PDF format (why people can't publish in HTML after all this is the web right ?) here is the text of the pdf..
A Framework for Evaluating Digital Rights Management Proposals
Rachna Dhamija
UC Berkeley, SIMS
rachna@ sims. berkeley. edu
Fredrik Wallenberg
UC Berkeley, SIMS
fredrik@ sims. berkeley. edu
Abstract
In this paper, we analyze the strengths and weaknesses
of the various solutions to compensate intellectual property
rights holders. Specifically we look at digital rights manage-ment
(DRM) based systems, extensions to DRM to support
fair uses, monitor-and-charge schemes, compulsory licens-ing
schemes and alternative business models.
Our main contribution is to provide a framework from
which current and future proposals may be evaluated. In
order to realistically evaluate any compensation scheme, we
suggest that the following questions are important to ask:
Is the proposal technically feasible? What are the incentives to circumvent legal and techni-cal protections for all parties in the transaction?
What is the burden of monitoring for compliance in the system, and on which parties does this burden fall?
What is the efficiency of the collection and distribution of funds from consumers to rights holders?
What are the impacts on user privacy and fair use? What is the feasibility of legal enforcement, both do-mestically and internationally?
1. Introduction
Over the last few years the debate over protection, or lack
thereof, of copyrighted works has flourished. Proposals on
how to reimburse the creators of these works range from
strict proprietary encryption locks to new business mod-els
that rely on revenue streams from ancillary products.
Each new proposal points out the shortcomings of previ-ous
schemes and highlights the benefits of its own solution.
However, no consistent framework exists for analyzing the
different solutions.
In this paper, we analyze the strengths and weaknesses of
the various solutions. Specifically, we look at DRM based
systems, extensions to DRM to support fair uses, monitor-and-
charge schemes, compulsory licensing schemes and al-ternative
business models. From this comparison, we extract
important dimensions such as technical feasibility, incen-tives
to cheat, burden of monitoring, privacy, and the feasi-
bility of legal enforcement. Our main contribution is to pro-vide
a framework from which current and future proposal
may be evaluated.
Digital Information as a "Public Good" Economists
sometimes refer to certain goods as public. This does not
imply that they are in the public domain as defined by intel-lectual
property law. Rather, a public good is a product or
service that has two properties. First, it is non-rival, which
simply means that consumption by one person doesn't limit
consumption of the next. Second, it is non-excludable, im-plying
that once the product exists, the benefit cannot be
limited to those that have paid for it.
Ideas and information captured in physical media tradi-tionally
fall into some middle ground. While the informa-tion
itself certainly has the characteristics of a public good,
the physical media that it is tied to is rival and exclud-able.
This gives rise to business models involving the sale
of physical artifacts whose only value is the embedded in-formation
such as books, CDs and DVDs. These business
models have taken a serious blow with the introduction of
information in digital form combined with communications
media such as the Internet. The question at hand is whether
or not it is possible to devise a scheme under which money
can be transferred from those consuming information goods
to the providers of the same.
We use the characteristics of a public good to distinguish
between the following classes of proposals to compensate
intellectual property rights holders:
Disgusting PDF format?! (Score:1, Offtopic)
WTF? PDF is a format that renders the same regardless of the program used to view it, and can be generated by open-source linux software. HTML is a format that is viewed differently depending on the program and settings used, especially since the majority of people use IE (not exactly standards compliant). Moreover, PDF files can be easily saved and vie
Re:Disgusting PDF format?! (Score:1, Offtopic)
THat's all very well and fine if the layout of one's document was important. But... this is a research paper for crissakes... there is NO need for pixel-perfect rendering. HTML is just fine.
Are you a troll, or what? (Score:2)
What do you think a chart, or a graph, or a table is? Just an arbitrary collection of pixels?
Good spatial organization is an important part of presenting scientific and/or research data accurately and aesthetically.
Would you really trust the published results of years of research to, say, a non-portable CSS/HTML
Re:Are you a troll, or what? (Score:2)
Are you a troll, or what?
Good spatial organization is an important part of presenting scientific and/or research data accurately and aesthetically.
This is what HTML was ORIGINALLY designed for.
Would you really trust the published results of years of research to, say, a non-portable CSS/HTML document, and hope for the best when your peers around the world try to print it?
Cosidering that html is the widest used cross-platform document format, I wonder if your dictionary contains the same definition of "
HTML for layout? No. Try "Markup". (Score:2)
What happens when you resize a browser window? What happens when you resize a PDF or PS reader window? In a browser, the document's layout changes drastically. In a PDF or PS reader, it doesn't.
The original design intention was for easy marku
Re:HTML for layout? No. Try "Markup". (Score:1, Flamebait)
You're wrong. Just accept that and move on.
You're a asshole, just accept that and move on. :)
I re-read my post, however, and realized that my first point came out totally incorrect. I was saying that HTML was originally designed for providing a cross-platform way to publish scientific and academic documents that could be read on any machine. That was its original purpose, and the world wide web is just a big bastard child of that purpose.
I could go into detail, but you're too much a asshole to be wort
Re:HTML for layout? No. Try "Markup". (Score:2)
This *is* possible in HTML, and was a possibility for it's use. However, IE won't render it, and well, IE's dominating the market still. (Though go read the browser wars post from yesterday, I kinda liked it).
Give me a link, I'm interested.
I'd like to point out, even though you're Anonymous Coward and you're not listening, that it's very possible to provide images in precise locations in html and still allow the page to shrink and expand for different browser sizes and different screen resolutions. In m
Re:Disgusting PDF format?! (Score:1)
Re:Text of the PDF paper (Score:2)
Re:Text of the PDF paper (Score:3, Informative)
Well, So What? (Score:5, Insightful)
The bathwater should be carefully checked to make sure no baby is contained therein before throwing it out. DRM often being overly restrictive, easily bypassed, or otherwise inneficient does not mean that there should not be some _Rasonable_ system in place that prevents misuse, and only mis-use. In the slashdot crowd-- and I find myself, as part of it, falling victim to this at times-- DRM is often spoken of in a context of its being inherently bad and undesireable. Truthfully, and effective and fair DRM system just might be what is truly needed.
Interesting comments wanted; trolls need not reply
Re:Well, So What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but to be fair, it has to respect the entire letter of the law. Not just "you can't copy/modify this, its mine", but everything. From (mostly theoretical, these days) copyright expiry to provisions made for fair use exceptions and changing legislation.
DRM as often spoken of is useless at best and harmful at worst. There might be some gems hidden there, but I doubt that allowing Holywood and Microsoft to follow through with their Evil Scheme of the Month is going to bring them to the surface.
Re:Well, So What? (Score:4, Interesting)
I would like to point you to this article [slashdot.org] and follow up by submitting that what you ask is either not possible or so impractical that we should not waste our energies on such a project.
To summarize the article, it basically states that because of the complexities of society, only humans should be allowed to decide the implication of the law in a case by case basis. Such decisions are not for the cold logic of a computer unless a sophisticated AI is created for DRM, which is the impractical part I was referring to earlier.
The key word in the article is "leeway", something that machines are completely incapable of.
Look at it this way, do you really want your computer telling you what you can and can't do? Now you can say that this is important for security and to prevent damage to the machine (e.g. Don't allow other users to access the machine, don't allow users to delete system files), but those are simply bad analogies and I encourage you to avoid them since they will only hinder this discussion.
Re:Well, So What? (Score:1)
You could be right- though I'd say "Not now does not mean not ever." As a programmer and (side business) artist, should I make something independant of salaried work, I would like the 800 lb. gorilla that redistributes to have some protection in place. As for a reasonable method of doing so, This is slashdot- why does what I what I want have to be possible?
Look at it this way, do you really want
Re:Well, So What? (Score:2)
Consumers have rights, yes, but copyright owners do too. With a functional DRM in place both interrests can be served. It would even allow smalltime publishers to get bigger at the expense of the "evil giant companies", because publishing costs could go down dramatically.
I think that DRM is something we'll going to have to live with from some point on, no use fighting it. It will serve a purpose.
(funny to hear people (on slashdot and in other places) slamming the music industry's "o
Re:Well, So What? (Score:2, Insightful)
but i think it would be wrong to condemn DRMS; sure, DRMS cause legal problems mainly relating to fair usage, but those problems should put in relation to the advantages DRM bring about. it is clear that private end users primarily see DRMS as a tool which makes them eventually pay more, but from a (more important?!) business perspective, DRMS a
Re:Well, So What? (Score:1)
You now have the moral duty to suggest how such a system would behave.
The problems are pointed in the article and in previous posts:
ok so thanks (Score:1, Insightful)
Companies are serious about DRM. It's not going away.
Re:ok so thanks (Score:2)
Much like the easily-broken CSS scheme on DVDs; the DVD-CCA can't just say, "okay everyone, we need to change the format because CSS has been cracked. Please toss out all your DVD players and discs, and replace them with our new DVD+ standard. Yes, it'll be expensive for you, but that's too bad."
If you couldn't buy a car without a padlock on the hood, "for y
As if.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As if.. (Score:1, Flamebait)
Compulsory licensing is socialism. I'll take DRM over it any day of the week. I'd rather not be able to look at certain memory locations in my computer for data that Im not supposed to have free access to anyway (except for fair use purposes, which can be accomodated) than not be able to write a song and sell it at a price of my choosing.
Re:As if.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Intellectual property is fascism.
Now, I'm sure we both realize that the previous statement was roughly meaningless and designed only to incite emotion. The point is that yours is the same. Copyright is a legal construct in the first place. It does not exist independent of the government's creating it.
But moreover, I don't see how it is socialism in any case. Socialism implies that the means of production are owned by the government. Umm, in this case I guess that would mean that the content producers were owned by the government? Or their equipment, perhaps? Nope, none of this is making any sense.
Well, you've made it quite clear what your opinion is, but you haven't really given any reason for anyone else to accept it. My point of view is that compulsory licensing has at least this benefit: it stops the "arms race" between file sharers / traders / copyright infringers (however you want to look at it) and the RIAA / MPAA. While I think the technological aspect of this "arms race" may actually produce technologies which are interesting and useful in their own respects, the legal "arms race" is much more troubling, as very questionable law is being enacted at the request of the side that evidently donates more money to political campaigns.
Compulsory licensing does mean that you can't "write a song and sell it at a price of [your] choosing", but the way I look at it, you didn't have a right to do that anyway. You currently have the ability, yes, but that ability is only justified (in the USA, by the Constitution) to be granted to you to "promote the progress of science and useful arts".
And yes, I realize you were probably just trying to get a rise out of me and the many Slashdotters who think as I do, but the point is that there are real, legitimate issues here. Most people accept copyright law because it's what they're used to, but the fact is that when you look carefully, the foundations for it--especially in its present form--are pretty shaky.
One interesting point raised by the linked-to article, which you did not address, is that in a compulsory-licensing system, the producers have an incentive to try to fake the system. That honestly hadn't occurred to me. I think this can be solved, say by having rankings signed with a public-key system, and I think the solution would be simpler and less Draconian in implementation than trying to get DRM on everything, but it is worth thinking about.
Re:As if.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it's possible to keep a free market. Not for released information-only products, but for non-released products. A scheme where popular artists earn more, where expensive productions remain possible, but without having to put any restrictions on use or redistribution of the material once it's published.
How, you say?
The starting point is that you can only demand a certain sum of m
Re:As if.. (Score:2)
I've thought about this type of system myself before. First off, you have to realize that under any even halfway sane copyright system, something like this can be implemented in userspace by means of a contract. (In a system with compulsory licensing, I'm asuming that you'd be allowed to waive your cut of the take; if not, you could always donate it to your favorite charity.) People could use this system right no
Re:As if.. (Score:2)
First off, you have to realize that under any even halfway sane copyright system, something like this can be implemented in userspace by means of a contract. [...] People could use this system right now; they don't because content producers know they can get a sweeter deal because of the abilities copyright currently affords them.
I don't think the current deal is so sweet. Look at how many artist detest the recording industry, but have no choice but to hope they'll create a smas
Re:As if.. (Score:2)
I think the deal definitely is sweet, otherwise no one would use it,
Re:As if.. (Score:2)
Re:As if.. (Score:2)
You may need to earn a better reputation by giving live concerts (making money at the same time) and providing more samples. That
Re:As if.. (Score:2)
Re:As if.. (Score:2)
It is one such type of system, yes, but not all systems meeting this description are socialism. From m-w.com:
Hey, look, astroturf! (Score:2)
Compulsory licensing is socialism.
If it wasn't for compulsory broadcast licensing, the RIAA, either as the people paying the PR firm that signs your paychecks, or the people whose propaganda you're mindlessly parroting would not have a multibillion dollar r
Re:a price of my choosing (Score:2)
Re:As if.. (Score:2)
Copyright is a protection of property. Saying it interferes with free market is like saying laws against theft interfere with free market. Free market means a buyer and seller reach a mutual agreement on a price. The seller has no say on the price of his product if buyers choose instead to copy it for free.
"To call compulsory licensing "socialism" betrays a lack of understanding of copyr
(un)Fair (Score:3, Interesting)
Odd how companies are spending so many resources in hopes that they'll score a home run. What I find strange is, that when other technologies which where hip where introduced (eg. cassettes, vhs tapes, etc), I don't recall the same effort as the 400lb gorillas running around with an attache of lawyer goons. Why not just go back to the basics and protest against those technologies, they're still being used... Odd...
What is the feasibility of legal enforcement, both domestically and internationally? It is easy for researchers and market actors to forget that a solution that requires significant government intervention and enforcement is inherently bound to the confines of country boundaries and international treaties.
Comments such as these rather scare me into thinking that at some point companies will come together and force their own private hell with a one world order rule on the net. Sure it would be a difficult task, but money talks, and I'm sure if the top ten companies in every country got together and lobbied for something like this, they might actually get it going.
What are the impacts on user privacy and fair use?
Privacy concerns frequently run counter to desires for economic efficiency. Therefore, any proposed solutions must acknowledge that there is a trade-off to be made. Fair use is important on its social merits alone, however, a broader adoption of fair and private uses will also serve to reduce user incentives to circumvent.
Situations such as these make some purposely circumvent policies and rules. Especially when they're (rules and policies) shoved down someone's throat.
Re:(un)Fair (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't recall that because you weren't a radio station in the 70's and 80's being sued by the RIAA for playing whole sides of LPs instead of talking over single tracks. You weren't Philips, trying to grow your new compact cassette format while the RIAA tried to get it banned in the US market.
The reason it's different now is purely because of the technology. Unlike those other battles - over physical technologies like the LP, the compact cassette, the reel to reel, DAT, Elcassette and so forth - or with established businesses that could be held economically accountable for breach of contract - this time the RIAA is forced to deal with a technology that is available to everyone and travels at the speed of light. This battle is purely a game of whack-a-mole, which the old order can never hope to win.
Compulsory licensing is a copout. It's also inevitable. My guess is the EFF is just hoping this "olive branch" will help them to build a dialougue with the industry. That could help build credibility for the EFF in established circles, but I suspect it still may be too early to play this card without alienating the hard liners (like myself). The music industry may be on the ropes, but it has a very long way to fall and I don't want to see anyone catch them before they hit the mat.
(BTW I was going to link you to a story about the RIAA and the LP, but trying to connect to RIAA.ORG returns me http://"""....""""" - it would appear they are, yet again, succumbing to a DNS attack...)
Wipe that meme: The EFF isn't promoting licencing (Score:4, Insightful)
Other EFF board members include John Perry Barlow [eff.org] [also associated w/the Grateful Dead] and John Gilmore [toad.com], neither of whom would endorse systems that require DRM. Beyond that, the EFF's general vibe of promoting online privacy and the right to anonymity would make the EFF incompatible with DRM systems.
I think that this bad meme (that the EFF wants C.L.) got into Slashdot a few months ago when an article covered the talk an EFF staff member gave on compulsory licencing. Talking about it or listing it as one method of compensating artists != endorsing it, but that confusion was made.
Re:Wipe that meme: The EFF isn't promoting licenci (Score:4, Informative)
Compulsory licensing is not DRM, so your comment doesn't make sense. Compulsory licensing means that license holders (the "evil" record companies) are compelled to license their material - and compensated for it, of course. It is basically what makes radio possible.
How it would work in P2P is that there would be some measure of which songs are being shared, a sort of Nielsen Ratings for P2P. Then the license holders for those songs would get paid in proportion to how popular they were.
What would fund them? Possibly the good old modem tax, or some similar measure that charges people who do a lot of file sharing more than people who do less. Read this article by EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann [dailyprincetonian.com] to hear it from the horse's mouth.
You are totally off base in thinking that the EFF does not support compulsory licensing. They have been pushing that "solution" for quite a while now.
Personally, I think it is a terrible idea, and I'm glad to see someone has finally given it a good public roasting. Hopefully the concept will die a quiet death and the EFF can get back to protecting people's privacy instead of forcing them to pay a modem tax and putting the government in charge of paying artists.
From the EFF's own web site (Score:4, Interesting)
"...The problem is that there is no adequate system in place that allows music lovers access to their favorite music while compensating artists and copyright holders. It's time to start addressing this problem head on. In the past, we've used a system called "compulsory licensing" to reconcile copyright law with the benefits of new technologies like cable television and webcasting. This approach has drawbacks, but it's certainly better than the direction that the recording industry is taking us today.
Many innovative payment models have been proposed (with or without a compulsory license), and we have highlighted some of them here,..." (emphasis added)
Fred's April article (which according to the EFF "explores a possible alternative": this doesn't read like strong support by the EFF to me) is talking about how to compensate artists. Fred writes that there are many ways to compensate them, of which one could be compulsory licensing, and that one way to do c.l. is ISP fees. Again, this doesn't read like a policy endorsement but instead an exploration of alternatives: ISP fees/modem taxes are a subset of a subset of ways to compensate artists. And talking about it != endorsing it.
when the problem is out of hand, check assumptions (Score:5, Interesting)
First of all, let us observe that it is very rare that hitting your customers with a massive hammer (filing lawsuits against them and treating them as criminals) ends up helping your business. And it's quite uncommon if you make someone's life a living hell (with Microsoft style Palladium DRM) that they are going to buy more product from you, much less have any positive opinion of you.
Secondly, let us look at what is really going on with music today, not what the music industry likes to say is going on.
1. Most people like music.
2. Most people buy music.
3. There is an amazing amout of music available on many labels from many geographic regions.
4. There is no easy way to a consumer to listen via radio to all the music that is available.
5. Outside of radio, the ability to listen to music before purchase in a commercial environment is even more limited. Some few music stores offer listening stations, but many times the equipment is broken or dirty.
6. In reality, most people listen to much of the music they end up purchasing via their friends. In fact, many friendships are made because people have common tastes in music.
7. The music industry's method of retailing is incredibly anti-customer and does not respect local laws and customs (try before buy, returns).
8. The music industry has made very little effort to revamp their sales system.
9. The existing online music stores all require that you register to
Re:when the problem is out of hand, check assumpti (Score:2)
Hey, it's working for SCO, you insensitive clod!
yours litigiously,
Darl McBride
Re:when the problem is out of hand, check assumpti (Score:1)
We've been over this many times. Just because something is working in your head, doesn't mean it's working in the real world.
If you want to be able to clearly see the consequences of your actions in the real world, you must take your medicine.
Please take your medicine, Darl! These crazy lawsuits and criminal charges are not a healthy way to ask for attention.
Sincerely,
Your Shrink
Re:when the problem is out of hand, check assumpti (Score:2)
internet radio is hard to find
One neat feature of iTunes is its radio menu. Click on the "Radio" label and you get a list of hundreds of internet radio stations, grouped by genre. iTunes lists the station's name, a blurb about the kind of music it plays, and its bandwidth. Just click on the station and voila, it's streaming through the iTunes interface.
It's thanks to this feature of iTunes that I've discovered a lot of sma
UCB Researchers!? (Score:1)
DRM - Damn Rapacious Marketers (Score:5, Insightful)
It really comes down to how much it will cost to do DRM and the cost of getting around it. The costs are not just monetary - but may include a complex tradeoff of penalties and benefits in many areas - including culture, the legal system, personal privacy, fundamental human rights and so on.
Since corporations and hence their hired thugs in government don't much care about things like human rights, personal privacy or culture (realisticly, things are not set up to encourage them to do so, so why would we expect it), they will always make their decisions on the basis of corporate self interest - which is usually short term profit these days.
There is almost certainly a place for DRM on some level - it encourages and rewards creative artists of all sorts (though the best artists seem to do their thing anyway). The problem is that as soon as we allow any serious IP protections (as DRM or whatever), there's no control on what the people who want to make profits can do with it.
I worked for a company whose game plan was to sell a product for less than $100 - the product was in large part IP of one sort or another. Once the marketers got hold of it, the price was inflated to the $1500 range. Not because it was worth that - but they thought they could charge that much and get away with it. I had figured out how to do a cheap DRM scheme that would be just hard enough to break to make it cheaper to just buy the product (at the $100 mark). Shortly thereafter I left the company - with the DRM scheme still unimplemented.
That kind of thinking "We can get away with charging that much" is pervasive. But its also problematic - just by charging that kind of inflated price, the marketers are providing higher motivation for people to find ways around paying the prices. Monopolistic practices (even in the small - one company holds the contract for the current top musical sensation) tend to exacerbate the problem. Now they want to impose DRM - worse yet they want to do it with the government's legal system - which means that they get the benefits (ability to raise prices, impose conditions...) but everyone else gets to pay the price.
If there were no serious DRM, but downloading a permanent copy of a song cost (say) a dime, there'd be no incentive to break DRM - and most people (I suspect) would go along with it and its not hard to believe that the music industry would be the better and with smaller distribution costs, the artists would probably be better off. But when we allow and legally support DRM it is both an incentive to the industry to charge as much as it can, and an incentive to consumers to find ways to break it.
Worse yet, we now have corporations that seem to have determined that they are owed a certain amount of money every year - and who are willing to pass laws to ensure that they get it. Essentially they want to tax us to ensure that their incomes stay where they'd like them to be.
Given all this, I see no reasonable alternative but to ban DRM completely - but I suspect the corporations will have their own way and we'll end up spending $10 to listen to a single song three or four times. The interesting thing is going to be the underground that springs up to counter them - who knows what that will result in? I do quite love the law of unintended consequences.
Ugh (Score:2)
Re:Ugh (Score:2)
Re:Ugh (Score:1)
Re:Ugh (Score:2)
In case of slashdotting... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:In case of slashdotting... Great troll! (Score:2)
Re:In case of slashdotting... (Score:1)
HTML version now available (Score:2, Informative)
DNA imprinted DRM Keys & the like (Score:2, Funny)
Here's what's included with the DNA which is actually RNA but hey you don't need no stinkin' virus protection...but if you do Symantec has a new cyberoranistic based anti-virii protection available in subscription form with no pop-ups...
Ok the list
Chromosomes with anti-hackable, DRM enhanced, 128 b
Sure, mandatory licensing (Score:5, Insightful)
Make the [MP|RI]AA sell non-discriminatory licenses for content that's already out there, rather than allowing them to throttle the channels of distribution. That's in the spirit of copyright law, because the intent of copyright law is to put content into the public domain... pause, think... and the mechanism for doing it is to reward rights owners. So by having Joe Public distribute the content, then reward the rights owner, everybody wins, right?
Well, sure, but there's a tiny problem. It's that nobody remembers that. The publishers have a vested interest in not remembering it. In fact, they've paid huge sums of money to Congress to forget it. The DMCA, and DMCA case law explicitely refutes it. The "exclusive rights" have become paramount, trumping the intent to make the content available.
So, you make the [MP|RI]AA license content. Fine. Does that mean they have to make it available without DRM? Nope. Does it mean that you get the right to break the DRM to use it? Well, technically, if you can do it yourself without obtaining or making available a tool to do it, so, de facto, no. DMCA case law has already made this clear. Congress said that it's not legal to obtain tools even for use on content that you licensed, and the courts have (astonishingly) upheld that.
So what good does licensing do, when you can only get crippleware content, and devices that will play crippleware content, and when you can't legally obtain tools that let you uncripple it?
I applaud the EFF's intent, but defeating rampant DRM is a pre-requisite to any shake up in licensing, not an afterthought.
Copy protecting music == fallacy (Score:3, Interesting)
ANY ATTEMPT TO COPY-PROTECT MUSIC IS FATALLY FLAWED.
First, you can hijack
Secondly, even if you can't hijack
Thirdly, even if you can't grab the data from the bus, you can grab the analogue signal coming out of the jack socket on the back of the sound card and convert that back to digital. You will have to do some filtering and, to avoid creating artefacts, it will have to be done in the analogue domain. Processing through analogue also should destroy any inaudible "watermarking".
Fourthly, even if someone has permanently soldered a steel-armoured cable feeding a pair of headphones directly to the sound card, which has been potted in several layers of chemically-different resins with sharp springy bits that will fly out and cut you to ribbons if you try to interfere with it, you can still point a mic at each of the headphones and get a signal that way. This is the least pretty option, but nothing can ever make it go away.
The success of any analogue ripping scheme is dependent upon the equipment used and widely-available consumer tat is possibly going to pollute the filesharing market with inferior copies of songs. This may well be what the RIAA wants - effectively, in terms of reproduction quality, a return to the tape days. On the other hand, there will always be a group of people who are fastidious about quality, and all the necessary equipment already exists. So who knows? Maybed we'll see a new elite audiophile network. The only thing I don't like is the word "audiophile", which sounds too much like the sort of thing News of the World readers might not like.
The RIAA's methods are never going to work because they are trying to achieve a fundamental impossibility along the lines of perpetual motion or lead-into-gold. Either they will realise they have to give up, or they will kill themselves with the effort. What the RIAA should ask themselves is this: if photocopiers, scanners and printers are so cheap and readily available, then why do people buy newspapers and magazines instead of just making photocopies of them or scanning them and uploading them onto the internet?
Re:DRM is flawed (Score:2, Insightful)
What about 'soft' DRM? (Score:4, Interesting)
I see a future that works along these sorts of lines: Firstly, record companies will be a lot smaller and less wealthy. This is of course the real reason why they oppose internet distribution but I think we all realise that however hard they fight this will eventually be the case. Secondly, I see them providing a two-level service from their website. A modest, flat subscription fee lets you download your favourite music from their own well connected server network, in whatever format (OGG, FLAC, MP3, AAC...) you want, capped at, say, 1GB of downloads per month. I've got a dedicated server where I get 200GB for $100/mo, so a $10/mo subscription fee would cut them a handsome profit of about $9.50, by that pricing scale. These files would be encrypted.
The second layer service is free to all comers; no email address required, no ad profiling information, just a username and password registration. This level doesn't supply any music, just keys for each song. You go on Kazaa or whatever, download whatever form is available (keys are issued on a per-song basis, not per-encoding), then decrypt it with a key that your player acquires by means of a web service API.
This depends on copyright law being made more sane; specifically, that it is illegal to redistribute copyrighted content FOR PROFIT. Also, the other big problem is that most of the record companies' revenue comes from teenagers, and you have to be over 18 to have a credit card and hence participate in transactions over the internet (I'm not quite 18 yet and I can attest that running said dedicated server is a real pain in the ass at present). Though if it's a subscription service I suppose they could get their parents to pay for it, the important thing is this has to be straightforward and easy to pay for above all else.
Given this scenario though, I think that artists and labels could continue to turn quite a handsome profit. People resent being bullied and ripped off, so music companies probably are losing out on a lot of revenue to the filesharing networks at the moment. However, stack these two options against each other. What would you rather have; an unreliable, hard to use filesharing network with its associated boat load of scumware? Or a clean ad-free page where you can download an entire album in just the format you like it at the click of a button and at maximum speed? Heck I'd pay more than $10/mo for that. I still buy CDs because I like stuff in 64kbit OGG (I'm not an audiophile and I can cram an immense amount of stuff onto my 128MB P800 mobile phone at that bitrate)
Or, if you do want to download something off Kazaa, then the act of getting a song key tells the record company that someone is listening to this song, and that will help them reimburse the artists accordingly. Yes of course this DRM can be broken, and yes some people will break it by stream hijacking or whatever but then _there is no point in doing so anymore_. The downloader contacts a record company server to get the key and by doing so they establish that this is the correct file, that it is of good quality and that the artist benefits from their download, and the recording company can build a good profile of just who's popular at the moment, and maybe the media player can discreetly ask where you got the file from so they can see which distribution channels work best. Go up to a friend of yours, tell them about this great new band you just heard and give them a crypted disk of some of their best tracks. Legal and beneficial to all, same spirit as the open source systems everyone's so enamoured of over here.
And, if you acknowledge that pe
All your right... (Score:1)
Error message: Somebody set up us the DRM
Clippy: We get signal
Captain: What !
Clippy: Main screen turn on
User: It's You !!
RIAA: How are you gentlemen !!
RIAA: All your right are belong to us
RIAA: You are on the way to destruction
User: What you say !!
RIAA: You have no chance to survive make your time
RIAA: HA HA HA HA
User: Take off every 'zig'
User: You know what you doing
User: Move 'zig'
User: For great justice
I just couldn't help myself...
UCB Researchers (Score:1)