DRM Take II — Digital Personal Property 356
Diabolus Advocatus writes "Ars Technica has an article on a new form of DRM being considered by the IEEE. It's called Digital Personal Property and although it removes some of the drawbacks of conventional DRM it introduces new drawbacks of its own. From the article: 'Digital personal property (DPP) is an attempt to make consumers treat digital media like physical objects. For instance, you might loan your car to a friend, a family member, or a neighbor. You might do so on many different occasions and for different lengths of time. But you are unlikely to leave the car out front of your house with the keys in it and a sign on it saying, "Take me!" If you did, you might never see the vehicle again. It's that ability to lose control over property that is central to the DPP system. DPP files are encrypted. They can be freely copied and distributed to anyone, but here's the trick: anyone who can view your content can also "steal" it irrevocably. The simple addition of a way to lose content instantly leads consumers to set up a "circle of trust" that can be as wide as they like but will not extend to total strangers on the Internet.'"
You down with DPP? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You down with DPP? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah you know me!
Forshame, whoever tagged the parent offtopic.
Ahem. Someone give me a fruityloops beat.
CTaco about to rocko
Cowboy neal, gimme your spheel!
DPP, how can I explain it
I'll take you frame by frame it
To have y'all sharin' shall we upp it?
D is for digital, P is for personal
The last P...well... that's not simple
It's sorta like another way to call (a concept regarding imaginary property) as (actual property)
It's eight little letters that are missin' here
You share on occasion at the other (download) part
As l33t h4x 'n it seems I gotta start to explainin'
Bust it
You ever had a torrent and grabbed it with a nice client
You get the packages and the IP and you know your shits compliant
You get home, wait an hour, peer's what you wanna know about
Then you open it up and it's some fed who straight up tryin' restraint!
It's not a front, F to the R to the O to the N to the T
It's just the police at a seeder's house (Boy, that's what is scary)
It's DPP, data other people's what you get it
There's no room for rights management, there's just room to hit it
How many brothers out there know just what I'm gettin' at
Who thinks it's wrong 'cos I'm leechin' and rippin' at
Well if you do, that's DPP and you're not down with it
But if you don't, here's your l33t membership
Chorus:
You down with DPP (Yeah you know me) 3X
Who's down with DPP (Every last matey)
You down with DPP (Yeah you know me) 3X
Who's down with DPP (All the mateys!)
As for the lamers, DPP means something gifted
The first two letters are the same but the last is something different
It's the quickest, slickest, compres-- I call it the compressedest
It's another eight letter word rhymin' with unruly and a-stoolie
I won't get into that, I'll do it...ah...sorta properly
I say the last P...hmmm...stands for pachouli
Now hackers here comes a packet, blow ICMP back to me, now tell me exactly
Have you ever known a hacker who have another torrent or FTP
And you just had to stop and just 'cos it went so fast
You portscanned it, it blacklisted you right away
That it had some l33t porn but it wouldnt be yours anyway
You couldn't be caught with it and honestly you didn't care
'Cos in a room behind a door no one but ur server's there
When you finish, you'll start seeding is what you tell yourself
And then you know that seeding's whack, cut that shit to preserve your wealth!
Chorus:
You down with DPP (Yeah you know me) 3X
Who's down with DPP (Every last matey)
You down with DPP (Yeah you know me) 3X
Who's down with DPP (All the mateys!)
Download it down!
Re:You down with DPP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Forshame, whoever tagged the parent offtopic.
That's why I hate getting first post, although the last time or two I didn't get downmodded. Some mods just automatically mod down a first post.
As to the actual topic,
It's DPP, data other people's what you get it
There's no room for rights management, there's just room to hit it
I wish the charlatains who keep trying to come of with new Digital Restrictions Management software would get honest jobs. There's no way to stop bits from being copied, and like DVDs, the key has to be with the encrypyed media. It's like leaving the key to your front door under the doormat; the first time somebody finds it, your TV is gone. Only with DRM it's several hundred copies of your TV that's gone.
Trying to sell bits is stupid, but not quite as stupid as trying to keep people from copying them. Bits are like air -- to sell air you have to wrap a balloon or a scuba tank around it. The people selling "digital content" need to learn to do the same. Don't sell movies, sell DVDs. People LIKE tangible objects. Don't worry about the "piracy", nobody ever went broke from piracy.
Whare would Photoshop be if it weren't for piracy?
You can't compete with free, but you can use free to sell stuff. The trouble with the media moguls is their own greed. If it weren't for their greed they'd not be taken in by the DRM-writing charlatains (who must be laughing at their poor stupid clients), and they'd use free to their advantage.
Re:You down with DPP? (Score:4, Funny)
How about this one?
'Tis not thy name that is my enemy.(40)
Thou art thyself, completely evil.
What's DRM? it is not aid, nor help,
Nor safety, nor right, nor any other part
that ever good could come of!
What's in a name? That which we call DRM,
by any other name, would still smell like offal.
So DRM would, were it not DRM call'd,
Retain that deep imperfection which he owes,
without that title. DRM, doff thy name, but still be recognized;
And by any name, for thy evil is still part of thee,
GTFO.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Trying to sell bits is stupid, but not quite as stupid as trying to keep people from copying them. Bits are like air -- to sell air you have to wrap a balloon or a scuba tank around it. The people selling "digital content" need to learn to do the same. Don't sell movies, sell DVDs. People LIKE tangible objects.
I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly. Digital information, because there's very nearly zero duplication cost, shouldn't be treated like property. It shouldn't be commodified. You can try to, with a legal regime that treats it like property, and with technical obstructions like the subject of this story, but that destroys the most valuable aspect of digital information. The "free" duplication of digital information has such incredible potential if relieved of the burden of treating it like physical
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Not exactly. If you leave your key on the front porch, someone can come in and take your TV, then your TV is gone - eg you no longer have your TV - we havent (yet) come up with a way to instantaneously copy something like a TV at a cost that is effectively 'free'.
Anything that could be considered "information" (such as music, books, music, etc) that is stored in a digital form *can* be copied for a cost that is so insignificant so as to be effectively 'free'. *AND* if someone makes a copy, two copies, or a
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Offtopic? This deserves +5 funny.
M to the P to P to the Y.
The reason that your data will not decrypt and die.
Re:You down with DPP? (Score:4, Interesting)
"You down with DPP?"
From TFA:
"The playkey, unlike the title folder, can't be copied--but it can be moved."
Allow me to speculate that Windows development teams are onboard with this. Windows will come with this feature, or said feature will be introduced via updates. Let's assume that it's actively pushed via automatic updates. Special files will be uncopyabable, at the request of IP holders. That's going to work out really great. For instance, you can't "sys" a floppy or a CD with XP, because vital files are "uncopyable" by Windows.
But - wait one. Aren't there boot CD's all the same? No, I don't mean Linux LiveCD's that can access Windows partitions. BART CD for instance. Win-PE. Various people have done things with the concept, but most haven't really caught on. How about USB? Tom's hardware has a how-to to create "Windows in your pocket". There are dozens more sites, with similar how-to stories. In short, those "uncopyable" files are routinely copied by people who are determined to copy them.
But - wait another one. Linux. Linux just doesn't recognize Windows file permissions. Boot a system to Linux, you can copy anything from anywhere to anywhere else.
So, yeah, I'm down with DPP. It's perfectly cool. They create it, implement it, and I ignore it. No problemo. I mean, this is BEFORE anyone gets around to creating a "crack" for the entire system, which will enable the least tech savvy elementary school student in the world to copy anything he wants.
Bring it on, I say. It's funny to watch the corporate idiots wasting their time and money on nonsense, rather than adapting to the world we live in today.
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I wouldn't say bring it on. They will be throwing big money at it, and I'm almost sure it will have some mechanism to autoupdate or perhaps ban non-compliant devices from being "authorized" to play files, similar to how modchipped Xboxes get permanently banned off of XBL. If a device gets permanently "cracked" in a way where it can't be updated, a new line of models come out, and newer music content will not be able to play on those.
I can forsee a scenario where it ends up like BD+, where its an arms race
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While such a thing is quite possible, and even likely, TFA says that the file can be "moved" to other places. Like, maybe a FAT file system? An Active Directory? To an iPod? Maybe mount a ext3 file system under Windows, and move the file to that file system? There are a lot of possibilities and neither MS nor the DPP people can cover them all.
Assuming they are really, really, really good with the concept, and they block all the "easy" methods of copying the file - within days or weeks, there will be a c
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Re:You down with DPP? (Score:5, Funny)
Damnit! You people and your "If I take your car, now I have it and you don't" analogies have ruined it for everyone! Now copyright infringement really WILL be theft!
At least for the week it takes someone to figure out how to duplicate the keys, anyway.
It is only DRM+ (Score:2)
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Re:It is only DRM+ (Score:4, Interesting)
This is just the first act. What happens when technology gets to the point that you CAN copy a car? Or a cabbage?
Peace on earth, or greedy rich men trying to stop it?
Re:It is only DRM+ (Score:5, Insightful)
What about option three? People stop designing cars, watches, etc, because once they sell one, anyone with the "replicator" can get theirs without the original designer being paid
In a world where everything costs nothing, what would they spend money on?
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What about option three? People stop designing cars, watches, etc, because once they sell one, anyone with the "replicator" can get theirs without the original designer being paid?
Repeat after me: the market is not the only way to promote the creation and distribution of valuable goods.
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Much like nobody wrote books or music before copyright existed?
Re:It is only DRM+ (Score:5, Insightful)
And anyone with a "link" to the key can assume ownership. So if you, or any of your friends' computers are compromised, they can "steal" your DPP protected stuff. And you can never get it back.
Of course, there is little reason to steal; people who want the files in question would simply get DPP-free versions. Only malicious sorts and vandals would bother, since there'd be no real gain from the act. But if you have a falling out with your friend, it doesn't look like you can "change the locks" so to speak. If I give a house key to a friend, and for some reason stop trusting him, I can change the locks on my house. This doesn't seem to support a similar mechanism. Also, unless you store the playkey online (which has its own problems), a hardware failure in the playkey storage device will cost you your files. Returning to the house analogy, it would be like your house burning down (okay, becoming inaccessible forever) because you lost the key to the front door.
Re:It is only DRM+ (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually after reading the article the guy is an idiot. The "playkey" is the whole problem with DRM. Whether downloaded off a drm server, or transferee securely br protected memory(as the article suggests). Transfer of that key is needed. Without it everything fails. What's worse in order to even be vaguely secure each music file would need it's own playkey. So for me alone that is some 5,000 keys.
If you had even the same playkey for every song title theft is easy. If each person has one playkey. Then it be ones possible to steal thousands of songs nearly instantly.
So I say again the guy is an idiot. A dumb idea so poorly thought out I wonder if he actually thought about it or pulledit out of his ass.
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Yes, this sounds like a dumb idea, but there's a kernel of goodness here, I think. Forget about "ownership" for a moment, my biggest concern in digital files is identification - attribution if you will. I would like to be able to watermark a digital file and have everyone know it's mine. I don't care if it gets copied, but I want every copy to bear the sign that this content was made by me. You'd think this would be relatively easy today, but every time I've tried to find a way to do this, all I found w
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mp3 and other lossy formats have as their whole point removing the kind of information you want to add -- sound that can't be heard. Compression is still a hot research topic with both academic and industry interests. In contrast, steganography is much more obscure. For now, the compression beats steganography.
Re:It is only DRM+ (Score:4, Insightful)
So it's not an easy problem, and as compression improves, option #2 there will get even harder over time.
Re:It is only DRM+ (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, it's not so easy to do this. When embedding a watermark, there are three fundamental approaches: ...
So it's not an easy problem, and as compression improves, option #2 there will get even harder over time.
That's a good summary. However, I believe digital watermarking has the same fundamental flaw as DRM: the means, expertise, and equipment to create and modify digital files are plentiful in this day and age.
Any idiot can copy a music file to a friend's computer. So DRM attempts to limit that easy copying, but as soon as it's broken, it's broken. Likewise, the bar is not much higher for being able to modify, edit, or sample a music file: audio editing software, MP3 encoders, tagging software, hex editors... all easily-available, easy-to-learn (with guides all over the web), and easy-to-use. So watermarks attempt to add a unique, recognizable, but unintrusive tag to that file, and they run back into the same issue that the underlying data is very easy to manipulate.
Contrast this situation with that of paper money, which often contains watermarks: The bar to "editing" or "copying" money is a lot higher. Sure, you can make a crappy copy of a $20 bill on a printer, but it won't turn out well. The recipes for real currency paper are secret and centralized, so difficult to steal. The physical equipment to print real money is extraordinarily large, immobile, and expensive, and easier to regulate since there are few legitimate, small-scale uses for things like color-changing ink and microprinting. Lastly, there are more, and smarter, serious guys with guns [secretservice.gov] who take a professional interest in counterfeiting than in file-sharing.
In my view, any purely technical means to limit the distribution or modification of digital data is bound to fail. I mean, we've spent decades trying to make digital data easy to copy and modify... and gosh, we've succeeded.
DRM and watermarks both rely on, essentially, an intentional obfuscation of data. But the means to detect (watermarks) or reverse (DRM) that obfuscation must then be widely distributed for them to be useful. Security through obscurity, minus most of the obscurity. Secure cryptosystems like PGP or SSL depend on a very small core of obscurity (a secret key) and construct elaborate safeguards and mechanisms to keep that secret key from ever traversing the network, and from "leaking" its content onto the data in a visible way. And still flaws are sometimes found. DRM takes that secret key and spreads it around all over the place. Lame.
Re:It is only DRM+ (Score:5, Informative)
Buy a copy of the ebook.
Now have a friend buy another copy.
Compare the two copies, zero out (or otherwise remove) any differences. Done.
Re:It is only DRM+ (Score:4, Informative)
If, however, you want identification that resists the efforts of hostile agents to remove it, you are pretty much out of luck. Any standard metadata, by virtue of being nice and standard, is trivially strippable. Trying to embed it in the sound itself is either audibly intrusive or inaudible. If it is audibly intrusive, that is obviously unacceptable. If it is inaudible, you run into the fact that the (quite talented) designers of lossy codecs have been honing their skills at removing inaudible data from sound for years. That's the whole point of lossy codecs. Even if there is some watermarking scheme that manages to be one step ahead, you still won't really have a "signature"; because it will only be readable by you. This is good enough for tracing the provenance of leaked copies, or catching tapers; but is useless if you want attribution, rather than forensic evidence.
None of those problems are likely to go away with future development. Metadata standard enough to be readable will always be strippable. Watermarks that are audible will always be intrusive(unless, of course, you are part of the song). Watermarks that are inaudible will always be vulnerable to being cut by lossy compression. Further, any watermarking technology that lets the public at large read watermarks, rather than being used solely for forensics, effectively becomes a clumsy form of standard metadata, and thus strippable. Even cryptographic methods won't work. A cryptographic signature is stops altered versions being distributed as the real thing; but it doesn't stop altered versions, with attribution stripped, from being created. Encryption can make the file useless to anybody; but you still have to let the intended recipient read it, and they can always create a plaintext copy, which brings you back to square one.
It is impossible to have attribution follow the file; but there are ways to demonstrate authorship on demand at any future time. So called "Trusted Timestamping" [wikipedia.org] services are available from a variety of outfits(most of the usual names in SSL certs, among others) and allow you to demonstrate cryptographically that a given file was timestamped by you on a given date and has not been altered since. If you timestamp all your work before it ships, you will clearly have the earliest timestamped copies that exist. This doesn't stop the distribution of stripped copies; but it does allow you to demonstrate that you possessed copies before any distribution occurred, on a particular date.
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It seems to indicate that playkeys would be per file. And the cost to store a key maxes out at about half a KB (for an RSA prime number based system); substantially less if it uses either a private key style encryption system or an elliptic curve based public key system. So for your files, that would be around 2.5 MB at the outside, or as little as 80 KB. If this were implemented, I'd expect a gig or two of flash memory to be included with any hardware based system, which would handle somewhere between 2
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when are these PHBs ever gonna learn?
The real question is: when are you going to learn? If you keep buying stuff with DRM, they'll keep making stuff with DRM. Money is the only thing they'll listen to, and by giving it to them, you're saying "DRM is awwwwwwwwright!".
They will instead pay for ever more draconian laws paid for with treasonous bribes, and shovel ever shittier DRM down our throats
With your money.
Support stuff that doesn't have DRM. Show them that they can make more money by doing that.
DRM is always bad (Score:2)
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Of course, there is little reason to steal; people who want the files in question would simply get DPP-free versions.
I disagree. There is a strong reason to do so: by "vandalizing" this imaginary property you teach the idiot the notion that in no circumstances he would have to get a DRM infected file. In this context erasing the keys on the server would be a exemplary punishment for supporters of this idiocy. (Some music stores relying on DRM infected formats already had to do that when they went out of business - consumers of course were screwed)
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With one slight problem to this entire idea - You only need the ability to play it once. After that, whoever wants "the" key can have it, for all it matters.
Thinking of this in terms of a car sounds nice (and Slashdot luuuuurves car analogies), but it hides the real problem inherent in all DRM... Instead of a car, think of it in terms of a secret written on a scrap of
why do they keep trying? (Score:5, Insightful)
what are they trying to achieve?
surely after years of being beaten to a pulp they MUST have learned that any attempt at controlling is more than futile?
Re:why do they keep trying? (Score:5, Insightful)
what are they trying to achieve?
surely after years of being beaten to a pulp they MUST have learned that any attempt at controlling is more than futile?
They keep trying for the same reason that politicians who push for shitty laws keep trying: they know that they only need one major victory and everyone will be stuck with it forever. That's why they don't read something like this:
and come up with a response like this: "but if I could make an infinite number of perfect copies of my car while retaining my own copy, at low or no cost, what would be my incentive to use a system designed to make me lose control over my car or any other property?"
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Well one reason might be that some of those perfect copies of your car may be used in ways you don't like - say running a red light. Now maybe you don't get a photo-ticket in the mail, but all the neighbours are talking about what a bad driver you are.
DRM / DPP to uphold a broken
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and come up with a response like this: "but if I could make an infinite number of perfect copies of my car while retaining my own copy, at low or no cost, what would be my incentive to use a system designed to make me lose control over my car or any other property?"
You made me think of universal assemblers [wikipedia.org] just there. I wonder what it would be like once *everything* is just information... from your car and house to donor organs. I wonder what those far distant future people would think of digital personal property....
The advent of universal assemblers would probably be actively resisted for the purpose of preserving an outdated economic model based on scarcity. Rather than celebrate the new era of plenty that this would achieve, many of our most powerful economic and political forces would fight it tooth and nail before they would adapt to the new world it would represent. That this is so likely almost makes me ashamed to be a member of this species.
Re:why do they keep trying? (Score:4, Funny)
if you can use a universal assembler to obtain any object you want, what motivation is there to do labor?
SOMEBODY is going to have to move the 5 ton golden statue of you off of the assembly pad and up the stairs. If you had thought about it ahead of time, you'd have assembled some robots first, but nooooooo
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People don't like dealing with change. Rather than trying to come up with a new system that works well considering the current realities, people try to make the current realities conform to what was previously in place.
Look at movies with flying cars, where so often the flying cars are restricted to 2d multiple lane 'roads' in the air. Seems like a ridiculous restriction to put on flying cars which would lead to almost the exact same set of problems we have with non-flying cars and traffic. It's just how pe
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There's a difference between fearing change and preventing it. One prevents growth and is an extreme, the other is natural. Of course clearly plenty of people don't know how to look beyond their own nose or recognize their own instincts.
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Unfortunately this type of self-knowledge has never been very popular despite the tremendous advantages it brings. The ability to say, "I have an instinct that makes me want to take this action, however, I know it isn't really what I want" is equivalent to being able to say "I am aware of a subconscious influence that this advertisement is trying to use, but it's not valid because it doesn't ag
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I think the flying cars issue you bring up doesn't so much illustrate an aversion to change as much as it shows that certain concepts (traffic management via restricted traveling areas) are both efficacious and necessary for a functioning society.
In other words, if there were no restrictions on where you could fly in your flying car, mid-air collisions would be frequent and devastating. Thus the concept of "air lanes" for flying car traffic. Unless you trust your average office drone, McDonald's fry-cook
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Re:why do they keep trying? (Score:5, Insightful)
Social engineering. They want to change the way in which we understand data.
Currently we tend to think of any sort of information as something to be shared freely. It's what we as a species do. I think that tendency to swap data among ourselves is what led us to amass the information that makes up our present culture and technology. It's a pretty basic thing in human beings.
But it's a pain to monetize data on that model. It didn't matter when distributing the data was expensive, since you could charge for the distribution. So as distribution costs for data approach zero, the challenge for the media cartels has always been to reframe our understanding of data, so that we think of it in the same terms as a car or a house. I believe that's why the term "intellectual property" was coined in the first place.
The trouble is it didn't work. It turns out that if you take a tune and try and rebrand it as some sort of household accessory, people still treat it as a song. So this is the logical next step: make that song behave more like real property, and see of that shifts people's thinking.
I can't see it helping myself. It's DRM, and it's always going to fundamentally, inherently insecure. But you can see where they're going with the idea.
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Because they have to (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like when a five year old tells you he can't find his shoes because he lost them. But he doesn't want to get in trouble so he'll say a gypsy took them. And you know the kid is lying but when you press him - he'll start to describe the gypsy. "He had purple pants, a gold shirt, and a moustache. He had a little monkey with him."
Much the same with DRM. They've lobbied for it, they've pushed it, they've gotten people to buy it and then yanked the key servers and left them high and dry. It can't be a swindle, they just haven't found the correct solution yet! So we go around and around with the industry talking about how to do this the right way. The truth is that there is no right way. The truth is that DRM is a lie. It can't work. Ever. Whenever you hold both the lock and the key, it stops being about cryptography and starts being about how to game the system.
Read up on how people beat DRM systems. Like DVD Jon. He's not a gonzo cryptographer. He didn't break DVD by his sheer mathematical skills. No. He was a kid with a machine code monitor who found the decrypted key in memory.
But like any good lie, you have to keep telling it once you start. Because the minute you say "well as it turns out there wasn't any gypsy" that's when you get in deep trouble. Imagine the class action lawsuits that would result! No, telling the lie over and over is much cheaper. So let's hear it for DRM2. I'm sure it'll buy the industry at least six more months before the next bored kid from the Netherlands comes along.
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at some point, they will have to admit it can't work.
i'm waiting for the day.
then again, a friend of mine said "nature doesn't toy around. when she creates an idiot, she means it"
Nah. (Score:2)
at some point, they will have to admit it can't work.
You haven't been keeping up on your SCO/Darl McBride stories, have you?
I assure you it's possible to tell a straight faced lie for years on end. Once you're in that deep, sometimes the only play you've got left is "keep digging".
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what are they trying to achieve?
Production of creative works in the context of a free market system.
It can be shown mathematically that under certain assumptions a free market results in the optimal use of resources. Unfortunately, those assumptions do not work for things like recorded music, where the marginal cost of production is essentially zero. Hence, a free market CANNOT be used to efficiently to determine allocation of resources for music production. If you tried a pure free market, you'd end up with massive underproduction.
There
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...For smart people to do stupid things, it takes government.
FTFY
This is entirely about a system, built on artificial government sponsored property, trying to maintain itself in a time when it is no longer feasible to do so.
Betting Pool (Score:5, Interesting)
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This would create a market for hacker/thieves to create malicious software intended to transfer, thus steal, your DPP.
Hacked before they even began (Score:5, Informative)
Since it obviously involves some type of key server to check against there are several ways from the very simple to very sophisticated. There are also several problems with it:
1) If the DRM permits on failure then that would be the simplest way to hack it, just block the server or specific queries to servers. If the DRM disallows on failure then a lot of people would be affected when a DDoS or a firewall/router 'problem' blocks the server somewhere upstream. This can off course be mitigated slightly by only disallowing after a certain time period, but that would require the keys to be stored either locally in the media file or locally in the media player. Both issues are simple to solve.
2) If the DRM uses a very central key server (hosted by the RIAA) that keeps track of all the 'stolen' keys then just distributing and submitting a rainbow table (easily accomplished through a botnet) of keys would be enough. If only few hold access to the key server, then there has to be some type of mechanism that finds and blocks the 'stolen' keys (where stolen is defined according to their dictionary, not the Standard English one, we would say copied to a public place). That mechanism will be very simple to either avoid (like blocking/allowing Google Bots) or mislead. Manually would be too time intensive and thus not work either.
3) If the central keys are held by the media sellers (eg. iTunes, Amazon, Microsoft) then it only takes a media seller to go out of business to have millions of files disappear. Also if the system has to be upgraded it will be very much fun to watch a) all systems synchronize their updates without downtime and b) maintain backwards compatibility. The option to 'hack' it in 2 is still valid especially when said sellers are big enough (Amazon and iTunes come to mind)
As with so many schemes for DRM it will not work and it will piss off the customers usually sooner than later. It will not be implemented and it will not be compatible with millions of devices/users out there. It is dead before it was even started. DRM does not work. It's akin to somebody making a perfect copy of your car (and/or license plate) and then driving off with the copy, you won't care, you won't know and/or you'll get in trouble for the other persons actions while you were the one that legitimately bought the car or applied for the license plate.
DRM will fail. (Score:5, Insightful)
With every new push, however, the average consumer comes closer to running head-first into these limitations. When you have people's files start disapearing off their hard drive when there is no physical product, they might finally join us in asking: "Why the Hell is a collection of ones and zeroes being treated this way?"
The harder DRM advocates push, the more the consumer becomes less ignorant of their questionable ownership philosophy.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:DRM will fail. (Score:5, Insightful)
No they won't.
Years of piss-poor software will lead them to think that it's "just one of those things" and power cycle their system.
If that doesn't work, they'll just buy a new one because what they had must have broken.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Damn, beat me to it.
Lets just hope the RIAA doesn't try to enforce IP with a 10^34 J laser. Frankly though, it would be consistent with their historical level of subtlety.
New Questions (Score:5, Funny)
This new development in the copyright arena is going to raise several important questions. Do we refer to this as "Dippy" or as "Da peepee"? Do we change the acronym to "Digital Pretend Property" or "Digital Property Penalties"? Will this technology never really take off, or will it only die after a multi-billion dollar campaign and several dozen slashdot debates? Only time will tell.
Still smells like DRM to me... (Score:3, Insightful)
On a side note... I would think that "stealing" mp3s would open up a whole new can of worms. What are you going to do when your "buddy" down the street refuses to "return" your music library, call the police?
Emulating the physical world... (Score:4, Insightful)
One would think they would eventually see the change of paradigm that's been going on for... 30 years?
oh yah.. this is gonna work. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why treat it as physical media? It's not! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
But wouldn't it be even better if you could 'burn' a new car with a nuclear warhead in the trunk, and give every one who had ever ridden in your car a big red button so they could completely destroy it and every single copy that you had ever made any time they wanted to? Wouldn't you feel a whole lot happier that way?
Paul Sweazey thinks that you would like that.
Stuff em! That's what I say (Score:2, Interesting)
They can add whatever DRM they like, I don't give a stuff. Bring it on, it will only hasten their ultimate demise.
Fail. (Score:4, Insightful)
Digital personal property (DPP) is an attempt to make consumers treat digital media like physical objects
That's great, except for one small problem. Digital media have none of the characteristics of physical objects. Build business models that recognise this, or go out of business. Those are your only two choices. Trying to force consumers to treat digital media like physical objects is no more likely to work than the car industry trying to persuade people to treat the sea like a road.
dear IEEE (Score:5, Informative)
Dear IEEE,
No thanks.
Sincerely yours,
Everybody
Re: (Score:2)
The miss the point (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is, for most younger people: I have it, you have it, we all have it. All the time, and for free.
Anything that doesn't encompass that usage model will get bypassed in favor of stuff that will adhere to that model.
The problem is for creative types that this means they get one sale in an efficient market. The first buyer then makes their purchase available to the rest of the world for free. Why would they do that? I don't think anyone is completely sure, but a reputation or status built by sharing is part of it.
The "one sale" idea pretty much pushes things back to a patronage system. Instead of recording a song and selling copies of it, a band is paid by some rich guy to play. The rich guy gets to tell them what he likes and what he doesn't like - and if the band wants to continue living off music they will play that way. They can then distribute their work for free without any worries about compensation.
The problem is, as quite a few creative types found hundreds of years ago, a patronage system quickly ends up where everyone is trying to be just like Elvis because the people with money to spend on the arts really, really liked Elvis. Or whomever was the big favorite. So in 17th Century Europe you had playwrites coming up with pretty much rehashes of the same theme over and over again because that is what the patrons of the arts liked and would pay for.
Sounds sort of like what has happened with music recently. But the problem is while the record labels have (somewhat) learned that an endless series of "Boy Bands" aren't going to cut it any longer with a patronage system it isn't up to the marketplace - it is up to a very small number of patrons. Is that really where we want to go?
And no, I don't see the Internet making much of a difference. If the Internet lead to broad-based financial support it would. But the Internet is a way to distribute stuff for free. There is no "financial support" involved. iTunes is a myth and you might as well get over it. Nobody is making money off iTunes, especially Apple who created it as a music supply for iPods. And as many sales as iTunes has it occupies maybe 3% of music downloads today. No, no money that way.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus, what about all the artists who refuse to give up creative control to anyone? You do realize that many artists have second jobs to pay for their living expenses, while their art is their hobby?
History shows rejection of imitations (Score:4, Insightful)
First, it is not correct to assume that patronage is the only alternative. There are many other models. But I want to focus on this claim:
Something like this actually happened in the 1950s. But it was resolved without the law. Musicians, fans and the industry decided against imitation.
Up until then the market for music had focused on songs, not particular recordings. There were many recordings of each song, and listeners did not mind a whole lot which one they bought. But with R&B music, the particular arrangement of a hit became more and more important. Instead of simply producing covers of popular songs, labels started to clone them, imitating everything they could, from using the same arrangement to hiring the same backup singers. Musicians protested, calling the clones "theft." Labels and radio stations said they would have nothing to do with them (though they didn't always follow through).
But what really changed the situation was the listeners. They wanted to hear the real thing - the original they had heard on the radio, not a knock off. The clones - and the covers simply faded away.
If you are sponsoring a musician (maybe you're Coke looking for music to use in advertising, or maybe you're a group of fans who have pooled their money for a sequel to Firefly), what would you rather do: pay for something that people will see as a cheap imitation, or put your money into something different?
Sure, people like things similar to what they already know. This is part of cultural change. My description of clones in the 1950s is drawn from Elijah Wald's How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'N' Roll, where he also writes:
A lot of the best innovation comes from taking something old and mixing in something new. Is the Mac GUI just a rip-off of Xerox? Is it bad that Linux is a reimplementation of UNIX? Was it bad that Shakespeare wrote his own versions of other people's stories?
Frankly though, I don't know that I'm really disagreeing with you. As you point out, the culture industries already put much of their effort into retreads and sequels.
This is idiotic. (Score:2)
Second, of course, is the strange idea that we should be striving to emulate the physical world. The physical world sucks. Scarcity sucks.
Privacy? (Score:2)
Whoops (Score:5, Informative)
The IEEE fails to take into account something rather major here:
First, that sounds like a royal goddamn pain in the ass and I'm a freaking software engineer. There's a reason the iPod has been so popular.
No it doesn't, it instantly leads to people who quickly and repeatedly lose access to things they pay for, as malicious script kiddies get into their machines that they've added to the latest and greatest botnet, copy the files off, and snag the key. I can see people jacking those keys being as popular as sniffing for world of warcraft accounts.
And it gets even more confusing:
So this key is moved into a tamper-protected circuit (irrelevant, no?) that is device exclusive. So you stick it in your phone so your music files only work there, or on your desktop and they only work there, or online and it's not even in your hands (but useless if you're not online) and this license can easily be moved around and if taken, fucks you permanently. But also somehow is magically secure enough that I can't just use it to decrypt the files and strip the DRM? And I can't somehow duplicate this key? What about key backups?
As dumb an idea as ever, I suggest the IEEE leave this one to rot in the dustbin, and stop letting the media companies push the tech industry around.
So, let me get this straight... (Score:2, Redundant)
I head out of the house and want to listen to the latest Lolcats album, "I cn haz Whyt Album?", which I've paid my $22 for ($1 to the artist, $6 to the studio, $15 to the Centralized Playkey Authority). Because I want to listen to it at the beach, I take my playkey for each song in the album and transfer it to my music player. Let's assume the transfer process is always perfect and you never get a "sent but never received" issue.
So I'm sitting on the beach, and decide to take a swim. Forgetting, in the p
Re: (Score:2)
Right, I'm assuming that it's complicated enough that I'd need a 12-year-old to do it. In reality, it'll probably be a 6-year-old. ;)
Probably what they'll do with burn-to-disc is consider that a permanent transfer of the playkey to playable media. How they'd then prevent the rip is an exercise in futility.
But eventually new CD players will not be able to play CDs without a playkey. It'll be sold to you as "rights enablement" because you can then do nearly everything you already could do before this whole
Pawn shops (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, to protect against loss, can I insure it for a penny on the dollar and the recover my losses if something happens to it?
The problem with most current schemes is that are extremely consumer hostile. I might have a CD stolen, but I can buy a used one very cheap. Digital music must be cheaper to distribute, no loss, no theft of the CD, but we still pay the same amount for the music, and have not option of buying it again in the secondary market.
Likewise, if some steals a car from me, I can have the cops do something about it. If someone steals my iPod, nothing is likely to be done. Not the cops, not Apple, not the labels will help me recover my property. They will, however, happily profit off the crime. OTOH, if I put a few songs up for people to copy, I will be liable for millions. Go figure.
In articles like this, the conclusion is often not the interesting item. Very often the conclusion is impractical and ineffective. What is sometimes interesting is the process they went through. For instance, one of the IEEE mags recently published a methods of secure offsite testing. As far as I can tell, while it prevents the cat from getting a degree, it does not protect against feeding answer to the traditional students. So it is not 100%, but the methods they use are interesting. It would be nice if the summaries would include some interesting bits, rather than just a naked conclusion, which is rather useless.
It's still DRM... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's still another attempt to make reality match "legality" instead of the other way around.
'If someone else copies your file, you will be punished by loosing that file'...
Fuck. That. Shit.
The current (and as it has always been) paradigm of free copying of data, is the best and most honest way of dealing with data.
"He who lights his taper off of mine does not diminish mine"... Jefferson, IIRC.
Whoever came up with this idea should lose their computing licence.
Don't steal from us, steal from them instead! (Score:3, Interesting)
With DPP, the media companies are offering an easier dishonest way to get music: instead of cracking the DRM, just steal other consumer's songs...
Basically, DPP means: Don't steal from me, steal from my customers instead!
Car analogy would be a manufacturer making cars with great anti-theft systems that are to be removed when the car is first sold in order to discourage thieves from stealing a product before it was sold the first time.
New name, old shit (Score:3, Funny)
I don't know if they are stupid or smart, either way it will penalize only the legal buyers, as always.
Adding a layer of indirection (Score:4, Insightful)
The core idea here is quite clever, it's kind of a Prisoner's Dilemma situation, where if you decide to be non-cooperative with whoever gave you a piece of media content, you can gain exclusive control over it... but if everyone decides to be cooperative, then everyone has shared access to it. This would provide a strong incentive for people to limit the sharing of their purchased content to people they trust, which would prevent unlimited sharing.
Very clever.
However, it ultimately suffers from the same fundamental problem as any other DRM scheme: Bits are too easy to replicate. While the idea specifically allows for unlimited replication of the content, it still requires strong DRMish control over the "playkey". Effectively, it just replaces the problem of controlling access/ownership of a large pile of very-copyable bits (the content) with the problem of controlling access/ownership of a small pile of very-copyable bits (the playkey).
While reducing the scale of a problem does sometimes make it more tractable, I don't think it really helps in this case. You still end up with some bits that must somehow be moved and shared, but without the possibility that they may be copied. How do you do that? No one knows. You can try to lock it up in secure hardware (effectively a dongle), but even if you succeed, you've just created a major hassle for end-users -- which is exactly what this scheme is supposed to fix. And, of course, really securing that key is very hard, and doing it cost-effectively darned near impossible.
And I don't see any possible way this could work without some sort of on-line interaction. When I "take ownership" of a playkey that I've been given access to, how is it that everyone else loses the ability to use that key? Obviously there must be some sort of central system involved, if not for each usage of the key, at least periodically, to check in to see if the possessor should still have access to it.
Perhaps there's another even more brilliant technical idea underlying the rather clever social hack, but I doubt it.
nude pictures (Score:2)
It's that ability to lose control over property that is central to the DPP system. DPP files are encrypted. They can be freely copied and distributed to anyone, but here's the trick: anyone who can view your content can also "steal" it irrevocably. The simple addition of a way to lose content instantly leads consumers to set up a "circle of trust" that can be as wide as they like but will not extend to total strangers on the Internet.
You mean they not only copied my files, they deleted my copy as well?
So this is for nude pictures? Now what excuse will young stars have when they leak such pictures for publicity.
On the inconvenience (Score:2)
Any, repeat any DRM will inconvenience legitimate users far more than copyright violators.
Won't work. (Score:2)
I don't get it (Score:2)
They propose solving the "problem" of files being copyable by encrypting them, and making a key that somehow can be moved but never copied.
How do they plan to do this key? Any time you decrypt the file to use it, you must have the key to it, and at that time you can make a copy of it. What ensures it'll be irrevocably lost when transmitting it to somebody else?
idiocity (Score:2)
So, the answer is to make things worse? Yeah, I'm sure that's gonna fly.
Uh, right... What a crock of shit (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright is a social contract which has time, and time, and time again been abused and violated by large corporations and their lobbying groups. This DPP nonsense is a sop to their war on the public domain and the rights we are used to enjoying.
This proposal? Well, let's smoke some MPAA/RIAA crack and spend a fortune making computers work in a way that suits their old business models.
You can't treat a number like property (Score:3, Insightful)
When you boil the matter down to its essence, digital content is simply a bunch of very long numbers. You can't treat numbers like property. Imagine trying to treat the number 17 as property. It doesn't work.
Re: (Score:2)
Ever greater disgust at this stupidity (Score:2)
I know! Let's come up with a way to break digital content, simply because it's digital! Not because it's a technical flaw!
Why? For social reasons!
HEADDESK
HEADDESK
HEADDESK
Copying Stealing (Score:2)
The obvious question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
...why?
"Digital personal property (DPP) is an attempt to make consumers treat digital media like physical objects."
When we see things like this, we need to sit down and have a hard look at the intent here. The fundamental nature of digital media is that copying is essentially a zero-cost event. The entire point of "DPP" is to break the nature of digital media.
Why? Why are we breaking the natural advantage of this new format? This isn't much different than pouring ink all over the pages of a book, so that they can't be read. Ultimately, we have to realise that we're doing it to make digital media fit the mold of traditional media.
Yes, I know you're thinking "but that's exactly what it SAYS! Make consumers treat digital media like physical objects." No revelation here--just repeating the blindingly obvious.
My point, though, is that the digital media breaks the economic model. We need to fix the model, not break the media. DRM is backwards. DPP is backwards. They're making the media fit the model (by kneecapping it), not making the model fit the media.
Reality is that digital media are here. A model that doesn't change to adapt to reality is one that HAS to die eventually.
I like it. (Score:2)
Seriously, hear me out. I've been wondering for years when an implementation like this would finally come along. I think it's a really good compromise between the big corporations and the free peoples, and here's why.
1. Legitimate use is easy and non-annoying. In other words, if you purchase the product on iTunes or Steam or any service implementing this protocol, you can use the product where ever and whenever you want, on whatever devices. There's no "Kindle 1984" scenario looming and no need to buy
Steam accounts (Score:2)
Slashvertisement to another level (Score:5, Informative)
A quick Google search brings his Linkedin profile [linkedin.com], along with his current job position:
That leads us to his company homepage, Telebind Inc. [telebind.com] Not surprisingly, their sole product is "technology and tools to create ownable Digital Property".
This is nothing but a pitiful attempt to pass astroturfing as a peer (or standardization group) reviewed article. And it is more probable that not even he believe on his product, but want to suck a few into his scam, just like the ones who sold the rootkit to Sony.
It could work (Score:2)
With this scheme: You still have an encrypted music file, and a key file. The software still sends the key file to a server, which checks it and returns the key. Two differ
badanalogy (Score:2)
I might if I knew that after someone took it, a magical copy remained in its place. And I definitely would if everyone did this, so that cars were essentially shared, I definitely would.
It would be pretty cool...relatively few original cars would multiply many times until everyone had a car. Then, undoubtedly, some would tinker with cars t
DPP Feature (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like something Douglas Adams would dream up.
Of course, the writers on Star Trek have been envisioning this feature for years - what other explanation do you have for all the episodes when software or other data is sent from one place to another and mysteriously lost at it's source.
The most scenarios involve the Voyager EMH.. he seems to be forever in peril disproportionate to his status as a piece of software.
It sounds like LCARS has been designed with a particularly viscous strain of DRM. Whether this has been designed into the system by Starfleet engineers or 21st century intellectual property lawyers is unknown.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's been all downhill since they bought into that "kibibyte" nonsense.
Re: (Score:3)
It's alive, but not well. Anyone who can use Google can find reasonably friendly software to rip DVDs, and much digitally-sold music is now DRM-free.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And since the entire revolution will occur in the form of /. posts, the revolution will slide off "most viewed" in a few days and post-revolutionary Earth will look much the same as pre-revolutionary Earth, with just a few geeks giving each other knowing glances and whispering "dude, we made a DIFFERENCE that day!"