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Jeremy Allison On Why DRM Will Never Work
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jun 07, 2007 08:31 AM
from the we-come-in-peace-shoot-to-kill dept.
from the we-come-in-peace-shoot-to-kill dept.
eldavojohn writes "At the ZDNet site, Jeremy Allison (a well-known employee of the Google corporation) goes on a hilarious rant against Digital Rights Management. He compares the access restriction technology with underwear gnomes & Star Trek while ending with: 'Believing in a DRM business model is like joining Star Fleet security, putting on your red shirt, and volunteering to beam down to the new unexplored planet with Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Someone will be coming back from that mission, it's just not likely to be the security guard. Always a true engineer, Scotty had the good sense to stay safely on board the ship.'"
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As I'm sure all Slashdot readers will recall (Score:5, Funny)
Re:As I'm sure all Slashdot readers will recall (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, it always seemed so unfair that he only got to enjoy some nekid flesh, when he could have gone on a wild prostitute sex and killing spree and be treated exactly the same.
I think we all agree, on shore leave from Enterprise - just go for it!
Cos, hey. Kirk has your back and he's got fucking proton torpedo's and an itchy trigger finger.
monk.e.boy
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Re:As I'm sure all Slashdot readers will recall (Score:5, Informative)
<PEDANTIC;>
Actually, Luke Skywalker had the proton torpedos. Kirk had photon torpedos.
</PEDANTIC;>
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Re:As I'm sure all Slashdot readers will recall (Score:5, Funny)
Shit. I've been found out.
Here, take my fake geek card and my thick glasses. I'll see myself out.
monk.e.boy
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Re:As I'm sure all Slashdot readers will recall (Score:5, Funny)
Shit. I've been found out.
Here, take my fake geek card and my thick glasses. I'll see myself out.
monk.e.boy
Hmmm, humility. The Force is strong with this one.
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I resign (Score:5, Funny)
So I will hand in my nerd license and resign.
Re:I resign (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I resign (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I resign (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't supposed to be comedy. If anything, see it as some kind of science infotainment show. Meant to give you some insight without boring you.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Or maybe the Star Trek references were lowest common demoninator enough to get modded "hilarious" rather than "off-topic".
Ye cannae change the laws of Physics (Score:3, Funny)
The whole premise is based on changing the laws of physics.
DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Customer goes and pays $10 dollars for his album and notices the can't play it on any machine except the ones approved by the company that sold the album and he can't backup the album in case it breaks so he has to buy it all over again if it does.
The pirate on the other hand happily buys a cheap cd for $1, goes online and downloads the album, burns it to cd and now has a cd that can be played on any machine and be backupped easily.
The basic idea of successfully selling anything is to provide better service then you can get for free.
When it comes to music/movies/games bought online I propose that you let people download the items as many times they want at high speeds. This means that it will be alot faster/comfier then doing it illegally through the relatively slow pirate networks.
I'm currently enjoying this to a great extent with games I've bought through EA. After a format or whatever I just need to tell the EA downloader to download the game for me instead of me having to hunt down the bloody cd that is forgotten in some bookcase somewhere.
I think downloaded music/movies should do it similarly so I easily can move my collection between computers without any fuzz at all making all my movies/music basically immortal. Good service at a good price is better then pirating.
Why DRM will never work (Score:5, Informative)
The first part has been explained time and again at
But it all would not happen if the receiver at least had some kind of benefit from the encryption. If it's only that his neighbor can't "steal" his pay-tv, some would already welcome the "feature". But that's not even the case. I should be kinda thankful that the content industry has been selfish enough so far to make DRM a tool that only they benefit from, with no gain whatsoever for the receipient.
Hard to market something that gives you a decisive advantage over your business partner.
All together Now!! (Score:3, Funny)
Simple math (Score:4, Interesting)
Hilarity ensues... (Score:4, Funny)
He compares the access restriction technology with underwear gnomes
Step 1 : Make an underpants gnomes reference
Step 2 : ???
Step 3 : Hilarity
Hey, it's not just some unknown Google employee (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, never mind it was Zonk.
Meanwhile, aboard the Enterprise... (Score:5, Funny)
Kirk: Uhura, can you patch into their signal?
Uhura: I'm trying, sir, but they're using some sort of signal encryption...
Kirk: Mr. Spock, analysis.
Spock [leaning over viewer]: It appears to be a primitive form of encryption, Captain. It will only take me a few moments to break it.
Uhura: Sir, we're getting a signal from the alien ship.
Kirk: On audio, Lieutenant.
Voice: This is the RIAA vessel Enforcer ordering you to cease and desist your efforts to break our encryption. Our signals belong to us and you have not paid the appropriate fees to access them. Cease immediately or we will be forced to beam our lawyers aboard your ship!
"Engineers should refuse to create DRM systems..." (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, consider the ICCP code of ethics: [iccp.org]
"2.5: Integrity: One will not knowingly lay claims to competence one does not demonstrably possess."
It seems to me that an engineer who, knowing that it is impossible to create a DRM system that does what it is supposed to do, nevertheless accepts an assignment to create one, is implicitly claiming competence he or she does not possess and is in violation of this point.
"2.7: Accountability:
"3.4: Statements: One shall not make false or exaggerated statements as to the state of affairs existing or expected regarding any aspect of information technology or the use of computers."
Re:"Engineers should refuse to create DRM systems. (Score:4, Insightful)
All software can be hacked. All software has bugs. People just have an expectation that it performs at a certain level. Should everybody working on operating systems be deemed incompetent because there are still security issues?
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Google! Google! Google! (Score:5, Insightful)
"a Google employee goes on"
A "Google employee"? Really? He has a name... it's Jeremy Allison. You know, the same Jeremy Allison that was described as "The legendary Jeremy Allison (of Samba fame)" when he resigned from Novell [slashdot.org].
Hell, he was still Jeremy Allison only a couple of months ago when he wrote an advice piece [slashdot.org] for young programmers.
Now? He's a Google employee.
Yeesh.
dear media middlemen: (Score:5, Insightful)
while not actually tested with a nuclear strike, their system has been tested by another form of damage: your DRM. we are happy to report that the Internet is still flexible and redundant. it has survived your DRM, and has successfully routed around the damage
please make note of your coming extinction. the internet as media distribution system is infinitely superior to your schemes, and is not yours to control. some of you apparently are not aware of this reality. you should try to be
the aztec and incan ruling classes were not happy at the arrival of new technology and unseen phenomena like the gun, the cannon, heavy metal swords, heavy metal shields, the horse, syphilis, and smallpox. the arrival was unplanned and overwhelming. but however unhappy they were at the arrival of such things, it did not change the fact that it spelled their quick and certain doom
so it is with you, dear media middlemen
all the best,
media consumers
xoxoxoxoxox
I disagree: rights management can be made to work. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The medium on which the data is shipped to the customer must not be readable on any standardised hardware which is sold with an interface to plug into a PC. (See also: Sega Dreamcast GD-ROM).
- This immediately eliminates the percentage of the hacker world whose expertise doesn't stretch as far as "taking a hardware player to pieces and following paths".
- It implies that the design of the player is encumbered with so many patents that even if you did build such a drive, you'd have a hard time selling it in much of the world.
2. The device which plays the data has no output except for a built-in screen. Rationale: You can't trust anything you plug into the device. (See also: Portable travel DVD players).
- This prevents anyone from exploiting possible issues in any security which may be attached to output data.
- For best results, and to minimise the impact of the analogue hole, the screen should be sized such that lining up a camera is very difficult and even if you did it would be impossible to get very good results.
There's only one minor issue. I've just invented the Sony PSP, which we all know has been a runaway success as a media player and movie releases tend to hit the PSP first. </sarcasm>
The bigger issue (Score:5, Insightful)
After reading the article (which is akin to blasphemy here on /. ), he hits upon a real concern about DRM: The effort to turn the US into a risky "IP economy", relying on DRM to protect our interests while outsourcing actual manufacturing and labor to cheaper countries.
The Pollyanna dream that western countries will be able to sit on ivory towers as "idea centers" while trying to sell DRM'ed Intellectual Property to newly affluent laborers in sovereign China and India is extremely misguided. Especially when these places are used to cheaper (and often better/unhindered) knockoff copies of movies/music/games already.
Public-key cryptography? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe he just worded that wrong, but if you can derive the secret key like that, you're messing up. Maybe he meant that messages can be encrypted and sent with the public key, and decrypted with the secret key.
Outsourcing your manufacturing base (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet, that is exactly what is happening.
Eben Moglen said once that the wealth of nations in the 21st century will not be measured by how much steel they make or how well they make it, they will be measured by how much software they make and how well they make it. Presumably he was talking about software which had some purpose, not Quake.
The analog hole (Score:5, Insightful)
There will always be an analog hole. There are only two things they can do about that. One is to degrade the analog quality. But this also degrades the user experience. That ultimately can't work. They can certainly go as far as making sure no analog connections exist between the playback source and the display. But to see it, you have to have a display. And that's a hole right there. The other thing they can do is restrict the ability to capture from the analog hole. But this ends up crippling devices that inherintly have to be analog, such as a camera. Watermarks are their best bet, but these have to be very subtle to avoid destroying the user experience. And the more subtle they are, the harder it is to make technology that can detect it in a variety of cases, and fit into a cheap consumer digital video camera made in China.
The real cause of the problem is not that content comes to us digitally. That's actually an advantage for the content providers. It's the fact that once a copy has leaked into the pirate world, stripped of its DRM encumbrance, there is no further loss of quality as there once was when everything was in analog.
Back when everything was analog, people put up with horrible quality just to get a movie cheap, or see one before they were otherwise allowed to for some reason. The fact that even today people try to sneak cameras into theaters to copy a major motion picture shows just how low a quality a lot people are willing to accept. Sure, some people today want their pirated copy to be perfect original digital reproduction. But the mass level of piracy will be quite happy with just the one generation of analog lossage that we have today.
The focus on stopping piracy needs to be at the distribution, not at the original capture. It only takes one leak and it's all over the internet. DRM would have to be 100% perfect to make a dent in piracy. It simply cannot do that. It won't work.
What DRM will do, however, is stop casual copying. It can prevent someone from making a copy for a neighbor. Now the neighbor will have to go to the internet to get a "real pirate copy". It will also cause people to have to buy more copies than they wanted, to be able to play on a variety of devices, of the most intrusive of DRM comes into being. But that is what the content producers are really wanting in the end, which would drive up sales because of this deprivation of fair use. That is ultimately what DRM can work for, and is what the content producers want.
DRM will also cripple many ways people can even play or watch the content they legally buy (or would legally buy if they knew they could play it). The number of such people affected is still small, and may well remain small (e.g. die hard BSD/Linux users). Because these people are affected, some of them will (and most of the rest will support) find ways to crack the DRM directly. So basically, DRM itself creates motives to crack DRM even among those willing to pay for everything they have (e.g. are not tha freeloader minority). So DRM will always be under attack. And big corporations have continually shown they are unable to make perfect technology, especially that involving encryption.
DRM will fail. But the prospect is that it could take as much as 20 years for big corporate executives to realize this. They are slow learners (as the internet itself has shown on a massive scale).
Re:This is going to get all kinds of responses, bu (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:This is going to get all kinds of responses, bu (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, there are disadvantages; rather than getting the show on demand, I have to wait until they schedule a "push". But generally the show is "pushed" before it is available through on-demand channels anyway, so that's not a big deal.
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Re:This is going to get all kinds of responses, bu (Score:5, Insightful)
But, in the end, everyone will see it for the profiteering racket that it really is.
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Correction (Score:4, Interesting)
DRM does nothing to prevent someone from copying the content.
This issue is about society and the rights of citizens, not about one person.
It has become very clear, that people will pay for content, even when that content can be had for free.
iTune has sold over 2.5Billion tracks, all of which can be found for free.
The people selling to the market ned to provide it convienantly, and at the price the MARKET is willing to pay, not what they want the market to pay.
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Re:Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
>>iTune has sold over 2.5Billion tracks, all of which can be found for free.
The question is will enough people be willing to pay for it to make it a viable business model. The big problem is that there is an entire generation of college kids that think everything digital is free for the taking unless it is properly secured, and if it is not properly secured then it is basically an invitation to take it.
Most college kids don't have the money to spend on something anyway so it doesn't affect the business model much now, but if they keep this attitude as they grow older and replace the people willing to pay, then there will be a problem.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Correction (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that you need an example, but here I go anyway. I have been downloading Southpark for years (I don't have cable, and Southpark isn't worth $100/month). iTunes started offering it, which is great because I value my time and think that $2 is money well spent. HOWEVER, I can't watch the episodes on my stinking TV! With P2P I could just burn them to a CD and watch the AVI on my $25 DVD player. So now I'm left with the situation where I can buy the episode for $2 and watch it on my monitor, or download it for free and watch it anywhere I like. Not to mention that the free version is higher-quality!
Tell me how restricting the paying customer is a sound business strategy?
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Re:Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
Legality and morality are entirely different and people should care less about the former and more about the latter. If you're an American, think of it this way: Signing the Declaration of Independence was an act of treason. Now, downloading digital content isn't as noble as throwing off an oppresive empire in the hopes of starting a country based on freedom, but to assume something is bad because "it's illegal" is shortsighted.
Personally, I feel that downloading content without compensating the creator (in the way they ask) is immoral. I generate content for a living and I expect to be paid for it. It would be hypocritical not to extend the same courtesy to others. If something is simply illegal and not immoral I don't have a problem breaking that law.
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Re:Correction (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
That's simply not true at all. I have yet to meet a non-geek who thinks "it's locked therefore it must be wrong." This weekend I was asked these two questions from two different family members: "why do I get this error message on my PC trying to watch a DVD?" and "why can't I copy my iTunes music to my cell phone?"
All their experiences in the physical world have taught them that if they buy something, it's theirs. This is no different: they both assumed that because they bought the products that they had the right to use them. They see only that "the computer" is giving them error messages. They've never heard of DRM. They have zero assumption that they're doing anything wrong (which is good because they're not.) Yet the products are refusing to cooperate.
In this case, DRM itself is instilling the "mentality" of "this is a stupid computer bug I have to get around." At no point does "right vs wrong" enter into the thought process.
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Re:Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but 40 years ago there was an entire generation of college kids that thought love and sex and drugs and rock and roll were free to be taken and shared, and now that generation packs mega churches and votes for George W. Bush. People change as they age.
I don't think it's appropriate to claim that a generation "has no honor" and thus will not use an honor-based system. Even if it is partially true at one point in time, it can change.
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Re:This is going to get all kinds of responses, bu (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean the fact that media companies won't make their products easily available to the public to download at a reasonable price?
"For DRM to "work", it's not necessary that it make piracy impossible, only that it reduce it to sufficiently low levels that the production of the work is still profitable."
But it can't work, because only one person has to crack the DRM on a file and put it on the Net, and the rest of the w
Re:This is going to get all kinds of responses, bu (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me tell you a quick story about a friend of mine. It was the Summer of 01 or 02, and he bought a CD. Like he used to do. He didn't know much about the 'net and he didn't download songs, he went to his local store and bought CDs. Simply because he didn't want to deal with P2P, considered it a hassle and didn't even want to look into it. What for? He bought a CD every few months, who cared that they costed 20 bucks? He can afford that.
He slipped his brand new CD into his car-hifi and
To say the least, he was pissed. He came to me and asked me what to do. Now, I didn't have any idea how to copy the "protected" CD to a CDR so he could play it in his car, but I knew that there are services where he could download what he bought. Funny enough, that was legal here back then, he had the "right" to "own" that music by buying that CD.
So he went and installed some P2P software. Was surprised how easy it is and within a few hours he had his CD on the computer, burning it to a CDR that works in his car was trivial.
From then on, he started using P2P more often and buy CDs less often, if he only found one good song on the disc, which is pretty much common today.
Conclusio: DRM was what turned him into one of those pesky pirates. He didn't (and still doesn't) care about the 20 bucks such a CD would cost him. What he does care about, though, is that the content works the way HE wants it. He doesn't want to distribute it, or remix it, or anything else the content industry fears so much. He just wants to listen to it. He just wants it to "work" as intended. That's his primary goal when it comes to content, being able to use it the way it's meant to be used.
He didn't care about DRM until this moment when his CD didn't work anymore as expected. They don't want me to copy? Cool with me. Don't wanna copy anyway. But what he wants is to be able to use his content. Such is the vicious cycle. DRM is deemed necessary because of the consumer actions caused by DRM.
Parent
Re:This is going to get all kinds of responses, bu (Score:4, Interesting)
When I buy a TV set, I have additional value compared to a stolen one or one that "fell off a truck". When the TV fails, I can claim warranty. I can go to the dealer or to the manufacturer and trade my faulty product against a good one. With other "hardware", you get other benefits. Often you have access to various services (support, installation, in case of computerhardware drivers...) or other added goodies that you simply would not have when you steal it.
With content it is exactly reverse. The stolen content has a bigger "value" than one bought. The value of content is determined by its usefulness. And you can't argue that content is worth more when it is restricted to one medium, impossible to shift and bound to malfunction when used with certain display devices that the manufacturer of the content doesn't approve. It doesn't even have the same "value" as content that allows me to shift freely and display in any way I deem appropriate.
So stolen content is "worth more" than content bought.
And that's the big fallacy of the industry. Not only do people save money by stealing it (which would be the same for stolen "hardware"), they actually get content that is more valuable than when they went and bought it.
And here's the big problem. It's not that people wouldn't buy content, despite it being overpriced IMO. What makes them copyers is that copying increases content value. Not in terms of its price, but its usefulness is vastly increased by removing restrictions.
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Engineering, Not Ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
Which would be a good point if all Mr. Allison was saying was "DRM is evil". However, that isn't his point. What he is saying is that it can't work, it's never going to work, and that trying build a business model (or an economy) found on DRM is a deeply irrational act.
The problem is that for DRM to work you have to hand the customer the encrypted data, the encryption algorithm and the encryption key. If you don't the DRMed work cannot be accessed. However, if you do, they have everything they need to circumvent the DRM.
But if the DRM has a fundamental logical flow, then the problem is DRM. That's the point.
A lot of people would agree with that. The two main approaches offered seem to be either move to a gift economy, or indoctrinate school kids to believe that copyright infringement is a Great Evil on a par with Rape, Murder, Genocide, and Britney Spears. Personally, I can see problems with both those strategies.
In the meantime, DRM still isn't going to work any time soon, and any exec who proposes spending serious money on it wants his arse kicking. Not for Being Evil, but for Being Stupid.
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Re:Engineering, Not Ethics (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, let's look at your analogy. The car is the plaintext, the lock is the encryption algorithm, the key is the encryption key. If your car had a DRM lock, it would have the key selloptaped to the car door, along with a notice saying "driving this car without permission is very, very illegal".
I think any manufacturer that made car locks like that might well get some complaints.
The trouble is that with DRM the key has to be sellotaped to the car door. What you're doing is giving people cars, trying to disguise the keys taped to the door, and telling them they can't go for a drive unless you say so. It might even work, for a little while at least, but once people catch on to the fact that the key has to be there somewhere, you;re going to start seeing an awful lot of unauthorised driving. If your business model depends on people only driving when you say so, then you're in trouble at this point.
Successful ones may be based on data. Unsuccessful business models may be based on anything, including editorial positions and wishful thinking. I don't see any data to suggest that DRM is enabling any successful business models. On the other hand the ease with which HD-DVD DRM is being cracked at the moment suggests that the opposite may well be true
Just because the media companies have a lot of money, that doesn't mean they owe it to DRM. I think this is a wishful thinking model, and I think its doomed to failure.
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Re:This is going to get all kinds of responses, bu (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Unfortunately, there was one tiny flaw in this plan. And I sincerely hope I d
Re:Sure DRM has downfalls... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Yes, I know (Score:5, Interesting)
1. I know a secret
2. I want to tell you the secret
3. I don't want you to tell anyone else the secret
4. I don't trust you
Perhaps you can see now why there's no solution to that scenario.
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