The Clicker: Design your own DRM scheme and win!
posted Jul 28th 2005 5:38PM
NOTE FROM AUTHOR: This week's column contains no real information. It is simply (more so than
usual) some ramblings on DRM. If you don't like rambling, don't read this and certainly don't comment to that effect.
After all, you were warned. On the other hand, we're offering a prize with this entry.
After column upon column of "DRM is evil" talk, it's time to take the matter into our own hands. It's your turn to
suggest a DRM scheme you'd be willing to live with. To that end we're giving away an iZon Bluetooth MP3 player to the
person with the most interesting comment in this thread*. Let us know how you would balance the rights of all parties
involved. Just how do you think this whole crazy thing should work?
My suggestion: let's get back to the basics. That's right, Mr. Peabody, we're hopping into the Wayback Machine and
we're returning to the root of it all, accountability. Accountability? That's right, accountability.
Fundamentally, there are only two real ways to prevent piracy: you can a) make it impossible for people to
distribute the media or you can b) convince people that it's not in their best interests to share the content.
While content-providers are doing their damnedest to implement the “impossible” strategy, it’s really just that: impossible. The tighter the regulatory grip becomes, the more likely someone will feel the “need” to free the content. Content providers like to pretend that this is the result of a Mountain-Dew-drinking subversive element. However, more often than not, it’s someone who simply wants to listen to his or her iTunes Music Store purchases on an iRiver device. Extremely tight control all but forces the DRM to be cracked.
So the question becomes: What happens if the “need” to break the encryption is removed? What happens if data and
content are allowed to flow freely?
Am I suggesting chaos? Heck no. I’m tossing out an idea: that content-providers shift all their resources towards
watermarking technology:
Step 1: Watermark the content with the user’s information.
Let’s say you buy a song from iTunes. Currently, encoded somewhere in the file is your name/account number. Apple does
this as part of their DRM. Let’s take that a step further. Let’s put in your name, address, email address, etc. Let’s
make it such that, if another person gets that file, they know it’s yours. Likewise, if a company discovers that file
on a file-sharing network, they can easily track you down.
Step 2: Distribute a user-information reader.
User-information reader? Yes, the purpose of this program is to quickly ascertain the user information for any file.
This program will be placed prominently on all sorts of sites. If you have a question as to who owns the file, fire up
your reader. Oh sure – you can use a hex reader to see some of that information today, but let’s not hide it. Let’s
celebrate it. Advertise it. Let people know that if they share their files, they are sharing their information. If they
don’t want their information spread, they should show some discretion in sharing.
Step 3: Shift all resources towards maintaining the integrity of the file.
Hash it. Encrypt it. Do what you like, but make sure that the file only plays if it’s been unaltered. I agree; that’s
not an easy problem. However, it’s really no harder than completely locking down the file. This of course would mean
you would need to produce closed-source tools for all the major operating systems, but this could be done.
Step 4: Key Revocation
Design the system such that each piece of information (e.g. every copy of every song, movie, DVR’ed TV show, etc.) has
its own globally unique identifier. The file will already contain your personal information. This will certainly aid
the process of generating a unique identifier for that content.
If content owners find protected content in the wild, they can revoke that specific file and all the copies of that
content that share that unique identifier. To me, this seems reasonable. If the content is being shared at large across
the internet, it really deserves to be revoked.
The point of all this is to produce a semi-fluid system. Have forty devices? That’s fine; there are no restrictions on
how you spread the files. Want to share a file with a friend? Go right ahead and email it over. Just be sure that it’s
a close friend who will treat your files with the same respect as you would.
Spread the tools wildly. Put the technology in every device. If you take away the need to break the DRM, maybe, just
maybe people would leave it alone.
Well… no doubt there are holes, but that’s what brainstorming is for. Let’s hear what you’ve got. Remember, the most
interesting comment gets a new toy.
* As judged by Engadget’s illustrious editors. You have until noon EST on Tuesday, August 2nd to enter. One
submission per person, so if you post multiple comments please make it explicitly clear which post is your entry for
the contest.
If you have comments or suggestions for future columns, drop an email to theclicker@theevilempire.com
my idea all along, drm the heck out of everything but provide the consumer with a life time back up of their media and the will not be as frustrated with losing or damaging their media, half the things ive pirated are simply to replace what ive already bought, plus lower the prices and people will be less enticed to steal it.
--Not my entry--
Watermarking isn't going to work. You said yourself that in order for that to work, you have to make it so the file won't play without that information. Well, that would require that all current MP3 players be scrapped, and everyone would have to buy new ones that support this new watermarking feature.
Ain't gonna happen. It's basically the same problem with Apple's proprietary format, we're forced to crack it just so we can use our own music in a reasonable fashion.
A scary idea, in that it puts a lot of personal responsibility on the user, but a fair one.
It doesn't work, however, to make altered files unplayable. Take songs at the end of the album that have a hidden track tacked onto the end. If I want to put them on the mix, I'll cut the hidden track (or maybe the main track) out. Maybe I want a 20 minute song to fade out at the 5 minute mark because I'm trying to make a DJ mix.
It's all fair use, and it's not possible under that scheme.
The other thing is the difficulty of defining exactly how much personal use sharing can occur. If I burn a mix for a friend, and then he rips the song and puts it on Kazaa, and my key for that song (or worse yet, all of my music) gets revoked, is that really fair to me? People will probably disagree, but I don't think it's fair.
a universal drm, although seemingly impossible would work better too, at least everything would be compatible with one another, proprietery is just too frustrating and confusing for the consumers
Adam's Way To Implement DRM In A Way That Can't Be Broken, Or Is Very Hard To Break.
//takes breath
It's simple. The problem is that people are allowed to have a file on their computer/portable device that actually contains the music; if they have that, it's exceedingly easy to copy the music out of the file and DeDRM it. Now, if we take away the file, and not allow the user to have a local copy, that issue goes away! The solution? A gigantic media server that streams music to computers, and wirelessly streams to portable devices. The user would get an account, and pay the 99c or whatever to get access to the song. Then, the user may stream the song and listen to it whenever he or she likes. Account distribution wouldn't work, because the user could only have one active stream at a time.
//takes another breath
I know there's an anti-iTunes contingent here, but I think that a lot of its DRM policy is pretty good. It's loose enough that most (non-geeky) users aren't even aware of it, and even though it can be circumvented, labels seem to be pretty happy with it.
And yet, I don't buy much from iTunes, because:
- The bit rate is too low for me
- I have to back up my music
- I can only play my music on Apple products
Of course, those first two complaints are more about the iTunes service/selection than the DRM scheme. So, I'd say my only request for a DRM format would be OPENNESS. A DRM solution should be free/cheap/easy for any manufacturer to incorporate into their products.
Now, I know why Apple doesn't do that (they want to sell iPods), and (especially as an Apple shareholder) I can't blame them for it. But unless I can play a song on pretty much any device (without circumventing the DRM), I'll stick with buying CDs and manually ripping them to MP3.
#5, people will just make analog copies from the speaker outs and re-digitize them. Then the copies go back out over the internet.
Okay, perhaps it isn't QUITE as good as the original file, but MP3 audio quality sucks to begin with.
I don't think these strategies will work.
Instead of iriver users wanting to play itunes songs you'd end up with the privacy crowd wanting to remove this information from their files. And when they cracked the encyption, apple would have to update their drm and we'd be back doing the same endless dance we're dancing now.
I think what we need to do is to make it so that most audio players would encourage you to pay for the file you're playing. Heck, you could even pay twice.
Just press the "give $1 to the artist button"!
Of course people would have to know that a fair amount of that dollar would actually go to the artist and not to the music industry.
Want to share this music with all your friends? Great! More people might be tempted to press that button, I know I would for my favourite artists...
DRM is still evil, what we need is another solution.
I think that the best DRM would be to have some sort of defense mechanism built into the files. So, if Johnny Hacker tries to alter it then it would, let's say, automatically shut down the computer or delete the hard drive or something to that effect. It's punishment at the local level. If only there were a way for the DRM'd file to reach out and just slap their hands with a large metal soup spoon... That's all.
I think that maintaining the integrity of the file is your weakest link. Someone'll hack it in no time and then the system's useless. There will always be some kind of file sharing program, even if you have to piggy back in on ipods.
The rest seems like a good ideal, but what about those people who think that if you stop giving the media's money it'll force them to try quality.
How about free access to everything but the government conducts random searches and the penalty is death. Let the ACLU choke on it.
we should enforce the death penalty for commiting copyright infringement...hahahah
P.S.
I think
#8 - Robin has it right.
Very weak DRM is the answer. Don’t make it super simple to copy the work (programs, music, video, etc.) but don’t make it super hard, either. There was (is) nothing wrong with the current CD-ROM technology for distributing music. For less technical savvy users, they simply grab the CD when they want to hear it. The more technically savvy person will rip it into a digital file on their computer, copy it to their iPod, Rio, etc, or make mix-CD’s. Again, nothing wrong with that. And most people, on either side of the spectrum, do not pirate music. Sure, a song here or there, but that is about all. And even then, if they really like it, they are more likely to go out and buy that CD or iTMS than they are to take the time to hunt down and pirate all the songs off the CD.
By making DRM flexible for the users, the music industry (and the movie industry) garners more goodwill from their consumers. Once a company institutes a DRM scheme that makes certain discs unplayable on common players (hello, Sony) then people get frustrated, and say “To hell with it” and either outright avoid content from that provider, or turns to piracy and feels less remorse.
DRM is to protect the owners of the content. We all, I hope, agree that there is nothing wrong with that. But when the content is unfairly limited in scope on the consumer end, then not only do the content providers alienate themselves from that consumer, but the consumers themselves will turn to other forms of entertainment to fill the gap.
Tim Robertson
DRM, and even the concept of copyright in general, is based on the simple premise of balancing the rights of the copyright owner with the license holder. Back in say, '99-'00, the scale was too far on the license holder's side. Between ripping things and the original Napster, copyright owners had little to no recourse. Today, however, things are starting to shift too far to the copyright owner. iTunes limiting the number of copies someone can make, CD manufacturers making it absurdly annoying to copy a CD (which I often do, not to share them, but to keep a copy that can get destroyed or stolen in my car), etc. The point is the scale should balance.
How can the scale be balanced? Realistically, it can't. No matter how hard people try to make a bullteproof DRM scheme, someone will always crack it. Use of that crack may be limited to 5% of the population, but that's not the point. The point is it was cracked.
All said and done, it's ultimately about money anyway. And the money is often not even going to the musicians in the first place. On the other hand, for every "evil" the RIAA commits, the end user is ultimately still being irresponsible.
My Solution (which is a lot like yours, but I put this in a paper I wrote back in 2001):
1. A purchaser of a license should be able to use that song on as many devices as they own. If I want to rip a copy to my desktop, fine. Copy that to my laptop and MP3 player and PSP, fine. If I want to burn a copy for the car, fine.
2. Users should be able to share, but that sharing should be to a limited number of other users. Incorporating your revocable license concept, if I can share with 5 people at any given time, allowing dynamically revocable licenses would theoretically maximize those 5 sharable licenses.
3. The balance of power in determining licenses should be with each artist, not the RIAA. If one band wants to let you share the song with 2 friends, fine. If another up and coming band is trying to break out and wants you to share with 100 friends, fine. This could be dynamic as well, but some sort of advance notice system would need to be incorporated, so licensees would have say 10 days notice before their sharing rights changed.
The system applies mostly to music, and sort of to movies. Games are an entirely different animal. Once again, legislation needs to reflect these differences to be truly effective.
Sorry that was long, but us law students are a bit notorious for being long winded.
Increase both the file size and quality of media (ie, on Blu-ray) so that current compression schemes would be inadequate to efficiently transfer the media via broadband - therefore forcing consumers to buy the product in a store (at a reasonable price), or live with a vastly inferior copy. I'd still prefer not to have any DRM period - and at a low enough cost, I find it easier to buy a CD and rip & encode to the format and quality I want, than to download poor quality DRM'd music or poorly encoded bootlegged material. Plus, I still want a hard-copy of uncompressed (or less-compressed) media.
I once spent an entire day downloading a movie over dial-up, only to go and buy a VHS of the same movie with much better quality.
Once the data has left the building, it's gone. Someone will always find a way to break the copy protection. The best way to protect data is to send it from a server and invest in a protected client, one that makes data very difficult to copy. This, of course, limits the customer's experience and choice of equipment.
The best from a consumer side is to assume that everyone is going to copy and use the Canadian method: include a surcharge for blank media that goes directly to the content providers.
I think one of the first steps of a fair use DRM is to recognize the viability of sharing. To think that every person is going to buy an individual copy of every single song is ridiculous. Growing up, friends made me mix tapes , dubbed TV shows, and eventually made CDs for me. Sharing is a big part of all media, and rather than have the industry trying to introduce an all or nothing policy, there should be some way to encourage sharing, but remove some of the anonymity of mass internet sharing (bittorrent). Perhaps, if iTunes or other DRM providers would allow you to share within your network (a reduced quality version) of the song, perhaps you could encourage sales of higher quality. I know it's essentially one person sharing One 99 cent track, or whatever, but tapes were free, I still bought the CD. The most important issue here, is that as consumers we should not have our rights REDUCED with this new shift to digital distribution. If we're willing to allow the record industry to cut out the process of printing CDs, stocking store shelves, and allow us to buy direct, there should be some benefits to the consumers. $10 per album on iTunes is nice, but losing the physical copy and rights is hardly worth the $5 discount.
Make DRM easy to circumvent. This is the speedbump strategy, so that people are fully aware of what they're doing if they decide to copy stuff. DVDs are a good example. Sure, there's some DRM, but discs can be copied with a burner, recorded via analog with a Macrovision filter, or decrypted with DeCSS if they want to use a clip.
You can't stop, or even slow, large-scale pirates with DRM-- you need enforcement to do that. And the studios/ record labels should realize that occasional copying and sharing benefits them and lay off of it. Napster/ Grokster et.al. obviously pose a real threat, but that's a tough nut to crack.
The solution? Tight DRM for high-value media that only works on special equipment (think digital theatre projection), loose DRM for subscription music services (require people to employ the analog hole and the hassle it creates), and no DRM on purchased content.
DRM is pointless. It's a waste of money. Why would you want to spend money on developing something that will instantly be bypassed?
There are a few realistic arguments for DRM:
- You own a company that makes DRM, thus you want to trick everyone into giving you money for something that is fundamentally useless
- You own a company that makes media, and you hate your customers and hate making a profit, and want to convince them to find their media elsewhere
- You're an idiot.
EVEN *IF* someone created an uncrackable DRM scheme, do you not understand that they will just copy it via analog means? Even if the worst case happens and we are all legally forced to use monitors, speakers, and printers that refuse to show things unless authorized, someone will just videotape the screen under best conditions, or mic the speakers and record it.
YOU CAN NOT STOP PIRACY! YOU HAVE TO LIVE WITH IT! For everyone's sake, please stop wasting your money and our time. It's getting really irritating. Start respecting your customers and giving them something worth paying for: I mean come on, is anyone actually interested in Deuce Bigalow: European Gigilo?
This is a trick question!!! No DRM scheme will ever win in the long term. Here's the thing... The iPods have gotten the general public into using computers and actually having to understand them to a small degree. As a result, in the coming years more and more people will educate themselves and are going to realize that consumers drive DRM technology. If consumers stop supporting DRM then they will die a painful death (remember the original divix?).
There's really one thing that the RIAA needs to address... sound quality!!! We've been using 16bit 44khz CD's since the early 80's. Why isn't music being released at 7.1 channel sound, 96Khz??? If I could buy an album that fills up an entire dual layer DVD purely with music I'd pay $15. It's not worth the hassle to download.
But a 128kbs aac off of itunes that only works with an ipod is a joke.
Here's another suggestion... Why not make DVD audio releases interactive? Separate all of the tracks so that users can remix them themselves...Like remove an annoying keyboard track or a vocal track. Save the configs in small files that can be traded and implemented on players via SD Cards. That would be friggin amazing.
Today's concept of DRM is inherently flawed. Music is about hearing something nice. If it's audible, then it can be hacked no matter how much technology you use to prevent it. Record companies should take a page out of allofmp3.com's book and simply change for banwidth and just take the hit for providing music in such an archaic standard. Allow the users to decide how they will listen to their music. Then make something like I described above on Blue Ray audio discs as the next standard- No one will download a 20gb audio disc if it could be had for $15. It's simple, improve your product and people will pay. Whew.
My DRM solution:
Step 1 - Obtain a steamroller.
Step 2 - Mount a wireless transmitter on the steamroller.
Step 3 - Mount a computer with a terabyte of storage and an FTP server on the steamroller.
Step 4 - While steamrolling RIAA employees and record label execs, allow people to log onto the ftp server and upload/download mp3s.
I feel that this solution would be fair to all the parties involved.
This is my DRM thing
1.) Put all the song on the server already encrypted
2.) Before the song/movie/whatever gets downloaded, scan the user's computer for any anti-DRM software
3.) Once the song is downloaded, hash it with a MD5 sum of the computer's harddrive.
4.) Add the name of the computer, the address, the phone number, and the ip address
5.) Let the user do what they want with it except remove the drm
6.) If the file ends up on P2P, match the data with a database, and then call the cops
Also, I have to debunk all of these. It's mind-boggling that the author is really this stupid.
Step 1: Watermark the content with the user’s information.
You cannot have a watermark that is both UNREMOVABLE and also does not affect the end result. Either you make the media crappier with dots/beeps/etc encoded in it so that it survives even analog translations, or you accept that this is all lost when someone converts it to another format (which is a foregone conclusion).
Step 2: Distribute a user-information reader.
Right, like the adobe reader which protects certain documents? Let's assume you remove any functionality which would allow copy/paste. Someone can take screenshots of a movie. Even if you disable that, someone can still videotape the screen. Even if the most draconian measures are implemented, someone can STILL copy it. And once ONE copy gets out, the entire system is useless.
Step 3: Shift all resources towards maintaining the integrity of the file.
Uh huh, and when someone converts the file to some other format that doesn't care about your integrity checksums, all the money spent on that is wasted. Like I said, it only takes one copy on the internet to ruin the entire plan.
Step 4: Key Revocation
See my rebuttal to step 3. There will be no key to revoke. You won't know where it came from, because the key and any watermarking has been removed. But let's say it works, and one user has their key revoked. This does not put the genie back in the bottle, the file is already out and in the wild!
Author, get yourself a life and a respectable profession other than corporate shill.
Here's my idea for not only DRM, but what I picture as the perfect music service.
First off, the portable player must have wifi, not only because it comes into play with my idea, but I think it's bitchin' cool. Also, the service should be one of those ones where you add a bunch of money to your account in the beginning, and just refill it when you use it all up.
Now, because the player has wifi, the music store should be accessible on the player, elminating the need for a PC. The player should also store an XML of the music you're likely to browse (your favorite genres, other music by artists you have, etc) an update it whenever it gets a wifi signal so you can atleast see whats available when you don't have a signal.
There should also be a buddy list. Besides simple IMs, you should have the ability to browse the users collection and "share" music. See what I mean by sharing below.
Now here's where the fancy stuff comes in. Each song file should have a high bitrate version of the track encrypted, but also contain a high bitrate clip of the song, and a low bitrate (32kbps low) version of the full song. When your buddy "shares" a song with you, you get the whole file. The first few times you play it, you get the choice of hearing it as a low bitrate full song or a high bitrate sample. After you hear the low bitrate full track like 5 times or something, it locks you out of that. While it's playing it gives you an option to purchase the track.
If you're in a wifi zone, it contacts the server and takes the money off your account and gives you the key to unlock the encrypted part of the track. If you're not, it'll unlock the low bitrate version again, and add the song to a queue so it'll get purchased next time you're in a wifi area.
Now if you have unused space on your player, the store should automatically put on a bunch of songs that it thinks you'll like so you can browse them later, even if you aren't in a wifi zone.
Anyways, that's my idea. Looking back on it now, it seemed a lot more organized and cooler in my head. It also doesn't really have much to do with DRM besides the brief mention of how the songs are organized and how they act depending on if you paid or not. Meh. You know you'd be all over this if it existed.
A solution to this problem could be a drastic change in the business model of the entire entertainment industry, and some intense cooperation between the recording industry and the digital music player manufacturers.
Think about it... if I buy a song, I can play it as often as I'd like in as many places as I can. But a CD is worth nothing to me without a CD player.
If I buy a CD player, I now have the capability to listen to every single digital recording ever made, but first I have to go buy or download some music.
The whole business displays network effects like the text book example of fax machines. If I am one of the first people to buy a fax machine in the 80's and nobody else has one, its not of much value. But once the devices have proliferated, buying a fax machine taps me into a large and valuable communications network.
By the same token, each new piece of music that is released increases the value of my (and everybody else's) digital music player. Even if I don't actually buy that track, I have the potential and the ability to.
Because music and music players are so complementary, it would be possible to lump them together and just have consumers pay one entity for the complete listening experience.
The trick would be to open up the whole system, and offer flexible payment options and rates that are based on the utility each listener derives from their digital music experience. On the other end, this revenue would have to be divided so as to fairly compensate every player in the supply end (recording artists, labels, managers, and device manufacturers) according to the value they provide.
So the new system from a consumer perspective becomes similar to the cell phone business: You pay a bill each month based on your listening time, which is automatically tracked on your digital music players. If you want a new device, there is some upfront cost, but not too high because of the ongoing revenue stream that would be generated by the anticipated increase in your listening time. All of your devices connect to a central repository from which you can download any songs you want.
From the supplier perspective, all music is tracked - not just in terms of downloads, but also the number of times it is played. Artists whose songs are played the most get paid the most. Hardware manufacturers get the direct revenue from their own device sales, as well as some portion of the ongoing subscription revenue pool that corresponds to the frequency with which their device is used.
The details of this would be extremely difficult to work out, but the ideal would be that every party pays or recieves exactly as much value as they put into or take out of the system. And the key is to look at the system not just as the music production industry, but also include hardware manufacturers and consumers as well.
Same system could be applied to the movie/dvd industries, but lets not go there yet...
Adam, thats exactly the kind of reason a lot of people have so much of a problem with DRM. It restricts the user from actually OWNING music they have paid for. If anything that is going to encourage piracy!
If anything makes DRM unsuccessful in reducing piracy, it won't be weak protection or encryption, it will be the amount of hassle required for consumers to actually use the media that they have paid for the way they want to use it.
Limitations like not being able to use it with 'x' device, won't open on other people's computers, requirements to use 'x' software, etc make it far more hassle than it should be.
This is not the way to go. A lot of computer users are not tech savvy and wont understand why it is not working the way unprotected media does. This is only going to frustrate the consumers and drive them to an alternative option, which of course includes piracy.
DRM would work best if it was designed to simply discourage piracy, not prevent it. It's practically impossible to prevent it, if you can listen to/watch the media then it's a safe bet you can copy it too.
These ever restrictive measures are counter-productive, if the easy option is to pirate it then a lot more people will eventually resort to that.
If paying a small fee to own the media in a simple and easy to use format is an option, then for many this will be more attractive than searching for a free copy on the internet.
It certainly would be for me.
I think you lower the price of music. Sales of cd is directly linked to what price the market will bear. Everyone i know who downloads music doesn't do because the like th e downloaded version, but because they don't want pay for the over priced piece of plasic. people will always Pirate things... that wont stop, but if you lower the price and make it more accessable to people the fans will buy the good music. I personaly download and test music out before i go invest in a cd. If i like it i go buy it and if i dont i delete it and never look back.
This ideas presented below are not original, but are an explanation and explicit endorsement of John Kelsey's and Bruce Schneier's Street Performer Protocol (http://www.schneier.com/paper-street-performer.html).
DRM is bad because it restricts your ability to access your own content. Watermarking is bad because it destroys your privacy (what happens when someone steals your iPod?). Whatever scheme you have, someone will break it and the raw data will be available to everyone. Every single time. Copyright enforcement is becoming more and more difficult all the time... it is already unfeasible in nearly every case, and it will soon be impossible. DRM exists to protect copyright. It is failing now and it will fail in the future. The solution is to abandon it, and protect content before it is even released. Protect the works by privately financing their creation.
The scheme is this: a creator agrees to release a new work only once enough money has been promised to them. People interested in the work donate the money. The money is kept in trust, such that the creator gets it after release. It can have conditions on the creator, such as release by a certain date. And if not enough money is raised or if the creator does not meet the requirements, the donations return to those who gave them in the first place. Consider it an updated and improved version of the relationship people now have with street performers, wherein the performer continues producing as long as he or she makes enough money. But the performance is free to all, in the sense that even those who did not contribute are free to enjoy it as long as it lasts (which will be indefinitely if enough people contribute). This is the world that P2P has forced ALL content into, and we would do well to embrace it rather than fight it.
Once something is released now, it is basically in the public domain anyway (for all practical purposes, at least). Accept this, make it official, and protect the rights of creators where you still can. DRM is dead, long live DRM!
Ok guys, bare with me as I'm not the most tech savvy guy around... just a gadget enthousiast.
I think watermarking could work. Imagine a music file with your info on it. To listen to it you'd just have to insert a mini kinda thumb drive with your info on it; some kind of fingerprint. If the player makes the match between the thumb drive and the watermark, the song plays. With stuff getting smaller and smaller, I don't see why someone would be annoyed by have to plug something in its player, same goes for the pc, you plug it in and your media files are "released". To protect even more from piracy you could have the watermark and thumb drive change the encryption with an algorythm that sync both the files and the thumb.
There you go. That's my idea!
much simpler than any of your complicated ideas:
a lot of the media for sale either by download or in stores, theoretically is already owned by us.
people are allowed to record programs they see on tv. i can record entire episode of the simpsons many different ways. but by simply having access to fox, i am able to record any simpsons episode shown on tv. i could watch the shows that lets say i copy on my pc on a pocket pc without any restrictions. the same goes for any movie seen on tv or (here's the kicker) any song i hear on the radio. if i listened to a song on the radio, i would be legally allowed to record that as i hear it. so instead of recording a song i hear, why not download a song i hear from p2p. what difference does it make whether i reocrd it or download it?
what would not be legal, let's say, would be to download episodes of some hbo show for free if you dont subscribe to hbo.
i got the idea for this from craftytv.com
The answer is no DRM. The companies involved need to recognise that when you get down to it, there is absolutely no point in DRM.
Any media that can be listened to/viewed can be copied. It is always possible to circumvent the DRM/encryption somehow. We have to accept this.
Secondly, we have to accept that there will always people who will go to almost any length to 'share' their media. It may be some teenager on a bit of a power-trip, or some guy who fiercely believes that all content should freely available. Whichever the case, these people exist. They will continue to make P2P and other such methods of media 'sharing' viable.
For the average user, DRM just complicates matters. They do not set out to distribute all of their media. They just wish to play their music freely. Yes, they may download music off such 'sharing' services. But these services will continue to exist regardless of DRM level.
What I am trying to get at, is that no matter what level of DRM you try and enforce, piracy will still continue to exist at roughly the same level. Increasing the DRM only increases the complexity and confusion for the average end user.
No DRM Scheme will ever work because of analog copying of material.
1. DRM was not issue when the public had no way of duplicating the media (LPs EPs etc.).
2. DRM only started to be an issue when media was stored on degrading media like tapes. (Betamax dicision)
The reason why things need to be DRMed is because the public has a high incentive to priate. What, do you ask, is this incentive? Time/Money/Work.
If the customer felt that the value of what they were paying for was acurately reflected in the product then they wouldn't go through the extra work/time/money to pirate it. It's a trade off. time = work = money.
The way that I see it, the media companies have already won in a big way.
As technology progresses, the costs to produce media have gone down. However, the cost of media has continued to go up. Why?
When you buy an online music file you pay ~$1/song. But when CDs came out, I used to pay ~$1/song. But that song file was much higher fidelity. It also came with a physical CD (that the media company had to ship places/ keep stock), and a booklet.
The online music file comes with far less "product" than the CD music file came with. It also costs the media company ~$0 to distribute and duplicate. So why has my cost not gone down? I might be willing to pay ~$0.30 per song at "internet quality" but not ~= to CD price.
What the industry has failed to grasp is that if they increase the quality/experience of the media they produce, then I'd even be willing to pay more than $1/song.
Imagine if all audio was on DVDs, came in 7.1, 5.1, DTS, DD, stereo, and MP3/AAC/OGG formats all on one disc? Heck, I'd pay $2/song for that. Especially if they made a really nice booklet, and the disc had videos and interviews with the band, and maybe, just maybe, a ticket to see them live? Suddenly, the amount of data/time/money that it would take it priate this disc is not worth it anymore. You wouldn't get the cool booklet, or the ticket to the concert. And since the data is very large (~10gb in size), it would take forever to pirate. Suddenly, it just makes sense to just go out and buy the damn disc for ~$35 and not spend 3-4 days trying to pirate it. Imagine that.
As media can be made by more and more people, more and more cheaply, the cost of all media will have to go down. The middle men have been cut out and they are trying to hold onto as many pennies as they can on their way out.
It's time for the media industry to give up on DRM and start making better media. Media that we *want* to buy.
--My entry--
Just encrypt the audio with a hash of the buyer's personal information. It would work like this:
You buy an audio file from iTunes. They know your real name and address because they verify it against your credit card. They then perform some kind of encryption (similar to what they do now), using a hash of your name and address as the encryption key. They then send you the file.
You only need to know your name and address to play the file you just downloaded. Your audio player could easily be configured to associate certain name/address pairs with certain songs, so you don't have to type in your name/address every time you want to listen to music.
Want to put your songs on an MP3 player? No problem: Just embed your name/address into the audio file's tag. Want to give your song to a friend? No problem: Just encrypt the song first with *her* name/address first. That way, if she puts your song on a file-sharing network along with the information necessary to play it (both your and her name/address), it will be clear that your friend, not you, put the file into the open.
And since we hashed your personal information before we used it as an encryption key, even if a hacker could decipher the key used to encrypt the audio file, he wouldn't be able to figure out where you live--your personal information is exposed only if you explicitly expose it yourself!
Like any DRM scheme, I'm sure this one could be broken (if only by recording the analog audio). But the point isn't to create an entirely foolproof system--we just want to allow people to share music with their friends while still being held accountable for sharing music with the entire world. This solution seems to accomplish that pretty well, I think.
The best way to prevent piracy is to distribute the information in a new way. The MPAA is sitting on a huge goldmine of advertising right now. If they were to find a way to let anyone anywhere watch and listen to anything they want, and be subjected to an advertising campaign focused around sales of merchandise, DVD's, and CD's, the average person wouldn't care enough to pirate music and DVD's anymore.
For an example: Almost all americans regularly listen to music on the radio without paying a dime, because the record companies are getting their small kickback. Recording artists want everyone to view their work, they just want to get paid for it. It doesn't have to mean being paid a lot, and certainly not a dollar per song like iTunes is charging. There's got to be a way to distribute all this goodness to the public without making them pay much for it, or else Cable Television has been using a faulty business model for the last few decades.
No DRM Scheme will ever work because of analog copying of material.
1. DRM was not issue when the public had no way of duplicating the media (LPs EPs etc.).
2. DRM only started to be an issue when media was stored on degrading media like tapes. (Betamax dicision)
The reason why things need to be DRMed is because the public has a high incentive to priate. What, do you ask, is this incentive? Time/Money/Work.
If the customer felt that the value of what they were paying for was acurately reflected in the product then they wouldn't go through the extra work/time/money to pirate it. It's a trade off. time = work = money.
The way that I see it, the media companies have already won in a big way.
As technology progresses, the costs to produce media have gone down. However, the cost of media has continued to go up. Why?
When you buy an online music file you pay ~$1/song. But when CDs came out, I used to pay ~$1/song. But that song file was much higher fidelity. It also came with a physical CD (that the media company had to ship places/ keep stock), and a booklet.
The online music file comes with far less "product" than the CD music file came with. It also costs the media company ~$0 to distribute and duplicate. So why has my cost not gone down? I might be willing to pay ~$0.30 per song at "internet quality" but not ~= to CD price.
What the industry has failed to grasp is that if they increase the quality/experience of the media they produce, then I'd even be willing to pay more than $1/song.
Imagine if all audio was on DVDs, came in 7.1, 5.1, DTS, DD, stereo, and MP3/AAC/OGG formats all on one disc? Heck, I'd pay $2/song for that. Especially if they made a really nice booklet, and the disc had videos and interviews with the band, and maybe, just maybe, a ticket to see them live? Suddenly, the amount of data/time/money that it would take it priate this disc is not worth it anymore. You wouldn't get the cool booklet, or the ticket to the concert. And since the data is very large (~10gb in size), it would take forever to pirate. Suddenly, it just makes sense to just go out and buy the damn disc for ~$35 and not spend 3-4 days trying to pirate it. Imagine that.
As media can be made by more and more people, more and more cheaply, the cost of all media will have to go down. The middle men have been cut out and they are trying to hold onto as many pennies as they can on their way out.
It's time for the media industry to give up on DRM and start making better media. Media that we *want* to buy.
I think having music stores built into mp3 software has already done a lot of good. It's much easier to click on the music store tab of my mp3 player (be it iTunes or WMP or whatever) and search for the song I want than to fire up some P2P sharing program, search, hope I have a good file, hope that it'll actually connect to someone to download from, and hope that that person will stay on long enough for me to get the file. I think my interest in classical music makes the P2P route pretty worthless for me, no one else has the music I want.
As for the studio getting to protect the music once they give me copy, I think the answer is in the personal codes. I have a code (be it personal information or just a serial number, or heck SS number). That code encrypts the file. I also put that code into my mp3 player (iTunes, WMP, iPod, whatever) and the player uses it to decrypt the file. Each player could only hold one code. Now, that does present the problem of what to do with all the players we have now that don't do that. I think the best solution there is to offer firmware upgrades. If you want to buy and play new music, you have to upgrade. My personal code would also be added to any music I ripped from the CD using one of these programs (WMP, iTunes, etc). These programs would also then be able to decrypt and create a stereo-playable CD from any files with my code. The unique code would make the file "mine" and allow all of my stuff the play it.
I'm not sure how this would allow (legal) sharing of music. Maybe all you could do would be stream from friends or have them make you full CDs.
Then there is the problem of families who share computers. If 4 people in a family use one computer, I suppose the programs should be able to hold more than one personal code. Perhaps this could be tied into the user so that each member of the family would have to set up the computer as a unique user.
I want to take some comments that are already here and expand a bit on them. Many people talk about the "natural," and very useful human habit of SHARING their music. Music fans (consumers) are prone to do this, mostly because sharing music amongst friends is the best way to find new songs, bands, and discover things you never thought you'd like. So, while we want to prevent wholesale, mass piracy, we'd like our DRM scheme to encourage, explicitily, this channel.
How to do this? Enforce sanctions and laws against mass uploaders / downloaders, and those that do it for profit (Chinese cd / dvd replication companies, I'm looking your way). But have DRM that actually encorages small-group social sharing of music. This means that, not just should we do what the original post states, "watermark the song with the owner's information," we should pay differently for the proximity that we have to the content creator. Imagine a DRM scheme that works as follows:
- Creator creates a piece of music. He (or she or they) get the content for free (this assumes a slightly more perfect world where musical artists actually own their own productions, but hey. Hell, I'm even willing for the sake of this discussion to include music industry guys as well as "zero-ith generation" content consumers).
- Creator shares this music with friends and family. These people are the 1st generation or tier of a particular album or even a single song. These people pay nothing.
- As the content moves through social networks, building more and more tiers (or generations), further and further from the originator, the cost of playing the media goes up. This way, the people who are most "in the know" about a particular band / genre pay nothing or almost nothing to collect and listen to things. The people who are last to the party for a particular album or song pay a modest fee for this song -- all because we can track how far the song has traveled from its origin point. The cash that's generated by these micro-payments (cents on a track, a few bucks on a CD, etc.) would go back to the artists (with maybe a few pennies to upstream sharers).
I'm arguing for a DRM scheme that enriches the right people, musicians (a lot), and interested fans (a very small amount). If DRM worked this way, there'd be no reason to strip it from your files. If I send jack over a song and I say in my email or IM, "dood, you're going to love this new track! just got it from john, have a listen -- it's definitely worth the %dollars% it'll cost ya!." When jack opens the song, the drm is scanned, the cost is determined, and jack can decide if the song is worth the cost. He might go to our mutual friend Jenny and see if she's got it and can give to to him at an eariler generation's price if he's particularly price conscience. But, since I'm a friend, and we like the same band, he doesn't really want to fuck with the system. Plus he knows that if he breaks the DRM, he won't be getting paid on any downstream revenues of that track.
Sure, there will also be a black market and a white market. But let's make the white market work to encourage sharing, and encourage artists to make good stuff, and fans to (small-scale) promote it!
simply scrap DRM. just scrap it.
the way to confront piracy is fear- people who download aren't afraid. because the RIAA only targets major uploaders. and not downloaders.
However, if the RIAA slapped 100,000 dollar fines randomly on people who only had 1 or 2 files uploaded, then everyone would start thinking differently about downloading. Suddenly you don't have to be a big uploader to be a target. the RIAA could be knocking at your door that minute.
with stories of confiscated hard drives with one or two pirate songs costing the owner 100,000 dollars, people with be extremely less inclined to pirate music.
then again, it might backfire, and cause everyone to hate the RIAA and make CD-R copies of music and just randomly give it out in protest...
It seems that all the DRM complaints start with, "I should be able to share..." Here's my solution: In the years to come that homes will become logged with some sort of number like an IP address (since there will be so many digital/WIFI devices that all operate on that home's "network"). If that's the case, then you could devise a system that allows a user to transfer ownership of their digital file to another IP or whatever, thereby limiting their own use of the file. Example: In 1992 I loaned my one and only copy of Paula Abdul's "Forever Your Girl" to a friend. Because he had the physical copy, I wasn't able to listen to the soulfull ballads and slammin' dance tracks. Why shouldn't it be the same for digital files (that are protected)?
I can already hear the geeky-whines of the masses saying, "Well, I should be able to keep a copy and not have to do without!" Says WHO? I mean, just because you CAN break the law doesn't mean you should. I'm honestly quite tired of defending the rights of criminals based on technicality and hypothetical situations.
Bottom line? Lock away/shoot violators and let the rest of us live in peace without having to listen to the collective moan of 36 year old, live at home computer nerds that don't want to pay for their Clay Aiken.
I'm with #17, Graham Best, on this one.
I honestly think that the Canadians have it nailed in just adding a tax of sorts to every media purchase that goes back to the content providers. However, the sad part is that the content providers in question here, the RIAA and MPAA, are WAY too greedy IMHO. I mean, come on, they're still charging about $15 to $18 for CD's when they should be extremely cheap now.
Knowing the RIAA and MPAA they'd cheerfully go for this and raise prices beyond what most decent people would pay. And, to make matters worse, not only would they be getting more money but the artists in question would still not see a dime of it. And back at square one we'd go. -_-
To say nothing of the fact that there STILL is no way to obtain older released content that has been out-of-print for years. There are dozens of old TV shows and songs that I'd give anything to get physical copies of. But, as it stands, my only options are to scour Ebay and/or look for a torrent file for a good majority of it.
Honestly, both the RIAA and MPAA both have only themselves to blame for the situation they are in. If they simply made all of their library available for a reasonable cost there really would be no reason to even think about illegally copying their copyrighted material; it would be too cheap to even bother for the majority of folks. Look at DVD's as a good case in point. Before, your only option was to pay $70+ for a VHS tape that would wear out in 20 or so watchings.
Nowadays, for the same price, you can get in some cases an entire season of a show and still have enough left over for popcorn and/or drinks. But then they had to take a step backwards and go all "MINE!" on us and turn everyone into a criminal for making a backup copy of what they purchased. If I did'nt know any better I'd swear they mentally regressed back to preschool age. :P
I think the current DRM scheme is feasible as-is, but if distribution practices changed, there would be less demand to strip existing DRM.
For example - iTunes, with it's authorization process, allows limited copying of a file in it's original state, allowing the user to share amongst personal devices. A fine DRM scheme that has worked for many consumers.
Now the brilliance - if instead of iTune's 30 second previews, if labels allowed DRM-less downloads of the full song, albeit at 64k or 32k encoding, consumers could truly listen to and preview music while sharing favorite songs with one another - lessening a need for stripping DRM, while still providing an incentive to pay full price.
Back in the day when I was a actual programmer and I used Borland's Turbo Pascal compiler (I just gave away my age didn't I?), Borland didn't include any copy protection on their software but did provide a simple rule for copying the software, treat it "like a book". You could make as many copies of the software as you like, and actually install it on as many systems as you like, as long as only one copy was in use at any one time. The same philosophy could be applied to downloaded media too, though it would probably require a little more verification than the end-user's promise.
When you download a song or a movie the file is watermarked with some personal user information. When the file is played the player will make a note of that info along with the time and date. At some later point the player will upload that information to a central server that will log the information and watch for any instances of the same watermarked file being played at the same time. This would violate the "like a book" principal and would require the owner to pay for another copy of the file.
This system has advantages for the user in that it would allow a user to make as many backup copies as required and would allow the file to be played on any desired device. The system also has value to the content owners in that there is a built-in mechanism to discourage file sharing, a method to derive additional income if the file is shared, and they would get a better view of the popularity of their titles (they love that marketing/demographic information).
One difficult problem would be how to handle "stolen" files. How would the player know not to play them? How would an original user report a file as stolen? Interesting problems but not insurmountable.
Addendum: This would be a great practice, because very little complicated hardware/software development would be neccessary.
We need to take DRM forward 25 years. In 25 years rapid prototyping will allow you to download a file press build and you will have a new TV or mouse or pair of pants. If you start thinking about how you would protect product designers from theft you see how big a problem DRM is going to be.
There is NO practical way to restrict data, period. As long as you can take the output signal from an audio player, DVD player, TV, etc. and route it into an encoder, there will always be some way to have the data changed into a format that *can* be redistributed.
The best way to restrict media from flowing around is to attach it to something physical that can't easily be duplicated. Or, worse yet, have the media encoded in a way that it can only be viewed by particular individuals.
About the only way I can think of that happening is if you somehow had a bio reader at home that was linked to a master database at the media company. Then the company would literally build your media to order---like imprint on your version of the media your bio code---such that the player for the media would require you to be part of the decoding loop.
Human decoder keys? Hm. Scary! I can see the movie possibilities now... ;)
Anything with personal information is realisticaly a joke because if you are going to place the music on a p2p database you're probably not going to use your own information. If you use someone elses info then the wrong person is probably going to be prosecuted and eventually the only way someone is going to be prosecuted is if they admit to it or if they are seen sharing media. Also identitly theft will probably increase if you do use personal information not the kind that youre credit card can be used but the kind that your info is going to be used so someone can put files on a p2p.
Key revocation list seems like the best idea. But people are going to put the illegal music that they got from a p2p database onto thier ipod and are never again going to connect their mp3 player to a computer that is going to revoke that file. And since alot of consumers either arnt going to be able or wont be willing to connect their device to an internet connection so the code can be cheked the downloader will be able to keep there music on there ipod and will never by the song. You arnt always going to find an iternet connection that you are willing to use or can use. The consumer wont have it so they cant use there media if there key revocation list cant be checked monthly or whatever it may be.
Having the media play if it hasnt been unaltered is pretty useless because there is never going to be an agreement that companies will only use one format to sell and use in there divices. Apple doesnt want to drop their itunes DRM because it helps them make money and keep the ipod a great seller. An agreement that will only help the consumer will never occur. And since it will never occur there will be someone that wants to put itunes music onto an iriver.
You could also have it so DRMed media can only be sent through a certain website from one comuter or device to another. You would be given a password that you cant change(only so you dont have a bunch of new users using "password") and you can only send the iformation a certain amount of time. A big problem with this would be finding an internet connection and connection speed: imagine how long it would take to send a HDvideo.
DRM is layer between the user and the content they wish to enjoy. It must be transparent either by a good set of things working behind the scene, or simply by the method itself. With physical media, it came as the method. You must use the tape/cd in the player in order to hear it.
I somewhat like the idea of going to a "higher quality" format such as BD or HD disc, but already CDs are at 16 bit, 44,100 Hz. The bit depth may be improved upon and the number of channels could be expanded, but it is usually the playback hardware that is lacking, not the source. Some people can claim that it "feels" different. The compression is what makes it sound wierd to the trained ear, but most people are not going to notice the difference between compressed audio at 160kbps and 320kbps.
More channels, greater depth, and higher compression bit rates are only going to be at a premium for so long.
Albums are often cheaper and better for the environment if you by them online. There is no packaging to waste, and then it is cheaper. Most albums I see run $15 on cd, but you can purchase songs at ~$1 a piece and the albums seldom have more than 15 songs, so the consumer wins.
So what to do? The record companies need to start selling things differently and selling different things. If they fear piracy of audio will reduce sales, they should start selling something that is hard to pirate.
I stopped buying CD's because I ended up just ripping the CD's to my computer anyhow. The packaging offered little that I desired. Extras like a good insert or Video on the disc might have changed my mind when I stopped buying CD's.
There are artists that I have spent money on that I would never have known about if my friend had not dropped some mp3's on my computer.
Arists can still make money through appearences, performances, and corporate licensing. The music is the advertisement. The money-making product should be something else.
This is simple: Let the market decide. A technology solution will never satisfy anyone. It's like an nuclear arms race. One will always try to outdo the other and it pits one side (Big Studios) against the other (consumers).
Obviously not enough people are not willing to pay $29.99 for a Shrek 2 DVD because it is overpriced (or undervalued by the consumers.) Fifty bucks for a box of TV Re-runs???? Gimme a break! This leads to finding cheaper ways to obtain the material you want. The same market forces apply to music. Why would I pay retail price for a CD that has only one good song?
Reduce the price...sell more...increase revenue . It's pretty simple.
My approach at developing a DRM scheme would be to utilize less technology and focus on human relations.
The companies should pool money together to provide "rewards" to those individuals who identify people who are "improperly" sharing copyrighted materials. These funds could be directly taken from the massive amounts of money used to fund DRM technology now.
The implementation, obviously, must be simplistic and easily accessible to the public (i.e. fill in a form, provide evidence, and be willing to testify).
If the "reward" is large enough and people would actually take action, then the fear of being turned in could counteract the improper distribution.
In other words, a "reward" of $5 per identification likely wouldn't do much in the way of stopping piracy; however, a "reward" of $100 may, and a "reward" of $1000 likely would.
A $1000 reward may sound expensive to catch one individual, but factor in the lowered likelihood of repeat offenders, and the fear it will strike in the hearts of potential offenders.
Imagine the psychological impact on someone who is contemplating "improper" distribution. This person would likely be thinking how close his friend is, or if it's worth it to distribute this item to a "buddy" who may turn him in and receive a "reward" for doing so.
In the end, it all turns on how close of a friend your are to the individual that you decide to distribute to.
As for those technologically-gifted hackers who know how to evade the techno-police, I'm sure there's just as competent techno-geniuses that are willing to turn them in where the "reward" is substantial.
This solution solves the necessity of continual development of DRM technology, which never seems to work. This also solves the problems innocent consumers have to face. For example, I'm stuck watching legitimately-purchased DVDs in my older television with colors that continually oscillate between black&white to color...talk about annoying.