Driven to Distraction by DRM

>Or are you, Adam, suggesting that DRM can never work? If so, doesn't
>that render copyright largely unenforceable in this digital age?

Ah, now that's the real crux of the issue, isn't it. Yes, I'm
suggesting that DRM can never work. It will always prevent some
entirely reasonable and legal-but-for-the-DMCA activity from taking
place. And people will always find ways around it, some legal, as I
did, and some not.

More to the point, DRM has absolutely nothing to do with the
enforceability of copyright. Copyright is law, DRM is code. Laws are
seldom cut and dried, and are enforced by courts made up of human
beings, whereas DRM is binary and offers no recourse to common sense.
But I wrote about this back in "Why DRM Offends the Sensibilities."

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08326>

As for the practical aspects of whether DRM prevents things from
being copied, I think that whether or not DRM is used (and in some
cases because DRM is being used) illegal copies will be made and
shared. Heck, I think the best thing Apple could do would be to
embed, via a tricky and constantly changing algorithm, the
purchaser's account name and credit card number in each download,
and make it very easy to see that information. :-).

I continually check for copied versions of our ebooks on the file
sharing networks and via Google, and there are now a couple of
Russian sites that contain some of our ebooks, and every so often
something shows up on a file sharing network (though I've never been
able to download successfully). But that's out of 57,000 copies sold.
I think that's largely because of treating customers like the honest
people they are.

cheers... -Adam

--
New Take Control ebooks! ........... http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/
       My latest ebook, "Take Control of Your Wi-Fi Security," is out!
_____________________________________________________________________
Adam C. Engst: I publish TidBITS, write books, and make sure the
acetidbits.com right people know each other in the Mac industry.
Me: http://www.tidbits.com/adam/ TidBITS: http://www.tidbits.com/

>Just to show my ignorance, WHAT THE HECK IS DRM??

DRM is "digital rights management."

The idea is that technological means can be used to prevent
unauthorized use of copyrighted material. It actually keeps people
from doing things with material (songs, movies, ebooks, etc).

1a) Apple's version of DRM is called "FairPlay." This is what
prevents you from copying and playing the songs you bought on iTunes
to more than 5 computers.
1b) Microsoft's Windows Media files use a different version of DRM.
1c) Like Safari v. FireFox, the two DRM's accomplish the same things,
but they do it differently and therefore have different strengths and
weaknesses.

2) Real mp3 files do not have any DRM. You can do whatever you want
with them. This is at least part of the reason why the iTunes store
does not use it. The iTunes store uses AAC files. Other stores use
windows media files.

3) Just because a file COULD have DRM on it, that doesn't mean that
it DOES have DRM on it. For example, if you use the iTunes program to
"rip" your CDs into AAC files, they do NOT have DRM on them.
Therefore, there is nothing preventing you from copying files to more
than 5 computers. But all the stuff you buy from iTunes or the other
music stores do have DRM on them.


So what's the big deal? Well, it's about protecting copyright holders
v. "fair use."

a) "Fair use" is the legal idea that consumers are allowed to do
some things with copyrighted. For example, you can make backups of
your installation disks. You can photocopy a page from your cookbook
to use so that you don't spill buttermilk on the cookbook. You even
are allowed to record programs from tv/cable to watch on your own
later (this was a VERY important court decision).

b) "Fair use" does NOT mean "You bought it, you can do whatever you
want with it." It is an accepted legal doctrine, and there have been
a series of legal decisions over the years laying out some of the
limits of what it includes. Your individual legal rights including
doing quite a bit with what you buy, so long as you don't harm the
copyright holder (at its simplest level, that includes costing them
sales. that is why you can't just make copies and give them away,
even if you don't make money off it. it is about harming the
copyright holder, NOT about whether or not you profit). Despite what
too many people think, teachers are NOT free to ignore copyright,
though there are educational uses that fit under "fair use."

c) DRM is a technological thing that simply prevents you from doing
things. Whereas "fair use" is complicated and often nuanced, DRM is
hard and fast. For example, if you own 10 computers in your home,
"fair use" would allow you to put your iTunes purchased songs on each
one (even if they weren't networked), but Apple's "fair play" does
not. There are times when DRM prevents the consumer from doing things
that they legally are allowed to do. Even _I_ admit that that can be
really f'ing obnoxious. That is what Adam was writing about.

d) When it is so easy to make copies of materials these days (songs
and movies and books are now just computer files, which can be copied
and shared at virtually no cost), piracy is a big deal. In 5th grade,
a group of friends and I would buy tapes and then copy them amongst
ourselves. But that was slow and the quality got bad pretty fast.
Now, copying and sharing a CD is fast and there is no loss of
quality. It's just so EASY. Technology has made something that were
unimaginable a short time ago incredibly easy for anyone to do, some
of which might be legal and some of which might not. DRM is "the
man's" attempt to make it harder again, perhaps to roll back the
clock.


So, what do we know?

I) There is no protection scheme in the world that cannot be cracked
or worked around. DRM is not about keeping all abuse from happening.
It is only about making it harder.

II) DRM will never be able to make nuanced judgements. Copyright and
fair use is quite complicated. And as it is in the copyright holder's
interests (at least in the short term) to limit use as much as
possible, DRM will invariably prevent some people from doing things
that they want to do and have the legal right to do.

III) Copyright abuse a HUGE deal. It is not just about bootleg movies
being sold on the street and file sharing networks full of commercial
music. It's a big problem in academia, too. And I am sure in lots of
other places. (I take this more seriously than most do. But I have
the law and decades or centuries of precedent on my side.)

IV) Most everyone agrees that copyright holders should have some
amount of control over their works, even that they should be
compensated for their use. Perhaps even that the copyright holders
should get to set the price.


What do people argue about? (and I am out of ordering labels...)

Alpha) How long should copyright last?

Beta) Under what conditions should it be transferable to others
(especially corporations)?

Gamma) Should technology be allowed to prevent consumers from doing
things that they have a legal right do?

Delta) How should "fair use" evolve as technology advances?

Epsilon) We know that the big media companies are evil, but exactly how evil?

And one other thing we know:
V) I'm really good at procrastinating. I mean, you probably don't
care about all of this, but by writing it I avoid writing about how
the decentralizing Chicago school reform created by PA 85-1418 was an
example of the natural systems frame, and how the political frame was
not properly taken into account, perhaps concluding with how paying
attention to the HR frame could have saved it (even though we all
know that it was really just a big ruse by the man to eventually put
more power in the hands of business leaders).
--
=alex hoffman

--On November 18, 2005 10:20:45 AM -0800 Alexander Hoffman
<ceolafaledev.com> wrote:

> DRM is "digital rights management."
>
> The idea is that technological means can be used to prevent
> unauthorized use of copyrighted material. It actually keeps people
> from doing things with material (songs, movies, ebooks, etc).
>
> 1a) Apple's version of DRM is called "FairPlay." This is what
> prevents you from copying and playing the songs you bought on iTunes
> to more than 5 computers.
> 1b) Microsoft's Windows Media files use a different version of DRM.
> 1c) Like Safari v. FireFox, the two DRM's accomplish the same things,
> but they do it differently and therefore have different strengths and
> weaknesses.

There is one additional use of DRM that both companies use that has nothing
to do with Copyright -- they use it to force you into, or to stay in, their
world. FairPlay only works with Apple software and iPods (although it is
cross-platform to Windows.) Windows Media DRM is Windows only, but is
usable with more than one device.

When you buy your first online song you're deciding which world you want to
live in. If you buy from iTMS and want to listen on a portable device, you
have to buy an iPod and your future upgrades have to be iPods.

If you buy from a store using Windows Media, you have use Windows to
transfer the songs.

This is why I encode my own songs in MP3 and buy only DRM free MP3s online.
I can still enjoy my iPod and iTunes, but I can change in the future if I
desire (or need to).

Kevin

At 10:20 AM -0800 11/18/05, Alexander Hoffman wrote:
>>Just to show my ignorance, WHAT THE HECK IS DRM??
>
>DRM is "digital rights management."
>
>The idea is that technological means can be used to prevent
>unauthorized use of copyrighted material. It actually keeps people
>from doing things with material (songs, movies, ebooks, etc).

Thanks for the good overview of DRM, Alex.

It's important to note that DRM is about preventing consumers from
doing things that may be entirely legal - it's an end-run around the
copyright system and it's backed up by the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act.

>3) Just because a file COULD have DRM on it, that doesn't mean that
>it DOES have DRM on it. For example, if you use the iTunes program to
>"rip" your CDs into AAC files, they do NOT have DRM on them.
>Therefore, there is nothing preventing you from copying files to more
>than 5 computers. But all the stuff you buy from iTunes or the other
>music stores do have DRM on them.

Similarly, just because someone sells a copyrighted product doesn't
mean that the seller must apply DRM. We don't do that with Take
Control ebooks, for instance.

>d) When it is so easy to make copies of materials these days (songs
>and movies and books are now just computer files, which can be copied
>and shared at virtually no cost), piracy is a big deal. In 5th grade,
>a group of friends and I would buy tapes and then copy them amongst
>ourselves. But that was slow and the quality got bad pretty fast.
>Now, copying and sharing a CD is fast and there is no loss of
>quality. It's just so EASY. Technology has made something that were
>unimaginable a short time ago incredibly easy for anyone to do, some
>of which might be legal and some of which might not. DRM is "the
>man's" attempt to make it harder again, perhaps to roll back the
>clock.

Interestingly, I find that many of these arguments aren't actually
true. A while back, I went looking for MP3 versions of albums I owned
in vinyl. It turned out to be rather difficult and time-consuming to
find all the songs on a given album, and even when I was able to, the
quality (since MP3 is a lossy compression scheme) was often fairly
low (128 Kbps, for instance).

Now, arguably, if sharing copyrighted files weren't illegal, there
would be services that would, like the original Napster, make it
significantly easier to find higher quality files.

Also, the fact that something is digital does not mean that illicit
copying is necessarily a huge problem. We've seen vanishingly small
amounts of copying of our ebooks, perhaps because we've done a number
of things to discourage the practice implicitly instead of applying
the blunt weapon of DRM.

>What do people argue about? (and I am out of ordering labels...)

Let's try to avoid the general copyright issues, since we've hashed
those out before in detail.

>Gamma) Should technology be allowed to prevent consumers from doing
>things that they have a legal right do?

Now that's an interesting question.

And changing gears slightly...

At 8:56 PM -0800 11/19/05, Kevin van Haaren wrote:
>There is one additional use of DRM that both companies use that has nothing
>to do with copyright -- they use it to force you into, or to stay in, their
>world. FairPlay only works with Apple software and iPods (although it is
>cross-platform to Windows.) Windows Media DRM is Windows only, but is
>usable with more than one device.

I think this is one of the aspects of DRM that bothers me the most,
since we have DRM standing in for laws (traditional copyright) and
being protected by others (DMCA), but simultaneously being used for
competitive advantage. In essence, then, DRM is the method by which
for-profit businesses are able to co-opt the power of the government
to maintain proprietary markets. It's hard to see how that benefits
the populace that is supposedly both served by and represented by the
government.

cheers... -Adam

--
New Take Control ebooks! ........... http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/
       My latest ebook, "Take Control of Your Wi-Fi Security," is out!
_____________________________________________________________________
Adam C. Engst: I publish TidBITS, write books, and make sure the
acetidbits.com right people know each other in the Mac industry.
Me: http://www.tidbits.com/adam/ TidBITS: http://www.tidbits.com/

In article <p0623094dbfa6f17e2e68[192.168.1.11]>,
 "Adam C. Engst" <acetidbits.com> wrote:

> I think this is one of the aspects of DRM that bothers me the most,
> since we have DRM standing in for laws (traditional copyright) and
> being protected by others (DMCA), but simultaneously being used for
> competitive advantage. In essence, then, DRM is the method by which
> for-profit businesses are able to co-opt the power of the government
> to maintain proprietary markets. It's hard to see how that benefits
> the populace that is supposedly both served by and represented by the
> government.

The use of DRM to lock consumers into a proprietary market is really no
different than Apple designing OS X to run only on Intel-based systems
designed by Apple. This has nothing to do with the copyright-enforcing
function of DRM. Even if the copyright issues didn't exist, Apple would
have created some mechanism to lock consumers into the iTMS/iPod
environment. That DRM happens to also enforce copyright restrictions is
merely a coincidence.


[That's only true if someone attempts to port Mac OS X to run on non-Apple Intel boxes, and Apple sues them based on the DMCA. The difference here is that the DMCA is explicitly being used to support proprietary systems. -Adam]

> The use of DRM to lock consumers into a proprietary market is
> really no
> different than Apple designing OS X to run only on Intel-based systems
> designed by Apple.

Yes it is. In the case of OS X, Apple is protecting the value of
their own intellectual property (OS X tied to Apple hardware is worth
more than OS X that will run anywhere). In the case of iTMS tracks,
they are using protection of other people's intellectual property to
increase the value of their own systems.

=Tony.Meyer

> I understand your concerns but how do you think this one should work?

Adam's particular proplem was, IMHO, more related to the fact that
the "Join Tracks" command in iTunes is a farce. Had Apple implemented
this properly, there would be no need to go through the hassles Adam
had to go through.

What Apple should do, IMHO, is to allow the user to select _any_ two
audio files within iTunes and "join" them, which would simply mean:
"If these two files are played directly one after the other in a
playlist or album, do not insert a pause between them, but play them
as if they were one track."

There's an added bonus to this approach: the current implementation
joins several CD tracks, and _only_ CD tracks, into a long, single
track. If iTunes remembered to omit the pause between the "joined"
tracks, instead of actually concatenating them into one track, they'd
still be separate, so you could still jump from track to track, as well.

As someone who sometimes enjoys classical opera and very often
listens to live albums, this is one of the key design(!) flaws in
iTunes, and it's about time that Apple fixed this. And if they _did_,
maintaining the original DRM of the seperate files is a no brainer,
because they remain seperate files.

> Or are you, Adam, suggesting that DRM can never work?

I'm not aware of a single DRM scheme that hasn't been broken, or that
doesn't have a major loophole in it that renders it uneffective.


> If so, doesn't that render copyright largely unenforceable in this
> digital age?

It is legally enforceable, but not technically.


Jochen.


--
A Polytrope's Musings <http://www.polytropia.com/musings>
Polytropic Flickr Pix <http://www.flickr.com/photos/polytropia>

> When you buy your first online song you're deciding which world you
> want to
> live in. If you buy from iTMS and want to listen on a portable
> device, you
> have to buy an iPod and your future upgrades have to be iPods.

I wonder for how many customers this works exactly the other way
round: they decide to buy a portable digital music player, invest the
money in that device, put their (existing) CD collection on it via
the software that comes with the player, and _then_ think about
buying music online, only to find out that their choice has been
limited by the choice of media player.

Sure, potential customers will probably be aware at buying time that
the iPod is closely linked into the iTunes Music Store, but, still, I
would love to see some numbers on what buying decision comes first:
online music outlet or music player?


> This is why I encode my own songs in MP3

Aren't there any other jukebox software apps out there that support
unprotected AAC files?


Jochen.


--
A Polytrope's Musings <http://www.polytropia.com/musings>
Polytropic Flickr Pix <http://www.flickr.com/photos/polytropia>

>
> c) DRM is a technological thing that simply prevents you from doing
> things. Whereas "fair use" is complicated and often nuanced, DRM is
> hard and fast. For example, if you own 10 computers in your home,
> "fair use" would allow you to put your iTunes purchased songs on each
> one (even if they weren't networked), but Apple's "fair play" does
> not. There are times when DRM prevents the consumer from doing things
> that they legally are allowed to do. Even _I_ admit that that can be
> really f'ing obnoxious.

I agree. But the very simple answer from the DRM side is this ‹ them's the
rules.

Ultimately, there's nothing to *force* any of us to spend a single
penny/cent/yen/qintar (just in case they've opened iTMS Albania by the time
you read this) at the Apple ‹ or any other, for that matter ‹ music source.
When you elect to buy from Apple et al, you freely and without any form of
coercion elect to be bound by the terms of the sale contract. It sucks, I
agree, that none of us here ‹ even collectively, even Adam! ‹ has enough
clout to force Apple to change the terms. The terms say that we are bound by
Apple's Fair Play DRM (and fair play to them) (Sorry), and so, since we've
agreed to those terms, we are in breach of our contract with Apple if we
then attempt to circumvent Fair Play. The answer is simple. If you don't
like Apple's terms, then go and buy your music elsewhere. If you don't mind
Apple's terms, then you get the convenience of Apple's service.

To go a step further back, I don't blame Apple. I'm guessing that this is
the accommodation they had to make in order to get the record labels on
board. The record labels, as we all know, are in a very precarious financial
situation, and are in desperate need of protection; as a result, they
insisted ‹ as though their very existence depended upon it ‹ that Apple
protect their product.

Personally, I don't care for the protection schemes that Apple and the like
place on their downloads. I have a *limited* degree of sympathy with the
record companies, because I realise that they can't simply give away their
product. But when all is said and done, yes, Apple and the others do
restrict your legal rights. But if you don't like it, don't buy.

Or use allofmp3.com instead.

Steve

[allofmp3.com has been discussed on TidBITS-Talk before. See the thread link. -Andrew]

http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2682

3) Just because a file COULD have DRM on it, that doesn't mean that it DOES have DRM on it. For example, if you use the iTunes program to "rip" your CDs into AAC files, they do NOT have DRM on them. Therefore, there is nothing preventing you from copying files to more than 5 computers. But all the stuff you buy from iTunes or the other music stores do have DRM on them.

Try ripping tracks from a CD to AAC using iTunes and then burning an MP3 CD to play in the car. iTunes won't let you. Why? Who knows. The tracks may or may not be infected with DRM, but iTunes still imposes limits on what you can do with them. Even though you bought the music, Fair Play <> Fair Use as far as Apple is concerned.

Cheers,

Michael

Point #1: FairPlay benefits Apple because it drives users towards buying iPods, instead of another brand of MP3 player. FairPlay may benefit large recording industry players because of protection of their intellectual property.

Point #2: Apple's FairPlay trump card is that it is 100% legal to burn audio CDs of FairPlay protected songs, and hence remove copy protection. i.e. it cannot be completely true that FairPlay is a closed proprietary system, since a endorsed means of removing copy protection exists.

The quality of such an audio CD should be identical to the original protected-AAC file, so the discussion of "loss of quality" is irrelevant.

IMHO, using Audio Hijack Pro as Mr Engst has done, should be legal as well, since the end result is potentially an AIFF file, that is the exact same result as AAC-->audio CD-->AIFF. Except saving several blank CDs and wasting much time.

The problem of loss of quality only arises if the AIFF file is recompressed by another lossy codec (either by AHP, or otherwise). Apple Lossless/FLAC is still OK. The price/megabyte of storage and transmission continually drops (eventually terabytes and terabits will be commonplace); and the process of AAC-->AHP-->AIFF can be automated via AppleScript (filling in ID3 tags etc). In which case, will FairPlay eventually simply become irrelevant? AHP, which has uses that aside from such "copy protection removal", surely is legal software.

(Please note that the other issues of buying songs online are still relevant i.e. AAC quality vs original CD quality, liner notes, albums vs singles etc).

Even better, when massive storage/transmission capabilities become commonplace, I can see Apple eventually ridding itself of compressed AAC, and sell full-quality protected music. Which when passed through AHP, would still be "full-quality". Ironically, in that situation, we can then compress our music down to AAC/MP3 format, knowing that the music has not be compressed twice. (Of course, by that time, CDs will no longer exist, and the "gold standard" will be BluRay/Dolby/12.1 sound.)

As a user of iTMS (individual tracks usually), I accept FairPlay to be simply an annoying reality, similar to Macrovision, CSS/region coding, and the copy-protected Microsoft .doc/xls format. Apple is for now justly reaping the financial benefits of coming up with a decent copy protection scheme. But in the short term, it's bypassable. And in the big picture, it's not really that big a deal. For now, I am confident that the Hymn project will always exist in some form, as a sort of back door, for the one day in the future when I feel the need to deprotect my bunch of iTMS AAC files.

Point #3: From a popular music point of view, FairPlay is currently relevant to only about 1-2M songs. If they wanted to, any artist is free to avoid large record labels, and sell their music online without copy protection. If this happens over time, surely the total amount of "FairPlayed" songs will be dwarfed by the uncopy-protected songs?: also making copy-protection irrelevant.