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Category: Digital Restrictions Management
April 3rd, 2007
Ding dong, the witch is dead
Yeah, I know it's a little early to declare the DRM 'witch' to be dead but EMI and Apple may very well put the first nail in her coffin!
Music piracy was born in the early 1970s. The cassette tape recorder was new and the Dolby B encoding (for reducing background 'hiss') was even newer. The 'state of the art' was long-playing records — made of vinyl, LP's had their own shortcomings but when new they produced surprisingly high-quality recordings. (Nearly as good as reel-to-reel tape – and far more accessible to consumers.)
Seeing the appeal of cassettes, record companies embarked on a two-tiered approach to selling music. The serious listener still bought LP's for their quality but portability made the cassette a superior choice for the 'on-the-go' consumer so the industry also sold pre-recorded cassettes of their record library. By and large, these pre-recorded cassettes were of clearly inferior sound quality.
It didn't take long to figure out that two or three people could share the cost of two LP's and a blank cassette and, using Dolby B encoding, make high-quality recordings of these brand new LP's while spending less than they would have on pre-recorded cassettes. Was this legal? Nope. But this kind of 'casual piracy' was tolerated by the music industry because they knew that high-quality reproduction was pretty-much limited to first-generation copies. With the development of the CD, in the 1980's, digitally-recorded music could be copied over-and-over with no loss of quality. Still, piracy remained 'in-check' in large part because distribution of digital music remained friend-to-friend.
Fast-forward twenty years and friends are still sharing the cost of music with their friends. The CD remains the gold standard for audio (as is the DVD for video) and the MP3 is the CD's 'lower-quality' sibling. Only now, the "CD-player" is a computer and copying a recording is as simple as copying a data file. If distribution were still friend-to-friend, the impact of this 'casual piracy' would still be small but today distribution is often peer-to-peer between computers connected to the Internet (and taking place largely without human intervention).
Unscrupulous peer-to-peer software vendors are turning their unwitting 'customers' into large-scale pirates subject to federal prosecution. What's worse, shortsighted recording companies are going after those same unwitting 'customers' instead of the real culprits — those making money off of the piracy of music (and video). Rather than embracing the distribution technology (and using it to their advantage to cut costs), the recording industry turned to DRM (digital rights management), a catch-all approach which does nothing to deter those 'pirates for profit' — yet makes enemies out of lots of paying customers.
In Steven Jobs' open letter of 6 February 2007, entitled Thoughts on Music, he points out that over 90% of the music sold today is on CD and therefore DRM-free already. So, how much impact can DRM have in stopping wholesale piracy?
NOT MUCH. After all, if most music sold is already DRM-free, piracy via peer-to-peer networks will continue to run rampant.
Is it really worth it to the recording industry to alienate so many customers by continuing to force DRM technology on us?
PROBABLY NOT. Defeating DRM today is no more difficult than defeating copy-protection schemes for software (and VCR tapes) was in the 1990's — but unlike those tools, simply possessing DRM-defeating tools is a felony, even if used legally. Forcing customers to commit a felony to use their own music in a legal fashion is not good for business. For most of us, all DRM does is alienate us by keeping us from playing our music wherever and whenever we want.
Well, things may be changing: EMI, Apple partner on DRM-free premium music. Finally, a major player in the recording industry (EMI) has decided to partner with Apple to sell DRM-free music via iTunes (granted at a premium price). To sweeten the pot for the premium price, Apple and EMI will distribute DRM-free music which was recorded at a higher bit-rate of 256Kbps.
Thanks EMI (and Apple) for recognizing that customer needs and desires are legitimate. It's time for the rest of the members of the RIAA to come on board. And its time for your congressmen and mine to repeal those portions of the DCMA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) which criminalize the use of DRM-circumventing technologies when doing so does not infringe upon the copyright holder.
November 7th, 2006
Now that Microsoft's licensed DRM doesn't "Play For Sure," will any DRM do it? Ever?
The rest of the world is beginning to get hip to what happens when the provider of a digital rights management technology (DRM) decides to change gears as Microsoft recently did when it essentially forked its DRM into two versions: one that it keeps for itself and its Zune brand and the other, known as PlaysForSure that, for the time being, it continues to license to licensees such as Real, Yahoo, F.Y.E., Napster, AOL, Wal-Mart and MTV. Even prior to this gear-shift, I occasionally referred to PlaysForSure as PlaysForSuren't since music and videos that are locked up with Microsoft's copy protection technology actually don't play for sure on every device you might want them to (eg: iPods). That said, PlaysForSure-compliant content most definitely works on more devices than does content locked up by Apple's DRM (FairPlay). Inicidentally, just to show I discriminate with this sort of treament, I've also referred to FairPlay as "UnFairPlay."
But, since content that's protected with Microsoft's PlaysForSure (including content purchased from Microsoft's soon-to-be-closed online music store) won't even work on Microsoft's Zune-branded devices, the contradiction that has long been "plays for sure" has been taken to a new level. The situation has Jamie, a blogger over on Microsoft's Channel 9, now referring to PlaysForSure as PlaysForMaybe:
I really dont get how the biggest software co. in the world - sets up a huge network of partners to trumpet their own technology: "plays for sure" - then when it itself enters the market - refuses to use it….Now if it was called "Windows Media Approved" - and zune didnt support it - that would be one thing… but the fact that you guys named the eco-system Plays for Sure - and then went and made the term meaningless seems counter-intuitive?…If I was a partner in [PlaysForSure], I'd be pretty peeved off.
That last part is the part that's got me stymied too. One day, Microsoft was a business partner to all the PlaysForSure licensees. The next? A competitor. For starters, to any PlaysForSure licensee that didn't know that this risk existed, I have no sympathy. As with any technology provider, Microsoft is of course entitled to do whatever it thinks it must do (legally) to fend off a credible threat. In this case, given FairPlay's market dominance as a DRM system, Apple is a very real and credible threat to a lot of Microsoft's businesses (virtually the entire software stack could one day subjugate itself to DRM). But, if Microsoft's PlaysForSure licensees are peeved about the gear shift, they sure aren't voting with their dollars by vacating the PlaysForSure ecosystem. Of course, they could be staying put for good reasons. Like the fact that there may be no viable alternatives.
Back in the early days of Microsoft's Passport single sign-on technology, Sun's Jonathan Schwartz warned that Passport licensees might one day find themselves in competition with the vendor of Passport: Microsoft. Schwartz, then in his pre-COO days (let alone CEO days), then established and personally drove an open and competing ecosystem (the Liberty Alliance) into the market. He lobbied hard for all potential stakeholders to get behind it and many did.
To the extent that Microsoft is now competing with PlaysForSure licensees, Microsoft's gear-shift around DRM is a realization of that warning. The difference is that neither Sun nor any other IT vendor has stepped in to put Microsoft and/or Apple (the two prevailing proprietors of DRM technology) into check. Not only does Sun have the seed technology (called Project DReaM) the way it did for the Liberty Alliance, it even has in place a separate organization (Open Media Commons or the OMC) that can serve as chaperone to the open technology. Theoretically, the Liberty formula is ready to be repeated with the OMC. And what better time to repeat it than at that very point when existing stakeholders are peeved and seeking an alternative?
But, as far as I can tell, the various stakeholders (the whole entertainment cartel, Yahoo, AOL, etc.) are happy to let Apple and Microsoft call the shots. All is quiet on the Western front. Or is it? Originally, I thought there hadn't been a peep out of Sun about Project DReaM or the OMC since Zune first showed up on the radar. I figured that this can only mean one of two things: (a) OMC and DReaM are either floundering or dead or (b) there's something large but stealthy in the works that only a handful of people know about. But then, before completing this blog entry,
November 6th, 2006
Doctorow: Only masochists will buy Microsoft's Zune
So far, by the looks of Microsoft's official site for Zune (which will no doubt get activated with a full blown iTunes Music Store-like store come Zune's anticipated launch date of Nov 15), Microsoft's fashion strategy for Zune (which is it really what it needs to succeed) is to go with a bunch of no-name hipsters that redefine cool instead of someone that matches Apple's "deployment" of Bono (lead singer of the megaband U2). In a poll that asks "Who should be Microsoft's Bono?," only 6 percent of 452 who answered (as of last count) thought Microsoft should go with some no names (that's 1 percentage point behind the Victoria's Secrets models) and 5 points behind comedian Steven Colbert (did anybody see him sing "I Write the Songs" with Barry Manilow? Who knew?). A whopping 46 percent of those polled don't think Microsoft can't succeed with Zune (see below for a snapshot of the poll results):
Perhaps the problem — if you believe what Cory Doctorow has to say — is that there aren't enough masochists in the world to make for a legitimate target market (for anything, not just Zune).
You were a sucker if you bought MSN Music tracks. You're a masochist if you buy Zune tracks.
Cory got the tip from Brent Lord who got some news from News.com's Ina Fried that Microsoft's MSN Music is officially shutting down. Big deal you say? Well, maybe not if you didn't buy any music from the MSN Music Store. But just supposing you made a big investment there and want to keep using those songs (legally), you must (from here until eternity) make sure you have a PlaysForSure-compliant playback device. The problem is that the future of the PlayForSure ecosystem is unknown. Now that Microsoft is launching Zune, it's conceivable that PlaysForSure (incompatible with Zune) will share a grave next to Bob in the Microsoft graveyard at some point in the future… thereby stranding not just MSN Music Store buyers, but also people who acquired or subscribed to content from one of the other PlaysForSure-compliant merchants (F.Y.E., Napster to Go, Real, Yahoo, etc.).
This Digital Rights Management-induced nightmare is the the same one that has future-oriented librarians worried sick. The scenario they most fear is where important historical works are stranded on their shelves because the proprietary hardware and or software needed to open them up no longer exists.
October 30th, 2006
Fortune: Strategically, Yahoo has four choices
Although Yahoo is apparantly denying it, Fortune is reporting that the largest Web property (audience-wise) is negotiating with Time-Warner for an acquisition of AOL. Wrote Fortune's Tim Arango and Adam Lashinsky:
FORTUNE has learned from multiple sources that Yahoo (Charts) recently approached Time Warner (Charts) (parent of FORTUNE's publisher) about buying America Online - essentially trying to jump-start talks that broke down a year ago. A source close to Yahoo disputes that Yahoo approached Time Warner and says that there are no active conversations between the two companies….
….A Yahoo purchase of youth-oriented Facebook for as much as $1 billion has been rumored for weeks. [Yahoo Chairman and CEO Terry] Semel could also sell his company. Microsoft and others would love to own the web's biggest single audience. So, too, would Google - if only to keep Yahoo away from Microsoft (Charts).
In addition to Yahoo's heavy investment in Internet Explorer, here on Between the Lines, we've noted other areas in which Microsoft and Yahoo are well-aligned (making them a pretty good match). Actually, one of those was on the digital rights management front where Yahoo operates in Microsoft's PlaysForSure ecosystem with it's music service. But Microsoft's move to Zune, which lives outside the PlaysForSure garden, may ultimately unalign the two companies when it comes to Digital Rights Management given how Zune, if it gets any traction, could end up "sticking it" to PlaysForSure licensees. That said, a Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo — and a subsequent hitching of the Zune wagon (the portable content player) to the Yahoo Music horse — could be one of several boosts Zune will need if it has any hope of taking on the iPod (at the very least, another is a Bono).
Arango and Lashinsky also noted that Yahoo's stock is off 35 percent year and how Panama — its new search-advertising sytem — has suffered delays. The way Fortune sees it, Yahoo has four choices:
- Buy AOL
- Sell to Microsoft
- Merge with eBay
- Stay the course
Which do you think it will do?
Loading ...October 26th, 2006
Poll: To win, Zune will need a Bono. Who should it be?
Yesterday, Microsoft CEO came to our news room to talk about Microsoft's plans across a variety of fronts. The one that interests me is the company's plans for its forthcoming Zune. After Microsoft's first stab at taking the licensing route (as it did with Windows) failed to slow down the the Apple juggernaut (with iTunes software, the iTunes Music Store, and iPods), Microsoft's Zune basically duplicates Apple's one-stop shop approach. Content is purchased from the Zune Music/Movie Store (we'll call that ZMS) and it only works on the software (eg: Windows Media Player) and portable content players (eg: Zune Players) that Microsoft lets it work on. Just like Apple.
One reason the Zune strategy is so relevant (and one that most people don't realize) is that the vendor who dominates the digital rights management market (as Apple is currently doing) is the company that may end up in control of a lot more given how telecommunications (particularly on the mobile front), entertainment, computer technology, and the Internet are so rapidly converging. Left unchecked, Apple could end up calling the shots for way more than just the record labels (Apple put them in their place earlier this year). For example, should Apple ship an iPhone (whch it's fully expected to do in 2007), the appeal of that phone, particularly if it solves the usability problems that most multimedia smartphones including Motorola's Q face today, could have Apple calling some shots for mobile operators like Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, and Cingular that they'd rather not have Apple calling.
In the interview (viewable via video here), News.com's Ina Fried asked Ballmer some Zune-related questions that I've taken the time to transcribe:
News.com: With Zune, you guys are trying to take on a pretty big leader in the iPod. It seems like you're making the bet that connecting with other users and wireless is going to be a big deal. How does that take off when, essentially today, there's no one that can talk to anyone?
Ballmer: We're going to come with Zune with 802.11 built-in. Of course, all PCs have 802.11 built-in. Of course, no iPods have 802.11 built-in, so there's certainly no disadvantage. We starting from scratch to build a community of entertainment afficianados both from the PC, from the XBox, you'll see that increasingly, from the Media Center, as well as from the portable music devices, the telephone, the mobile phone, etc. So, we start, but we're building on industry standard connectivity so we can go a lot of places.
News.com: Zune for now is all Microsoft doing the service, the software, the hardware. Does it stay that way? Is that the goal?
Ballmer: You'll see as we get into things next year, that there will be more and more opportunities for third party innovation in kind of a managed and orchestrated way. Certainly, we're reaching out actively to partners who are in the phone business, the retail business, etc.
Microsoft has been coy about how exactly third parties will get to partcipate in the Zune ecosystem and Ballmer clearly isn't dropping too many hints in his interview with Ina. Partners in the phone business? What that means is that Microsoft recognizes that mobile phones will not only have to be able to play ZMS-purchased music, they'll have to be able to acquire it through the mobile operators' networks. The implications, some of which have to do with Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system and some that don't, are many. The retail business? That's a harder one to put a finger on. Clearly, Zune will be available through retailers. But that's nothing new from a third party participation point of view. One possibility is that if you're a Zune owner, you'll be able to walk into a record store, sample some music, and download it to your Zune right there (with the retailer getting a cut of the sale). This would differentiate Zune from the iPod.
Another differentiator getting some press in the last couple of days has to do with how Zune players can share music via their Wi-Fi connections. After an Internet rumor originally made the rounds saying that you might get ZMS credits if the person you share your music with buys that music, it's now clear that that isn't the case. But, going back to what Ballmer said, there is certainly some confusion about the role Wi-Fi will play, aside from connecting to other Zune players. Ballmer clearly pointed out the Wi-Fi is a standard form of wireless connectivity that is found on Zune as well as PCs. But earlier today, my fellow blogger Phil Windley wrote:
Zune players have Wi-Fi, but you can't use it to sync the player with your computer or even buy tunes at the Zune marketplace.
Needless to say, I'm confused as I'm sure the market will be.
But, to be honest, Zune's technical prowess will very likely not matter for two reasons. First, it's simply the cost of admission to the game against Apple. Either you've got certain basic functionality, or you don't. Second, if Apple isn't doing it, it's not because Apple didn't think of it. For example, adding a Wi-Fi radio to a portable media device won't do any wonders for battery life and battery life is absolutely a critical factor with portable audio players. But even if the Wi-Fi feature appears to be getting traction (or any other feature for that matter), rest assured Apple will have it too before Zune erodes even one percent of Apple's marketshare. It's not as if Apple is simply going to stand still.
Which brings me back to the headline of this post. Beating Apple, if that's possible, means realizing that this is a fashion play. It's not a technology play. To win, Microsoft will have to convince people like Robert Scoble's son and all of his buddies that a Zune is cooler to have than an iPod. That's like convincing Marlboro smokers that smoking some newfangled pink cigarette is cooler than smoking Marlboros (not that I think smoking is cool). Marlboro's cowboy mattered. A lot. As do Apple's white headphones and the iPod's association with the rock and roller that not only defines cool, but crosses generations in the process: U2's Bono. Microsoft will have to match that which raises the question: Who should be Zune's Bono? Here are some choices. If I'm missing a biggie, let me know through the comments or by emailing me at david.berlind@cnet.com and I'll add him, her, or them.
Loading ...October 26th, 2006
IE8 already, more Vista delays, big holiday gadget budgets, WinTel/AppTel to usurp living rooms, and Zillow under the tree?
IE8 already? Internet Explorer 7 is hardly out the door (in fact, Secunia has already found a second vulnerability in the newly-released browser) and Microsoft is already dropping hints about IE8, also known as IE Next, according to Mary Jo Foley.With IE 7 finally out the door, Microsoft has begun sharing some hints about IE 8.0, also known as IE Next. Chris Wilson, the newly minted platform architect for IE, addressed the Ajax Experience crowd this week and presented some of his thinking on what matters for the Web, going forward.
Microsoft also has its sites set on more near term stuff. For example, getting Vista out the door. Apparently, there's a new flaw in the release candidate of Vista that crashes the operating system so badly that it has to be reinstalled. ComputerWorld is reporting that the bug has caused Microsoft to delay Vista's release to manufacturing (RTM) until November 8. The continued delays have caused Microsoft to issue upgrade coupons to holiday system buyers. But regarding those coupons, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes says "Microsoft has taken what should be relatively easy and made it far too complicated by handing too much control over to the PC vendors (a list which includes Acer, Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Sony, Toshiba …)."
With the holiday season already here, Ed Bott asks "Who’s got the best seat in the digital living room? Bott says (and I agree) that a lot of hardware and software companies, including Microsoft, are betting big bucks that they can take over the living room and be your hub for digital media. Just yesterday, I was having this discussion with someone else.
The three companies most focused on this goal — because it probably represents the hottest growth area for them — are Microsoft, Apple, and their primary hardware backer Intel. All three are deadset on moving in on the household names that have traditionally "owned" the home entertainment center. What's their secret weapon? Their proprietary digital rights management technologies. As people acquire more of their content (video and audio) from sources like the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) that only serve up copy-protected versions of that content, the merchants who run those sources (like Apple and Microsoft) get to decide where that content will work, and where it won't. It's no coincidence that Apple's forthcoming iTV can playback iTMS-purchased content while a Motorola set-top box (or any of the other gear in your home entertainment center) can't. My problem? Computing gear has never been very good at hardcore audiophile stuff like amplification and it probably never will (or your computer will wiegh about 150 pounds).
Speaking of the holidays, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes points out that we'll be parting with about $21 billion over the next few months and that the average consumer will drop $195 on consumer electronics alone. Of course, you and I not average. What’s on your holiday wish list? I want a pair of bluetooth enabled Oakley's with interchangeable Rx lenses. How does what you want compare with what other people are most likely to buy?
Another question: Where will you be doing most of your buying? Within the next few weeks, I'm relatively certain the boxes from Amazon (the ones I have to cut down to size for recycling) are going to start showing up. That's where my wife does most of her holiday shopping. But Donna Bogatin points out that prying eyes are trying to unlock the secrets of successful outfits like Amazon. She says the commerce giant wants to stop Google's mission to snare direct competitors into revealing confidential, proprietary details of competitive operations to the "do no evil" Google.
Meanwhile, Russell Shaw thinks that Zillow (yes, the entire company) is going to end up under someone's Christmas tree on relatively short order. Russell notes that there are several likely suitors of the red-hot real-estate information site and points out which of them would make for a perfect marriage. Can you guess (Hint: It's not eBay or Amazon.)
October 23rd, 2006
iPods vs. everything else: An audio quality arms race? More like a fashion arms race
According to a story in Technology Review by John Borland (who used to work with me here at ZDNet), Sony is apparently hopeful that noise cancelling technology will give the company some advantage in the portable audio market against rivals like the iPod which happens to control 70 percent of the market. Wrote Borland:
"Portable players of all types have sounded rather bad as far back as I can remember, but the iPod really surprised me," Blackwood said in an email interview. "Now competing companies are being forced to make better sounding products just to keep up."
That's Brad Blackwood being quoted (as I laughed). He's a recording engineer out of Memphis that very likely has what audiophiles refer to as golden ears. He can hear things that you and I cannot (or maybe we can, but we'd need special training). Nothwithstanding the extent to which a decent third-party pair of noise cancelling headphones might bring an iPod up to snuff with one of Sony's newfangled offerings, Sony's investment in audio quality improvements is admirable but for the most part misplaced. It's going after a segment of the market that isn't that lucrative to go after, if your Sony.
If your Bose — a company that has cache value with audiophiles — the situation is a little different. Whereas it makes sense for Bose to cater to them with products like its Quiet Comfort 3 headhones (I so want a pair), audiophiles and golden ears are simply too narrow of a niche to pursue if you're a consumer electronics giant trying to cater to the masses or take on Apple. As it turns out (and this has so far been the downfall of every company trying to steal share from Apple), most of the iPod generation is far less concerned with the audio quality in their ears than they are with the image of owning an iPod and having those white headphone wires dangling from their ears. So powerful is the iPod icon, that having a set of white headphones matched to something that's not an iPod isn't good enough.
Am I downplaying implementation and quality? No way. The point is that implementation (eg: Apple's brilliant abstraction of the complex connectivity between its online store and iPods) and some measure of audio quality are simply the cost of admission. You want to take on Apple? You had better have those parts licked. Borland goes onto quote an IDC analyst:
Sony's introduction of noise-canceling technology into the device itself, with a microphone in the MP3 player that senses and counteracts ambient noise, raises the stakes considerably. Rival executives say they're watching to see how consumers react to this development, but no one has yet promised to follow suit.
"It's a way in which device vendors can differentiate themselves, and we expect to see similar strategies, if not identical ones, over time," said IDC analyst Susan Kevorkian. "But frankly, an important issue to consider is consumers' perception of good enough. For many, even if music sounds sub-par … the perception is that it just isn't that bad."
Raises the stakes considerably? Or sub-par isn't that bad? Which is it? Answer? The latter. Sony, Microsoft, and the whole lot of them looking to beat Apple need to realize that while they're worrying about what goes on the circuit board, Apple is mostly trying to work out the next TV commercial with U2 lead singer Bono. As it prepares to launch it's own iPod killer (Zune) in the next few weeks (just in time for the holiday season), I think Microsoft knows this. Perhaps Sony and other would-be Apple assailants have finally figured this out too. Of the bunch though, Microsoft is probably the only one with (1) the killer instinct, (2) a need to do some sort of bet-the-company move (all technology roads eventually lead to the company with the leading digital rights management system and Microsoft knows that it has to be that company), and (3) the advertising budget.
The next question of course — the one that no one is trying to unearth the answer to — is "who Microsoft's Bono?"
October 23rd, 2006
With DeCSS behind him, "DVD Jon" turns his attention to Apple's Fairplay
Robert Levine of Fortune reports:
When he was 15, [Jon Lech] Johansen got frustrated when his DVDs didn't work the way he wanted them to. "I was fed up with not being able to play a movie the way I wanted to play it," that is, on a PC that ran Linux….To fix the problem, he and two hackers he met online wrote a program called DeCSS, which removed the encryption that limits what devices can play the discs. That meant the movies could be played on any machine, but also that they could be copied. After the program was posted online, Johansen received an award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation - and a visit from Norwegian police.
Johansen, now 22 and widely known as "DVD Jon" for his exploits, has also figured out how Apple's iPod-iTunes system works. And he's using that knowledge to start a business that is going to drive Steve Jobs crazy….Johansen has written programs that get around those restrictions: one that would let other companies sell copy-protected songs that play on the iPod, and another that would let other devices play iTunes songs. Starting this fall, his new company, DoubleTwist, will license them to anyone who wants to get into the digital-music business - and doesn't mind getting hate mail from Cupertino.
The Forbes piece goes on to say that Doubletwist may have a hard time finding customers because of how they could end up getting sued by Apple for using Johansen's technology. Or maybe even other companies like Microsoft since, to the extent that protected content that's not designed to run on iPods will (thanks to his technology), the implication is that he'll be reverse-engineering other digital rights management systems as well.
But, will DoubleTwist need customers? Or just some support from the Norwegian government. One small detail that escaped Fortune's coverage is that Norway is one of the three Scandanavian countries (the other two being Denmark and Sweden) that has publicly expressed concern about the impact of Apple's closed system — known as FairPlay — on its citizens. In fact, in Norway, Apple's implementation already violates that country's laws.
Perhaps there's a double entendre to the name "DoubleTwist."
October 20th, 2006
iPod turns 5. Competitors turn stomachs. And Apple's just gettin' warmed up
I was contacted by a public radio reporter today to comment on the fifth anniversary of Apple's iPod and here is basically what I said:
In the longstanding tradition of the Mac, Apple has done an absolutely brilliant job demystifying what is otherwise a complex technical process. It is only in recent years that some of the competing products have managed to catch up to the usability of the iTunes/iPod duo. But, by the time they did, it was basically too late. Apple controls 70 percent of the portable digital audio player market and, in the US, 88 percent of sales of downloadable music. Not only that, Apple has successfully bridged a usability story into a fashion story which has taken the attraction to the iPod to an entirely different level that no other technology vendor will be able to duplicate. That's because they're all pretty much fashion stupid. Just look at the billboards for the iPod. That thing in the hand of the youthful hipster doesn't even look like an iPod.
Recently, at Gartner Symposium, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talked about Microsoft's stick-to-it-iveness with the message that once his company commits, it has the resources to keep at it until it wins. Only, in the portable digital audio space, the company didn't stick to it. Instead, after it's PlaysForSure ecosystem barely made a dent in Apple's momentum, it went back to square one with a brand called Zune that, except for a few minor details, will pretty much mirror Apple's strategy (where the content comes from the same source as the hardware does). When Microsoft about faces, this is a sign that Apple is in charge.
And just when all of Apple's competitors are turning to plan B, and just when a few cell phone vendors are getting hip to the idea of including iPod-like functionality in a mobile phone (something that no smartphone maker has quite figured out how to do very gracefully), Apple is about to swoop in and show them all how its done because you know that Steve Jobs would never let an iPhone see the light of day unless it's absolutely perfect. Nokia, Ericcson, Sony, Samsung, Motorola and the rest of the lot of them (as well as Microsoft and the other portable audio manufacturers) will be left so stunned by Apple's entry into the market that it will feel as though a supertrain with a wild party on it just left the train station while they were left standing on the platform say "But,…but…"
None of this is very good for consumer choice. Buying iPods engenders the purchase of content at Apple's iTunes Music Store which in turn engenders the purchase of iPods for the rest of your life because your content collection won't work anywhere else. Imagine for example if music from Sony's artists only worked on Sony's walkmans, forever. You get the picture. Not good.
How's this going to end. Eventually, some governments will force Apple's hand under antitrust law. If not here in the US, then somewhere else. Apple knows this and the name of the game at this point is arbitrage. Somewhere, on Apple's general counsel's spreadsheet, is the cost of an antitrust settlement against the company — the sort where the company is forced to open up its interfaces on a fair licensing basis much the same way Microsoft has been forced to do the same. No matter how conservative the what-if scenarios in that spreadsheet are, Apple will still profit and very famously so.
Here's a good question. With Apple Mac sales going up (on the coattails of iPod sales), what happens when Apple decides not to make a Windows version of iTunes?
October 14th, 2006
DMCA should scare us all
I was thinking about how much things have changed in IT over the last twenty-plus years and then I remembered a saying an old fried of mine used to use: The more things change, the more they stay the same. In the case of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, however, I am not sure sure this old adage holds true.
In the 1960's, "Xerox" became a household word and 'fair use' took on a whole new meaning for the courts (see 17 U.S.C. section 107).
During my college years, it was not uncommon to buy two LPs (long-playing records — for you 'kids' out there) and a blank 90-minute cassette so that you and one or two of your friends could share the expense of a couple of record albums.
Then there was the Sony BetaMAX case [464 U.S. 417] and 'time-shifting' entered our lexicon.
The analog technology of the 1960's and 70's made 'acceptable' reproductions of most printed and recorded material but far from 'perfect' copies. In practice, this 'casual piracy' pushed the limits of 'fair use' (intended primarily to serve educational purposes) but really didn't impact copyright holders to any great extent. (For a comprehensive look at the potential impact the DMCA could have on the 'fair use' exceptions to copyright law, see my blog in IT Education: DMCA threatens academic freedom.)
With the introduction of the personal computer came the ability to make perfect copies of digital material. Not to worry though, software was about the only digital media there was and too few people owned PCs (let alone had access to the Internet) to make piracy a big problem.
To a large extent this capability to make perfect copies of software brought the cost of that software down dramatically — to the point that most users would be just as happy to buy their own copy than to have an illegal copy. When costs could not be brought down any further, the copy-protection schemes of the early 1980's were soon replaced with reasonable licensing practices which were not too intrusive for the legitimate software buyer yet made it inconvenient (though not impossible) for the wholesale pirates — out to make a buck.
By the 1990's, Windows 3.x was on the market. (Yeah, yeah… I know that Apple did 'windows' first in 1983, four years before Microsoft released Windows 2.0 – actually Xerox PARC did it first in 1981.) Anyway, by now the user-friendly personal computer was here to stay. Along with it came the ability for just about anyone to make perfect copies of just about anything that was stored (or could be scanned) digitally. By the end of the 1990's ubiquitous access to the Internet raised the stakes even further. For the first time, pirated digital material could be distributed to millions of people in a matter of hours and the pirates could hide behind the anonymity of the Internet. (A topic for another blog.)
During the 1990's, the REAL pirates (those making money off of the intellectual property of others) went high-tech — offering users (mostly college students with access to their university's high-speed network) free access to peer-to-peer file sharing tools.
Knowing full-well that most people don't understand anything about copyright law — or that they were taking part in felony theft of intellectual property, these unscrupulous vendors were putting their own customers at risk and what was once 'casual piracy' (sharing of copyrighted music among friends) had become the the wholesale piracy of music (and motion pictures), often by unwitting participants who had no concept of the scale of their theft, or of the legal risk to themselves (and their families) as a result of their participation.
Overly dramatic? Perhaps, but the music and motion picture industries didn't seem to think so. Enter the DMCA …
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998) [H.R.2281.ENR] was intended to protect copyright holders from the level of copyright infringement now available. Its not the intent of the law but rather its implementation that is most alarming.
We like to think of 'copyright holders' as people like us who just want to get paid for their efforts. In truth, most copyrights are signed over to large multi-national corporations in exchange for pennies-on-the dollar returned to the original author/artist. (At one time, copyrights expired with the death of the author/artist — no more, corporate entities go on forever and so it seems, do their copyrights.)
In the past, copyright law was written so that 'intent' played an important role in determining infringement. Infringement for personal use (sharing with your friends, for instance) was more or less ignored, or otherwise treated as 'fair use'. In crafting legislation, the government always viewed its citizens as benign. It was up to the courts to prove intent to infringe – not the legislative branch of government. There was no attempt to restrict the development of any technology simply because it could be used for illicit purposes as long as its intended use was for legitimate purposes.
The DMCA changed all that. For the first time, legislation was crafted which assumed that some technologies were, in and of themselves, illicit and and should be prohibited in favor of other technologies, which would be protected through legislation — at the expense of innovation (and the citizens of the United States). Mere possession of said technology would make citizens guilty of a crime — whether they had used the technology for illicit purposes or not. Never mind that international law had no similar prohibitions — leaving users easily confused about which technology available via the web was legal and which was not.
It would be generous to call this collusion between government and industry 'unseemly' and yet, the DMCA remains largely unchallenged.
The most talked about impact of the DMCA is Digital Rights Management (DRM, for short, although my colleague, David Berlind, prefers to call it C.R.A.P.). While DRM is intended to provide protection for copyright holders (whomever they may be) from illicit copies of their materials being used by other than those that purchased the material. It has become much more than that.
DRM has become corporate leverage. No longer can you purchase copyrighted material from one vendor and be assured of being able to play (or view) that material on another vendor's player. What's more insidious is that DRM technology comes with an End User License Agreement (EULA) whose terms can be altered at any time. Should such terms become unacceptable to the user, there is no recourse except to stop using the copyrighted material! Sometimes, the DRM technology is tied to a subscription service. You can buy the material but, if you stop subscribing, you lose access to the material you've bought.
The DMCA has given license to corporate use of subterfuge as well. An excellent example is Sony's aborted use of root-kits in its CD-based DRM scheme. Root-kits were invented as a means for UNIX internals programmers to gain access to their own protected code — kind of an escape hatch. Root-kits have long been in the toolkit of unscrupulous hackers but never before has a multi-national corporation turned to their use in order to hide the presence of its technology on a customer's computer. This same technology could just as easily be used by any unscrupulous vendor to sabotage the products of another vendor at will.
In the mean time, what about the REAL pirates? Has the DMCA, or DRM in general, stopped the mass distribution of illicit copies of music or movies, or software anywhere in the world?
There are dozens of articles on ZDnet alone about Microsoft's attempts to protect themselves from piracy. So far, all we've heard about are 'false positives' and other WGA horror stories. Have we heard of even one piracy ring which has been thwarted by this technology?
The pirates don't care if Microsoft nails the hapless user. (The one who is being targeted by DRM, WGA, and similar technologies.) The pirates already have their ill-gotten gains.
It's time to throw the rascals (who passed the DMCA) out of Congress and elect those with the backbone to craft legislation which is in the interest of authors/artists and their audience and stop serving corporate interests in exchange for campaign contributions.
Until this law is changed, be afraid, be very afraid.
October 12th, 2006
United States v. Google? The DOJ would be going after the wrong perp
Not that today is pick on Nicholas Carr day or anything (see my last blog post). But, while clearing out my RSS reader which I haven't looked at in days (thanks to being at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo), I couldn't help but catch Carr's headline United States vs. Google. Eeeek! Antitrust law in the information technology industry is one of my areas of specialty. For a minute, I thought missed the news. But there was no news to miss. Carr has written a post about about how every era of computing has its defining antitrust case and makes a case for why the Google logo could end up as the next tech bullseye at the center of the US Attorney General's dartboard (artwork anyone? I'll post it).
Wrote Carr:
With Google this week taking over YouTube, it seems like an opportune time to look forward to the prospect - entirely speculative, of course - of what could be the defining antitrust case of the Internet era: United States vs. Google…..
….According to recent ComScore figures, it already holds a dominant 44 percent share of the web search market, more than its next two competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft, combined, and its share rises to 50% if you include AOL searches, which are subcontracted to Google. An RBC Capital Markets analyst recently predicted that Google's share will reach 70 percent. "The question, really," he wrote, "comes down to, 'How long could it take?'"
Google's AdSense ad-serving system, tightly integrated with the search engine, is even more dominant. It accounts for 62 percent of the market for search-based ads…
…With the YouTube buy, Google seizes a commanding 43 percent share of the web’s crowded and burgeoning video market….
…..Should Google's dominance and power continue to grow, it would inevitably have a chilling effect on innovation and hence competition, and the public would suffer. At that point, the big unasked question would start being asked: should companies be able to compete in both the search/ad business and the content/services business, or should competition in those businesses be kept separate? If there is ultimately a defining antitrust case in the internet era, it is that question that will likely be at its core.
Given how some attendees to Gartner Symposium/ITxpo responded to Carr's insinuations that IT doesn't matter, I'm certainly open to debating that question. But, on the issue of whether Google has or will have a monopoly, Nick, you've got the wrong man.
For starters, market dominance requires the definition of a market and the DOJ can take just about any company it wants in the tech industry, conveniently define a market that it dominates, and then go for the antitrust jugular. While I always agreed that Microsoft had a monopoly worth clamping down (particularly given the leverage that Microsoft applied on system makers and developers), I was also mildly amused by the ultimate definition of the market the DOJ said the software giant dominated: that of Intel-compatible PC operating systems. Not PC operating systems (that would have incuded the Mac). Not Intel compatible operating systems (that would have included server OSes like the then extremely dominant NetWare). But, to be on the safe side, "Intel-compatible PC operating systems."
So, to be honest, it would be a piece of cake for the DOJ to define a market that Google monopolizes in an effort to bring an antitrust suit against the company. In fact, I'd argue that the word "market" doesn't work on the Internet, thus making it even more difficult to bring suit against Google. On the Internet, markets are replaced by communities and properties like Google are like nightclubs. Everyone wants to be where the action is. Got something to auction off or looking to get a good deal by way of auction? Would you even waste your time anywhere else but eBay? Buyers and sellers (a community) both know that that's the hottest nightclub in town — the best place to score if auctions are your thing.
Likewise, the nightclub owners know how, once a community has formed at your drinking hole, you have to work pretty hard to keep them. Search communities, as Alta Vista learned from Netscape and as Netscape learned from Yahoo and as Yahoo learned from Google are a fickle bunch and any antitrust question should come down to how the alleged monopolist is applying leverage in a way that deprives any communities it serves of choice (otherwise known in antitrust terms as the crime of "maintaining a monopoly"). For example, are Ad Sense participants forbidden from using anything but Google Checkout? It's a fine line, but there's a difference between incenting customers through your network effect and forcefully locking out certain competitors.
If you're looking for the bad guy — the one whose monopoly is like a cancer on everything it touches (including entire other industries) and the one that's building a private stovepipe on the Internet with a full metal jacket that's unpenetrable by competitors — then that bad guy is Apple. So powerful is Apple, that it now gets to make the rules up for other industries. So brazen is Apple, that it's CEO Steve Jobs publicly brags about how the iTunes Music Store controls 88 percent of downloadable music sales (a number that dwarfs even the 70 percent number that Google might reach in one of the communities it serves).
While on my Symposium/ITxpo trip, I met a reporter in the press room that just recently realized how she is stuck with Apple's iPods for as long as she doesn't want to throw away the 400 songs and the $396 (at 99 cents each) she paid for them at Apples iTunes Music Store. She'd buy one of Microsoft's new Zunes in a heartbeat if should could (she thinks they look cool — confirmation that portable multimedia is as much about fashion as it is anything else). But, right now, she can't bear the thought of throwing away all that hard-earned music.
On the flight on my way back to Boston, Pluto was sitting next to me. OK, it wasn't Pluto. It was a girl who works at DisneyWorld mostly in another role but sometimes as Pluto. She had an iPod with a hundred iTunes-purchased songs in it. Relatively speaking, that's not too many (there's enough time to get out without losing too much face). But it's a start. And to the many people here on ZDNet who respond to my Apple rants that these users first know what they're getting into when they first get an iPod and start buying from the iTunes Music Store, she clearly didn't understand the long term consequences of Apple's proprietary digital rights management scheme. Today, she's very happy with it. Tomorrow, perhaps some 300 songs later, she'll be like the reporter I met in the Symposium press room. Oh, and if you're getting the idea that I stop everyone I see with an iPod to lecture them, you're right.
And, as if locking customers in and telling record labels where to shove it isn't bad enough, Apple's powerplay is dangerously close to taking down the home entertainment electronics space too. Most if not all of the home entertainment equipment makers (particularly the ones that serve audiophiles like me) are standing on the sidelines as Apple begins its march right past them and into our living rooms with products like iTV; products that essentially connect the iTunes Music Store directly to your big screen TV and speakers (disintermediating everyone else — equipment makers, cable TV systems, etc. — that's used to having an equal shot at your entertainment center). As I've written before, I've got about $20,000 worth of whole home entertainment wiring and gear that is useless to me if I want to purchase songs at 99 cents a pop from the iTunes Music Store.
So, Nick, you'll have to forgive me for shrugging at the idea of a Googlopoly. Compared to the damage Apple has already done and continues to do unchecked, Google is a choir boy.
October 5th, 2006
About that supposedly legal MP3 download site in Russia....
Back when I first started complaining about how a 99 cent song (purchased at the iTunes Music Store) couldn't be played back on my $20,000 whole-home entertainment system (a shining example of the problem with DRM technology), a bunch of people suggested that I could legally buy music that would work from a Russian-based source of unprotected MP3 files called AllofMP3.com. It seemed too good to be true. Then, after I did a little homework, I found my instincts to be right. A lot of people outside of Russia were trying to get AllofMP3.com shut down. That was more than a year ago, and, to this day, AllofMP3.com is still up and running and probably getting more business than ever now that it's in the crosshairs of the US government. That's right. A music pirate in Russia is causing such a stir in the international copyright community that America's top trade official is saying that Russia shouldn't be allowed as member of the all-exclusive WTO club unless it shuts the site down. According to Reuters:
Russia should shut down a pirate music Web site that is robbing U.S. recording companies of sales if it wants to become a member of the World Trade Organization, the top U.S. trade official said on Wednesday.
"I have a hard time imagining Russia becoming a member of the WTO and having a Web site like that up and running that is so clearly a violation of everyone's intellectual property rights," U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab told reporters after a speech to a services industry organization.
I never did end up buying music from AllofMP3.com. I respect copyrights and have lived in suffrage. Even though I'd gladly drop a few hundred bucks for music a year, I don't buy songs online since I can't get them to work where I need them to without breaking the law. So, I just don't bother buying music at all (not a good net result if you're in the music business).
I also never got an answer to the question I asked in my last posting about AllofMP3.com:
But here’s a question: Let’s say I get a hold of a DRM-free version of some song from a site like AllofMP3.com that’s still up and running (the fact that it’s not shut down yet leads me to believe that the Russian authorities are not yet convinced of the site’s illegality). If I wanted to make sure the copyright holders got whatever royalties were due to them, how would I do that? In other words, where do I send the check?
The record business doesn't want to answer that question and I'm sure you can figure out why. But what about the artists?
October 2nd, 2006
October 3, 2006: DRM lovers' day of reckoning?
Through its domestic and international Web sites, the Free Software Foundation is calling those who oppose digital rights management (DRM) technologies (eg: technologies found in products that are put out by Apple, Microsoft, and others) to arms in hopes of making Oct 3rd a global Day Against DRM. Under the guise of a campaign the FSF has dubbed Defective By Design, the FSF is encouraging those who are concerned about the harmful effects of DRM to globally unite for one day and take the sort of action that sends a clear message to the purveyors of DRM technology that it's not welcome here (or there, or where ever you may be). The site encourages visitors to get involved in one of four-pages worth of anti-DRM "actions" that are planned to take place around the world tomorrow, Oct 3. Or, if they don't see an action that appeals to them, to start one of their own.
In essence, the call is giving rise to what can best be described as loosely organized anti-DRM "cells" each of which is encouraged to take whatever action they deem necessary. The actions range from the relatively benign (add a badge to your Website) to activities that are certain to get some people arrested. For example, for actions that will be taking place in many cities (as can be seen from the list), members of the campaign plan to distribute and strategically place Defective by Design warning labels (see photo, above left) on the packaging of new products on the shelves of retail stores like those run by Apple. Personally, I don't condone that practice and I believe there are more constructive ways than vandalism to get the dialogue going. But I get the sense that those who vociferously oppose DRM feel as though they are out of options and that time is running out before a certain point of no return (where DRM leaves an indelible stain on the world's culture) comes and goes. On that point, I definitely agree.
September 29th, 2006
The ZDNet video experiment
Okay. So, we've taped all sorts of video coverage here on ZDNet. My colleague Dan Farber has his CIO Vision series going and we're doing new whiteboard sessions all the time. Here's one I did I did on C.R.A.P. (a.k.a. DRM). But if you scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll see dozens of other whiteboard videos that we've produced. But that's clearly not enough. Now, my fine friends in CNET's BroadBrand group (ZDNet is a CNET Networks property) have sent me Panasonic's incredibly awesome AG-HVX200 (DVCPRO-HD, DVCPRO-50, DVCPRO-cable) camera (pictured right) to try out some new video concepts. A lot of pros apparently like this camera for its HD capability but we won't be using it for that. What we'll be taking big advantage of are it's great optics and its built in PCMCIA-storage slots. Instead of recording to tape, you can record directly to a special PCMCIA storage card instead. Today, Panasonic offers the cards in two capacities: 4 and 8 GB. At the lower non-HD resolutions, the card holds about 4 minutes of video per gig. Not much, but that's good because it will force me into keeping things 
tight. I've already done one prototype video (comparing the portability of CDs and cassettes to digital music) and pumped it across the country where the folks in our West coast offices have done a bit of editing. Check it out and let me know what you think. I'll be using the camera here in the home office and on-location at events.
Finally, this camera does more things that I can possibly imagine but the user manual stinks. It basically tells you what all the buttons do, but not why you'd want to do those things (kind of useless if you ask me). So, if you know anything about this camera or have any cool tips or tricks (like how to edit the MXF files it puts out without saving the output to a different format), or have an idea for what the best accessories, please let me know. Thanks!
September 27th, 2006
Microsoft's solution to having its DRM hacked: sue
When it comes to keeping Microsoft’s digital rights management technology from getting hacked — a situation that recently provoked one of the fastest patches ever to be turned around by the Redmond-based company (because of the stakes) — the company has already shown how its technological options are limited. Within 24 hours of fixing one hacked version of Microsoft’s DRM, the same hackers — the developers of FairUse4WM (the utility that strips content of any Microsoft DRM that might have been applied to it) — released a new version of the utility as a countermeasure to the patch. Now, Microsoft is suing those developers. It’ll be an interesting test case since the hackers aren’t being accused of pirating content. They’re being sued for creating the tools that enable piracy which will be a harder case to make. Sure, that case was successfully made with Napster. But the Napster network also facilitated and carried information that was critical to successfully pirating music. But the developers of FairUse4WM play far less of an active role in any acts of piracy once "a pirate" has their tool.
Wrote Bill Rosenblatt at DRM Watch of the news:
Microsoft has filed suit against the unidentified programmers who created FairUse4WM, a hack to versions 10 and 11 of Windows Media DRM (WM DRM). In the action, Microsoft alleges that the programmers — who are known only by the nom de keyboard "viodentia" — infringed copyright by using some of the company’s unpublished source code for WM DRM. The source code presumably includes an indication of where Microsoft hides encryption keys for WM DRM….It is interesting that Microsoft should sue these hackers for stealing source code rather than for circumventing DRM under the DMCA (17 USC 12.01)…suing under the DMCA would be a tacit acknowledgement that WM DRM is hackable — an acknowledgement that Microsoft clearly would not care to make.
The move certainly raises the question of whether such legal options are the last resort to protecting software-based DRM. If they are, they won’t survive the international test of time (and Internet). Meanwhile, the Secure Video Processor Alliance is already out politicking, saying that hardware-based DRM is the only way to do DRM. It may be right (not that that makes DRM right).
September 26th, 2006
Doctorow: HDTV is a Trojan Horse. DRM is the payload
Cory Doctorow, who is probably the world’s best communicator when it comes to the dangers of digital rights management technology, is issuing a stern warning about HDTV. Wrote Doctorow in Information Week:
The high definition screen has become a kind of Christmas tree, overladen with ornaments hung by regulators, greedy entertainment execs, would-be monopolists from the tech sector, broadcasters desperate to hold onto their spectrum, and even video-game companies nostalgic for the yesteryear of impervious boxes….If the studios had their druthers, they’d just encrypt high-def signals. An encrypted signal needs a key to decrypt, and you can set up all kinds of rules about when, how and who can decrypt a show by building it into the contract that comes with the key. But you can’t encrypt over-the-air TV: the broadcasters get the spectrum for free, and in exchange they have to serve us. It wouldn’t do to let them lock us out of the programs aired on our airwaves…. The Broadcast Flag is the law the studios came up with to square this circle. They proposed a Soviet-style planned economy (Fox president Andy Setos, who wrote the Broadcast Flag draft, referred to it as a "well-mannered marketplace") where all TV receivers would have to be built to honor the rules set down by the entertainment industry. The studios would get a veto over any feature that threatened its existing business-model, and anyone who wanted to interface with a TV receiver would have to agree to play by Hollywood’s rules….. The Broadcast Flag was adopted by the FCC, and then was struck down by a DC court that told the Commission its jurisdiction stopped at the broadcasting tower, and didn’t extend to your living room. But the studios and the broadcasters continue to advance their plans for a high-def universe, and they continue to use HD as a trojan horse for smuggling in mandates over the design of commodity electronics.
This is just a small collection of excerpts that werel part of a much longer must-read treatise that really gets under the fingernails of what the entertainment cartel is up to. I get a lot of grief here on ZDNet and in my email from people who say that buyers of DRM-saddled electronics and content know what they’re getting into and therefore deserve what’s coming to them. But I’ve disagreed, often saying that, like cigarettes in the early days, most people aren’t aware of what they’re getting themselves into. But I’ve never articulated it as a Trojan Horse. Two words says it all. Thanks Cory.
September 25th, 2006
Engadget editorial on DRM completely misses the point
Stephen Speicher has posted an editorial on Engadget that makes it sound as if the reason there’s so much opposition to DRM is that people want the freedom to pirate content. The title of the post is Digital Content: Why the sense of entitlement. Wrote Speicher:
There is something that I’ve never really understood when it comes to the digital entertainment debate. That is: where do people get their sense of entitlement with regard to content?….After all, it’s not really our content. At the end of the day if that’s how content owners choose to sell it, isn’t that their right?…Somewhere along the line people started to lose perspective in this whole DRM debate….for some odd reason, people determined that they were the ones who should choose what was right and wrong when it came to the buying and selling entertainment content. Instead of the all-too-familiar set of rules for selling goods (i.e. the seller and the buyer mutually agree on the terms of sale; if either of the parties doesn’t agree, there is no transfer of goods) consumers felt perfectly justified in writing their own personal rules….Law-abiding, moral people do things with entertainment content that they wouldn’t dream of doing with physical goods. Can you imagine walking into a restaurant which you knew to be overpriced, eating, and then leaving without paying just because the you felt the place was a rip-off and not worth the prices they charged? Worse yet, can you imagine doing it the next day also?…..Yet people feel no such compunction about appropriating media content without paying anyone for it.
That’s where he lost me. It reminds me of the Net Neutrality debate where the arguments (both for and against) have been distorted by people who haven’t been paying close enough attention to the details. Somehow, others catch on to these distorted views and eventually, the truth has a much harder time rising above the noise.
Stephen, the majority of the people who voice opposition to DRM, including me, have no intention of misappropriating anyone’s content. You’re absolutely right in noting some of the existing practices of piracy that take place on behalf of some unscrupulous individuals. But those who oppose DRM are not asking for new rules that wouldn’t otherwise apply. We’re asking that the baby not get thrown-out with the bathwater. The rules used to be that you’d buy a record, a cassette, or a CD and you’d be able to use them in any device that was designed to work with those mediums.
With DRM, the rules were actually changed on us (not the other way around). Now, we buy the same content we were buying before, but in the new medium of digital bits (as opposed to vinyl, tape, or CDs). But the one problem is that we can’t take those bits and use them on any device designed to work with bits. It’s the equivalent of having to buy one Fleetwood Mac CD for your car, one for home stereo, one for your boom box, etc. Those are different rules if you ask me. It wasn’t us copyright-respecting people that have no interest in emulating your "friend who buys music via an online store and then immediately torrents ‘clean’ copies" that came up with these new rules.
Spiecher goes onto say:
The obvious answer is that people have no respect for goods where the marginal cost of production is zero or close to it. It doesn’t matter that work went into its production. It doesn’t matter that the sales of current goods pay for development of future goods. It seems to only matter what production costs. And, of course, what the consumer’s self-proclaimed set of rules are.
It’s a convenient vetting of the cost issue to support his argument but completely ignores some of the other efficiencies gained by the new ecosystem. In the old physical goods ecosystem (which still exists), content owners bear the cost of manufacturing, packaging, and retail channel support. In many industries (I don’t know about the entertainment business), retail channel support is actually the most expensive item. That’s not to say that some of the costs mentioned above (production, advertising, etc.) aren’t real. But let’s be honest. As the world completes its shift to bits (as it did from other media), entertainment companies will begin to recognize significant savings. In fact, I would argue that it’s DRM that’s stalling the death of the existing media types (like CDs). Sure, retail stores should and can exist. But why must it involve physical media?
Why shouldn’t you be able to walk into a "record store", listen to some music or watch some videos at a kiosk designed for that very application, make your selections, pay with your credit card (or cash), and have the content downloaded to your device right there on the spot? Think of the benefits. All that shipping that’s avoided. All that packaging that’s harmful to mother Earth eliminated. Less square footage to operate a retail outlet and ultimately less energy costs. The main reason we can’t do this today is because of DRM.
In fairness, Spiechert acknowledges he may be missing some points and asks for feedback regarding his opinion (delivered!). But, so as not to propogate distortions of the truth, I would have rather just seen the questions without the commentary. Yes, there are pirates out there and I agree that it’s a thorny issue. But patting every customer down in a head-to-toe airport-security like frisking is simply not the answer.
Thanks to ZDNet reader Steven Ackerman for the pointer.
September 21st, 2006
Move over iTunes. Here comes the Secure Video Processor Alliance
Meet Jas Saini. He’s chairman of the Secure Video Processor Alliance — an alliance whose members are not about to take Apple’s incursion into the home entertainment and content multiplexing market lying down.
The battle to be your content multiplexer is on. It’s a battle that most people don’t even know is taking place. But it is. And it’s too early to declare a winner. What is a content multiplexer? It’s the device — essentially a cache — that lives at the nexus of the converging worlds of computer technology and the entertainment industry. Think of it as the train station through which all content — for example, a movie — arrives into your home and is then subsequently distributed to other consumption componentry. Apple’s iTunes software is one of the most well known examples. Via its Internet-based connection, it can take delivery of content from the iTune Music Store and distribute it to other components. In addition to being able to burn music to a CD for use on a CD player, it can also distribute content to Apple’s portable playback devices (iPods), other computers running the iTunes software, and, announced last week, to a device that lives in your home entertainment center — a device that Apple has codenamed iTV. Last week, Apple announced that movies would be available through the iTunes music store — thereby expanding the scope of content types that iTunes can aggregate and distribute.
Apple is not alone in its quest to be the central cache for all your content. There’s at least one other company — your local cable TV provider — that in some cases already has that job and wants to keep it. In the cable TV world, content is delivered through pipes that are owned and manged by the cable TV provider (the wire outside your house) into your Personal Video Recorder (PVR, a TiVo device is an example of one of these) and then from there, the PVR takes on the role of being the content multiplexer. As far as PVR content multiplexers go, TiVo was one of the first to demonstrate this capability with a service known as TiVo-to-Go that could transfer content from your TiVo PVR to a portable playback device. More recently however, Motorola has demonstrated a similar architecture, capable of moving content from its PVRs to its mobile handsets such as the Motorola Q smartphone.
The battle doesn’t stop there. Then, there’s your local phone company — the Baby Bells whose primary source of revenue (the voice business) is being devastated by competing services from the local cable companies, and more recently, from Voice-over-IP technoloiges like Skype that work over the Internet connection (in some cases, a connection that the phone company itself is providing). In an effort to survive, the Baby Bells are diversifying into the content delivery space as well. Using their exclusive access to the dark (unused) fiber optic technology that may already have been installed outside your home, the phone companies are gearing up to deliver extremely high quality content (eg: Hi-definition) through services like Video-on-Demand and, rest assured, they’re just as interested in being your content multiplexer as Apple and the cable guys are.
But wait, there’s more. Ripping a page out of Apple’s book, Microsoft is, between its forthcoming Zune brand and its Media Center PC, also gunning to handle all of your content multiplexing. DirecTV, electric utilities and other outfits that already have a "content consumption" relationship with consumers want in as well and now, even some large merchants are tossing their hats into the ring. Amazon, for example, recently joined the fray with its Unbox video service for downloading movies and, while these mostly wire-line providers duke it out, many of the cellular phone companies are quietly looking to sneak around center court with a come-from-nowhere win that leverages their wireless connections as the delivery vehicle.
This brings me to my next point which is that to be declared the winner in the content multiplexing market is the equivalent of winning all the marbles. Because of the convergence that’s happening between technology, telecommunications, and entertainment, the stakes in this battle are extremely high. Whereas some outfits like Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon are happy to rely on a delivery pipe they don’t own (the Internet), the phone, cable, satellite (DirecTV), and cellco companies see
September 18th, 2006
TiVo sits at nexus of DRM conundrum
Recently, I’ve been hearing a lot about how movie studios (and other providers of video content) are significantly more senstive to the idea that the High Definition versions of their content might get pirated than they are to other lower resolution versions. I’m not sure what the implications of this are. But one logical deduction would be that the movie studios are less sensitive about the low-res versions getting out. Perhaps to the point that they’ll give away the low-res versions in hopes those give aways will cause buyers to go out and purchase the high-res versions. Could this be? It sounds like they think that by keeping the HD versions close to the vest, they won’t be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Making this distinction seems completely senseless to me. If I’m a pirate, I’ll probably take whatever version of whatever it is I’m pirating I can get. And, regardless of whether I paid for it or not, if I happen to view the low-res version of some movie, I’m not going to pay more for the HD version. Or maybe I’m the atypical video consumer. When I first started hearing ruminations of this logic, I thought it was nonsense. But, between last week’s big Apple announcements and a story in Information Week, I now realize it’s not. Last week for example, Apple CEO Steve Jobs talked about improved resolution on the company’s video iPods and cited "near DVD quality" but not HD quality. My colleague Dan Farber pointed this out during last week’s Dan and David Show (a podcast).
The Information Week story goes into detail about how the fear of HD content getting pirated (but not the lower resolutions of the same content) is preventing TiVo from making a lot of HD content available to users of its TiVo-To-Go service — a service that allows you to take content that’s been downloaded onto your TiVo’s hard drive and transfer it to a portable video playback device like one of the ones from iRiver or Creative. According to IW’s Antone Gonsavles:
TiVo subscribers willing to spend a hefty $800 for its new digital video recorder will find one feature missing, the ability to burn content to a DVD, or move it to a computer or portable media player….TiVo’s Series3’s biggest feature — the ability to play high-definition content — is also its most limiting, in terms of portability. While such content can be played on a monitor or TV, it can’t leave the box…. The reason for the inflexibility is the lack of copyright protection technology approved by content providers and cable operators. The viewing quality of high definition content increases its value, and makes it a potential favorite among pirates, so copyright owners are particular sensitive about the distribution of HD programming and movies…."The definition (for distribution) so far has been nothing happens," Andrew Morrison, product manager for Series3 at TiVo, said Wednesday. "You can’t get it (to another device)."….. "It may never happen, or it could be years away," Morrison said.
For those not familiar with who CableLabs is, the story goes into pretty good detail about the role that CableLabs plays in the cable TV ecosystem when it comes to content protection. But just supposing that HD content is really as prized (over the low-res versions) by pirates as the entertainment industry thinks it is. Then, that industry’s concerns about HD content getting pirated could be justified given TiVo’s current content protection architecture. TiVo, like Amazon, Yahoo, AOL, Napster-To-Go, and other providers of digital music and/or movies, relies on Microsoft’s digital rights management platform to copy protect content that’s transferred from a TiVo-box to a portable player. It’s for this reason that the only portable video players that are compatible with the TiVo-To-Go service are the ones that are PlaysForSure-compatible.
PlaysForSure is the brand name for a personal entertainment ecosystem that Microsoft’s been working on — one that establishes compatibility between content merchants (ie: AOL, Yahoo, Amazon, etc.), the copy protection on the content they sell, and the software and devices that can play that content back. Not only is the long term viability of that ecosystem being called into question by virtue of Microsoft’s new Zune brand (a brand that is both incompatible with and a competitor to PlaysForSure participants), the ability of the underlying DRM technology to secure the content it’s supposedly designed to protect was recently compromised by a utility called FairUse4WM. Even worse, Microsoft plugged the "hole" and the developers of FairUse4M released a new version that re-opened the hole it within 24 hours (The newest version of Apple’s DRM known as FairPlay is apparently no better off). In other words, if the DRM system that TiVo is relying on is so easily compromised, then the fears of the entertainment execs who some how have it in their heads that HD content is worth more to pirates than the lo-res versions of that same content may be justified.
As a side note, last year, TiVo started playing around with watermarks. Watermarks could be used in combination with (or in lieu of) DRM technologies and are designed to uniquely encode each individual copy of content that a watermarking content provider issues with information that can identify the person who originally purchased the content. Theoretically, watermarks could stop piracy because of the way pirated content can be traced back to the "original pirate." But watermarks may prove to be ineffective. Last year, Sun’s director of Web Technologies Tim Bray — a person whose software engineering instincts I trust — told me that watermarks can easily be defeated (which makes sense to me).
September 18th, 2006
EFF on Zune: Risk of DRM/DMCA checkmate no longer a risk. It's reality
By way of Cory Doctorow, comes a pointer to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s take on Microsoft’s new Zune: a brand that has broken ranks with the Redmond-based company’s previous digital rights management (DRM) strategy that attempted to establish an ecosystem of compatibility (under the name "PlaysForSure") between content merchants (ie: AOL, Yahoo, Amazon, etc.), the copy protection on the content they sold, and the software and devices that could play that content.
Critics of DRM (including me) have long warned of the risks of strategy, policy, and technology shifts amongst the various DRM stakeholders (technology companies, entertainment companies, copyright holders, etc.): namely that consumers could wake up one morning to learn that the rules regarding legal playback of their content investments (audio, video, images, etc.) may have changed to the point that they’ll probably have to, at some point,M re-buy their favorite music and video all over again. In the US, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) has, with few exceptions (none of which apply here), outlawed circumvention of content copy protection. So, with Microsoft’s Zune, now comes proof that these were not Chicken Little warnings. Wrote the EFF’s Derek Slater:
Microsoft’s Zune will not play protected Windows Media Audio and Video purchased or "rented" from Napster 2.0, Rhapsody, Yahoo! Unlimited, Movielink, Cinemanow, or any other online media service. That’s right — the media that Microsoft promised would Play For Sure doesn’t even play on Microsoft’s own device. Buried in footnote 4 of its press release, Microsoft clearly states that "Zune software can import audio files in unprotected WMA, MP3, AAC; photos in JPEG; and videos in WMV, MPEG-4, H.264" — protected WMA and WMV (not to mention iTunes DRMed AAC) are conspicuously absent.……
…..This is a stark example of DRM under the DMCA giving customers a raw deal. Buying DRMed media means you’re locked into the limited array of devices that vendors say you can use. You have to rebuy your preexisting DRMed media collection if you want to use it on the Zune. And you’ll have to do that over and over again whenever a new, incompatible device with innovative features blows existing players out of the water….
….The real culprit here is the DMCA — but for that bad law, customers could legally convert DRMed files into whatever format they want, and tech creators would be free to reverse engineer the DRM to create compatible devices. Even though those acts have traditionally been and still are non-infringing, the DMCA makes them illegal and stifles fair use, innovation, and competition.
….May this be a lesson to those who mistakenly laud certain DRM as "open" and offering customers "freedom of choice" simply because it is more widely-licensed than other formats. With DRM under the DMCA, nothing truly plays for sure, regardless of whether you’re purchasing from Apple, Microsoft, or anyone else….
Doctorow drove straight to the irony of the situation when he wrote "Microsoft’s iPod-killing Zune player won’t play music that’s locked up with Microsoft’s own anti-copying software."
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
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