Tag: DRM
-
Understanding the Newts
Recently I’ve been trying to figure out the politics of technology policy. There seem to be regularly drawn battle lines in Congress, but for the most part tech policy doesn’t play out as a Republican vs. Democratic or liberal vs. conservative conflict. Henry Farrell, in a recent post at Crooked Timber, put his finger on…
-
Korean Music Industry Puts Negative Value on DRM
The Korean music industry has negotiated a deal that puts a monetary price on the inconvenience customers experience due to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology. According to a DRM Watch story: In an agreement with the Korea Music Producers’ Association (KMPA), [the online service] Soribada will charge users KRW 500 (US $0.51) for DRM-protected music…
-
The French DRM Law, and the Right to Interoperate
Thanks to Bernard Lang for yesterday’s discussion of the proposed French DRM law. The proposed law has been widely criticized in the U.S. press. Assuming Dr. Lang’s translation is correct, this criticism is mostly (but not entirely) off the mark. Apple’s iTunes and iPod are good examples of the type of product that would be…
-
Bernard Lang Reports on the Proposed French DRM Law
[Bernard Lang, a prominent French computer scientist and infotech policy commentator, sent me an interesting message about the much-discussed legislative developments in France. It includes the first English translation I have seen of the proposed French law mandating open access to DRM technologies. He has graciously given me permission to post his message here, with…
-
Apples, Oranges, and DRM
Last week mp3.com reported on its testing of portable music players, which showed that playing DRM (copy-protected) songs drained battery power 25% faster in Windows Media players, and 8% faster on iPods, than playing the same songs using the unprotected MP3 format. As more information came to light, it became clear that they hadn’t done…
-
RIAA Says Future DRM Might "Threaten Critical Infrastructure and Potentially Endanger Lives"
We’re in the middle of the U.S. Copyright Office’s triennial DMCA exemption rulemaking. As you might expect, most of the filings are dry as dust, but buried in the latest submission by a coalition of big copyright owners (publishers, Authors’ Guild, BSA, MPAA, RIAA, etc.) is an utterly astonishing argument. Some background: In light of…
-
USACM Policy Statement on DRM
I’m pleased to post here a new policy statement on DRM, issued by USACM, the U.S. public policy committee of ACM, the leading professional society for computer scientists. It’s a balanced yet strong statement of principles that can be applied to many public policy questions relating to DRM. I helped to draft it, and I…
-
How Watermarks Fail
I wrote Wednesday about Randy Picker’s suggestion of using digital watermarks to embed users’ personal financial information into media files, to discourage users from sharing the files. Today, I want to talk more generally about watermarks and how they tend to fail. First, some background. Watermarks are subtle signals embedded in the background of media…
-
Mistrust-Based DRM
Randy Picker has an interesting post on the Chicago Law Faculty blog, describing what he calls “mistrust-based DRM”. The idea is that when an online music store gives you a song, it embeds into the song a watermark that contains your credit card number, or some other information that would let a (dishonest) person spend…
-
Sony CD DRM Paper Released
Today Alex and I released our paper about the Sony CD DRM episode. This is the full, extended version of the paper, with a bunch of new material that hasn’t been published or posted before. As an experiment, we posted draft sections of the paper here and asked readers for comments and feedback. The experiment…