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Handhelds Hardware

Content Control in Mobile Devices 104

Posted by michael from the one-ringtone-to-rule-them-all dept.
BigJim.fr writes: "Mobile operators envision the handset as the ultimate closed platform providing an opportunity to regain end to end control over content distribution. Right to replay from Total Telecom provides insight into how they imagine user-hostile digital right management systems in the near future." Excellent article.
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Content Control in Mobile Devices More

Content Control in Mobile Devices

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  • Kinda the reason I went with the Open Source Sharp PDA. Just a deveolper edition but well worth the $399 I paid for it!

    • Re:No! (Score:2)

      by ankit ( 70020 )
      err...
      The Zaurus isnt quite open source. They dont give the hardware design etc. Simputer [simputer.org] can be called a trylly open source handheld.

      Hardware apart, even parts of the Zaurus software environment are closed. Parts of Qtopia [trolltech.com] are closed, and licensed from Trolltech. Also, the opera web browser etc are closed.
      In fact, there is a project, Open Zaurus [sourceforge.net] is an initiative towards a tryly open software Zaurus environment.

  • Be an informed customer (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RC514 ( 546181 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @08:32AM (#2930117) Homepage
    Don't buy what you don't want. It is that simple.
    • I know you're referring to content rather than the mobile devices themselves, but it's only that simple so long as the vendors are willing to sell you only what you want. I don't need nor want to listen/ watch the latest intelligence-insulting dreck that the content vendors are peddling to people with limited attention spans, but how long will it be before the phone market splits into a "pop" segment where I pay for this even if I don't use it and a "serious" (aka "business" segment) where there's a different set of expensive added-value features.

      Of course, you can also make a point of continuing to use your old mobile phone, and only upgrading to models a couple of years behind the curve as they drop in price....

      • I'm referring to the devices and the content. If the device doesn't let you do what you want to do at a price which you are willing to pay, don't hope that somehow someone will offer to change that. If a device is crippled with unavoidable DRM, look for alternatives and if there aren't any, don't buy. People need to look at the whole product, the device and the service which is offered (not what is promised to be available in 6 months).
        • ...the devices and the content.

          OK, fair enough.

          I should also have mentioned the whole cost of the 3G infrastructure needed to support the devices and the content. (Some of this cost has already been incurred to buy permission to use the relevant parts of the radio spectrum, and the interest charges on the that cost, and... so we're already paying even before the benefits (sic) are available.)

          Ah well, back to fixed-line phones from home and coin/ card phone booths for travelling, perhaps. If you can find a phone booth now that the ubiquity of mobile phones is making them less uneconomic to install outside densely-populated areas.

    • Re:Be an informed customer (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @10:21AM (#2930379) Homepage
      That's not good enough. This is so actively hostile to users, why should it even be allowed to exist? It needn't. An aggressive response would be far superior, I think, to a passive one.
      • In a supposedly free world, the question to be asked is why it shouldn't be allowed to exist. The default is "anything goes", right? It doesn't hurt you if you ignore it, unless of course the majority thinks it's cool and buys the stuff. Which brings us back to "Don't buy it if you don't want it." Ensuring that customers make informed decisions really is the key.
        • In a supposedly free world, I could sell bread made out of sawdust and chalk.

          We don't live in such a world, and it's probably for the best. This is not a made-up example; this is _exactly_ the kind of thing that used to go on before governmental regulation of food manufacture and sales. People bought it anyway, in no small part because 1) it is not in the interests of sellers to have informed customers, witness the bitter fights about labeling organic food, 2) they had little choice.

          The sole purpose behind our economic and regulatory policy is to maximize public good. After all -- why should the public put up with it if it is intended to harm them! We don't live in a perfect world, and so we must tolerate _some_ evils. But this is purely for pragmatic reasons. We still seek the optimal point at which there are the least evils and the greatest goods.

          This looks like a damn lot of evil, and very little good, in comparison to a more open alternative. Thus, why even bother allowing the evil alternative where the comparison is so clear?

          Don't be so naive as to imagine that the default -- the Hobbsean jungle in which everyone is perfectly free to do as they like, but where their lives are nasty, brutish and short -- is desirable in all cases.

          (though if it were, n.b. that copyright laws are ALSO not the default)

    • Be an active opponent (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Dan Crash ( 22904 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @10:41AM (#2930454) Journal
      Don't buy what you don't want. It is that simple.

      I see this attitude a lot on Slashdot, and every time I do I think, "Could you bury your head a little further in the sand?"

      Statements like "Don't buy it if you don't want it" really do nothing to address the fact that digital rights management *is* being rolled out, that many if not most people *will* buy into it, and that this will change the legitimate options left for others.

      Think automobiles.

      Once upon a time, if you didn't like the new-fangled horseless carriages, you could simply "not buy what you didn't want" and ride your trusty steed or horse-drawn carriage instead. How many horses do you see on the roads now?

      * * *
      When something become ubiquitous, it changes people's mindsets. Ideas that once seemed unconscionable begin to seem not only bearable but familiar and preferable.

      Just not buying DRM yourself isn't enough. We all have to organize and work together to defeat strong DMR if we want to continue to enjoy free (as-in-liberty) information ourselves.
      • If people buy it, so be it. It's a majority vote and those who complain that they haven't been heard on the issue just don't recognize the facts. Sometimes the road is a little longer than what looks like a straight connection from a to b to you. The best mechanism which is available to us is market dynamics, or isn't it? You are free to try to convince others, which is what I'm doing when I say "Make sure you really want it before you buy it", but the voting is done with the money being spent on what people want and therefore buy.
        • No, market dynamics is not the best mechanism for
          determining the course of events in the public
          sphere. A campaign of carefully targetted
          asassinations will outperform market dynamics
          every time. Killing the people who make your
          life unpleasant is a proven strategy for improving
          your experience.
        • "Voting with your dollars" is a fallacy. It sounds good (democratic, even!) and paints critics of "free" markets as dictators, winning arguments in a sort of oblique ad hominem attack.

          But a vote, in any meaningful democratic sense, is a share of power distributed equally among participants. Money isn't distributed equally, and literally can't be, without losing its worth. Hence it's not a vote.

          To be a little more concrete:

          Imagine we have a new presidential election tomorrow, but instead of ballots, people purchase their politician. Money as real votes! Would you still say this is a democratic election? Would you say it represents the "majority vote"? Why not?

          We also shouldn't forget that Big Money works to eliminate choices and competition from the marketplace. A glance at the Microsoft antitrust documents should remind anyone of that. So Big Money can oftentimes "buy out" the choice you would've voted for.

          This isn't to say we should vote for who gets a cellphone. Markets are good things. But it's important to remember that markets work best when smartly checked by a framework of democracy, and that money != votes. (God help us if it ever does!)
    • You can't buy what you aren't ALLOWED to buy. Soon everything will be illegal except what the MPAA and RIAA allow you to buy. This is why they call it a "monopoly". Dig?

  • Marketing Hype (Score:2, Interesting)

    by evil_roy ( 241455 )
    This article is really nothing but a bunch of statements beginning "I believe ......"

    Don't bother reading it. You will learn nothing. Unless , I suppose, you really want to know what Mr Duhl believes.
    • Don't bother reading it. You will learn nothing. Unless , I suppose, you really want to know what Mr Duhl believes.
      Please, Slashdot posters don't need any extra encouragement not to read the article. ^_^

    • From the article "Websites like Napster...". I didn't read any further - journalists that think Napster's a web page generally don't have deep insights into internet tech.

  • Streaming to PDAs (Score:2, Insightful)

    by FrankBough ( 173822 )
    Does anyone actually want to watch videos on a mobile phone? There is a huge assumption being made by the proponents of 3G that people will actually pay to do this - whether they're paying for content or bandwidth or both they'll have to pay one way or another.
    • Not right now they don't. But there are already small displays (like glasses or visors) that create the illusion of a big-screen. It's quite possible that these displays will improve to the point that watching a movie with one will be very enjoyable. Stereo headphones will take care of the audio portion. I don't know whether anyone is working on this but it is a pretty obvious idea.

      MM
      --
  • The devices are mobile - ie. small and light.

    Therefore I won't mind carrying 2 of them. One proprietary one with which to phone my friends. And one open one, on which to play MP3s. We know the encryption will be broken with high-tech methods or low.

    If there's a market for an open player, then there are millions of people with the skills to make them.

  • Do they have no clue? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gagravarr ( 148765 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @08:49AM (#2930144) Homepage

    "By definition a standard drm is less secure than a proprietary one," says Gregg Makuch, senior product manager for mobile product and services at Seattle-based Realnetworks.

    Yes, security by obscurity, that well known way to make your product more secure... anyone else scared by people with this sort of mindset potentially having so much control over what we will and won't be able to do?

    • Yes, security by obscurity, that well known way to make your product more secure...
      Audio playback requires some kind of system that converts DRM-protected data into an audible waveform. If the system is published and openly available, then any code monkey can write one that converts it to a .wav or .mp3 file. The only other way that I can think of is fingerprinting, but that has been defeated every time it's been challenged. Other than closed obscurity-based systems, what does that leave?
      • Audio playback requires some kind of system that converts DRM-protected data into an audible waveform. If the system is published and openly available, then any code monkey can write one that converts it to a .wav or .mp3 file. The only other way that I can think of is fingerprinting, but that has been defeated every time it's been challenged. Other than closed obscurity-based systems, what does that leave?

        A good possibility is the inclusion of an encryption chip into audio speakers, which will be delivered with digital DRM-crippled data. The data will be encrypted to a private key stored in the encryption chip of the audio speakers, which can be extracted by a simple command. This way free-as-in-speech software will NOT be excluded.

        Of course you could still copy a song to a different computer or even broadcast it via Gnutella or whatever, but you could only play it on your pair of speakers. You could of course copy your private key around the network, but it's impossible to change the speakers' private keys. The only possibility is to disassemble your speakers and grab the data between the decryptor and the DAC, but not if decryptor and DAC are located on the same IC.

        If the speakers are blown up, replace them by keeping the DAC/decryption unit.

      • If your product requires some crucial part of it to remain secure, then that will be its biggest weakness. As soon as that one thing comes out into the open, a huge swathe of the security it offered is gone. Think CSS here.

        However, if your product is secure despite everyone knowning about it (because you published it), then it will be more secure than one relying on people not knowing how it works. Think DES and friends here.

        There is quite a short article on Security by Obscurity with microsoft as the case study here [vnunet.com]. Alternatly, pick up your nearest book by Bruce Schneier [counterpane.com]

        • I know about the obscurity myth, but when it comes to encryption where the end user owns the means of decryption (whether that be the software or hardware) then eventually the secret will be out. Even with decryption built into the speakers, someone will do a MoRE [lemuria.org] on it.
    • Any open standard does not have to be reverse-engineered. The DMCA is no use for them.

      Any proprietary encryption, no matter how weak, provides them with a powerful legal protection when combined with the DMCA. Because sure, you can crack it, go ahead. But then they can sue you.

      So yes, as absurd as it may sound: a proprietary standard provides them with (legal) security by definition.

  • 3G and Movies (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I work for a shall we say large company that is planning on realeasing 3G (No one likes them, including myself). So rather than get flamed for working for them Ill just tell you flat out.. I don't get all that many requests for this tech, and thats my function here... I would say roughly 1 out of 1000 customers are interested.
    • Isn't this one of those features that depends on public awareness and critical mass?

      People will realise they want/need it when they see their friends with it.
      Or it will fail to take off and disappear.

      If it doesn't achieve the initial craze phase (and it obvioulsy hasn't yet)then it will never get anywhere.

  • I don't mind (Score:2, Interesting)

    by morie ( 227571 )
    I don't mind to much to pay for certain content on a handheld. If I know beforehand it will only work on that mobile device, or even only once, I can make a choice

    It would have to be priced accordingly, though

    It's like going to see a movie: You know it will only be there once, at that time, in that theater for that price. If that's clear, nobody will ask to take a copy for use on any home theatre.

    It would have to be priced accordingly, though. Overpricing will triger piracy.

    • Re:I don't mind (Score:2, Insightful)

      by DrJohnEvans ( 553988 )
      A good movie normally runs between two and three hours, has an intricate and carefully-constructed plot, has dynamic characters with whom the audience can identify with, and is generally meant as a one-time experience, to be discussed (and likely dissected) afterwards. The last time that such qualities were found in popular music was in the days of the two-hour classical symphony. The symphony allowed for the same developed reaction as today's movies: enjoyment is derived from your experience of all the qualities mentioned above.

      Today's music pieces generally run from two to four minutes in length, consist of perhaps two verses and one chorus (repeated several times), with a repetitive melody and perhaps-- at most-- an innovative solo. The content of the song is so much more limited than that of a movie that analysis is just not possible without continuous playback.

      Of course, today's popular music fans are certainly not out there to analyse their music, right? What, then, is the basis for their enjoyment of a song? Consider this: the best reaction to a song (that the song creator would hope for) would be a simple "Hey, I like this." It's much more of a knee-jerk reaction. The music somehow stimulates some sort of pleasure nerve, and we derive enjoyment from the song. As humans, we want all the pleasure we can get, and would thus want to hear the song again.

      This is the reason that the entire music recording industry exists: the consumer's desire for repetition. We (generally) never bought CDs, cassette tapes, records, et cetera, just to listen to them once. It's going to be an uphill battle for single-serving music distributors.

      Play it again, Sam.

  • about the end... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mirko ( 198274 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @08:52AM (#2930155) Journal
    While the audience hears the song on the radio they are invited to order the track through their gsm phone, just by sending an sms to a short
    number (5380).

    They may have to improve SMS maniability as it is far too uncomfortable.

    The sms is answered immediately to validate the email address given in the sms and after a confirmation, the content is sent to the listener's mailbox.

    Immediately ?

    Are they sure ?

    And why would somebody buy the right to play an MP3-like on a shitty phone loudspeaker when they actually hear it on a good radio at the same time? If they really like the song, then they may wait until its has ended to buy it, wouldn't they?

    A micropayment of EUR2 is deducted from the phone bill, and the licence is sent separately
    to the same mailbox, or as a present to a friend, all within seconds.
    So:
    1. It is quite expensive
    2. This means that the phone companies will be the new banks which'll not only know how much we own but also with whom we communicate. This is dangerous for privacy
    3. mail on a phone ? I knew I was getting old but please, why not on something comfortable with a maniable device which name begins with "key" and end with "board" ?


    When the listener opens his email he finds the track and licence in his mailbox and may play the
    music.

    So it'll take some time to actually hear what we wanted to hear when we were too busy purchasing it?

    The content owner - in this case Radio 538 - has the choice to allow cd burning or not;
    to listen for a week, a month, or forever - whatever they agree to with the artist can be set in the business model.

    Content owner ?

    What about public domain songs ? (see my .sig)

    They will be thrown out of the media?

    And why do the song "belong" to the radio (content owner)?

    don't they mean the "distributor"?
    • Clearly you don't get it: You hear something on the radio, when you like it you have it send to your computer via E-mail and that's the place where you can listen to it again, not on your phone!
      But you are right about the price, 2 Euro's times the number of tracks on a CD makes it expensive.

      And the Contend Owner thing, well it's sloppy journalism but we know what they mean.

    • > why would somebody buy the right to play an MP3-like on a shitty phone loudspeaker

      Because mobile phones and portable mp3 players are rapidly converging. When I went back to london at christmas there was a lot of adverts for new mobiles that played music, and are intended to replace your walkman. Now that phones have digital connections, processing power, memory, a headphone socket, and a billing system, it all becomes a bit inevitable really.

    • They may have to improve SMS maniability as it is far too uncomfortable.

      Then perhaps you should buy an Ericsson phone with a chatboard: a small keyboard that you can click into the phone. It makes typing a lot easier. I have had one for years.

  • Standards-based v proprietary security (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Polaris ( 9232 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @08:56AM (#2930164) Homepage Journal
    '"By definition a standard drm is less secure than a proprietary one," says Gregg Makuch, senior product manager for mobile product and services at Seattle-based Realnetworks.' I find this hard to accept. Certainly a standards-based drm is verifiably more secure than a proprietary one, and all too often proprietary standards rely on obscurity or a smug belief in the superiority of the technology, without it having stood up to peer review by experts (remember GSM encryption?).
    • The thing the article does not mention is that a number of rights languages have already undergone a rather thorough peer review within MPEG 21 [telecomitalialab.com], which is looking to adopt an open solution. I heard from a friend who attends that all of the submissions had problems (e.g. ambiguity) except for XrML which was subsequently adopted as the starting place for MPEG (neither he nor I work for the companies backing XrML).

      Real's original rights language, XCML, was rolled into [coverpages.org] ODRL. ODRL was one of the standards that lost out so maybe that partly explains the strange logic.

  • scary... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Em Emalb ( 452530 ) <ememalb.gmail@com> on Thursday January 31, 2002 @08:58AM (#2930167) Homepage Journal
    "When the listener opens his email he finds the track and licence in his mailbox and may play the music. The content owner - in this case Radio 538 - has the choice to allow cd burning or not; to listen for a week, a month, or forever - whatever they agree to with the artist can be set in the business model."

    Ok, so I pay for this track, probably can't burn it, move it to another device, I don't know how long I have it for, and they can take it from me at anytime? This is a good thing?

    It's a good thing we are all sheep to be led blindly through the world. Technology like this scares the hell out of me. I pray people will wake up and say gosh damnit, we are tired of this shit and we ARE NOT going to take it anymore.
    • Ok, so I pay for this track, probably can't burn it, move it to another device, I don't know how long I have it for, and they can take it from me at anytime? This is a good thing?

      Think of it as renting a track, just as you may rent DVDs now. As long as you are informed of the model and there are ways to purchase the track forever (i.e. by buying a CD) then there is no real issue there.

      And they can't take it away at any time - this would be violation of licensing agreement.

  • When will they learn? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Squeak ( 10756 )
    "By definition a standard drm is less secure than a proprietary one," says Gregg Makuch, senior product manager for mobile product and services at Seattle-based Realnetworks.

    You cannot implement DRM without some form of encryption and time after time, closed proprietary encryption routine have proved to be flawed. Security through obscurity cannot be relied on to remain secure.

    Examine three possible scenarios:
    1) They develop a perfect, crack proof, implementation,either proprietary or open standard. Great (for them)! But how likely is this to happen?

    2) They develop a flawed (crackable) implementation of an open standard. This is quickly broken and all media content released up to that point, which will be comparatibly little, becomes available. They patch the flaw and issue an automatic upgrade to the firmware. (This is likely to be possible - if they want to control content then they are likely to want to have control over the platform too - and if it isn't, well, people often upgrade their phones quite often anyway.) Then version 2 gets cracked, and so on until they get it right, probably at about version 5.

    3) They develop a flawed implementation of an proprietary method. This gets cracked too of course, but probably takes a little longer. Hence, a greater volume of content is now available unprotected. The patch and recrack cycle continues until they get it right.

    From the media owner point of view scenario 1 is preferable and they lose out the most with scenario 3. Scenario 2 is a workable compromise.

    Which is most likely to happen?
  • Quote from the article:
    Websites like Napster, which created the expectation that content should be free to download, copy and disseminate, caught the music industry off guard.

    it's the second sentence and after 3 words the article lost my attention. AFAIK Napster [napster.com] does have a website but the system itself doesn't use it.

    When people get kid-stuff like that wrong I really don't think they should be writing stuff like this. I had an aunt who used to disconnect after 'surfing the web', then dial back in to collect het E-mail...

    The internet contains more than websites and not every service on the internet is a website...

  • Who's going to do this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dr. Spork ( 142693 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @09:08AM (#2930189)
    I am quite unafraid of these developments. I never expect to download media to a handheld device. If I want control over the songs I listen to while I jog or sit on the train, I'll bring an iPaq or something similar. If I want someone else to pick the music for me, I'll tune to the radio. If I want the internet... well, that part will stay free.

    Who the hell do they think will pay for media streamed to handhelds? I can only vaguely imagine such people (the types that leave their cell phones on in the opera house). I won't shed a tear if it turns out that MS milks them.

    Besides, if portable devices are connected to the internet with decent bandwidth, I'm sure that computer-only services that provide media without DRM will make a mobile device frontend, and you'll be able to get the same media on the handheld. Still, I don't quite see the point, but maybe that's a sign I'm getting old.

    • If I want the internet... well, that part will stay free.

      No it won't, that's just the point of these scheme's; you get a broadband wireless connection explicitly for the purpose of downloading media from where ever, you don't need it to call home!
      And just that added benefit (at a high price!) is being frustrated by these drm scheme's, for sure such a device will refuse to play any content that does not have the proper signature, regardless where it came from.

      • ... such a device will refuse to play any content that does not have the proper signature, regardless where it came from.

        Oh, I see. This wasn't in the article, though--it was strictly about downloading and streaming media to handhelds. It's quite possible you're right. However, if consumers can't freely load their legally created MP3s into a certain PDA, this will create a pretty big market for alternative PDAs that do allow this. (This will break no law; cf. the Rio decision.) As storage density increases further, media files on general-purpose handhelds will make sense. Still, the worst case scenario is that you have to carry around two separate devices: one for scheduling/games/etc. and the other for media playback iPaq style.

  • They repeat the same erroneous statement "... a standard DRM is not as secure as a proprietary one..." Stupidity #1: security through obscurity.

    The next stupidity is the assumption that I want to [watch movies|listen to music] on my cellphone. Until my phone becomes a general purpose PDA, I want to do one thing only on my phone - communicate.

    The third stupidity is the assumption that, given that I want to "experience content" on my phone/PDA, that I am willing to pay over and over again to do so. DiVX died, get over it. I've paid for it, it's on my damn PDA, I want to enjoy it over and over again.

    Oh well - their "proprietary" DRM will be like unto the cheese of the Swiss, and the righteous will properly manage their rights.
    • "They repeat the same erroneous statement "... a standard DRM is not as secure as a proprietary one..." Stupidity #1: security through obscurity. "

      It doesn't matter how open or closed the DRM system is. If the law states bypassing DRM (for any reason) is illegal, that's all they need.

      BTW, a proprietary DRM has these benefits to the company:
      1. Can license the scheme to other content providers
      2. can be done in house or on contract to lower costs. I know standards based DRMs may be lower but corporations don't think that way.

      "The next stupidity is the assumption that I want to [watch movies|listen to music] on my cellphone. Until my phone becomes a general purpose PDA, I want to do one thing only on my phone - communicate."

      Agreed. And I don't even own a mobile phone or pager.

      But I can see the Bells offering Satelitte music to GSM cell phones for a fee in the near future. Just hook up some headphones and pay the $3.00 access fee. You already pay all kinds of silly little fees, don't you?

      "The third stupidity is the assumption that, given that I want to "experience content" on my phone/PDA, that I am willing to pay over and over again to do so."

      People already rent the same movie more than once. Some people even see the same movie more than once while it is still in the theater. There will always be suckers for this kind of thing.

      I expect a wave of "content providers" and consumer electronics manufacturers merging in the next 5 years. Its what is necessary if any of these visions are to occur because you need to control all aspects of content creation, distribution, and playback. Right now you have seperate industries with conflicting goals. Once they start merging you'll see the 3-5 big players in each industry being the same 3-5 big players in ALL industries: manufacturing, distribution and end user sales.

      We can all turn off the TV and say "no" but I am increasingly of the opinion that it really doesn't matter.

  • Common Sense Gone South? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TicTacTux ( 99149 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @09:15AM (#2930204) Homepage
    Okay, for two bucks I give you the right to look at me for one hour. (Staring costs extra). After that period you're forced to look somewhere else, please. Note that I am not only the content owner, I am the content myself...

    Just because it is technologically possible it does not mean it makes *sense*. The end effect of this behaviour is utter egoism, nothing else. I understand a musician needs a beer or a pizza from time to time. I also understand he/she does her stuff primarily for their own satisfaction. Making money off it is a welcome side effect. If we start to pervert this into its contrary, we better get prepared to have transponders implanted, and after an afternoon's walk through the park we're getting charged for 'services' we did not even dream of using.

    Maybe those technocrats and lawyers should have their EQ checked. Good night when making a buck is the only or primary motivation for anything...

    • I live in the south, and yes it is here.
    • I understand a musician needs a beer or a pizza from time to time. I also understand he/she does her stuff primarily for their own satisfaction. Making money off it is a welcome side effect.
      Needless to say, as far as the music industry is concerned, they put money in, they get music out, and they sell that music under whatever conditions provide them with as much profit as possible. Unfortunately, the most profitable music is unlikely to be the best music. And those musicians who don't make massive profits for the industry are screwed even worse than the music consumer. (Do you like being called a "consumer"? Well, the music industry are trying to redefine musicians as "hired workers" and thus obtain ALL legal control over their music.)

      Someone suggested that we just stop buying their music. I couldn't agree more, but I shouldn't need to point out that the music industry doesn't make most of its profit out of the /. readership. As long as the world's sheep (sorry, consumers) continue to feed the music machine, the music machine will continue to have enough money to feed the lawmaking machine, and thus obtain even control over even more aspects of our lives which have nothing to do with them.

      </PESSIMISM>

  • House of cards (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pointym5 ( 128908 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @09:20AM (#2930218)
    It's interesting that no mention at all is made in the article of the fact that the success of any DRM scheme is utterly dependent upon the legal foundation of DMCA-like laws. The details of the various schemes are unimportant, and their currently escalating sophistication is simply a passing phase. Eventually it will become clear that all that matters is the threat of criminal punishment at the hands of compliant governments. All these fancy cryptosystems will devolve to the ROT-13 level of complexity.

    This is not meant as a joke or a troll. Why, in the long run, should anybody invest in expensive complex technologies when simple cheap ones satisfying the letter of the law will suffice? As successive DRM implementations fall before the incessant pressure of educated people bent on their defeat, corporate interests whose profit stream rests on control of their "intellectual property" will throw up their hands and cry "terrorist!" to a Senate committee. Mark my words.
    • DRM implementors vs "hackers" is like a game of cat and mouse.

      But the mouse is often faster than the cat, and gets away.

      The DMCA [cornell.edu] makes it illegal for the mouse to run, and if it does, a big elephant (US Federal gov't) will stomp on it.

    • Yup now I understand what the guy meant with this statement:
      "By definition a standard drm is less secure than a proprietary one," says Gregg Makuch, senior product manager for mobile product and services at Seattle-based Realnetworks.

      He wasn't talking about technological security. He was talking about legal security. An open standard doesn't need to be reverse-engineered, the DMCA won't help. Any proprietary DRM mechanism provides security even if it's simple to crack, because they can use the DMCA to sue everyone into oblivion who dares to crack it.

      At first I though this manager was just plain dumb (like most of them are when it comes to security), now I'm not so sure after all.
  • The user pays a content charge of between 150 and 350 yen per track, and there is a monthly fee of 200 yen to use the M-stage service.

    I don't know a hellofa lot of users, which are willing to pay 1.50 through 3.50 Euros for one single track (which they can't do as they please, due to DRM).

    Could it be, that it's this applied greed-freak scheme that prevented the breakthrough of those commercial online music offerings?

    And no; I don't download my music from the net.

  • You're guilty until you buy an expensive lawyer to prove your innocence.

  • Unbeatable Method of Defeating Content Control (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @09:30AM (#2930241) Homepage Journal
    The big media companies keep talking about content control. The ultimate goals of content control are to charge every single person who partakes of the content every time they partake of the content and also to install such a formidable barrier of entry to the content generation business that the only way to publish your work on a large scale would be to enter into contracts unfavorable to you with some giant mega-corporation.

    What I am about to tell you is 100% legal under the DMCA (Not that that will prevent these companies from attempting to file lawsuits.) It is an absolutely effective method of defeating any content control, and it is your only hope of retaining any rights against the giant mega-corporations. It is so dangerous to them that I am really surprised that they have not yet attempted to pass a law to stop it forever.

    What's this big secret (I hear you cry?) It is simply this: Don't consume their content. Do some research. Find that club that's playing that local band. Go see a live play. Find other ways to amuse yourself. Dropping those multiple billions of dollars a year that we collectively spend into the local economy rather than into the pockets of some mega-corporation would take its toll fairly quickly.

    Someone's bound to reply "You could write your congressman" but come on -- Your congressman gets a letter from you and from Sony. The Sony letter has a nice fat check in it. Guess which letter he's going to open first. Guess which one he pays the most attention to. The Enron collapse demonstrates just how much power the corporations actually have in this country, and Congress may make mouth-flappy-noises about campaign finance reform but it is not going to happen. They'd never put any teeth into any laws they make even if they do pass some. Americans just didn't get pissed off enough about it.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Well, they cost employees/shareholders billions of dollars by lying about how much debt and revenue they actually had. How did they get away with that deception up until they imploded?

        They got to where they are (well, were, before the collapse) by trading on political influence. And corruption like that is not good for the country.

        • Well, they cost employees/shareholders billions of dollars by lying about how much debt and revenue they actually had.



          Agreed.



          They got to where they are (well, were, before the collapse) by trading on political influence.



          Hogwash. Yes, they made huge contributions to political parties and candidates. But they hid debt in accounting entities. The poorly-formed accounting standards were and are there for any corporation to abuse. Nothing special was done by the government for Enron with regard to accounting standards. It might make you feel better to rail on evil corporations or politicians, but the fact is, this abuse happens regardless of how much money is sent to politicians.

          • They were able to hide their debt in offshore companies by lobbying Congress and the regulatory agencies to exempt them from the rules preventing them from doing that.

            Those rules were enacted in response to companies doing exactly what Enron did to defraud their investors.
          • Hogwash. Yes, they made huge contributions to political parties and candidates. But they hid debt in accounting entities. The poorly-formed accounting standards were and are there for any corporation to abuse. Nothing special was done by the government for Enron with regard to accounting standards.

            Here's a link for you: Gramms regulated Enron, benefited from ties [chicagotribune.com]

            The accounting rules that Enron got to exploit were created especialy for them - search for 'Enron exemption'.

            Another link : Exemption Won in 1997 Set Stage for Enron Woes [nytimes.com] [NYT, registration]

            It might make you feel better to rail on evil corporations or politicians, but the fact is, this abuse happens regardless of how much money is sent to politicians.

            If you can back that up, I would be very interested in hearing more about it. I've always assumed the opposite.

            Oh, and try to relax. Just because I don't currently share your view, doesn't mean I'm not interested in learning about your perspective.

            • try to relax ...


              Hey, I am relaxed, but thanks for caring. 8-)


              The Chicago Tribune article refers to regulation of energy trading contracts "that Enron and other companies traded." Deregulating commodity trading has nothing to do with how a company hides assets or liabilities or losses in special-purpose entities. See this story [businessweek.com] [Business Week] for a history of the use of SPEs. Enron is not the only company to take "advantage" of special-purpose entities. They became popular in the 80s - long before Enron's rise to power.


              We can argue forever about to what degree campaign and political contributions influence politician's behavior. I'd have to agree that there is some influence. Politicians are human, after all - albiet a much lower form of human life than /. readers. I'd have to argue, though, that ego is likely as large an influence on public figures. Look at Al Sharpton and Rush Limbaugh. Opposite sides of the political fence, but both obviously enamored with the attention they get and willing to do what it takes to get more attention. I can pull more examples from the left and right on this.

      • Because very favorable laws were passed in the energy deregulation and accounting arenas. Had those laws not been passed, Enron's finanical state would have seen the light of day a lot earlier. And Enron and Arthur Anderson both spent a lot of money lobbying Congress for those favorable laws. Check out opensecrets.org. You can search on Enron or click on the Enron and Anderson links at the top of the page over toward the left.
      • Yes, you are. Enron collapsed because they made a HUGE bet on continued deregulation. When the California energy market imploded, deregulation went bye bye, and Enron lost big. REAL big. Deregulation was allowing Enron to cash in on the massive price gouging going on in the energy market, and they were hiding their debts with this huge amount of cash flow.

        Bye bye deregulation, hello reality for Enron.
    • Another unbeatable method of defeating content control would be to hire an army of ninja space monkeys to beat up all those monopolistic corporations.

      You may think it's not realistic, but then again neither is the idea that you're going to get so much as 0.1% of people to even reduce their consumption of this content. It's a nice thought and all, but it's a pipe dream. Even on Slashdot many people are all excited about the upcoming Star Wars and Spiderman movies. Do you think they're going to stay home just to stiff some big company of $7.50? It's not even a drop in the bucket, it's a freaking molecule.

    • The Sony letter has a nice fat check in it. Guess which letter he's going to open first. Guess which one he pays the most attention to.

      I read an interesting article yesterday about a commission in Canada that wants to ban political contributions by corporations. (here [cbc.ca])

      What is interesting to note is:

      - It's not just crazy people like Slashdotters who think corporate money is trouble.

      - One political party in Canada already refuses to accept corporate donations, and the leader of another party says he would consider doing the same thing. (He states that the party that currently holds power gets the greatest benefit from corporate donations.) Unfortunately, these are the two parties that have the least number of seats at the moment.

      - Two provinces in Canada already ban corporate donations. (Quebec and Manitoba.)

      Sounds like a good idea to me. :-)

  • When the listener opens his email he finds the track and licence in his mailbox and may play the
    music.


    Cool. They dare to ask the user to click on a flashy animation of e. g. Christina Aguilera in his inbox, while everyone else told him NOT to click on obscure attachments...

    The only thing he'll get to hear is his w1nd0z3 box blowing the whistle(r)...
  • ... provides insight into how they imagine user-hostile digital right management systems

    To me, "user-hostile" sounds too impersonal. I suggest "customer-hostile" instead. I think it better captures the contempt the industry feels for the people who buy their products.

    It's also easier to say than, "I spent my hard-earned dollars on your over-priced, lowest-common-denominator tripe and now you're telling me I can't even play it how and when I want!?!"

    • We're talking about hard-wired mobile devices here. They can't be reprogrammed, so they'll end up being hostile to all of their users, restricting what every user can do regardless of whether he wants to become a customer of theirs or not.
  • None of this security will work as long as you can download files to a phone via a PC the. Take the Nokia 5510 [nokia.com] for example, Nokia has put digital rights management in place (ala Sony Memory Stick).... this can now be circumnavigated quite easily. The cat is out of the bag, trying to stuff the blighter back in using a crowbar will never work!
  • And I'd pay money for these so-called services because ... ???
  • Duhl expects to see kiosks appearing where users can plug in their mobile device and download music directly via a music subscription service.

    I am reminded of in"duh"viduals [dilbert.com] as seem in Dilbert.

    just a mental image.

    The pay services have not been doing well so well. But I suppose they will do as well as those soda machines out in the street selling 5 dollar sodas. Only the truly desperate will stoop to purchase the warm bottles, cans, whatever.

  • Until they manage to put decryptors in my eyes and descramblers in my ears copy protections is a load of bs no matter how much they spend on it. I will choose to honor a copyright or not, just like everyone else out there.

    Let's stop waisting all our resources on this planet trying to protect that easy money tree of the 1900s and spend some time inventing new ones for the next centry.

  • Repeat after me ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Aceticon ( 140883 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @11:06AM (#2930556)
    A mobile phone is a device for social iteraction.

    That's right boys and girls - the biggest use of mobile is to comunicate with other people.

    Now comes 3G - brand new, lotsa bandwidth.

    What's the first thing the so-called industry experts think about?
    - Let's use mobile phones as a way to deliver content to people - basically a glorified pay-per-use portable televison and radio in one.

    Immediatly followed by:
    - Let's protect the content from being redistributed by the users - no sending of copyrighted music to your friends buddy.

    Wake up!!!

    If instead of all this bulls*it mobile phone companies would create an open architecture that allows costumers to send anything to other costumers ( the mother of all P2P services ) there could be loads of money to be made ( just charge by the KByte ).

    Cheeesh ....

  • Telesaur-Rex in a Tar Pit (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cotu ( 412872 )
    Yeah, it all sounds very, very scary... Big old Telesaur Rex
    gnatching his teeth, and growling at the top of this lungs...
    except for the fact that 802.11 is still here and still not
    monopolized by the telesaurs. Oh, by the way,
    hotspotting with 802.11 to not chew up their precious
    cellular spectrum is seen as very attractive too by the
    telesaurs, hence you'll eventually see dual mode wireless
    widgets even if nobody got the bright idea that hooking
    up to a cheap 802.11 network -- maybe for free in various
    places -- would be a cool thing to do with your cell
    phones and wireless widgets.

    But the real thing that makes the garden walls most
    suspect as a business model is all it takes is for one the
    telesaurs to blink and plug it into the Internet. AOL
    thought they had the ultimate walled garden too,
    but in the end they finally blinked because there was far
    too much content elsewhere and people would have left.
    This isn't exactly the same, but the prospect of lots of
    cheap 802.11 coverage (ie, retail, business, airports...)
    which will clearly just drop directly off onto the Internet
    will make their garden walls a lot more like a tar pit than
    a gold mine.

    -- Mike
  • I've heard a lot of people say "I don't want content on my phone." I think you should wake up. It would be great to have a real wireless web browser on your phone. You stand in the middle of downtown Austin, TX and you google "Indian restaraunt and Austin" and "Austin Movie Theatres" to get the showtimes and decide if you have to time to eat before the show, or better yet after. I'm not talking about in your home town, I mean when you're outta town. Having the web in your palm makes everywhere seem more like home. This goes for content too. No briefcase---you've got the three condensed matter preprints you want to read in your phone in your hand, you're favorite tunes to jog to, and a movie to watch on the flight home. Put your lecture notes there as well. But what about your porn? I mean, at home you can just go into the adult bookstore and buy some DVDs and mags without identifying yourself. But with digital rights management, I find the most serious problem is that of remaining an anonymous consumer. Let's stipulate that you want content on your phone (you do, you do! trust me). Let's stipulate that you'll pay for it (why not? you pay for that shit now). Let's even say you're willing to pay to use it once (you go to concerts sometimes, or even movie theatres after all). But you DON'T want to identify yourself and you certainly don't want your phone company acting as a central broker with records of everything you do (except the meat stuff like eat). Most every other content for which you pay and only get to enjoy one time can be done anonymously: such as attend a concert, sit in a movie theatre, go to a lecture, read a book (ok, sometime people reread books, but not too many). I'm gay and I don't want to identify myself as buying gay erotic fiction to read on my phone while I stay in hotels during professional conferences. I want the content, but not the way that digital rights management software will deliver. Anyway, you get the point.

  • All DRM systems will be cracked. All media can be re-recorded. The content companies are stupid greedy thugs. The DMCA was bought and paid for with the dollars you spend on CDs and DVDs.

    I hope the corps hurry up with these products so we can get started cracking them.

  • An interesting read is content is *not* king [firstmonday.dk]

    Bottom line the way to make profit is to encourage people to communicate!
  • And what do the Phone Companies think of this?
    Their broadband licences have prooven too expensive for quite a few and now they get another obstacle in the way of selling this service.

    As soon as there is one Phone Company not using such a rights-management system (why should they??) they'll be the top of the crop overnight!

  • I think this will be great! Nothing like a complex puzzle to solve! It will be a good challenge for everyone involved. There is no such thing as "perfect encryption". If I can view it or hear it.... it CAN be cracked somehow!

    I wonder if they have been watching Oracle and Larry Ellison? "Unbreakable" HA! There is no such thing. How long before we're swapping DivX and MP3s for free via our 3G phones??
  • This will go over big with the sheep out there. You know the ones that buy Britney Spears and the boy bands and all the other suck-ass pseudo musicians out there who are popular because the media machine says they are. Most of who get all their spending money from mommy and daddy. What do they care if it cost micro-cents to listen to the same damn song over and over again. Even if it is the same one they play on the radio over and over again. Screw 'em! I'm happy listening to my Hawkwind and Blue Cheer and MC5 LP's.
  • ...but for all those who are not sure, let me clarify.

    • The content owner - in this case Radio 538 - has the choice to allow cd burning or not; to listen for a week, a month, or forever - whatever they agree to with the artist can be set in the business model.

    Okay, firstly I must admit I'm not a musician. But I am an "artist". A writer, to be precise. So I feel I'm in a better position than most to tell you that this kind of thing has nothing to do with the artist. Well, barring all those greedy jerkoffs out there who are generally the ones spewing out second rate shit anyway, with little appreciation for the art they profess to create due to their own lack of any real talent.

    Uh, where was I before the rant fever almost dragged me into the pits of madness? Someone who is genuinely good at creating original art, who has this old, mostly-forgotten thing called "talent" (not synonymous with "talent", a word touted a lot by cheesy music shows etc), actually gets a lot more from the act of creating than from the act of peddling their creations for magic fish (money). However, the fact that magic fish will allow them to live a comfortable life, and continue to create, is a useful wee fact and serves to propagate a cycle of sorts, where artist creates, gets magic fish, creates more art.

    Now, maybe I'm completely off base because I have no experience in the musical arts and it's possible, I suppose, that somehow musicians are all a pack of narcissistic leeches, but I don't think that a true artist would support the selfish, gluttonous tactics being pushed into use by the industries. On the other hand, the number of true artists out there is questionable. I don't think that pop artists qualify, because they genuinely do not have talent (it waxes and wanes of course, but the average is close to zero)--they're chosen for their looks, to appeal to the shallow (screaming) teenyboppers with rich parents.

    However, I have heard mutterings, both on Slashdot and elsewhere, of alternative and lesser-known musicians who really oppose DRM, the RIAA and whatever else. The fact that these musicians are "lesser known" and "alternative" leads me to suspect that they are the ones who actually care about what they do, and have real talent, and are mostly unrecognised for it because...well, the public doesn't generally seem interested in talent.

    And now that I've said all that, I have realised that I have absolutely no idea what the point of this post is supposed to be. Perhaps it just got my goat that it is implied that artists are endorsing and profiting from the daylight robbery of previously unquestioned rights, to be replaced with openly audacious tokens that are heavily paid for. Even the artists with no talent don't benefit from that.

    I fear the world we are heading towards if someone or something doesn't intervene. It's going to be a world ruled by several large, rich companies, with 1% of the global population earning 99% of the available money, with a few relatively prosperous countries, while everyone else suffers in poverty. And you may be right, I may well be a pessimistic melodramatist.

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