Is DRM possible?
Posted on:: December 10th, 2003
Kevin Marks suggests that the Church Turing Thesis — any computer can emulate any other — means we’ll be able to emulate our way around any DRM scheme. He points to the MAME emulators that let you run old games.
But — despite Church, Turing and the Darknet paper — will DRM, combined with digitalID and “trusted” computing, raise the bar so high that you’ll have to be a hacker to get around DRM even for Fair Use purposes? If so, then DRM will have forever altered the economics and ethos of the Internet, primarily (IMO) for the worse.
(Kevin also points to the wonderful Bayeux Tapestry Construction Kit.)
Categories: Uncategorized dw
If you talk to sensible people in the field, like Biddle, they concede my point.
The DRM Destroys Value economic argument is the other half of this – DRM’d content is worth less to customers. Companies that choose to forego that much value lose out to those that give the customers what they want.
See Jessica Litman’s ‘Sharing and Stealing’ essay as another example of how freedom beats constraint.
Actually, it’s clear to me that DRM is nothing but a delaying tactic by media companies.
It will be hacked. Hacking it will be reduced to a point and click GUI that anyone can use.
Today, it is trivial to copy a DVD these days. At one point, CSS was formidable, now it’s a joke.
The coming shift in the marketplace toward electonic media from physical media is terrifying to the people that make money selling CDs and DVDs. I know these people and they want the DVD era to last as long as possible.
It can all be hacked eventually
I suspect that Microsoft is perfectly aware that whatever DRM system they build into the next Windows will be cracked — or users will simply pass around music and videos using non-DRM file formats.
But if Microsoft can convince Hollywood that they have this super-strong proprietary DRM technology built into Windows, then major movie studios and record labels will agree to distribute their stuff in that format, and Microsoft will use this as an incentive to get users to upgrade.
If Microsoft’s DRM system is cracked after everybody on the planet has upgraded to Windows 2005 Multimedia Edition (or whatever they call it), Bill Gates won’t care. He’ll be too busy mapping out the company’s strategy for selling Windows 2010.
DRM is a big joke if someone wants a COPY of a movie or music file THEY WILL GET IT no matter what DRM is in use at the time the recording industry is wasting time and money on this technology that doesn’t even work