[DMCA-Activists] Wired: "Squishy DRM"

[Seth Johnson]

(Forwarded from Digital Bearer Settlement List)

-------- Original Message --------
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 13:50:14 -0400
From: "R. A. Hettinga" <address@hidden>


> http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,55006,00.html


Digital Rights Outlook: Squishy
By Brad King

2:00 a.m. Sep. 12, 2002 PDT

Media companies are singing a new song that could be called
"Get Squishy With It."

The long-running debate over how much digital rights
management is too much has changed. Now it's about just how
much copy protection files should include, and media
companies believe they have the answer: squishy security.


"We need interoperable DRM products that allow people to
never feel the walls (of security)," said Ted Cohen, vice
president of new media at EMI, one of the five major music
labels.

It's not a new idea, but it's starting to resonate with
Congress. At a recent government hearing, Philip Bond,
undersecretary of commerce for technology, opened the debate
by saying that he wanted a world with "a consistent and
reliable and predictable level of legitimate copyright
protection."

That's a frightening turn for consumer advocates and
technologists who argue that DRM fundamentally alters the
way people use their computers, televisions and stereos.

It's the word "legitimate" that bugs consumer advocates
because nobody is quite sure what that means. They argue
that fair use rights -- which allow people to listen to a
copy of a CD in their car, for example -- have eroded in the
quest for security, even the squishy kind.

"Those who aren't for überprotection are being labeled as
pro-piracy," said Robin Gross, staff counsel for the
Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The concern has basis. Judges determine fair use case by
case, but technology companies are being asked to develop
DRM systems that determine ahead of time what people can and
can't do with files. In many cases, there are no precedents
for DRM companies to draw from.

"Technology implementers can only do what they are told to
do, and technology can only do what it's programmed to do,
and right now, they are defining a perverted version of the
law, because that is all they can do," said John Erickson,
systems program manager at Hewlett-Packard's research lab.

With no firm guidelines, technology companies have started
looking for more squishy security measures.

The latest idea comes from Thomson Multimedia. It's a Super
MP3 file with better sound quality. Next year, it will get a
video component as well, allowing entertainment companies to
encode a song along with a video, album cover, lyrics and
other information.

The twist: The Super MP3 will come with a tracking signature
-- a digital fingerprint -- that will identify the PC that
made it.

"People will pay for better MP3s," said Henry Linde, Thomson
Multimedia's vice president of new media business. "If the
MP3 file that Brad King encodes shows up on a system, we
will know where it comes from. We call it lightweight DRM,
but it won't prevent you from doing anything."

It's radically different from Microsoft's solution, which
comes with proactive restrictions.

The DRM debate has been contentious. Entertainment companies
claim they've been losing their shirts, while technology
companies say the restrictions prohibit them from creating
new products.

Music and movies are flying across file-trading networks,
available on demand for millions of Internet users
worldwide. Napster brought the debate to the masses. The
five major record labels sued Napster, which had 70 million
users at the time. The Recording Industry Association of
America claims $4 billion in losses, and the Motion Picture
Association of America claims it's lost $3 billion -- though
it doesn't quantify physical versus digital piracy.

Such figures are suspect, however, because they guess at
potential losses, which haven't always held up to further
scrutiny.

When the FBI cracked down on hackers in 1990 for snatching
and posting a confidential technical 911 phone manual, the
prosecutors put a price tag of $79,449 on the document,
according to Bruce Sterling's account in The Hacker
Crackdown. The figure was based on labor, hardware and
software costs.

Defense lawyers countered that AT&T sold a similar document
to the general public for $13.

It's true that millions of people are sharing files through
networks like Kazaa and Gnutella and instant messenger
programs like AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. But
it's impossible to put an accurate dollar figure on how much
-- or even if -- it's costing the entertainment business.

It's the staggeringly quick adoption of technology, and the
speed with which it's improving, that has media companies
searching for answers -- even squishy ones.

"As technology makes things easier to do, the concepts we
grew up with -- sharing a tape with a friend, making a mixed
tape -- turned from sharing an LP with a friend into
plugging in an iPod and downloading 1,000 songs in eight
minutes," said Cohen. "That may have to change."

-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: address@hidden>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation
<http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and
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