Archive for the 'DRM' category

IDEC - Institute for Consumer Defense - is the largest consumer association in Brazil. It lauched a campaign against Digital Rights Management (DRM) titled “Tehcnological Restrictions - You pay for it, you get less“.

This is the right question to ask. I waited quite some time before writing about a bizarre issue with Windows Vista. Initially I thought that it was a small bug to be quickly corrected by Microsoft: file copying, file deleting and file moving is apparently very slow in Vista. When we say slow, understand “10-50 times slower than in Windows XP”. Normally, this is a nearly impossible change between two versions of the same Operating System (XP and Vista) and such a bug should be corrected quite easily. But it seems that Microsoft is unable to explain what is happening (let alone correcting the issue).

This is so abnormal, that I start to kick the paranoid mode in. One of the explanations I heard is that if Microsoft is unable to go into details and does not bring a solution is because this is not a bug but a side-effect of an intended feature. The most probable thing coming to mind: Windows Vista includes an extension to the file system that allows to handle more directly Rights Management (DRM and similar). In order to do this, they have to pay a price in performance whenever we want to access to a file.

So, is the long-copy/long-delete bug actually an intended feature of an Operating System hiding more and more anti-user devices? It is the more possible if you remember that before Vista launch Microsoft touted the feature allowing to add a peremption date to files (”file auto-destruct on 31st December next year”) or to limit access to only a limited set of users.

See also: The Register.

The recent news lead me to talk again about digital music and its cohabitation (or lack of) with network technology. As a matter of fact, we learn this week that our new French President is in favor of a strong action against pirated music and downloads. This is not very new, indeed, but the confirmation came from Nicolas Sarkozy quite early after his election. Nearly simultaneously (I see nothing more than a coincidence), Amazon just announced that they would start a new service of online digital music sales that would do completely without copy-protection system (DRM or Digital Rights Management) and would go 100% MP3-only. This is supported by EMI that decided to provide tens of thousands of music titles out of its international catalog.

I admit easily that I am not surprised to see a politician posturing as is expected from his image and adopt an attitude that is based on perceptions but ignoring technical and commercial realities. Nicolas Sarkozy is playing his part in the show as a right wing leader decided to fight all kinds of illegal activities. Nobody should be surprised here. But I contend that this is already an echo from the past and he is missing the light of the future.

Exactly on the opposite, Amazon recognized the commercial reality: Customers do not want those technical anti-copy measures. They go against the legal user (the illegal one does not even see this in the illegal but free MP3 files, of course); They do not stop industrial copy and intense distribution on the P2P networks for example, but they stop the buyer from playing the music title on a player that is nto pre-aprpoved or on the PC of the son’s bedroom, or on the CD-player of Mom’s car, etc.

Amazon, understanding this reality -and certainly also aware that online stores without DRM have better sales/user figures than the others- decided to go and fight directly the current leader of eMusic, Apple iTunes.

Wish them luck! If there will always be poor teenagers ready to sacrifice quality, ease of use, ease of purchase, elegance of the package, etc. (didn’t we copy LPs on dirt cheap tapes when we were young?), a good product will always be a hit.

And if some people insist on telling that the competition of a free product (illegal downloads) can only kill paying products (online music stores), I invite them to consider the tough/relentless competition between a product with a (very very high) price as bottled water and a product (nearly) free like tap water available in nearly all homes (at least in the developed countries). As far as I know, Perrier, Dasani, San Pellegrino, Vittel, Volvic et al. do not petition for a law prohibiting tap water. Those companies and brands offer a product with very notables advantages and make a nice profit out of it.

This is free advertising for a major launch of a DRM-free online store: AllAboutJazz.com sells jazz music online without any DRM included.

Since the AACS (the protection of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray against copying) is technically broken, there was only one lock left: after unlocking tools, there was the need for the publication of the needed key to allow easy operation.

The MPAA tries to ban this famous key number from the Internet while it keeps popping up everywhere. This week, it’s the rage all other the web: Let’s publish the key.

09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0

Internet users visibly do not want to be stuck again with one of those technical measures that do not (and cannot) stop real pirates and are creating more problem for loyal users/buyers. So, this is quite a large movement we are participating to.

One of the sources: The Inquirer.

Microsoft promised that the new graphics standard for Windows (DirectX 10) will not be applied to anything older than Windows Vista. This was enough to push some people in looking for ways to make it work on Windows XP (WinXP), or on Mac, or on Linux. A guy, named Cody Brocious from San Diego, California, claims to have had the first success at this. He created a wrapping code to make those DirectX 10 appplications (mostly games) run on Windows XP and even on some DirectX 9 hardware.

That could quickly become one of the most interesting development in video games for Windows this year.

Cody Brocious official Project Alky blog.

From the Inquirer.

It’s all over the place today: German MusicLoad revealed that 75% of its customer support calls were about complaining around the problems created by the inclusion of Digital Rigths Management (DRM) in the MP3 files they sell.

Coming from a company that is living from the sale of legal MP3s, it has a lot of weight. Up to now, that was repeated in many circles, but the music major producers where denying it or downplaying it. Now, it comes from one of the inner circles.

We told you that DRM is annoying (or more) the legal-minded user who bought a DRM-infected file, but leaves the pirates able to plainly use the files in the most usual and natural way. More than one user decided to download the file from P2P just to get rid of the annoyance.

I have at home an “English patient” DVD that repetetively refuses to start in my Home Cinema PC (I don’t have any other DVD player). Maybe I should download a copy from BitTorrent, leave the DVD box on its shelf and watch the movie.

My suggestion is not “go and pirate!”, but it’s call to arms for the marketing departments of these music producers. The customers want music, they are ready to pay for it (look at iTunes and MusicLoad, to name two), but they don’t want the hassles of those protections. Being blind to customer needs is a doomed approach to business. Start listening and P2P will become less of a problem (being free is not an overwhelming advantage: Perrier is selling bottled water and does not complain about the virtually free water on tap).

Believe it or not, this is what Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, just told to financial analysts. He was trying to explain why the actual sales are already considered as much lower than the initial MS estimation. Apaprently, the most exotic countries (China, Russia, South East Asia) are on the list of the accused. But wouldn’t it be possible that the reason lies in selling Vista at an horrendous price while bringing only a cute new interface and potential problems with a rights management technology that will lead to more problems than solutions for the average user?

The solution (according to Steve): A re-inforced fight against piracy and a stricter WGA system. It’s only the beginning…

The music industry is a large ship that moves slowly. But when they saw the arrival of the Internet, most of this industry decided to jump onto technical measures to close and protect the music they produce in order to protect their rights: Hence the Digital Rights Management (DRM). Today, things did not really change, but they could.

Two informations of today:

• Warner is loosing money (benefits reduced by 74% in the last quarter of 2006). Its CEO commenting on the recent call by Steve Jobs for dropping DRM, said that they do not intend to stop DRM. Ever. [1]
• According to the Wall Street Journal, EMI would be talking to music distributors about the possibility of removing all copy protections while publishing electronically the largest part of its catalogue. Since EMI was also the company that actually tried distribution without DRM in the recent months, they may have learned that it’s what the consumers want in order to by music online. [2]

If you regularly read the news on this site, you know that I am not fully in favor of buying an OS software that could well be more expensive than the computer holding it (more than 500€ for the richer version of Vista). But I did not expect the announcement made by Alex St. John, chief executive of video game producer WildTangent.

Security went to the front line while developing Vista (who could complain?), but this comes against functionality. And video games are definitely sensitive applications because they include so many different functions. In-game saving may become difficult with the presence of the Rights Management feature of Vista, game network features will soon become a nightmare and ESRB video game classification (allowing total control for parents over what their children can or can’t do on their computer) has decided to deny games already installed or not yet rated (the vast majority).

Again: I advise you not to rush to install the yet-to-be-sweetened Vista…

Origin: TG daily.

For those of you who want to know where technology-based content protection is naturally leading:

Thanks to XKCD.

We already talked about it here at length: Devices willing to handle High Definition (HD) video have to (or will have to) be all HDCP-compatible in order to be able to display anything. Recent Christmas holiday season sales will probably soon appear as somewhat lacking in this section (most of the HD-Ready TV sets don’t even include an HDMI connecteor that is a needed but definitely not sufficient pre-requirement).

Today, we start to hear about incidents for users of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) game console from Sony. When connected to TV-HD sets, some consoles see their display cut by some blacks and their sound dropping, etc. It is now confirmed that this is caused by a bug in the communication between the TV set and the console. Since the TV does not respond fast enough to the HDCP challenge from the console, this one decides that it is connected to a non-HDCP display peripheral and unilaterally cuts the outputs (sound and image).

(more…)