http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,14756,00.html For Your Eyes Only Media companies are tired of feeling ripped off. New software could stop Napster-like piracy in its tracks and make it profitable to sell entertainment online. By David Orenstein, May 2001 Issue The first response of the movie and music industries to peer-to-peer piracy was to go to court-to make a technology phenomenon into an issue for the lawyers. Round two is shaping up to be exactly the opposite: a legal issue is becoming an issue for the technologists. How so? Digital rights management (DRM) software puts a virtual lawyer into every song, book, and movie. Content owners are betting that a new technology will make it possible to distribute their titles over the Internet without risking widespread piracy. DRM software allows publishers to embed rules in files that precisely define how those files can be used. If a consumer fails to obtain a license for a DRM-protected movie, the movie won't play. If a consumer attempts to watch a movie more than the agreed-upon number of times or for longer than they paid for, the DRM virtual lawyer will put a stop to the show. Media publishers and retailers are encouraged and have begun to launch major trials. In late January, BMG Entertainment made 2,900 songs available for digital downloads through a network of more than 50 Web retailers. Meanwhile, two trials of video on demand were conducted late last year in Cincinnati and in three Western cities. And barnesandnoble.com has been carrying thousands of downloadable e-book titles for more than a year (see "Book Learning," November 14, 2000 issue). The explosion of digital publishing and the much-publicized Napster imbroglio have created a significant market for DRM software, and Microsoft, IBM, and Intertrust are each using their presence during the trial phase to position themselves as the technology of choice. But the market isn't ready to choose. Given that consumer interest in media files exploded when files were free, no one really knows how people will react when they have to pay. The music industry will get a good indication of how well the model-and the software-works when the "Big Five" recording giants put their full catalogs online next year, says GartnerGroup senior analyst P.J. McNealy. How it works In DRM, rules are embedded into files, which the software then encrypts. Wrapped up in an encrypted "container" with its rules, a movie is then released on the Internet. Consumers who pay for a license receive decoder "keys" from clearinghouses or publishers. But even those armed with decoder keys must follow the rules. If a consumer pays for five movie viewings, for example, embedded rules simply will prevent the movie from playing any more than five times-that is, until the license is renewed. Managing the rights for streaming media is a bit different. In video-on-demand trial runs in Seattle, Portland, Ore., and American Fork, Utah, Blockbuster used InterTrust Technologies' software to ensure that rented movie files would stream to customer set-top boxes for no more than 24 hours. To prevent videotape recording, the companies used copy protection software from Macrovision, which inserts signals into the file that confuse VCRs but that go unnoticed by televisions. In the Cincinnati trial, Broadwing and Intertainment are using Microsoft's DRM software. In either case, DRM software provides publishers and retailers with a wide variety of options to set rules. If a retailer runs a subscription service, as Napster plans to do, it could require subscribers to renew their song licenses every month. A site or music label could also allow consumers to burn a song to a CD, but only for an extra charge. And an e-publisher could allow you to share a book with a friend by making available a single copy that can be passed along but not copied. Significant problems could arise, however. One of the biggest: Not all DRM software runs on all players. After all, the companies that write the software are competitors. And for now, they'd rather fight for market share than make life less confusing for consumers. If, for example, you buy a song protected by IBM's software, it won't run in Microsoft's Windows Media Player, which only plays Microsoft-protected files. To listen to the IBM-protected music, you'd have to obtain another player. Ultimately, some player makers such as RealNetworks, Liquid Audio, or MusicMatch might run all DRM software on virtually any music-playing device, but such universality would require scores of business deals and an enormous amount of technical work. Beyond that, consumers may be forced to upgrade their portable players to accommodate DRM, something they may be unwilling to do. And no one really knows if DRM software can actually secure files. Few DRM-encrypted digital downloads have been available for long, so hackers haven't had much of a chance to find weak spots. Why bother? aaa start insert Sensitive Secrets Doctors, lawyers, and drm. Digital rights management technology can do more than just control who listens to a Radiohead track; it can also control who sees and edits sensitive business documents such as budgets, medical records, and even trade secrets. For example, McGuireWoods, a national law firm based in Richmond, Va., uses DRM software to ensure that opposing lawyers do not misuse the documents they obtain during litigation, says Rodney Satterwhite, the firm's general counsel for knowledge management. "We get paid to worry," Satterwhite says. Rather than rely on blind faith that its opponents will act in good faith, the firm protects trade secrets with Authentica's PageRecall software, which converts documents into specially encrypted Adobe Acrobat files. Using PageRecall, McGuireWoods can ensure that only the opposing lawyer herself can open the file. Meanwhile, the firm can block her from copying or printing it, say, for her client's product development team. The firm can make the documents totally unreadable after the litigation ends, Satterwhite says. Protecting business information with encryption is not new, of course, but DRM presents a more versatile set of options than encryption's simple, "Joe can open this budget plan but Phil cannot." DRM also enables more precise use and distribution of information. Certain parts of a protected medical record, for example, would be visible to everyone who has access to it, but sensitive sections could be read only by the patient and his doctor. Versatile as it is, DRM may never be a really big hit in business, says Forrester Research analyst Eric Scheirer. It may be more trouble than it's worth unless privacy and security are absolutely paramount. On the other hand, hackers may not even bother to crack DRM encryption because it's so easy to pirate songs and movies from DVDs, CDs, and VHS tapes, says Forrester Research analyst Eric Scheirer. Twelve-year-olds can easily "rip" songs from music CDs to distribute far and wide. And better compression and cheaper bandwidth will make movies an increasingly attractive target. Scheirer argues that such end runs by consumers will eventually kill the retail prospects of DRM. Instead, publishers may use it to syndicate content or to retain control over retail pricing. In the end, DRM may prove more useful for protecting certain medical records, legal documents, and sensitive corporate memos. Nevertheless, publishers seem confident that DRM will solve the piracy problem. Blockbuster and Enron's video-on-demand trial program would never have drawn participation from studios such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer without DRM technology, says Blockbuster spokesperson Liz Greene. "DRM is vital," says David Bishop, president and COO of Home Entertainment at MGM. "We can make [piracy] difficult enough that someone won't spend 150 hours of their life breaking into something that they could have purchased for $3.99 or $4.99." The industry's confidence in DRM, of course, makes perfect sense. No sizable company would do business without an army of lawyers, so why not enlist an army of virtual ones, too? http://bill.verity-networks.com/timeline/t_frame.html TIMELINE: of technology, copyright laws, etc from http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-8-40-31.jsp Let's Share! Richard Stallman 30 - 5 - 2002 New technologies have altered the consequences of a copyright bargain struck three centuries ago. Stallman argues that sharing is more important than profit, and that copyright needs to change drastically in a digital age. zzz licences, copyrights, patents, trademarks and such. perpetual copyright: Peter Pan, Mickey Mouse AND DO THOSE REQUIRED READINGS! Paper from the CACM - by Niv Ahitov "The Open Information Society" Lawrence Lessig The Architecture of Privacy Draft 2. Essay presented at the Taiwan Net '98 conference, in Taipei, March, 1998. http://modiin.njit.edu/Courses/pervasivec/AssignedReadings.asp Papers from recent issue of CACM on Digital Rights Management. Communications of the ACM Volume 46 , Issue 4 (April 2003) Digital rights management SPECIAL ISSUE: Digital rights management and fair use by design >toc "Digital Rights Management and Hair Use by Design"