Mike Masnick wonders if Lala is engaging in Newspeak when it describes its tracks as “DRM-free.” Something certainly smells fishy:
We noted the oddity of supposedly DRM-free files only being able to be loaded onto iPods, since that suggested there clearly was some form of restriction on the files. However, it’s becoming clear that there are certainly some types of DRM being used. In Bob Lefsetz’ latest blog post, he notes that each file has a watermark that identifies its owner, and if you’re not the owner, you won’t be able to play that song. In other words, the supposedly DRM-free tracks… have DRM. It’s just a slightly different type of DRM.
I don’t think this is necessarily true. It’s possible, for example, that it’s just a watermark, in which case the files wouldn’t play in other Lala players but it would play in any other music player. Of course, that would be kind of a stupid business strategy, because it would put your own software at a disadvantage. But maybe the labels, who are not exactly known for their business savvy, were convinced that would be an effective piracy deterrent.
I haven’t had time to look into this in a lot of detail, but so far I haven’t been able to find a clear description of how the watermarking system would work. The Lefsetz reference is rather vague. Does anyone know if Lala has made a clear statement of exactly what format the songs will be in and how the watermarking will work?
Danny O’Brien points out that ATI is releasing software “upgrades” that reduce the functionality of its hardware:
The latest update to ATI’s Catalyst drivers now offers”improved TV quality and Broadcast Flag support which enables full US terrestrial DTV support”.
It’s a little unclear from that README whether the new support is for a new, hardware revision of ATI’s Theater 650 digital TV tuner, or simply a new software implementation of the digital TV copy control for current owners of the Theater 650. However you look at it, though, “broadcast flag support” is hardly an upgrade.
Prior to such support, you could be confident that you could use these cards for their given purpose: to record whatever you want off the air, whenever you want, in whatever format you want. Now, ATI, recently purchased by AMD, is announcing support for equipment’s right to take that power away from you, and substitute a crippled subset of their tuner’s capabilities whenever a broadcaster commands it.
But this isn’t just an unfeature: it’s an unnecessary unfeature. You can have full terrestial HD support without the Broadcast Flag – mainly because thousands of concerned citizens fought hard for that right. AMD must surely have noticed that the Broadcast Flag proposal has been dead for over two years, ever since the courts threw it out as FCC overreach. Thanks in part to your letters and calls, no politician has managed to sneak it into law since.
It doesn’t seem like reducing the functionality of your products is a very good business strategy.
First eMusic, then Yahoo!, then Apple, and now Amazon have joined the anti-DRM camp. This adds momentum to the general perception that DRM-based business models are outdated and on their way out, at least in the music market. It’s only a matter of time before the labels cave.
It’s striking that this announcement is occurring less than a year after the unveiling of Amazon’s Unbox. As I said then, the use of DRM was a major reason the service sucked so much. Thanks to the much larger file sizes, the online movie market is a few years behind the online music market in its evolution. But I think recent developments in the music market presage similar developments in the movie market a few years from now. Ultimately, DRM is a bad business strategy because it doesn’t stop piracy but it does punish your own paying customers. The labels and online music vendors are realizing that now. Hollywood is still in denial, but they’ll figure it out eventually.
I missed this IPI essay when it came out last month. In its opening paragraphs (and its conclusion) the paper purports to be a critique of technologists’ arguments against the DMCA, with my own paper and EFF’s Unintended Consequences as exhibits A and B. There have been relatively few substantive criticisms of my paper (it got little more than a sneer from IPI’s president, for example) so I was excited about the opportunity to read a serious, essay-length critique of my arguments against the DMCA.
Boy was I disappointed.
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I assume most of TLF’s readers are already reading Ed Felten, but just in case some of you weren’t, I thought today’s post on HBO’s Bob Zitter’s suggestion that we come up with a new euphemism for DRM was particularly good:
The irony here is that “rights management” is itself an industry-sponsored euphemism for what would more straightforwardly be
called “restrictions”. But somehow the public got the idea that DRM is restrictive, hence the need for a name change.
Zitter went on to discuss HBO’s strategy. HBO wants to sell shows in HighDef, but the problem is that many consumers are watching HD content using the analog outputs on their set-top boxes — often because their fancy new HD televisions don’t implement HBO’s favorite form of DRM. So what HBO wants is to disable the analog outputs on the set-top box, so consumers have no choice but to adopt HBO’s favored DRM.
Which makes the nature of the “enablement” clear. By enabling your set-top box to be incompatible with your TV, HBO will enable you to buy an expensive new TV. I understand why HBO might want this. But they ought to be honest and admit what they are doing.
I can think of several names for their strategy. “Consumer Enablement” is not one of them.
There’s nothing to say about this that hasn’t already been said, but boy is this funny:
You can get your own here.
You should check out the ongoing discussion with Cord Blomquist about the ethics of digging AACS keys. Cord’s core point seems to be this:
Copyright and patents aren’t contracts, they’re codified law, and it’s understandable why we’d prefer a common standard for such things. Imagine we had to sign a contract waving acknowledging that the seller retains the rights to reproduction every time we bought a book or magazine. This would be cumbersome and tedious. Yet even without a contract or another such explicit statement we all know that we can’t just post an article from a magazine on a site and put AdSense ads against it and call ourselves a legitimate web business. This would be copyright infringement and stealing. Take this idea a step further and we see that he 2nd or 3rd person to copy the material is equally liable for the copying if they know that the material is copyrighted.
How is this different from Digg hosting something that is copyrighted? Are we saying DRM and music copyrights don’t deserve the same respect because they are copyrights we don’t like?
The first thing to point out here is that Cord is lumping together two very different rights. I wholeheartedly agree with him that copyright law is a beneficial institution, and it’s entirely appropriate for the state to take action to protect peoples copyrights. If Digg’s users were posting copyrighted songs or films, I would certainly be a lot more critical.
But DRM is not the same thing as traditional copyright. Anti-circumvention rights are a brand new legal right that was invented from whole cloth by Congress in 1998. The question of whether those rights are legitimate are wholly separate from the question of whether the underlying copyright.
Cord continues:
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The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Cord Blomquist also doesn’t approve of the Digg protesters:
Websters are calling the ‘revolt’ at Digg an online Boston Tea Party. This is offensive to anyone who knows the history of the Boston Tea Party. The Sons of Liberty destroyed someone else’s property, a very non-libertarian thing to do, but they did so to protest the unjust taxation of their own hard earned dollars and the tyrannical British rule. Besides, the British East India Company was nothing like what we would call a private enterprise. Before it was dissolved in the middle of the 19th century the East India Company had many governmental and military functions and virtually ruled India. The revolutionaries were against this kind of government granted monopoly and unjust use of power.
Digg users posting HD-DVD encryption keys is no Boston Tea party. These rogue digg users are referencing a proprietary code, which is not their property, and they’re using a private website, which is also not their property. This attack on private property is more like an online October Revolution. The people at Digg can exercise control over their own property, while the users claim that controlling a private site is equivalent to theft. (They should read What’s Yours is Mine). It all smacks of Marxism to me.
So in other words, it’s OK to destroy private property if you’re protesting a law Blomquist disagrees with, but it’s not cool to even “reference” private property if you’re protesting a law Blomquist likes.
Mark Blafkin has an puzzling take on this week’s Digg/AACS business:
The real story here is about the ephemeral nature of Web2.0 companies. When your value is based on the people you attract more than the value of any product or service you provide, your grasp on success is tenuous at best. You will always be at the mercy of 5-10 percent of your users that are most active and usually most crazy. Web2.0 has a lot of promise, but it also has some potential pitfalls. We’ve just seen one of them. When you’re relying on “mobs,” well, you’re relying on MOBS.
I’m at a loss what point Blafkin’s trying to make here. Let’s keep in mind that a “Web 2.0 business” is just a website whose contents are controlled by users rather than the site administrator. Or in other words, it’s a website that gives users the freedom to exchange information without having to first seek the permission of the authorities. As a libertarian, that seems to me as an almost unalloyed good.
If the DMCA effectively says that Digg had to choose between breaking the law or shutting down, that seems to me like evidence that there’s something wrong with the DMCA. Digg is not profiting from piracy the way Napster and Grokster were. They’re a legitimate news site whose users happen to have strong anti-censorship views.
Blafkin seems to have the opposite reaction: that if user-generated content is incompatible with the DMCA, then so much the worse for user-generated content. But libertarianism is not about slavishly obeying the law, regardless of the consequences. If copyright law starts effectively outlawing legitimate websites, then copyright law has gone too far.
Tech Policy Weekly from the Technology Liberation Front is a weekly podcast about technology policy from TLF’s learned band of contributors. The shows’s panelists this week are Jerry Brito, Braden Cox, Hance Haney, Tim Lee, and Ben Klemens of the Brookings Institution. Topics include,
- The Supreme Court smacks down the Federal Circuit in two major patent decisions
- the latest in the Vonage vs. Verizon patent saga
- Digg and the AACS encryption key
There are several ways to listen to the TLF Podcast. You can press play on the player below to listen right now, or download the MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the podcast by clicking on the button for your preferred service. And do us a favor, Digg this podcast!
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.