Sense or nonsense of DRM

[hartiberlin]

Is there still some other DRM system out there ?
What about DRM for DIVX ?
Is this safe ?
Could this only be played by the DIVX Player or
are there others players out there, that support it ?

Regards, Stefan.

[Yusaku]

Originally posted by hartiberlin
Is there still some other DRM system out there ?
What about DRM for DIVX ?
Is this safe ?
sweet secret: no DRM system is safe, by definition. If you give user highly, sophisticately encrypted data, and a key to play them back... what is there to stop him from using this key to dump the deciphered content to disk instead of feeding it to decompressor? And even if this is too complicated, I can just emulate a PC and dump screen output to video compressor, that will work as well.

DRM is a bad, paranoic idea that cannot and will never ever work.

[hartiberlin]

Hi Yusaku,
well you are probably right,
but from the viewpoint of the content producer,
who has to pay a lot of money to produce the movie,
it would be good to have such a system, so
everybody, who wants to watch the movie has to pay
a small fee.

Okay, I will make my movies now with WMV DRM,
but the user has only to pay a very small fee via 1-900
or SMS billing and then he can own the movie forever.

I think this is pretty fair for paying a small 2 Euro
fee for a good movie via SMS payment and then own
the movie forever.

What do you think ?

Surely there might be hackers out, that will in
the long run crack the movie and post it to Peer2peer
networks, but in the first time, there will be coming
in revenue to be able to produce new content.

I think, if the DRM is used fairly with small fees
only, then many people will use it.

I recently saw a presentation with Bill Gates showing
off with colleagues his Mediacenter 2005 software and
applications and external portable players, etc...
and I am sure in 2 to 3 years also the broadcasting
corporations all will have DRM movies only transmitted
via the air...

Imagine, if a company like ABC transmits a program
like STarwars episode 1 in their evening program and
many people can grab that 1:1 digitally to their harddrives
and make themself DVD-Rs from it,
George Lukas will never sell anymore again his Star Wars
collection DVDs.

So with DRM you can say, just broadcast it, and it will
just only play 1 time or the recorded movie maybe gets disabled 1 week later.

So people will not be able to put that on DVD-R forever.

So I predict in not too long time, every digital satellite
and arial settop receiver box will get DRM implemented in some way.

Well, if it is used fairly and cheaply, why not ?

Regards, Stefan.

[ChronoCross]

That would have been like saying that now that there are CD burners no one will ever buy another CD.

Or since there is tivo and DVR recorders on cable providers or VCR's that no one will buy boxsets of their favorite TV shows.

Or since I have a radio I can simply record soongs onto tape and listen to them all I want.

If we take all the advancements ever in the history of media it is still one of the largest economies on the planet. Even with all the pirating, all the recording and whatnot can we truely say that they don't make a rediculous amount of money?

If I buy a DVD or a video file I don't want to have to worry about losing my rights to it if I lose my DRM files. I shouldn't have to pay extra to watch something I've already bought.

There was a news story today that the Dutch are charging extra tax on a specific product. Per gigabyte a person has to pay an extra 4 bucks per gig because of DRM and copyright protections. All that extra money goes to the RIAA and MPAA collection agencies...seriously what's up with that. How many more of peoples rights are they gonna take away. Pretty soon I'm gonna have to pay an extra $3 per roll of toilet paper for Treehugger rights...that last part was a joke so don't get offended.

I can only hope that DRM will be cracked that way I can do whatever I want with my Property anytime I want. I'm not condoning illegal activities but we must face the fact that there will always be pirating and it still won't bring the industry even close to being in trouble. Those commercials are bogus as hell when they talk about all the "little people" it hurts because I haven't seen one damn person effected by pirating in all of the blockbuster locations in my city. did you ever think that the reasont hey make less money is because they produce 30-40 crappy movies a year and only 2-3 good ones? Perhaps you should stop paying half rate actors like julia roberts 40 million a movie.

[hartiberlin]

Hi ChronoCross,
I agree with you in the case of the big corporations.

But I think, DRM also gives the small independant
movie producer a much more powerful distribution
chain !

He does not need anymore to do costly DVD productions,
nore has he to care about distribution of DVDs.
He can just encode his movie with DRM and
just only sell it online !
That is much easier and cheaper distribution
and he will make money this way !

As the fee for watching the movie and owning
it forever will be very low, I would
also go as the enduser with it, if I could
get new movies which I like this way, which
would have the same quality as a good DVD or
even a HDTV WMVHD file.

So if independant movie producers, which don´t have much
money for DVD production go this way, I think it is very
good way for them to compete versus the rich big blockbuster
companies.. and once users are used to store and backup
their licenses, these movies can be played forever on their
systems without any big trouble.

Regards, Stefan.

[ChronoCross]

You also have to consider what would happen if say a house burned down. How are their licenses backed up?

I think that now that DVD burners are relatively cheap nowadays a person should be able to mass produce DVD's for relatively the same cost it would to provide the bandwidth to distribute the picture online. Also anyone purchasing it on DVD would pay shipping and therefore reducing DVD costs even more.

Why do you think big corps make so much money? My friends mom works for a company that sells the labels and casings and DVD's to companies. She says they cost for an entire DVD set only about $6.00 and they sell DVD's for 16-25. Ripoff if you ask me.

DRM is in ideal a good thing but can be easily abused by companies trying to make more money

[Wilbert]

Guys, could you open up a new thread if you want to discuss the pros and cons of DRM?

[Yusaku]

Edit: Wilbert, sorry - I started this post before yours. I promise not to continue with the discussion :) If you could, please split the last few messages to a new thread?

Hi Stefan,

even though DRM might seem like a good thing, it definitely is not. Not only it is nonsense in the logical sense (see my post above), but it is very dangerous even for the ones producing content.

1) you are dependant on Microsoft. Microsoft controls _everything_ about its DRM, if they decide you have to pay a fee for something suddendly, you will have to. There is grave danger building your business on someone's else monopoly in general, and it is quite foolish to help someone create this monopoly.

1.1) one example of this danger is media players. Microsoft's DRM will play only on WMP. Nothing else. Well, actually, it plays also on ZoomPlayer DRM edition. This edition is (I think) $10 more expensive than the regular one, only because microsoft digitally signed it. Which means that users who prefer something else than the ergonomic disaster named WMP have to shell out $30 for a mediaplayer they could've gotten for free (gabest's MPC for example). Noone will ever be able to play DRM WMVs on linux or Apples, unless Microsoft blesses us with a new media player for those platforms (definitely won't happen for linux, knowing microsoft :) ). Noone will be able to play it back with their favorite player (that normally supports WMVs just fine), which means support costs for you.

2) licences. If I buy a media from you, I just want it to work. Yet, the first time my computer crashes and I'll have to reinstall windows (those who say it doesn't happen work in microsoft's public relations only), I lost it and have to beg at your doors for another licence. Not only is it humilliating, but if your company goes bankrupt, I just lost my media.

3) protection from P2P. Whole DRM design is basically just a shield from p2p and everyone knows that. And BECAUSE of that, it utterly fails (DRM will stop 99.9% of users. That 0.1% is enough for a massive spread on p2p though. For a referrence, see how much game copy protections helped against warez underground groups).

4) people who want your video will simply pay for it. Yes, not everyone. Not everyone will be interested in it, though - I definitely didn't buy EVERY CD that I have MP3s from - but I bought quite few. People have quite fixed ammount of money they spend on CDs, DVDs etc. - you cannot ask a teenager who filled his iPod Photo 60GB to go and buy all 15 000 songs he has loaded in there. Asking $15 000 for the content on one bloody iPod is just wrong, when all it actually does is supply a radio. But if you make a product that's interesting enough, people will simply buy it, as can be seen on rapidly increasing sales of CDs and DVDs (despite RIAAs laments, even CD sales are quite sharply increasing - which is quite surprising, given that IMO recently the quality of music went down) - and everyone knows copy protection systems on CDs and DVDs don't work AT ALL, so theoretically everyone should download them off of the internet instead of buying.

On the other hand, if you offer me an interesting DRMed media that I'll really want, you can be sure that I'll try to download it off of a P2P first, simply because the version off of P2P will be much better (i.e. will work in all mediaplayers, will work even after multiple crashes; I can simply back it up and know that it'll work 50 years from now (DRMed content will 100% NOT work after that period of time, I am sure of that for various reasons)). If I won't find it, I might even buy it, decrypt it and share it as a public service :)

ChronoCross: Before blaming big corporations for the costs of DVDs, take a calculator to your hand:
Manufacturing costs of DVD+package: $6 (actually, I think $4, but you said that)
Margin (for producing the movie, computer editing for DVD format etc.): $2 ($8 total)
Spread costs of unsold DVDs (let's say you'll sell 2/3rds of discs, i.e. every disc will have to pay half of unsold disc): $3 ($11 total)
Margin for distribution link: 50% ($22 total)

Yes, your roun-the-corner shop makes most of the sold DVD's price. Cost about $20 is just fine, problem is when in some countries (e.g. mine) they cost $40. That IS a rip-off. Also, from this example you can see why current internet selling prices are so bloody wrong - selling on internet eliminates all the costs, except margin for producer; and they introduce only the cost of bandwidth extra (let's say $0.10 for one CD); yet I haven't noticed iTunes being 90% cheaper than classic CDs in stores.

[hartiberlin]

Wilbert, move these last messages to a new topic,
if you decide not to have them here:

Yusako,
I agree with the bad monopoly of M$,
but how would then sell as an independant
video producer your videoclips via Peer2Peer networks ?

I wanted to sell them just not via a website,
but spreading them via Peer2Peer in DRM format, so
endusers, who download them will have to pay before
viewing them.
So is there any other method to sell movies via Peer2Peer networks
and not using Microsoft DRM ?

Thanks.

Regards, Stefan.

[Doom9]

Wilbert, move these last messages to a new topic,
if you decide not to have them here:It does sound so much nicer with a please in it, does it not? You didn't even use conditional form so it sounds like a command and that's just plain rude.

Furthermore, Wilbert asked to stop abusing another thread for the purpose of this discussion. So why are there subsequent posts to his made before I split the thread?

[hartiberlin]

Sorry,
my native language is not english, so thanks a lot for splitting
the thread.

Regards, Harti.

[Zarxrax]

Trying to spread a DRM encumbered file via P2P simply will not work. First of all, simply because its on P2P doesnt mean anyone will download it. People only download things that they want from P2P, and if no one knows what it is, they most likely are not going to download it. On the off-chance that someone DOES download it off P2P networks, and then they find that it is encumbered by DRM and they can't play it, you expect them to pay you to view some strange file that they downloaded, when they have no idea what it is? No, they are just going to delete it. Some P2P networks allow ranking of files, and on those networks this type of file would get a poor ranking, effectively stopping anyone else from downloading it.

One solution that I can think of is to put a low quality copy of your movie on P2P networks, without any DRM. If people enjoy it, perhaps then they would like to purchase a high quality copy, or a DVD from you.

Most people don't have a problem with paying for something that they enjoy. The creator of Bittorrent gave his software away for free. He makes emough money to live off of, solely from DONATIONS he recieved from users who enjoyed his software.

Many independent musical artists will give their music, or at least some of it away for free as downloads, then allow people to support them by purchasing a CD or merchandise.


I think the most important thing is to get the word out to as many people as possible about your product. The ones who like it might pay you. Giving away your movie for free is probably the best thing you can do in this regard. Given away free, people will actually SEE your movie, and if its good, they tell there friends, they post about it on internet forums, etc. Word gets out.

A good example is a small series called Kwoon (http://www.kwoon.com). They gave 1 or 2 episodes away for free online for a long time, creating a buzz. Then they finally put out a DVD, which is the only way to obtain all 3 episodes.

[Yusaku]

another way of distributing content through P2P only to paying users is bittorrent.

Actually, I thing you were thinking of using BT from the start - on the "true" P2P networks your idea will never ever work, Zarxrax explained it well enough.

In BT, you will have to make a promotional website for your media, and users authorized by paid SMS (or whatever) will be given a link to .torrent file and their IP will be unbanned on a tracker for this one file for a time necessary to download the movie (say, one week to be on a safe side). All other IPs will be banned by default.

End result:
1) you'll use P2P, sparing bandwidth
2) users will use classic, proven BitTorrent clients etc.
3) users will have uncripled files they want
4) users will have to pay for the download

Of course, there is the risk that someone downloads the file and spreads it immediately to another P2P network, this time completely unprotected (by blacklist on a tracker). But this is a risk of digital media overall, and not even DRM will protect you from it.

You'll have to slightly modify some tracker software and integrate it with your payment gate, but any CS student around should do that for few bucks.

Still, it is interesting twist, using the evil for good. Good luck with it ;)

[Zarxrax]

Yusaku: your method is flawed, because of its reliance on an IP address. There are a multitude of problems with using that method which would cause him lots of trouble. The most basic problem is that many people do not have static IP addresses. Also, someone may purchase a download from one PC, and plan to download it from another, but they can't do that. You could also run into issues with people behind routers and firewalls.

[hartiberlin]

Hi,
I would like to do it like this:
Create a ZIP file with a small highres clip of the movie
and some instruction text file, how to pay for the WMV with DRM
which will be also inside the ZIP file.
So the people could at least play the 20 seconds free sample
clip and if they like it they have the instruction inside the text
file how to buy the DRM license for the longer movie in the ZIP file.

The ZIP file will be posted mainly into the usenet news.
And into the Kaza Lite Peer2peer network.

Regards, Harti.

[Yusaku]

Originally posted by Zarxrax
Yusaku: your method is flawed, because of its reliance on an IP address. There are a multitude of problems with using that method which would cause him lots of trouble. The most basic problem is that many people do not have static IP addresses. Also, someone may purchase a download from one PC, and plan to download it from another, but they can't do that. You could also run into issues with people behind routers and firewalls.

Instead of saying "flawed", tell me a single case when BT is still usable and yet my method won't work (actual case, not a general problem). I am pretty sure you won't find any, except when user uses an anonymous (!!) http proxy. But when someone uses anon proxy, he is definitely an advanced user who knows what he is doing.

You don't suggest that IP address will change in the middle of openned TCP connection, right? Purchase will be done using phone and result will be a password with which you activate IP on tracker, not a problem if you use another comp. And all NAT routers and firewalls expose IP of WAN interface, that's after all what they are for. If an user will be behind some really weird NAT that will use different IP for each connection, you can extend IP-enable to whole C-block of IPs, after all main security measure is the secret "torrent" file. You only have to ensure that when someone sends this file to a friend, there'll be 95%+ chance that it won't work, that is more than enough.

hartiberlin: heh. Good luck, you'll need it. That will surefire fail, see Zarxax's reasons. What do you think will be the first tag you'll earn in P2P system? "FAKE". In case of usenet, you're _almost_ sure to get banned for OT/DOS attack, as you'll be sending useless spam-alike junk, just compared to spam MUCH bigger.

[pieroxy]

You don't suggest that IP address will change in the middle of openned TCP connection, right?

Maybe he didn't, but I do. I am connected to my ISP by PPPoE and my IP changes every day. As a result, I cannot hold a socket opened for more than 24 hours. But again, that's hardly what the internet was meant to achieve.

[lamer_de]

In case of usenet, you're _almost_ sure to get banned for OT/DOS attack, as you'll be sending useless spam-alike junk, just compared to spam MUCH bigger.LOL? People post complete DVD-iso's that are password protected so nobody beside a few selected people can use the files, and I don't see them getting banned (neither for spamming nor for the distribution of copyrighted material).

While I have no clue of what nature your material is, if it's something independed, the best would be to set up a website of some sort.Active searches for stuff on p2p network nobody knows the content exists are rather rare, so you probably need to get your content to be known first. A website with streaming or a download possibility for a LQ or a part of the content will help you there. You can offer BT or other p2p links there if you're short on bandwith.

Also, I don't think that DRM is that wrong of an idea for his case. Cracking the DRM seems pretty complicated with that Japanese program (as you can already see at the posts of users for whom it didn't worked), and the incentive to crack some amateur movie shouldn't be as high as for, let's say the Terminator 2 HDTV version, so there's a good chance it won't show up in a cracked version instantanously.
Adult Media paysites still exist after all, although every p2p network is overloaded with porn.

CU,
lamer_de

[Yusaku]

still, for BT you have quite graceful recovery. First, the client will remember the peers he used to communicate with, thus you have high chances of finishing download even though banned on tracker. And, you can re-authorize at the tracker.

Still it is quite unlikely that the IP would change too much (i.e. I think it will stay in the same C class)