BrianAndPamela.com

One of the things I try to do here in my little corner of the net is to educate. There are issues out there that get very little attention in the normal world press, and those issues are really very important to all of us. Decisions on issues like net neutrality, freedom of information exchange, copyright and IP law will set precedent now and shape the future of the entire world. October 3rd is the International Day Against DRM which makes this a great time to explain why DRM, something that seems so helpful and benign, is actually capable of eroding the very fabric of freedom. You think that was a little extreme? Read on…

DRM is Digital Rights Management. It's the technology that "protects" music that you download from iTunes or other online music stores. It's also the over-all concept behind companies wanting to control how individuals obtain, store, consume and distribute information or content. So DRM tells your iPod that you have the rights to play the song that you downloaded, but if you copy a file that I downloaded the DRM won't allow it to be played. Sounds reasonable so far. It also is the idea behind the "broadcast flag" which would allow networks to encode their programs with information which would prevent you from recording the show to a hard-drive device (TiVo or Media Center). There are other major concerns for DRM, but we'll get there.

What's in a name? Digital Rights Management. Let's deconstruct, shall we? At first glance it truly doesn't sound that bad, but think about it for a moment. Digital Rights Management is a way for someone else to manage your rights. Would you accept any other form of "Rights Management"? Civil Rights Management? Voting Rights Management? First Amendment Rights Management? I don't think most people would lightly accept these, yet we've been sold the idea that it's OK for someone else to manage our digital rights.

Some opponents of DRM actually refer to it as Digital Restrictions Management, and that's certainly a more valid name. DRM very rarely encourages you to exercise any rights with the content and many times actually prevents the user from using the content in completely legitimate ways. "Big Content", as the members of the MPAA, RIAA and major TV networks have become known, want us to believe that the only people who have a problem with DRM are people that want to steal content. Certainly that's not true. We simply want to be able to access content in ways that make sense, without having to jump through absurd hoops to accomplish it. If I go buy a CD, it is legal for me to make copies of those songs to put on my iPod or stream around my home network. "Big Content" wants DRM on that CD to prevent me from doing that. And they actually have DRM on anything I download from iTunes that prevent exactly that sort of legal activity. Actually, they want to prevent me from uploading those songs via Bit Torrent or other Peer to Peer systems, but the result is that I have to jump through some extremely complicated hoops to use content I legitimately purchased in a legal way. If you then take into account the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which makes it illegal to circumvent DRM, not only is the process difficult, it actually violates federal law. Don't think that Big Content wants DRM on CDs? They built it into DVDs and have been trying to figure out ways to prevent CD ripping & burning for YEARS.

Whose computer is it, anyhow? I chose it. I paid for it. I brought it home and customized it, but I can't control it. Until recently the notion of parts of your computer that you couldn't control was unheard of. You (or at least administrative users) had complete control over your computer, nothing ran without permission and if it did it was a virus or other mal-ware. Now with DRM, Big Content wants to control your access to most of the information on your machine. DRM systems are in place to prevent your computer from doing what you want it to, or at least to control how you do it. Indeed, some Big Content companies take the position that your computer isn't really yours at all, since they are using the machine to deliver content to you, they feel they should decide how it works.

Some have taken this idea so far as to automatically install undetectable software, called a rootkit, on computers that cripples the function of the computer. In 2005, Sony BMG shipped 52 albums on CD which automatically installed the XCP-Aurora software which "prevent[s] any media player or ripper software other than the one included with XCP-Aurora from accessing the music tracks of the Sony CD". The software was not easily un-installable and, here's the REALLY nefarious part, installed a patch to Windows which effectively hid the software from the user even if the user ran process analysis tools. The program, called a "rootkit", also continuously monitored all other running Windows processes. Deleting the software from an infected (and I can't really use any other word here) machine would render the CD Drive unusable. Because of the manner in which the Sony software acted, it actually made the infected computer more vulnerable to viruses, worms and Trojans.

When asked about the rootkit fiasco, a Sony exec brushed off the issue saying, "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?" Sony was forced to pull the infected CDs from the market but to this day has not actually apologized or even admitted that what they did was wrong. They now offer an uninstall on their website, but the uninstaller requires a user to sacrifice privacy by providing personal information, to use Internet Explorer and to install an Active X control (browser add-on) that has been demonstrated to be unsafe.

More examples? How about the desire for broadcasters to prevent you from recording television shows to a TiVo or Media Center PC? Or Windows Media Center deciding that even shows that are not flagged will time out after three days and you'll be unable to watch them? The new Zune portable media center device almost shipped with a feature that would add time-limiting DRM to files shared with other users, even if the file didn't have DRM to begin with.

Add to all of this the utterly ridiculous mish-mash of DRM schemes that are out there. If you buy a song from iTunes, you can't get it onto a non-Apple portable player, nor can you play that file in Windows Media Player or Media Center. Likewise, buying DRM music from one of Microsoft's "Plays for sure" partners means you can't take it on an iPod or listen to it on iTunes. To make matters worse, the Zune released by Microsoft later this year won't even use MS's Plays For Sure system, but it's own incompatible DRM format. And that's just in audio, video is a whole other problem. Lastly, DRM is bad for artists and content creators. It's an expensive proposition to create and maintain a DRM system. Every time a license is acquired or renewed a transaction is executed. For large DRM systems, that translates to a large on going cost. This cost eats up most of the cost of the online distribution.

Digital distribution should have been a huge boost to the amount that artists and creators actually made from their art, but Big Content doesn't care about that. They charge as much as they can and complain when their high prices and inconvenient DRM systems drive people to steal content. What's going to happen to all of the music we've downloaded when Apple or Microsoft decide to stop renewing DRM licenses, or want us to change DRM systems? Indeed what happens when you buy a new computer and want to copy your music over? Some DRM systems won't even allow that.

Now I can hear an objection forming, that it's their content and I can choose not to consume it. That's just it… maybe I can choose not to consume it, but I can't choose not to have DRM limitations placed on the software and hardware in my computer. And why should I have to waive rights in order to consume content how I choose? Moreover, why does it make sense that the only people being inconvenienced by Big Content are the paying customers? Those heavily involved in peer to peer already don’t care about DRM. It's also basically the argument that if you don't have anything to hide you shouldn't be worried about the government snooping.

DRM is just bad. It's a broken system that is forced onto consumers by monopolistic associations like the RIAA and MPAA with willing accomplices in the technology industry. What can you do about it? Not much, truthfully. Get mad. Do more research before you buy music. Support sites like music.podshow.com, emusic.com and magnatune.com which offer DRMless music for purchase from independent artists. You can also checkout DRM.info and defectivebydesign.org