home taping is killing the music industry
You've doubtless heard about Sony's recent DRM fiasco. Today, word that a piece of tape placed on the CD can defeat the copy protection. So can the holding down the shift key, or turning off autorun, for that matter.
This is all very funny, but I'd encourage people not to conclude what the following Slashdot commenter did:
Really, there's nothing they can do. If someone can create software to copy-protect a CD, some enterprising soul can create software to defeat it.
This is true, but only because it includes the term "CD". At the moment we're lucky to have a popular digital audio standard (Redbook CD) that has no DRM built into its format, and a digital video standard (DVD) with poorly designed security that is now easy to break.
But let's not lull ourselves into a false sense of security. The next generation of digital media will have very strong protections — geeks have won this round because the DRM people were sloppy and at times relied on security through obscurity. That won't happen again. The cracking of the current generation's formats also took place under a lax legislative atmosphere that, post-DMCA, does not exist. And it's only thanks to a relatively small handful of brilliant experts — people like DVD Jon and Bunnie Huang — that we enjoy the digital freedom we currently do. A little disincentive can go a long way. There simply aren't that many sufficiently brilliant people that have to be dissuaded.
It is theoretically possible to make a digital format that is all but uncrackable, and I wouldn't be surprised to see someone succeed at such an implementation. The electronics industry is trying to build DRM into our home entertainment centers and PCs. If they succeed in that effort the situation will be even more bleak. We'll truly be at their mercy.
Yes, the analog hole will always exist. But taking advantage of it requires expertise and some relatively expensive equipment. And the end product will never live up to the source — particularly since the source formats' fidelity gets better with every new release.
Sony looks like a bunch of boobs, but that's largely because the CD format ties their hands. CDs won't be around for ever; neither will Sony's chagrin. This is a battle that is going to have to be fought over and over. Maybe the geeks will save us every time. Congress would only have to do it once.
Comments
But let's not lull ourselves into a false sense of security.
You should have told me this before I loaded iTunes 6 and realized that jhymn couldn't crack my music anymore. Of course, while I don't get new music, Apple doesn't get new dollars. Still, you're right.
It may appear that there are only "a small handful of brilliant experts" capable of cracking DVD security... but this could well be an illusion fostered by the Internet and the open source movement. I'm not saying that (e.g.) DVD Jon is not brilliant... but we really don't know how many geeks worldwide are capable of duplicating his feats, because he's done them already and his code is available for free. In the Web-connected world, announcing that you've reinvented the wheel doesn't give you lots of karma. Why risk legal trouble in your own country to do something that's already been done by DVD Jon?
Meanwhile, about this next generation of scary super-DRMed digital media: who are the customers? Especially now, when all the early adopters have read Cory Doctorow's blog? Which killer app is going to convince people to give up MP3s, DVDs, and CDs and switch to the Format of the Future? Who is volunteering to play in the band that releases music only in strong-DRM formats? (Hint: AFAIK it's not any of Sony's artists, who are royally pissed about their plummeting sales.) Which producer will be the first to refuse to sell a movie in DVD format because they believe it's better to be poor, obscure, and safe from pirates than to be rich and famous? And which government will be the first to raid a private house in order to take away the illegal VCRs, tape decks, Tivos, and pre-DRM computer equipment?
I don't have the grip on the technology at issue needed to dispute this, but I was just reading something that cited Edward Felten as saying, "The consensus among independent experts, including me, is that strong copy protection (protection that a moderately skilled person expending moderate effort cannot break) simply is not possible on general-purpose computers such as PCs. A strong copy protection scheme is as implausible to many experts as a perpetual motion machine."
I don't know if he's overstating the case or if so much has changed in three years, but I thought it was worth pointing out.
it's true that once you can play the content on a general purpose PC, the jig is up -- you can get a very good quality reencoding of the file, if not a digitally perfect copy. But many formats won't be able to play on PCs (satellite TV, for example). Most troubling, though, is the prospect of trusted computing, which would eliminate the concept of the general-purpose PC itself.
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