Digital Rights Management Paul B. Hill

Why is this on the radar? Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) ASTM Recent contract dictating the use of specific DRM plugin for Adobe Acrobat (Windows only) ASTM Similar terms and technology choice Naxos Using the DRM in Windows Media Player Open Student Television Network (OSTN) SAE is requiring us to adopt the use of Adobe FileOpen (as described at www.elecpubs.sae.org/TestFileOpen) as a condition of renewing our access to their digital library.

We are also content creators Courses Research results Thesis University Press Audio and video of lectures and events Books

Limitations of copyright and DRM technologies Cannot prevent copying and file sharing for a substantial length of time Cannot incorporate fair use Cannot replicate entirely and exactly the terms of legal contracts Cannot in and of themselves make content profitable Do not interoperate with one another today Cannot ensure that artists and other participants in the supply chain receive royalty payments to which they are entitled

Desired Outcomes? Common broad statements? Be conservative in what you limit Be liberal in what you allow Ensure access for many generations of systems

IP and copyright are the new “range wars”. “If Information is power, IP and copyright are the steppingstones to it, just as mineral rights and industrial means of production were the keys to power in earlier times.” – from a publication of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB)

Managing Diversity Proliferation of DRM technologies Standards? Not a Windows monoculture Proliferation of licensing terms Educational models Face to face Self paced Distance education

Is “fair use” relevant? The owners of a product can sell it pretty much under any conditions they want to specify as long as the actions they require are safe and legal. Whatever the rights of consumers and the general public may be, they are rendered moot by the unfettered ability of owners to digitally lock up their products.

The social balance “The social-political-legal environment of copyright always evolves, but until the dawn of the digital age, there was an implicit underlying balance of rights and interests that prevailed in discussions of copyright since the eighteenth century. Digital technologies are threatening to tear up that agreement, and DRM is yet a further challenge. Digital networks and DRM bring a tier of technology to the IP-copyright edifice that unsettles the previously stable social construction.”

Books, Music, and Movies became Content “Content has many lives: first as an initial product, then as an asset that can be reincarnated – repackaged, re-expressed, and repurposed, then distributed, consumed, and experienced in multiple co-existing forms in many venues on a virtually unlimited number displays and devices. The implications of content lifecycle are enormous. A hit isn’t just a single product; it is a franchise that may spawn many more profitable offerings.”

DRM Standards “…content security and DRM truly form an inhospitable maze of international, national, trade, and proprietary standards.”

Striking a balance License-holders need to decide how much rights management and protection their content requires. As license-holders seek 100% control or reducing loss to 0%, each percentage point will cost more than the last to achieve. To date, increased control has also imposed greater difficulties for paying customers to consume or access the content. Example: Very good control can be achieved with a dedicated player for a single DVD, however the cost can be prohibitively expensive.

“Information wants to be free.” – John Perry Barlow “…Information isn’t the foundation of the new economy. Information is not an economic offering…Only when companies package it in a form customers will buy – informational goods, information services or informing experiences – do they create economic value.” – Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore

Is perspective important? To date most DRM systems have emphasized what the customers are prohibited from doing. Few, if any, have emphasized what a customer is allowed to do.

Why have DRM schemes failed? To date they have either been cumbersome enough or restrictive enough to cause a significant number of users to rebel or reject. Writing a secure, tamper proof system is difficult when the attacker has full physical access to the machine, and the defender has no physical access to the machine.