Round One of the DRM War......

Ding...Ding...
Round One
Of the DRM War
Has Started....

As any one who has read my blog over the last several months know I have very definite ideas about the upcoming digital transition, and more importantly issues surrounding it, i.e. DRM and the consumers right to play what they want when, and on what they want. The first salvo of the DRM war against High Definition media owners vrs the consumers was fired earlier this year when a hacker was able to find the AACS Code the encrypted the title and locked the High Definition Disc. This was posted and eventually made its way to the Digg.com website, where it was posted. Digg.com soon received a cease and Desist order requesting they take down the code and any post related to it. However, there was a revolt and very soon after it was remover it was put back up in many different forms by thousands of readers, The folks at Digg finely relented and let the post stay up.

The bigger picture is that while the Media companies and studios will try to limit how consumers use their media, forcing people to find workarounds to to what they've always done before, which was well with the preview of "Fair Use" I have seen reports of some rather nasty ideas floated using hardware embedded software that "phones home" and alerts the powers that be what your doing if your playing a DVD that not quite legit they will know and may do anything from shutting down the machine either later next time you try to play that disc, or right then and there, or filling a report to someone who can make your life miserable for months after.

it was just brought to my attention that Direct tv, has put a 24hour cap on letting folk view a per per view movie, that include items you've started watching and haven't finished, once the 24 hrs was up it disappeared, and if you want to see it again you have to pay again. Heres the link;

http://www.hothardware.com/News/Your%5FDirecTV%5FWill%5FBe%5FDRMOld%5FAnd%5FBusted/

The encryption code used in Blu-ray HD DVD is called AACS code its a encryption used for content distribution and digital rights management for dvd, I foresee other uses for it, none of them good..

Here are two Links to information about AACS Code;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Access_Content_System

Also related to the AACS Code the page detailing the crack to the DRM on the HD DVDS:

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1104

Heres a link to the DIGG Story about their taking down the code and putting it back up again.

http://www.techimo.com/forum/t185930.html

Also heres a link to a page on the HBO Site I found this morning;
This explain their position on recording show off their networks;

http://www.hbo.com/corpinfo/cgmsafaq.shtml#jump3




I don't think most people realize how their rights as consumers are being slowly eroded and what we have taken for granted as rights granted to us back in the 1970's with the advent of VCRS , and a supreme courts decision that vcrs did not violate copyrights or tv produces as long as the tapes were made for personal use. its called "Fair Use" What is needed for people to call and email and write their local congress people and let them know they are against DRM and crippling DRM in particular.As far I'm concerned that fair use law extends to CD's DVD, HD DVDs and any other media, as long as I make copies for my own personal use they have no right to limit my ability to record or archive any media.

Today's Media and The Future..

Early Adapters, pay through the nose... That said.....all the formats we have now, Mp3. wave, Apple's AAC, ect, Dvd, HD, & Blu-ray will eventually be superseded by whatever new technology is developed over the next years, However, as the film/movie preservationists have pointed out many times, as we move forward much is lost,, I am thinking both of lost films themselves and the the people who actually were there, and, almost as importantly , the equipment to play edit and do anything with the old media. This premise can be extended to many other things such as old computer hardware, there are millions of computer reels of data siting that no one can access because the machines to play the magnetic memory data tapes are not around any more. Soon there will be millions of VHS tapes laying all over the world with no vcrs to play them on, like the fate of 78rpm records, eventually cd and optical disc will suffer a similar fate... Although it will probably take longer.. All this is not counting what is eventually done with DRM and what effect it has on the hardware. All this is is to say, there is something ,to be said, for the printed page. One can still read a 100+ year old book and one may be able to read the same material digitally 1 year or even a week later after it was digitalized..

DRM is Digital Rights management, What it Essentially boils down to is the copyrights holder, be it the studio, author or production co, whoever, controlling what we can do with the content, whether we can record a show/movie to a pvr, or record something to a dvd burner like I have the big deal in all of this is that its digital, which means every copy is as good as the original, and theres no degradation over the copies like we had on the old analog tapes, What they don't want is perfect digital copies getting out in the world uncontrolled so they can't make any money off them The music industry tried DRM in their MP3s they sold and soon found it was a losing battle, People were still decoding the mp3 or most of them just ripped the music off their legal cds and put them up on file swapping sites anyways. So finely they are giving in and stripping all DRM off the MP3s they sell, Heres a link that will give you a general idea of what were talking about with the music. http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/01/amazon-adds-son.html As for movies Broadcasters can put in flags that tell receivers what they can and can't do with certain material, most of this is getting into the HD realm, Essentially, dumbing down and crippling sat and cable receivers, and making content harder to enjoy. However, the Saga is not dead, for proof, I refer you to the following link, http://wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2008/01/sony_music
The new battle cry will be watermarking so copyright holders can track a piece of material back to the original buyer and hold them responsible for letting the material getting into the wild.. Of course, privacy experts are having their say about the idea. The whole DRM/privacy issue will continue to boil over for many years to come, and probably will never be completly settled one way or the other, There will alway be a contingent of the population the change the status quo and fight for the rights of the average person, in this case, the right of the average person to play his own media as he see fits on what he sees fit.