DRM News

From The Register as it reports on the effects of these changes to the DMCA as they relate to the Internet Archive.

The Library of Congress has published six exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which criminalises duplication of material copyrighted to someone else. The exemption is from punishment for breaking the kinds of copy controls on material which are designed to stop unauthorised duplication.

One of the six exemptions is for computer software or games for the purposes of preservation, but only if the original machine, format or technology involved is obsolete.

The Library of Congress's other exemptions to the DCMA include permission for users of mobile phones to circumvent the technology which makes the phone only work with one network. Another exemption allows the duplication of "dongle protected" software where the dongle has been damaged and a replacement is no longer available.

Another exemption allows educational establishments to "break" digital rights management (DRM) technology for audiovisual works to be used by media studies or film classes, while another exemption that allows users to bypass DRM on CDs in order to test and fix DRM technology which might damage the user's computer.

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Ray Beckerman, a lawyer representing clients in cases against the RIAA, recently took part in a conference call organized by DefectiveByDesign.org, an organization which opposes DRM Technology, content restricting programs embedded into software that blocks users access to music, movies, software and other forms of digital data.

Accusing the RIAA of "conducting a reign of terror" by bringing lawsuits against defenseless people, Beckerman warned that one case in particular, Electro vs. Barker, has the potential to shut down the Internet completely.

RIAA's argument is that Miss Baker, a poor nursing student who lives in housing projects, should be prosecuted on the basis that "merely making files available on the internet is in and of itself a copyright infringement."

Beckerman calls the complaint "a shocking argument because if it were accepted it would probably shut down the entire internet."

The U.S. government has also filed legal briefs supporting the RIAA's argument.

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First, you need to enable hard drive mode using the instructions we posted before. Then, rename whatever files—MP3s, movies, programs—to have the extension ".jpg" in order to fool the Zune into thinking it's an image. This hack works because Zune doesn't apply DRM to images!

Now, take your Zune and send the folder containing these files to your buddy along with a real photo.

Cory Doctorow poses a question that gets at the heart of many of our DRM, licensing-versus-ownership, intellectual property rights discussions. Duping in a virtual environment is similar to stealing; even if you're not taking the object or medium from someone else when you duplicate it, you're still diminishing the value of a commodity that someone else has purposefully invested in, thus undermining and decreasing its value. In fact all rights-related issues stem from Cory's question, so I'll rephrase it to make it more general: at what point do our rights as customers end when rightfully paying for access to a medium or service? Is a company morally obligated to not only protect its intellectual property but also to protect the customers who have already paid real money for it?

The virtual world Second Life is having to contend with a new piece of software that makes it easy to copy in-game artifacts. Most virtual worlds claim total ownership and control of anything created in the game, but Second Life allows players to claim a copyright in their creations. Players can sell (or refuse to sell) their in-game tchotchkes, or give them away under Creative Commons licenses. Second Life has a thriving economy based on the trading of user-created objects.

An open-source tool called CopyBot allows players to cruise around copying the objects sported by other players. Many SL players are upset by this, and demanding action. Second Life's proprietors, Linden Labs, are trying to figure out what to do. They've ruled out eliminating third-party programs from Second Life, and they are on record as refusing to become copyright enforcers for their community. They are offering to temporarily adjudicate questions of infringement to see if they violate the Second Life terms of service, but they're seeking better solutions, including reputation systems.

Second Life's management is doing an exemplary job of coping with this, but benevolent dictatorships aren't the same thing as democracies. If a game is going to declare that its players are citizens who own property, can the company go on "owning" the game?

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Broadcom is the latest to heave its weight on the wagon, proclaiming it's the first to unleash upon the industry a "... complete system-on-a-chip (SoC) solution that combines both Blu-ray™ and HD DVD optical disc formats into a highly integrated, single-chip design."

Among those who are already on the bandwagon, Ricoh has whipped up a single laser that can read both discs, a group of inventors has filed a patent for a DVD/Blu-ray/HD-DVD single disc monstrosity, and NEC has told the world it's mashed up a single chip that can handle both next-gen HD standards.

Yes, NEC has been there, done that, and is outta gum -- that would mean Broadcom isn't the first...Also supporting DVD and CD media, the chip can decode many standards including H.264/AVC, VC-1, MPEG-2, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Tru-HD, and DTS-HD.

Unlike NEC, Broadcom made no specific mention of a digital copy protection system. The included support for a network interface, however, makes it possible that the chip uses AACS, which is a next-gen form of digital rights management.

The most stringent of the current AACS specifications (PDF) demand an online transaction in order to verify that your media is legitimate before you can use or watch what's on it.

Read the full article. It is worth your time.

Last February, storage provider Seagate announced it would be introducing later in the year new hard drive platforms that can be fully encrypted at the hardware level, rendering their usefulness to would-be thieves almost pointless.

Today, with the absorption of former competitor Maxtor almost complete, Seagate is moving with all speed to deploy its implementation of the Trusted Platform Module, now called DriveTrust, on upcoming Momentus hard drives, including one 2.5" model for notebook computers, and another for DV-R devices.

So Seagate is being very careful today how it positions its announcement of the unveiling of hard drives with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) component for PCs, knowing full well that the capability for one's hard drive to overrule the operating system -- and, with it, the authority of the user or administrator with regard to what files can be written, where, and when -- is not necessarily something consumers automatically view as a "feature."

Key to the success of Seagate's architecture will be the integrity of the chain of communication between the TPM module on the PC -- upon whose existence DriveTrust will depend -- and the TPM on the hard drive (HDD). With the hard disk drive itself being one of the most closed systems in a computer assembly, it becomes relatively easier to secure the chain of communication between the CPU and HDD using hardware-based authentication. This disables any third party or unauthorized device from siphoning off portions of the bit stream, whether using hardware or software.

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The famous cracker of the DVD protection system has now done it again. Apparently he has been bragging with the fact that Apple’s DRM protection system is now another of his victims.

The 22-year-old hacker who goes by the nick-name of "DVD Jon" has allegedly deciphered Apple Computer's FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) technology.

Monique Farantzos, managing director at DVD Jon’s company DoubleTwist Ventures, confirmed the breakthrough. The company said that it planned to license the code to other digital music player manufacturers. However, Apple declined to comment.

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Aladdin Knowledge Systems identity management and content security solutions has announced that its market-leading Aladdin HASP software protection and licensing solution protects software developers from those seeking to exploit the recently unveiled Google Code Search in order to more quickly find software bugs, password information and even proprietary code. Aladdin expects the new Google tool, which provides a mix of both convenience and a potential threat, to serve as an additional instigator in leading developers toward greater software protection.

The unique Envelope inside HASP stands as the strongest software protection tool available, allowing developers to protect applications by "wrapping" them in a virtually impenetrable shell within minutes. Aladdin technology prevents reverse engineering and debugging of application code through strong encryption of software files and powerful anti-debugging schemes -- thwarting software attacks by wrapping files with multiple, randomly-assembled layers of protection.

Because the HASP Envelope doesn't require changes to the source code, it's an ideal protection solution that remains immune from attackers using tools such as Google Code Search for basic searches for bugs and other vulnerable, proprietary code. Despite this latest possible threat, Google remains positioned as one of the world's top Web properties, offering innovative search technologies that connect millions of people around the world with information every day.

"Aladdin HASP's powerful protection remains steadfast even with the introduction of widely available tools, such as Google Code Search, that potentially make it one step easier to attack the security of software," said Avi Barir, vice president of Software Digital Rights Management at Aladdin Knowledge Systems. "Aladdin is pleased to offer a valuable solution that continues to supply ultimate peace of mind for software developers even in the wake of the latest available techniques and tools for locating vulnerabilities."

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Trillion-dollar hedge fund BlackRock (BLK - commentary - Cramer's Take - Rating) has been quietly amassing shares of the Israel-based security software maker Aladdin (ALDN - commentary - Cramer's Take - Rating), reaching a 13.5% ownership stake during the third quarter.

Aladdin, which is considered a market leader in the software digital rights management (DRM) industry, makes software products and UBS security tokens that prevent unauthorized use of software, and protect copyrights and intellectual property.

Over the past few quarters, the company's revenue sank as sales of its major DRM operation slowed and a secondary offering tanked. Many analysts claim an unstable management is a big part of the reason for slowing sales rather than a slowdown in demand -- a perception which could indicate that BlackRock intends to intervene with a possible management shakeup.

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Credit card company Visa International said Wednesday that it has suspended service to music download site allofmp3.com, the latest setback for the Russian company accused in the U.S. of pirating music.

"It's no longer permitted to accept Visa cards," said Simon Barker, a Visa International spokesman. "The action we've taken is in line with legislation passed in Russia and international copyright law."

The news comes as allofmp3.com launches a public relations campaign to counter claims by the U.S. government that the site is an outlaw operation. On Tuesday, allofmp3.com announced plans to give away hundreds of thousands of albums for free, according to a story in the International Herald Tribune.

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Emusic, the world's second largest DSP (digital service provider or online music store), after iTunes, has announced that it has attracted 20,000 subscribers in Europe since its launch two months ago. This equates to two million downloaded tracks, according to eMusic. Part of the appeal of eMusic is its DRM-free (digital rights management) offering allowing music to be played on any MP3 player, including iPods, as well as its ability to be transferred to different devices.

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This difficulty, Goldberg continues, only serves to dissuade consumers from buying music legally and instead keeps unauthorized peer-to-peer services in business. He calls the protected a la carte download model a "failure," noting that legal digital download figures have remained flat all year.

"There's been no growth this year at all," he says. "The market has stalled."

On a month-to-month basis for this year, average monthly downloads are flat, just as they were last year, averaging around 10 million a week. Of late, average weekly downloads have slightly slipped, from 11.5 million in January to 10.7 million at the end of September. That's after an all-time high of almost 20 million downloads the week after Christmas.

According to the most recent SoundScan year-to-year figures, digital album sales through October 1 have grown 115 percent over the same period last year, while downloaded individual tracks have grown 72 percent.

Yet these gains have not yet closed the gap with still-declining physical sales, which are down 8.3 percent from last year. DRM opponents say a la carte sales could do more to close that gap if restrictions were removed, but it is impossible to quantify whether this is in fact the case.

Yahoo Music is attempting to prove this theory by making Jesse McCartney's new album available in both protected and unprotected formats at the same price via a deal with Hollywood Records.

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In the latest instalment of the ongoing Sony BMG rootkit scandal, a Quebec court has approved a class action settlement for Sony music CDs which installed dangerous spyware on buyers' computers without their knowledge or permission.

"The settlement relates to music CDs sold by Sony BMG (Canada) Inc. that included anti-copying software that would be secretly installed on a computer when it was inserted in a CD drive," says the CBC, pointing out the spyware DRM (digital restrictions management) consumer control software, "made it possible for a computer to be hijacked by an attacker or susceptible to a computer virus.

Ontario has already reached a similar settlement and, "The agreement now includes additional notification requirements on Sony and a comment from the judge that there were no findings with respect to the now-infamous Exhibit C," said Michael Geist, Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa.

If you're a Tivo buff like me, you should take some time to read nitty-gritty in the full article.

But when we moved onto another program--Revenge of the Sith, recorded off of HBO-HD--the screen suddenly went gray, with a TiVo warning emblazoned across the bottom: "Viewing is not permitted using the TiVo Digital Media Recorder. Try another TV input." Several other programs--Empire of the Sun (HDNet Movies), Simone (HBO-HD), and episodes of Battlestar Galactica (Universal HD) all yielded the same result. Further investigation revealed the culprit: hitting the Info button from the program listing page (TiVo's Now Playing screen) on these programs included a section called "restrictions": "Due to the policy set by the copyright holder, this recording: Cannot be transferred to VCR, DVD, or any other media device. To learn more, visit www.tivo.com/copyprotection."

Visiting that link will reveal apparent culprit: TiVo's Macrovision copy protection. Apparently, these programs were flagged as "copy never," so the box was dutifully following orders, and allowing video only via the copy-protected HDMI output (which is, to date, impossible to record). This isn't new: as far back as 2005, there were reports of TiVo boxes imposing restrictions on the viewing of certain TV shows. At the time, TiVo blamed the restrictions on "false positives"--saying the viewing restriction technology, ostensibly designed for pay-per-view and video-on-demand programming, was being turned on (by the cable companies) to cover a wider array of programming.

Next month, Microsoft will release its sort-of-anticipated Zune portable media player, finally offering a product some think could go head-to-head with Apple’s iPod.

On the other hand, Microsoft has locked it down with new digital-rights management (DRM) software specific to Zune. Astoundingly, it won’t even support Microsoft’s existing PlaysForSure DRM system, which means it can’t play songs bought from stores like Napster, Rhapsody, or MTV’s Urge, only files bought at the new Zune Marketplace. Which means you would have to re-purchase any songs bought from those sites. (And, of course, it won’t play songs purchased on iTunes.)

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