There is a lot of debate occurring at the moment with regards to Digital Rights Management (DRM), as I am sure you have all noticed. Although I think the idea is broken it's not usually something that I a lot to say about. I own a handful of CD's, and even fewer DVD's; I should also point out that I don't download the stuff either. I am just not into this stuff all that much, broadcast TV and radio (including Internet radio) and the occasional trip to Block Buster tends to do it for me. However, when it comes to the BBC iPlayer that is a different story!
Why am I ranting?
Like all good citizens in the UK I shell out each year for my TV licence, from which the BBC is funded (of which I approve). So I have paid for a bunch of content which I can watch with my TV, great. Even better I can now watch it on-line, and download it for later viewing with iPlayer, or can I? Well that's not entirely true, I can (if I could be bothered to upgrade my flash player) watch it on my Linux laptop, but I don't much fancy watching TV when I am working. What I want to do is watch it on my hacked XBox running XBMC.
There is no flash available on my XBMC so downloading is the order of the day, and here the DRM problems begin. There is of course an XBMC Script for iPlayer based on a hack of iPlayer based on iPhone downloads. In a nutshell you pretend to be a Apple iPhone and you can download things, that have been shoddy encoded with a bit of XOR'ing. Not really DRM and a little misguided. Anyway, its a lead into my main rant...
I have already paid for this content, why do I have to work around the DRM just to watch it on the device of my choice? This of course being the thrust of most peoples anti-DRM arguments! Normally my response would be "well just don't pay for it" (apple iTunes being a good example here); however in this case I have already paid for it!
So whats the problem again?
The problem that DRM is supposed to solve is the content being distributed without control on the Internet. This is not like tape, its not just confined to the people you know, its just about for everyone. The idea with DRM is that you allow the distribution, but restrict the ability to play. Does that concept work? No. The media providers don't want to let the cat out of the bag; unfortunately the cat is out the bag, and is starkly refusing to be hurded!
Don't get me wrong I do believe that he artists, and indeed all the people in the chain, deserve to be paid for their efforts. I also acknowledge the need to protect that, or we are not going to have any decent content. What I question is the way its being done. The technology is flawed, and the methods of policing are arbitrary!
What cracks me up with the "you can't play it" idea is that its easily subverted. Audio is easy, turn it into analog and then back into digital, the equipment is cheap enough that just about anyone can. The same is true for video, although playing with HDMI is a little harder (at the moment). The BBC in a way is the same, they have already broadcast the programs, anyone could have recorded them and shared them on line. The problem here is the will, not the how!
At the end of the day however you encode something, its going to have to be decoded to be "played". All that DRM does is removes my freedom of choice from what can do the decoding. It has not prevented me from distributing the material!
The method of policing "unauthorised" distribution is also needs some attention. To my mind you currently have a lottery on who gets caught! I think it fair to target the people to "released" the material into the wide world and not those who "passed it on" (I realise that's not a defensible position under law, but its an ethos). If you stop it being released, then it can't be distributed. Which in reality is what the content providers want, ie you can't download, but as we said the cat is out of the bag!
My suggestion!
OK let me return to iPlayer (rant over). I have a TV licence number, a postcode, and a name, why not ask me for this when I download something. Then use digital watermarking to encode a unique signature into the media that I have downloaded. This allows the BBC to trace a given piece of media back to the person who downloaded it. It also means that I can play the media on what I want!
Now clearly this means that anyone can play it on anything! They can also distribute it to anyone. We its the latter that, when combined with the Internet, is the real problem. Under my suggestion it would be easy to trace back to the person that "let the cat out of the bag", you then punish them using the full force of the law.
Ah, I hear you cry, but they could remove the watermark. Yes that is a possibility, but there are a few caveats. Firstly, why bother, you can download it anyway, and play it on anything, sure there is a watermark, do I care? There will of course be some people who really do want to remove the watermark. If done right it would require multiple people to collude (ie they require multiple watermarked copies) to find the watermark. I am sure with the right algorithm you can make the collusion difficult. Lets not give the smart people a reason to create the way of breaking it; my xbox example is good here, I don't want to distribute the content, I just want to watch it! The large majority of distributors are likely to be either unaware or too lazy to remove the watermark.
Now of course the whole concept relays on the fact that the watermark is hard to find and remove. In fact what is required is a watermark that is "robust and imperceptible". This unfortunately is not easy to do. However I am sure that money would be better spent trying to find one, rater than employing bad programmers to XOR bits of a data stream!
