Sun DReaM Finds Home In IPTV 68
An anonymous reader writes "The Register has a story reporting that Sun's DRM will find a home in a Korean IPTV system. From the article: "This week Sun released the source code for two components of DReaM, its DReaM-CAS (Conditional Access System) and DReaMMMI (Mother May I) the underlying mechanism for always asking a central resource for permission to access content. In papers that Sun put out this week it has described both of these processes. DReaMCAS or D-CAS currently only manages access to content in the MPEG-2 format."
Open Source DRM is like... (Score:3, Insightful)
WHHYHHYHY! (Score:5, Insightful)
How many times do these people have to be told, DRM can't work, at least not the way they want.
(shudder) to quote Bruce Schneier, you can't make water unwet, you can't make bits uncopyable.
STOP STOP STOP.
The only crypto should be authentication, as in, I the user want to be protected from fraud.
That and I don't really see the worth. Not a lot of TV is worth seeing once let alone twice.
Tom
Re:Avoid te knee-jerk reaction... (Score:5, Insightful)
(a) Does the DRM system prevent users from making fair use of protected content? (Shifting content in time, space, format)
(b) Does the DRM system enforce additional non-piracy-related restrictions on the end user at the behest of the content industry? (Region codes, preventing use of things like track skip/fast forward/other remote control buttons)
(c) Does the DRM system continually depend on an external authority which, if it were ever to become defunct, would effectively revoke the rights of the user to access the content? (And, can that external authority track the usage habits of the end user?)
While (c) here is an implementation detail that has implications concerning things the content industry would like to be able to do, (a) and (b) are make-or-break issues which apply to all DRM. That is, if (a) and (b) are true, then the DRM system is just as oppressive (perhaps even more so) than the DRM we're already afflicted with, regardless of the platforms that the DRM is available on or the open-source-ness of the scheme. But if (a) and (b) are false, then the content industry won't use them.
From the article you linked:
We believe in content owners' rights to control their creations as they see fit. And consumers have the right that if those systems are onerous, they just don't have to buy them. So the fair usage issue gets sorted out by the market. - Glenn Edens, Director, Sun Labs
This is a foolhardy assumption. The entire reason that the content industry plays the way they do is to ensure that there is no consumer choice when it comes to DRM. They use the legislature to enforce particular DRM schemes on the public. They collude in I-can't-see-how-this-is-legal associations to ensure that whatever DRM scheme is used is burdened with licensing terms to prevent electronics manufacturers from making playback devices that permit the full scope of fair use or that don't impose non-piracy restrictions on the end user, and those licensing restrictions are given teeth by the even-more-broken patent system. Even the biggest duel of the new millennium - Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD - laid to rest the question of DRM fairly early when both format consortia announced they were using AACS. And none of this is motivated solely (or even primarily) by piracy - the real goals here are to be able to track the end user, to manipulate the international content market, and to force the end user to watch advertising.
No sir I dont like it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Next thing you'll know if you watch CNN too much you'll get republican are great email and snail mail and if you watch Fox News the democrats will be trying to swing you back.
Or if you watch only shows showing violence you'll be flagged for special security at travel terminals.
This can be abused way too much. Corporations do not protect our security if there's a dime to be made off selling your information.
Re:Open Source DRM is like... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You Don't Get It (Score:3, Insightful)
Well now, that's a nice thought, but I can't see it happening. Truth is that we've had DRM in one form or another on computers for at least 20 years, and it's not just going to disappear no matter how much you may wish it.
(For the purposes of this discussion, I am including copy prevention measures such as having to type in a given word on a given page of the manual, or using a hardware dongle, Elite's Lens-lok, etc - they're "Rights Management" in that they seek to enforce the copyright holder's right to be the only one prodcuing copies, and they're certainly applied to digital products)