HBO Exec Proposes DRM Name Change

surfingmarmot writes "An HBO executive has figured out the problem with DRM acceptance — it's the name. HBO's chief technology officer Bob Zitter now wants to refer to the technology as Digital Consumer Enablement. Because, you see, DRM actually helps consumers by getting more content into their hands. The company already has HD movies on demand ready to go, but is delaying them because of ownership concerns. Says Zitter, 'Digital Consumer Enablement would more accurately describe technology that allows consumers "to use content in ways they haven't before," such as enjoying TV shows and movies on portable video players like iPods. "I don't want to use the term DRM any longer," said Zitter, who added that content-protection technology could enable various new applications for cable operators.'"

Try...

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital Consumer Encumberment

Honestly, does the name change anything?

When are they going to actually SELL something?

[cHALiTO]

I'm tired of this SHIT.

Wake me up when they're ready to actually SELL me a record or a movie. I don't want no 'license' to listen/watch something or any shit of the sort. I want to OWN a COPY. Copyright says I can't redistribute copies. Fine. But I want MINE to be MY OWN, and do with it whatever the fuck I want.

They can't have their cake and eat it too... and if they can.. well, they shouldn't.

He is trying to make a point, but badly.

[Russ Nelson]

He is trying to make a point, but he's making it badly. He's trying to claim that there are people out there who are only producing entertainment because it's copy-protected. Which is obviously bullshit, since CDs have no copy protection, and in the libdecss days, anybody can rip a movie they purchased and store a copy on their hard drive. This state of affairs has not reduced the amount of entertainment for sale. His point -- that Digital Restrictions Management might allow for more entertainment -- is not obviously incorrect.

Calling it Digital Content Enabling is a poor way to make his point, because it implies that people would accept a different name for DRM. He thinks that renaming it to reflect the effect HE HAS NOT PROVEN will help people accept DRM.

Re:Freakanomics

[SadGeekHermit]

I recently got a bill from Time Warner Cable for 160.00. 140 of it was for cable, internet, and etc. 22 was for Girls Gone Wild and something even dirtier. Of course, I have no problem with THAT, heh heh...

But jeez, 140 bucks for TV???

I called them and cancelled everything except my broadband internet connection. My monthly bill went from 144 bucks to 44 bucks. I saved a hundred bucks a month by dropping cable television!

The girl on the line sounded positively HURT by this. She asked me "But why do you want to cancel TV?" I told her it just wasn't interesting and she said "oh" in a quiet voice.

I felt at that moment as if I'd just dumped a sweet, loving girlfriend and broken her heart. It was a bizarre thing.

It didn't stop me from saving a hundred bucks, though! Woo HOO! That's two cases of beer a week!

YouTube and AtomFilms are better anyway...

Prior art

[Vainglorious Coward]

ZDNet's David Berlind already uses the acronym C.R.A.P. [youtube.com] (for Content, Restriction, Annulment, and Protection)

Re:Freakanomics

[soft_guy]

As far as I can tell, the software industry to this day has never learned this.

There was a time in the 1980s where every time you bought a game one of two things would happen: either they tried to play games with the floppy disk by adding a certain number of bad sectors, etc. or else at the beginning of the game you had to "enter the first word of the second paragraph of page 46 of the manual".

I haven't seen people do this for years. Now you usually have to hae some kind of license key or nothing at all. No one ships defective media on purpose and the way that licensing is implemented isn't just amateur hour anymore.

Re:Freakanomics

[HAKdragon]

Actually, a number of PC games do rely on "bad data" on the discs to avoid being copied casually. Software, such as Alcohol 120% and Daemon's (sp?) Tools have methods of getting around these various protections.

Re:Freakanomics

[zero_offset]

Those people who take your service cancellation requests make commissions from convincing you to keep your service. I'm thinking there's a pretty good chance she saw "SadGeekHermit habitually orders PPV softcore pseudo-porn" and concluded the sad-dumped-girlfriend voice might open you up for a discussion where she could set the hooks.

On a side note: what are you drinking? I would hope $100 would get you four cases. My "default" beer is Sam Adams and it runs about $25 for a case, when you can find it by the case, and most people consider it expensive. (In reality MY cost is much less since I now buy kegs, but in terms of cost by the case...)

Re:Freakanomics

[geekoid]

" No one ships defective media on purpose and the way that licensing is implemented isn't just amateur hour anymore."

yeah..that';s why it takes moments after release for there to be a crack.
I have downloaded a no CD crack for every game. Yeah I bought the game, I just want to play it without hearing the cd whine up and down and cause a stutter in the game.

Re:DCE = Digital Crap Enforcement

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital Control Enforcement
Digital Content Estopple
Doughnut Cream Euphoria
Digital Content Enslavement
Digital Consumer Enslavement
Digital Consumer Extortion
Digital Crap Exposure
Digital Control Establishment
Digital Consumer Enema
Dumb Consumer Enslavement
Drowsing Consumer Enrolement

Re:Freakanomics

[Lumpy]

Want your favorite shows back?

set up a old POS 1.2ghz or higher machine at a friends house with mythtv on it. have it after recording use a modified version of myth2ipod to make a compressed Xvid of it and then ftp them to your home PC/server at night.

Works great. I have done this for 1 year now and it works great. A buddy in Tokyo added my scripts to his mythbox for me and now I also get a nice feed of fresh anime for my daughter and incredibly fun to watch game shows for me.

I throw both of them $5.00US a month for the trouble. they are both more than happy and I get the very few shows I watch without having to troll isohunt or pirate bay.

Re:Freakanomics

[lgw]

I've played at least one game tha made my CD-ROM chatter almost as bad as a Commodore Floppy. I stopped playing for fear of damaging my drive!

Re:Freakanomics

[imidan]

Yeah, what is the deal with that? Why do I have to have the CD in to play? Given the right software, which anyone can get, the CD is trivially easy to copy to my hard drive. Or I can download a no-CD crack off the Internet. Why do they make this little hoop for me to jump through? Look, I bought the game. I have the sales receipt and everything!

My theory is that the people who make DRM technologies are kind of like telephone sanitizers. We've just been paying them for so long that if we suddenly give up on this utterly wasteful technology, then we'll be stuck with a lot of out-of-work DRM people, and they'll be meddling in the kitchen cupboards, rearranging them so we can never find anything anymore.

Re:Freakanomics

[badboy_tw2002]

Because the name of the game is _delaying_ the inevetible. Eventually its going to be cracked - that's a given. No one today is selling a game expecting that a No-CD patch won't make it out. What they don't want to do is have a Day-0 crack out. They want you to at least consider buying the game before you download it from your buddy, depending on how badly you want it. Reasonable logic? I can kind of see the point, but as the top level poster mentioned, the people who are pirating probably aren't going to buy it anyways. But at least they'll have to wait a little longer than the honest guy. Kind of like hardback/paperback I guess.

Re:Freakanomics

[Opportunist]

It ain't that easy anymore.

Many programs today start running CRCs of themselves to disable exactly this practice (i.e. making a conditional jump unconditional or inverting it, which used to create the funny side effect of the game only running without the CD inserted, but not when it was present :)), they just set a variable and test it a long time later to thwart simple approaches like your step 2, or they use code altering techniques, execute code out of data segments or even the stack (and now try to convince Vista that this is a good idea...).

Cracking games was a fun pastime in the 80s and 90s, with people competing who can do it first. Someone who cannot be me (of course not, I'd never ever do anything illegal) holds a personal record of just under 10 minutes, including the disassembly process (which took quite a while in the old days). But that changed big time with the advent of "professional" (read: done for profit, not done with a lot of knowledge) copy protection mechanisms.

If the computer content industry really wants to find out who cracks their games, all they gotta do is take a close look at the times when people take days off. Whenever a new version of a copy protection program comes out, I bet a lot of very good people take a day or two off. :)