Linux and DRM? 88
xgyro asks: "In light of the recent agreement between MS and Disney, and many calling for 2004 to be the 'Year of the Linux Desktop' does Linux have comparable DRM system to allow for distribution of protected content? Linus Torvalds has already endorsed DRM on the Linux platform. Possibly by coincidence, this company has announced a product that seems to provide for some possibilities. Will other companies follow suite? As a employee of a large content provider, what current options are out there for groups that want to deploy protected content on Linux?"
well, (Score:5, Informative)
Linus does not endorse DRM (Score:5, Informative)
Quoth Linus:
That's not exactly a ringing endorsement. If it is, then Linux could be construed to have endorsed browsing Slashdot, child porn, and writing viruses.
Linus did not "endorse" DRM on Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Linus did NOT "endorse" DRM on Linux; he merely said he wouldn't disallow it.
Geez, talk about RTFA. Now the posters don't even bother to do it.
Not an endorsement, an "I don't care if you do it" (Score:4, Informative)
en*dorse - To give approval of or support to, especially by public statement; sanction: endorse a political candidate. See synonyms at approve.
This did not happen. The quote from the article which you've fictionalized into an "endorsement" goes something like this--
"I also don't necessarily like DRM myself," Torvalds wrote on the "Linux-kernel" mailing list. "But...I'm an 'Oppenheimer,' and I refuse to play politics with Linux, and I think you can use Linux for whatever you want to--which very much includes things I don't necessarily personally approve of."
Please, xgyro [mailto], tell us how you extrapolated "use Linux for whatever you want to...[including] things I don't necessarily personally approve of" into "endorsed"?
A Microsoft troll, no doubt, but necessary to refute. Fiction becomes myth becomes fact after time.
Re:One option is treating your customer with respe (Score:5, Informative)
I realize that you're joking, but actually I did check, with the help of an IRC acquaintance.
He and I both downloaded the same track from emusic -- at different times, just in case you're wondering, as it was a track I'd had for a while --, and then each ran md5sum on our copies. The md5sums matched. and for the truly tin-foil hatted, I had him give me the start of his md5sum first.
We weren't looking to pirate the tracks, we were just curious, given that emusic in its early incarnation as mp3.com had once boasted of its water-marking technology.
Re:One option is treating your customer with respe (Score:3, Informative)
Kind of off-topic, but the fact that, at least on the supported platforms, mplayer plays Real streams quite happily and allows nice things like output to a file, means even if Real was a great format, there is no compulsion to install the proprietary player.
We're there (Score:4, Informative)
Re:well, (Score:2, Informative)
So in that respect it's really not that different from all the other operating systems on the market, now is it?
Protecting content is a waste of time because humans can only experience the content via analog methods. Meaning: there is always going to be a weak spot. Not only that, every single attempt at a DRM system to date has been cracked-- unless you consider the various encryption tools out there, like PGP/GnuPG... and even those suffer the same problem as every other protection scheme. The data has to be decrypted at some point in order for it to be useful.
Re:DRM is not kernel related (Score:2, Informative)
It is sure to spread to the OS level in the Longhorn release.
Want DRM? Try books! (Score:3, Informative)
Well, you could start by reading a book. DRM is not viable on closed source systems; it won't be viable on open source systems. If you plug DRM software into the kernel, I can still run it inside a virtual machine and snatch out whatever content I want (and put it on a peer-to-peer system). Better yet, I can get content from someone who doesn't try to treat me like a two-year-old.
Want a real system for getting money for your content? Try micropayments, or subscription, but don't bother with DRM. Any engineer (who isn't trying to part a fool from his venture capital) will tell you that, in the long run, "trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet." (Thanks, Bruce [schneier.com])
Cleartext interception is the difference (Score:2, Informative)
DRM does not have to be a black box any more than PGP needs to be a black box.
The difference between digital restrictions management for copyrighted works and GnuPG for secret communication is that use of GnuPG comes with the full cooperation of the machine's owner, who can if he wants intercept the cleartext by patching the source code. The stated goal of many DRM system includes preventing such interception.
Of course, you could provide the DRM system as source code and have it attest that it hasn't been trojaned, possibly by providing the copyright owner with a hash of the kernel and app binaries, as seen in TCG's platform. However, this would make DRM'd works incompatible with any modification of the app or of the kernel; is this compatible with OSI's Open Source Definition?