Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you Today? We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the history and evolution and scope of digital
Speaker 1: rights management or d r M. Recently, I was talking
Speaker 1: about n f t s, you know, non fungible tokens,
Speaker 1: and why I find that whole concept frustrating. But I
Speaker 1: also I made a I made a whoopsie an error
Speaker 1: when I was doing that, and so big thanks to
Speaker 1: Jason Stadler on Twitter for pointing this out letting me
Speaker 1: know also did it in a really cool way, like
Speaker 1: it could have said like you're an idiot, and didn't,
Speaker 1: so I appreciate that a lot. But in way, the
Speaker 1: mistake I made is that I had said, if you
Speaker 1: look at n f t s as a way to
Speaker 1: support artists, it's not really that effective because the artist
Speaker 1: only gets paid once on that initial point of sale.
Speaker 1: So let's say that I make you know a little
Speaker 1: piece of digital music, and I create a digital token
Speaker 1: and n f T to represent the ownership of that
Speaker 1: piece of music, and I sell it to you for
Speaker 1: a dollar and then you turn around and sell it
Speaker 1: for ten dollars. Then well you made money off of it,
Speaker 1: but all I made was the dollar. Well, Stabler, include
Speaker 1: me in that, you know, because you're talking about a
Speaker 1: blockchain approach where every single transaction becomes part of the chain.
Speaker 1: You can trace it from point to point and see
Speaker 1: how many times a token changes hands. You can actually
Speaker 1: code in essentially a royalty feature in n f t
Speaker 1: s so that the creator of the n f T
Speaker 1: receives a little payout every time the n f T
Speaker 1: goes through a transaction. So in that way, n f
Speaker 1: t s are actually superior to a physical piece of
Speaker 1: art because an artist can only sell an original work
Speaker 1: of art once. Uh. They could, you know, create copies
Speaker 1: and and and sell those as well, but the original
Speaker 1: they only sell once and then whatever happens after that,
Speaker 1: it's out of the artist's hands literally, So in that way,
Speaker 1: n f t s can be superior. U. I still
Speaker 1: think that they are wasteful, uh and speculative, but that
Speaker 1: is an important thing to actually note, So thank you
Speaker 1: against Tadler. Anyway, that got me to thinking about digital
Speaker 1: rights management, and the whole point of DRM is ostensibly
Speaker 1: to make certain that the party that holds the intellectual
Speaker 1: rights to a certain digital property is able to exercise
Speaker 1: those rights. Uh, you know, digital stuff is different from
Speaker 1: physical stuff. I mean, that's one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: n f t s are a thing, right, is that
Speaker 1: you can't treat digital the same way you would, you know,
Speaker 1: an analog physical thing, because you can copy stuff and
Speaker 1: easily distribute it wholesale, as opposed to if if I'm
Speaker 1: selling something physical that that takes a lot more effort
Speaker 1: to make a copy and transfer it. So that's the idea,
Speaker 1: but in practice it's typically used to prevent folks from
Speaker 1: gaining unauthorized access to hardware or software, particularly in the
Speaker 1: Internet age, though the concepts of d r M actually
Speaker 1: predate the Internet, and often folks will use the term
Speaker 1: as a blanket term when really they might mean something
Speaker 1: more specific like copy protection, which is one aspect of DRM,
Speaker 1: or they might mean technological protection measures, which I would
Speaker 1: argue is a little more broad than DRM. But anyway,
Speaker 1: it's meant to cut off people's ability to copy or
Speaker 1: steal stuff, or, as is frequently the case with tech
Speaker 1: like printers, for example, to go outside a company's ecosystem.
Speaker 1: By that, I mean companies like Cannon have incorporated DRM
Speaker 1: to prevent people from using just any kind of toner
Speaker 1: cartridge with their Cannon printers, something that the company recently
Speaker 1: had to walk back a bit. In fact, let's talk
Speaker 1: about that for a moment. So Cannon was using toner
Speaker 1: cartridges that had a little chip in them, and the
Speaker 1: Cannon printer would scan and look for that chip to
Speaker 1: verify that the toner you just put into the uh,
Speaker 1: the toner cartridge that you just put into the printer
Speaker 1: was in fact an official Cannon toner cartridge. And this
Speaker 1: is kind of a DRM. If it didn't detect the chip,
Speaker 1: then you wouldn't be able to use the toner because
Speaker 1: the printers like, no, no, no, you should only be
Speaker 1: using Cannon toner. Uh. We all know that printers the
Speaker 1: the where the money is in that toner, right, Like
Speaker 1: you can buy a printer for an amazingly cheap price
Speaker 1: as the toner that's gonna cost you, like just just
Speaker 1: after a year or two, you're gonna spend way more
Speaker 1: on toner than you ever did on the printer. So
Speaker 1: the only way that works, obviously is if you can
Speaker 1: lock people into that ecosystem, because if they have an
Speaker 1: option to go somewhere else to get the toner where
Speaker 1: they can get it more, you know, cheap than the
Speaker 1: official source, that's what they're gonna do. So the way
Speaker 1: Cannon was trying to get around that was by using
Speaker 1: little chips embedded in the toner cartridges so that users
Speaker 1: would be forced to get those cartridges to use with
Speaker 1: their Cannon printers. But now we're in a semiconductor shortage
Speaker 1: and Cannon can't actually get hold of the materials to
Speaker 1: make the chips to embed in their toner cartridges, which
Speaker 1: means that Cannon's had to produce toner cartridges that don't
Speaker 1: have the chip, And it also means that Cannon has
Speaker 1: had to instruct users on how to use those those
Speaker 1: cartridges and bypass the d r M systems that are
Speaker 1: otherwise in place. Typical technically, what that means is Cannon's
Speaker 1: teaching people how they can get a work around on
Speaker 1: the system that is supposed to lock you into the
Speaker 1: Cannon ecosystem, where you know, theoretically you can go outside
Speaker 1: of it now because Cannon's just told you how it works.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's that's one of the downfalls of d
Speaker 1: r M. Now, the folks who hold intellectual property rights
Speaker 1: saw DRM as a necessity in order to actually, you know,
Speaker 1: profit off of the i P that they owned. So
Speaker 1: you can think of it kind of like a lock
Speaker 1: that's on some piece of technology, and only legit customers
Speaker 1: are given a key to use it and only under
Speaker 1: specific circumstances, or as the Free Software Foundation puts it,
Speaker 1: DRM isn't really about protecting copyright or i P, but
Speaker 1: rather controlling the use of i P, as is clearly
Speaker 1: the case with the cannon printers. Also, DRM really describes
Speaker 1: an overall philosophy and strategy, not a specific implementation. There
Speaker 1: are a few really popular implementations of d r M
Speaker 1: and a couple of flavors of that, but it's it's
Speaker 1: more of a this is what this technology does, as
Speaker 1: opposed to this is a very specific tech, uh, and
Speaker 1: some people use totally different DRM methodologies than others, so
Speaker 1: it's not a singular technology or anything like that. There
Speaker 1: have been so many bad DRM implementations that I think
Speaker 1: a lot of folks in the text space immediately associate
Speaker 1: DRM with frustration and anger and betrayal. A bad DRM
Speaker 1: solution can become a real pain in the patookas for
Speaker 1: legit users of tech. For example, there are video games
Speaker 1: that have DRM protections in it where it's been shown
Speaker 1: that the d r M actually negatively impacts the performance
Speaker 1: of the game on gamers machines, So you might have
Speaker 1: things like dropped frames, or you might not be able
Speaker 1: to set the graphics settings as high as you think
Speaker 1: you should based upon your hardware, because the the involvement
Speaker 1: of DRM is actually impacting the quality of your experience.
Speaker 1: And perhaps the most exasperating thing is that in many
Speaker 1: cases it doesn't actually solve the problem it's meant to tackle.
Speaker 1: So in our lock analogy, imagine you've got a gate
Speaker 1: with a lock on it, and you've got a key
Speaker 1: for that lock. But sometimes the lock sticks right, Sometimes
Speaker 1: the key gets stuck in the lock and you can't
Speaker 1: even turn it or pull it back out, and it's
Speaker 1: just a pain to operate. Meanwhile, you look over and
Speaker 1: you see a bunch of folks casually standing nearby with
Speaker 1: a big old pair of bolt cutters, and you realize, well,
Speaker 1: they just have to get the lock off once and
Speaker 1: then they can actually go in and out of the
Speaker 1: gate as much as they like and you know, that
Speaker 1: seems to be the preference. That's that's the better way
Speaker 1: of doing things. So d r M, a lot of
Speaker 1: people argue, not only does it not solve the problem
Speaker 1: of say piracy uh or or having ownership over i P,
Speaker 1: it also hurts the legit users or customers who are
Speaker 1: are purchasing this stuff. But let's not get too far
Speaker 1: ahead of ourselves. Let's well, we're gonna start by talking
Speaker 1: about the history of d r M and the various
Speaker 1: laws that have made an imperfect solution even more of
Speaker 1: a problem, because y' all, this starts to get absurd
Speaker 1: when you start really thinking about it. Now, many decades ago,
Speaker 1: even before the era of personal computers, we're talking like
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties nineteen sixties, you typically encountered computer systems in
Speaker 1: just a few environments. One might be academia like universities,
Speaker 1: you know, like Stanford and m I. T. They were
Speaker 1: working on uter systems and furthering the discipline of computer science.
Speaker 1: Another was in certain think tanks. They might have had
Speaker 1: access to computers, and a few businesses were starting to
Speaker 1: adopt them. So by the nineteen sixties you had a
Speaker 1: few big companies purchasing massive computer systems to run processes
Speaker 1: in the background. All right, this was not yet the
Speaker 1: era of desktop computers. That would take another decade and
Speaker 1: some change. Really, uh, you, we're really looking at massive
Speaker 1: main frames for the most part. Now, in the early days,
Speaker 1: computers and their software were tightly coupled. You had proprietary
Speaker 1: computer systems running proprietary software and it was only through
Speaker 1: that pairing with specific hardware and specific software that everything worked.
Speaker 1: Like you couldn't port the software over to a different
Speaker 1: computer system because it wasn't compatible. In fact, in some
Speaker 1: cases you were working with a hard wire system, a
Speaker 1: hard coded system, where the computer system could perform certain
Speaker 1: processes because it was hardwired to do that, and you
Speaker 1: couldn't separate software from hardware. It was effectively firmware. So
Speaker 1: the program would just live on a single computer and
Speaker 1: that was that. But towards the end of the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: things were starting to change and IBM saw that its
Speaker 1: customers needed more flexibility. There was a need to be
Speaker 1: able to move programs between machines, or to make backup
Speaker 1: copies of software so that you would have a backup
Speaker 1: available should something happen to your primary copy. But creating
Speaker 1: that kind of capability would also mean that customers would
Speaker 1: more easily be able to make illegal copies of software.
Speaker 1: What if someone were to give away copies of that
Speaker 1: software to colleagues, maybe even people in other companies, you know,
Speaker 1: companies that had not purchased the software, IBM would then
Speaker 1: be out of a customer. So we'll talk about what
Speaker 1: IBM did in just a moment, but first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Okay, So IBM is looking at ways
Speaker 1: to allow customers more flexibility with their software, but also
Speaker 1: preventing the wholesale copying of software, so that IBM doesn't
Speaker 1: just sell one copy and then that's it, right, Then
Speaker 1: it just goes viral as people start copying. And of
Speaker 1: course these are this is the old days, is pre Internet,
Speaker 1: or at least pre Internet in any meaningful way, and
Speaker 1: so you know, we're talking about physical copies at this point,
Speaker 1: and one of the things they were looking at was
Speaker 1: a cryptographic approach. This would be like the lock and
Speaker 1: key technique I was talking about before the break, where
Speaker 1: only entities that have a legit key would be able
Speaker 1: to use that software. But IBM saw that this was
Speaker 1: a poor swan because it would make the software harder
Speaker 1: to use, and perhaps most important, it would be expensive
Speaker 1: for IBM to implement. And also there was a concern
Speaker 1: that if you were to update your system, the method
Speaker 1: of encryption may no longer be valid, that you would
Speaker 1: have to consistently update the DRM as well as whatever
Speaker 1: the operating system was. It was just it was becoming
Speaker 1: a nightmare. And so what s Humphrey, who worked at
Speaker 1: IBM in the nineteen sixties would end up saying, quote,
Speaker 1: because we could not devise practical physical security measures, we
Speaker 1: had to rely on the inherent honesty of our customers.
Speaker 1: Our hope was that legal protection and criminal prosecution would
Speaker 1: limit the piracy problem end quote. So in other words,
Speaker 1: IBM came to the conclusion that forcing any kind of DRM,
Speaker 1: although it wasn't called it that yet uh would end
Speaker 1: up causing more harm than good. So IBM decided not
Speaker 1: to go down that route that we would later call
Speaker 1: DRM because the downsides were greater than the positives. At
Speaker 1: least that's the conclusion the company came to in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. If you flash forward three decades, the company
Speaker 1: who had a very different point of view, and we'll
Speaker 1: get there now. In the late nineteen seventies, Apple executives
Speaker 1: and managers were deep in a conversation about creating a
Speaker 1: solution to protect Apple software and prevent folks from being
Speaker 1: able to make copies of it. So this is the
Speaker 1: early age of personal computers, where you frequently would purchase
Speaker 1: programs on a floppy disk, and you would insert that
Speaker 1: floppy disk into a floppy disk drive attached to a computer,
Speaker 1: and then you would run a program off the disk. Well,
Speaker 1: with the ability to copy the contents of one disk
Speaker 1: onto a blank disc, that meant there was a risk
Speaker 1: that you would sell one copy, the customer would then
Speaker 1: produce a ton of copies on their own and then
Speaker 1: either undercut you or worse yet, distribute them for free
Speaker 1: to other people. I think of the children. So folks
Speaker 1: like Randy Wingington and Apple's co founder Steve Wozniak debated
Speaker 1: on solutions that could cut back on or outright prevent
Speaker 1: software piracy. They outlined different levels of DRM. Again, it
Speaker 1: wasn't called DRM. It was really was more like levels
Speaker 1: of copy protection. So if a copy protection were perfect,
Speaker 1: they would describe it as level one. It would be
Speaker 1: the most restrictive and it would prevent attempts to copy
Speaker 1: the software illegally. Uh, and it went all the way
Speaker 1: down to level five. This would be the least secure
Speaker 1: at eight percent effectiveness. So there's still some copy protection
Speaker 1: there um. And essentially what they were saying is we
Speaker 1: you know this, this level of copy protection. Eight out
Speaker 1: of ten computer users would not bother to try and
Speaker 1: work around it. But if you were determined, you could
Speaker 1: find your way around that copy protection. And again, this
Speaker 1: was just a way of classifying potential solutions. And we
Speaker 1: know about all of this because a person who goes
Speaker 1: by the handle of vader Mere on Reddit happened to
Speaker 1: come across a bundle of Apple internal memos, like the
Speaker 1: physical paper and ink kind of memos. They found the
Speaker 1: bundle of documents in a goodwill store, and those documents
Speaker 1: detailed the back and forth between various engineers and Apple
Speaker 1: about potential copy protection solutions, and nearly every proposal was
Speaker 1: dismissed as either being too easy to get around or
Speaker 1: too difficult to implement, or too expensive to consider, or
Speaker 1: too inconvenient for the end user, or some combination thereof.
Speaker 1: So again, these were very smart people all debating the
Speaker 1: possibility of creating various copy protection strategies and realizing the
Speaker 1: downsides might be greater than any kind of benefit they
Speaker 1: might grant. I actually remember computer games in the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties that would have their own takes on copy protection,
Speaker 1: and these wouldn't necessarily count as DRN, but there is
Speaker 1: some overlap with DRM there. For example, I remember I
Speaker 1: had a game that would prompt you to provide an
Speaker 1: answer to a question early on in the game. Like
Speaker 1: you could start the game, you could start playing, but
Speaker 1: before very long you would get a question posed to
Speaker 1: you and the answer would be found in the game's manual.
Speaker 1: Like back then, games came with physical manuals that you
Speaker 1: would have. Uh. Some of those manuals would be printed
Speaker 1: on dark paper, dark ink on dark paper, because the
Speaker 1: game companies figured that folks weren't just copying video games
Speaker 1: onto blank discs, they were also going to the local
Speaker 1: photocopier and copying the manuals too, and getting around this
Speaker 1: kind of rudimentary copy protection strategy. So the dark paper
Speaker 1: with dark ink would foil most copiers. They would just
Speaker 1: produce black pages. I want to say one of the
Speaker 1: Wizardry games did that, but I could be wrong, But
Speaker 1: playing those games was kind of a hassle because you
Speaker 1: have to have the manual handy and flip through it
Speaker 1: while all you really wanted to do was just play
Speaker 1: the darn game. Let's say that you know, you went
Speaker 1: out there and bought the game with your hard earned money,
Speaker 1: like for me from cutting the lawn over and over again,
Speaker 1: even if it didn't need it. Gosh darn it, because
Speaker 1: I needs those games. And I end up handing over
Speaker 1: my allowance money or the law and more money, whatever
Speaker 1: it was, And and I get a game, and I
Speaker 1: come home and now it's just a pain in the
Speaker 1: butt to play because there's this copy protection I have
Speaker 1: to get around. Uh. That plays into the issue with
Speaker 1: DR and potentially being inconvenient for legit users. In fact,
Speaker 1: it would start to tell you that maybe I just
Speaker 1: want a cracked version of this game so I don't
Speaker 1: have to deal with that. It's not because I want
Speaker 1: to steal the game, but just because this is a
Speaker 1: barrier between me and experiencing the thing I want to experience.
Speaker 1: But we really shifted into high gear with DRM in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties. This is also when we saw the
Speaker 1: birth of the World Wide Web, which for many people
Speaker 1: was their first exposure to the Internet. And again, the
Speaker 1: Internet had actually been around for a while before the
Speaker 1: Worldwide Web came along, but really only a fraction of
Speaker 1: the general public were even aware that it was a thing.
Speaker 1: Most people didn't know. Unless you were, you know, actively
Speaker 1: working on our bonnet, or you were a college student
Speaker 1: at the time in in one of the computer labs,
Speaker 1: you probably didn't even know the Internet existed. The Web
Speaker 1: represented a new way to access information, and that included
Speaker 1: information that could be under copyright protection. And you know, well,
Speaker 1: folks say information wants to be free, the parties that
Speaker 1: hold copyrights might not always feel the same way. Now,
Speaker 1: I should add this is understandable if you were to
Speaker 1: pour your time and effort and talent into creating something
Speaker 1: like let's say it's a novel, and you wanted to
Speaker 1: earn money off your work. If you thought this is
Speaker 1: something worth paying for, I want to become a professional novelist,
Speaker 1: you would be concerned about folks skirting around the whole
Speaker 1: paying for your work thing. They'd get to experience your work,
Speaker 1: but you'd make no profit from it. Now, I say
Speaker 1: this because I know I tend to come down pretty
Speaker 1: hard against corporations and stuff and for lots of good reasons.
Speaker 1: Corporations often make bone headed decisions. But I also want
Speaker 1: to make it clear that I do see the need
Speaker 1: and value of copyright, like I see the reason for it.
Speaker 1: I don't think it needs to be nearly as extensive
Speaker 1: as what we have here in America, but I digress. Also,
Speaker 1: by the way, I say that as the son of
Speaker 1: two authors who have published numerous books, the way copyright
Speaker 1: law is right now, assuming that my parents were too
Speaker 1: uh to grant the ongoing rights to either me or, say,
Speaker 1: my sister, uh, we would be able to collect royalties
Speaker 1: on works for the rest of our lives. Uh. But
Speaker 1: you know, I don't care about that so much. I
Speaker 1: think it needs to be less expansive than it is.
Speaker 1: But I digress. So the ninety nineties hit and the
Speaker 1: web provided a new way to distribute information and files,
Speaker 1: so there was a need for some sort of mechanism
Speaker 1: to make sure folks couldn't just steal stuff. Like if
Speaker 1: you wanted to sell digital files on your website, you
Speaker 1: would probably want a method to keep folks from copying
Speaker 1: your products without limitations. But have no fear. A man
Speaker 1: with a degree in sociology will soon be here as
Speaker 1: soon as we take this quick break. Okay, before the break,
Speaker 1: I teased the entrance of Victor Shear, so in nine
Speaker 1: uh he founded a company called Electronic Publishing Resources, but
Speaker 1: soon they renamed this company inter Trust. Sheer had an
Speaker 1: amazingly prescient vision of what the Internet would allow. In fact,
Speaker 1: this is before Tim berners Lee had established the first
Speaker 1: web server. In fact, this is before the National Science Foundation,
Speaker 1: which had dominion over the Internet back in those days,
Speaker 1: had even lifted the restrictions on the commercial use of
Speaker 1: the Internet. The NSF wouldn't do that till and Sheer
Speaker 1: founded Electronic Publishing Resources the year before. So uh, he
Speaker 1: really saw where where the path was leading. He saw
Speaker 1: that the Internet was going to become the marketplace where
Speaker 1: people would buy and sell digital goods. But how do
Speaker 1: you make that work? How do you make a stable
Speaker 1: marketplace for the the per just sing and selling and
Speaker 1: transferring of digital goods so that it doesn't just become
Speaker 1: a chaotic mess. How can you assure that the rights
Speaker 1: holder to say, a certain song, will not see their
Speaker 1: song just copied and distributed across the entire Internet. What
Speaker 1: was needed was a method to wrap files up into
Speaker 1: a container of some sort, and the container would have
Speaker 1: special rules associated with it, rules that the container would
Speaker 1: only uh, you know, allow users to do so, Like
Speaker 1: if it was within the rule set, it was fine.
Speaker 1: If it was outside, it wouldn't allow access to the
Speaker 1: file inside the container. Rules like how many times the
Speaker 1: file might be accessed. It could be something like a
Speaker 1: a subscription service where you would have to continuously pay
Speaker 1: a subscription fee in order to have continued use of
Speaker 1: a specific file. Uh. Maybe it would be on how
Speaker 1: many machines you can install the file. We saw this
Speaker 1: a lot with music file else where companies were creating
Speaker 1: limitations on how many machines you could install a particular
Speaker 1: album before you would get a message saying sorry, you've
Speaker 1: you've put this on the max number of machines you
Speaker 1: can have it on. Same with video games like that.
Speaker 1: That was a big thing with video games too, where
Speaker 1: you could purchase a game and you might get a
Speaker 1: message saying, no, you've already got this installed on another machine,
Speaker 1: so you can't install it on this computer, which is
Speaker 1: a real pain in the butt if you're doing things
Speaker 1: like upgrading your computer system, or you happen to have
Speaker 1: multiple computers and you just want to be able to
Speaker 1: port the experience from one machine to another. DRM would
Speaker 1: sometimes interfere with that, but anyway, Uh, those were the
Speaker 1: sort of rules that would be associated with these containers.
Speaker 1: That was Sheer's vision. Again, not bad for a fellow
Speaker 1: who had a sociology degree, and he would file several
Speaker 1: patents around this idea. And it was Sheer who called
Speaker 1: it a digital rights Management strate to g so that's
Speaker 1: where dr M comes from. The patents would end up
Speaker 1: making headlines later on when Intertrust, a company that at
Speaker 1: the time had fewer than forty employees, filed a massive
Speaker 1: lawsuit against Microsoft claiming infringement, saying that Microsoft was making
Speaker 1: use of DRM technology without actually paying Intertrust for for
Speaker 1: using it. The battle would last a few years, but
Speaker 1: Microsoft ultimately would settle out of court and pay Intertrust
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. Something similar
Speaker 1: happened between Intertrust and Apple almost a decade later. But
Speaker 1: around that same time, work out of Xerox's famous park
Speaker 1: department that's p a r C. It stands for Palo
Speaker 1: Alto Research Center, they would develop a different approach to
Speaker 1: d r M, one that took into account not just
Speaker 1: copy protection, but the transference of files. That project would
Speaker 1: evolve into a product called content Guard. So yeah, the
Speaker 1: digibox from Intertrust and content Guard originally from Xerox, and
Speaker 1: then IBM. You remember them, the company that said that
Speaker 1: you know, a DRM approach would be bad for business. Well,
Speaker 1: they developed a cryptographic envelope methodology to send files inside
Speaker 1: as a type of DRM. They called it cryptolope, which
Speaker 1: sounds like something too young vampires in love would do
Speaker 1: if their parents didn't approve of their relationship. Cryptolope, You're
Speaker 1: welcome anyway. By now, we were into the late nineties
Speaker 1: and in the United States, Congress was hashing out a
Speaker 1: new law to address copyright issues in the digital age.
Speaker 1: In fact, this was the infamous Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Speaker 1: or d m c A. Like when you hear about
Speaker 1: someone getting a d m c A strike, it relates
Speaker 1: back to this law, which became a law. Now. A
Speaker 1: big reason for the d m c A was that
Speaker 1: folks were now able to make digital copis of stuff
Speaker 1: and make them available over the Internet, and a big
Speaker 1: part of this was digital music. This was before the
Speaker 1: iTunes music store that wouldn't launch until two thousand three.
Speaker 1: But there was another way to get digital music. So
Speaker 1: some of y'all might be too young to remember this,
Speaker 1: but back in the day, the way you would get
Speaker 1: digital music onto a device, you know, like an MP
Speaker 1: three player, that's what we called him back then, before
Speaker 1: we had smartphones. Well, you would take your music collection
Speaker 1: from c d s and you would use a CD
Speaker 1: ROM drive connected to a computer, and then you would
Speaker 1: use a program to rip the music from those c
Speaker 1: ds and convert them into music files, and then you
Speaker 1: would transfer those files via a cable to the MP
Speaker 1: three player. There was no wireless MP three's back in
Speaker 1: those days, but this meant that you'd have musical files
Speaker 1: on your computer. You could potentially send those files to
Speaker 1: someone else or save them to some other disc and
Speaker 1: you could listen to music without actually paying for it.
Speaker 1: The horror. And then we had the rise of peer
Speaker 1: to peer networks, and those made it way easier to
Speaker 1: distribute files like music files across a large group of computers.
Speaker 1: You know, I had Napster and Kazan and those kind
Speaker 1: of of peer to peer networks, So you had a
Speaker 1: subset of folks who were uploading and downloading music files
Speaker 1: like crazy anyway, DRM was one method to try and
Speaker 1: prevent folks from just copying music wholesale, and one of
Speaker 1: the things that the d m c A did was
Speaker 1: to make it a crime to try and circumvent the
Speaker 1: DRM protections on files. Now here's where we get into
Speaker 1: a weird paradox that still makes my brain melt. All right,
Speaker 1: let's quickly talk about making a copy for the purposes
Speaker 1: of a backup here. Generally speaking, the US government has
Speaker 1: ruled that it's okay to make a copy of stuff
Speaker 1: you own for the purposes of a backup. So, for example,
Speaker 1: I have a small collection of Vinyl records. I might
Speaker 1: want to make a digital backup of those Vinyl records
Speaker 1: so that should anything happen to my physical collection, I
Speaker 1: still have the music. Now, granted, a lot of this
Speaker 1: example kind of doesn't work in the era of on
Speaker 1: demand streaming music, but just stick with me here. The
Speaker 1: point is if I made a copy of that Vinyl
Speaker 1: record album collection just as a backup for myself and
Speaker 1: that was it, I'd pretty much be in the clear.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is considered acceptable. It kind of falls
Speaker 1: in line with fair use. Fair use is a collection
Speaker 1: of legal exceptions that allow folks to copy or otherwise
Speaker 1: make use of material that they don't own. The copyright
Speaker 1: for um fair use, though, is a tricky subject anyway.
Speaker 1: In the era of DRN, making backup copies is way
Speaker 1: more complicated and infuriating. A lot of d r M
Speaker 1: just outright prevents customers from making a copy, including backup copies.
Speaker 1: So it's legal to make backups of your stuff, now,
Speaker 1: that's what the courts have said repeatedly. What the d
Speaker 1: M c A does however, as it says, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's okay for you to make a copy of your
Speaker 1: stuff for the purposes of backup, but it's not okay
Speaker 1: to get around the DRM protections that prevent you from
Speaker 1: making a copy. So this is a classic catch twenty two.
Speaker 1: You could make a legal backup copy if you could
Speaker 1: get around the d r M, but getting around the
Speaker 1: DRM is illegal. Other countries adopted similar legislation, which meant
Speaker 1: now that DRM has legal protection and people don't. Yikes. Uh,
Speaker 1: this kind of leads to lots of problems. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've got the issue with the individual users. That's a
Speaker 1: problem right there. Like if you aren't allowed to make
Speaker 1: a backup copy because of that protection. That's really frustrating.
Speaker 1: But another big one is archival and president vation of works. See,
Speaker 1: the way we store stuff evolves over time, and that
Speaker 1: also means that the older methods we were relying upon
Speaker 1: in decades past gradually become obsolete. Like let's go back
Speaker 1: to floppy drives. I'm sure some of you out there
Speaker 1: listening you might have a working floppy drive hanging around,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, I would say we could
Speaker 1: call them extinct, like the dinosaurs. So let's say that
Speaker 1: a company released a particular piece of software on floppy disks,
Speaker 1: and the disks contained a form of copy protection on them,
Speaker 1: and then decades later, someone needs to access that program,
Speaker 1: except now that company doesn't exist anymore, so you can't
Speaker 1: go to them. There's no one to go to the
Speaker 1: No one has floppy drives. So even if you had
Speaker 1: a copy of the disk in your hand, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to make a copy of the old file
Speaker 1: because the way it was protected and the way it saved.
Speaker 1: So in the in the efforts to preserve important stuff,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of hard to think of certain things
Speaker 1: like like computer games as being important. But in order
Speaker 1: to preserve that for historical record. The copy of protection
Speaker 1: stands as a huge barrier to that, and so that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why people who are critics of
Speaker 1: DRM really hammer this home, saying DRM really makes it
Speaker 1: difficult for us to do important work. There's also the
Speaker 1: issue of if you want to do scholarly work, if
Speaker 1: you want to examine a computer program to look for vulnerabilities,
Speaker 1: for example, like you're doing some security research, DRM can
Speaker 1: stand in the way of that and to disable the
Speaker 1: DRM would be breaking the law. So there are people
Speaker 1: who really have legit criticisms for the way we treat
Speaker 1: DRM these days. And this means that over time we
Speaker 1: lose knowledge, right, we can't act says that anymore, the
Speaker 1: information literally becomes inaccessible. So again one of the biggest
Speaker 1: arguments leveled against DRM. That prevents the legal archival of information,
Speaker 1: and it means that those files and the stuff built
Speaker 1: from those files end up living on borrowed time. Then
Speaker 1: there's also the back end of DRM. So a lot
Speaker 1: of these methodologies rely upon a service running in the
Speaker 1: background where a file is checking in with the mothership
Speaker 1: back home. Right, So DRM is not just something that
Speaker 1: just lives on a file itself. It's part of a
Speaker 1: larger interconnected service. So what happens if the company in
Speaker 1: charge of that service goes out of business or gets acquired,
Speaker 1: will you still have access through the equipment or file?
Speaker 1: I mean, you purchased it, but if you lose it,
Speaker 1: like if the thing goes away, what happens to the
Speaker 1: stuff you bought. Here's a great example of this. I
Speaker 1: have purchased digital copies of certain television shows. The Mighty
Speaker 1: Bush is one of them. I did that on Xbox.
Speaker 1: I purchased the full seasons of The Mighty Bush, and
Speaker 1: I have it available in Xbox to watch whenever I want.
Speaker 1: Let's say something weird happens at Microsoft and the entire
Speaker 1: Xbox division goes defunct and I no longer have access
Speaker 1: to that. I paid for that that stuff, and I
Speaker 1: would have otherwise had access to it if they had
Speaker 1: sent me, say a physical copy of the DVDs, which
Speaker 1: by the way, I went ahead and purchased because of
Speaker 1: just this very reason. But I would no longer have
Speaker 1: access to that material. It's It's one of the big
Speaker 1: arguments against streaming services is the idea that should the
Speaker 1: streaming service go out of business, you lose access to
Speaker 1: all of that stuff. Or what about when a company
Speaker 1: that sells a DRM protected file decides to recall that file. Now,
Speaker 1: this happened with Amazon in two thousand nine, and in
Speaker 1: a fitting twist, the files were e books, and they
Speaker 1: were ebook versions of two George Orwell titles, Animal Farm
Speaker 1: and Nine. Now, considering the novel features an invasive government
Speaker 1: exerting control over virtually every aspect of people's lives, largely
Speaker 1: through the control of information, this hit pretty darn close
Speaker 1: to home. It felt like like like reality was mirroring fiction.
Speaker 1: So what actually happened? While according to Amazon, the company
Speaker 1: that had added these two titles to the Kindle Store
Speaker 1: didn't actually have the publishing rights for those books, which
Speaker 1: meant it would be illegal to sell those books because
Speaker 1: the company that was selling them didn't actually have the
Speaker 1: rights to them. So Amazon stopped the sale. But some
Speaker 1: customers had actually already purchased those titles they had added
Speaker 1: them to their digital libraries. So Amazon then recalled the
Speaker 1: titles from the customers who bought them and then issued
Speaker 1: a refund. But that meant that people who had purchased
Speaker 1: either of those books suddenly saw them just vanish from
Speaker 1: their kindle libraries. So let's think of that as if
Speaker 1: it were a physical book. Let's say you went to
Speaker 1: a brick and mortar bookstore and you purchased a physical
Speaker 1: copy of George Orwell, and you take your physical copy
Speaker 1: of the book home with you and you put it
Speaker 1: up on your shelf, and that night, someone from the
Speaker 1: bookstore breaks into your house takes the book off your
Speaker 1: shelf and leaves the purchase price for the book behind
Speaker 1: before leaving. That would be quite the invasion. And that
Speaker 1: is kind of what happened digitally speaking with Amazon, and
Speaker 1: it was made possible through DRM tools, which of course
Speaker 1: raises troubling issues. If DRM allows a company to recall
Speaker 1: a product after you've already purchased it, well, it's definitely
Speaker 1: not yours, is it? Like you, you just have access
Speaker 1: to it for as long as the company allows you
Speaker 1: to have access to it. So there are a ton
Speaker 1: of issues around DRM, and most of them poorly affect
Speaker 1: the end user. Uh. It often feels like you're being
Speaker 1: punished for having gone through the proper channels to purchase
Speaker 1: whatever the digital good is, whereas if you had just
Speaker 1: you know, pirated it, if someone had already cracked the
Speaker 1: d r M off of it, and you've got access
Speaker 1: to the pirated copy. You wouldn't have these concerns because
Speaker 1: it would all have been stripped away. Not a great message.
Speaker 1: I haven't even really touched on some of the methods
Speaker 1: of copy protection that have led to massive problems, like
Speaker 1: Sony's infamous copy protection methodology that was in the mid
Speaker 1: two thousand's. It would install a root kit on your computer.
Speaker 1: So you go out, you buy an album published by
Speaker 1: Sony b MG. You would come back and you put
Speaker 1: the CD on your computer, and maybe you want to
Speaker 1: rip the music to put onto your brand new iPod,
Speaker 1: or maybe you just want to listen on your computer,
Speaker 1: and boom, your computer installs files that create vulnerabilities on
Speaker 1: your computer system, vulnerabilities that hackers later were able to
Speaker 1: take advantage of and infect systems with malware. Uh. It
Speaker 1: was like installing a back door to your computer system.
Speaker 1: Something that's never a good idea. Now, the really crazy
Speaker 1: thing about all of this is that DRM doesn't work,
Speaker 1: at least not for the purpose for which it was invented,
Speaker 1: which was the whole idea of giving the rights owners
Speaker 1: the peace of mind that you know they're not going
Speaker 1: to be completely exploited by everybody else. There are folks
Speaker 1: who specialize in cracking DRM on files, and as long
Speaker 1: as they're not caught, the result is that the new
Speaker 1: files are DRM free and are preferable to the d
Speaker 1: r M versions, even for legit customers, and the entertainment
Speaker 1: industry has not faded away because of this. It's not
Speaker 1: like piracy has destroyed companies. The arguments for DRM typically
Speaker 1: end up not holding very much water, because, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, the problem with piracy doesn't actually seem to
Speaker 1: hit the bottom line, at least not nearly to the
Speaker 1: extent that companies would have us believe. Now. DRM is
Speaker 1: still a thing today, but the landscape has changed dramatically.
Speaker 1: For one thing, the proliferation of streaming services has created
Speaker 1: a new way to distribute stuff like music, movies, and television.
Speaker 1: To access the entertainment, you need a subscription to those
Speaker 1: various services, or you have to have a free version
Speaker 1: that's supported by ads or whatever. Whatever. The revenue generation
Speaker 1: model is not that this is the only way people
Speaker 1: access entertainment, but it's become so popular that a lot
Speaker 1: of DRM strategies are just moot because the entertainment gets
Speaker 1: locked inside a specific ecosystem, or you've got stuff like
Speaker 1: computer games or console games that require the player to
Speaker 1: have a persistent connect to the Internet. The purpose of
Speaker 1: that connection is to verify that the player in question
Speaker 1: is using a legitimate copy of the game, namely that
Speaker 1: the person playing the game purchased the game, and the
Speaker 1: connection Internet connection is a connection to a server that's
Speaker 1: verifying that. This is also an irritation because even if
Speaker 1: the game is a single player experience, you still have
Speaker 1: to be connected to the Internet to run the game.
Speaker 1: You're not playing against other people, you're just trying to
Speaker 1: play the game, and yet you need that connection time
Speaker 1: and again we've seen people resist that and to complain
Speaker 1: about it. So, yeah, DRM is still a thing because
Speaker 1: there's still this massive fear that the whole system would
Speaker 1: fall apart, or at the very least companies would make
Speaker 1: less money than they feel they should should DRM go away.
Speaker 1: But I've seen a lot of legit arguments that say
Speaker 1: DRM really just causes more problems than it and it
Speaker 1: doesn't really solve the problem it was meant to solve.
Speaker 1: So I'm also an advocate of just getting rid of DRM.
Speaker 1: I don't know that we can rely upon the honesty
Speaker 1: of the average person on the Internet. But I am
Speaker 1: pretty certain that DRM is kind of a broken solution
Speaker 1: to a problem that actually hasn't been well defined in
Speaker 1: terms of impact. I mean, the Government Accountability Office in
Speaker 1: the United States famously issued a report that said it
Speaker 1: is impossible to determine to what extent piracy actually affects
Speaker 1: the bottom line, and that the numbers that that content companies,
Speaker 1: that things like music companies and movie studios, the numbers
Speaker 1: that they cite saying we lost X billion amount of
Speaker 1: dollars because of piracy, those are unsupportable. Uh. The big
Speaker 1: reason behind that is that you can never actually say
Speaker 1: that someone who pirated something would have otherwise purchased it.
Speaker 1: So a pirated copy is not the same thing as
Speaker 1: a lost sale. Right If I pired a copy of
Speaker 1: an Adam Sandler movie, it might be that I'm morbidly curious,
Speaker 1: but not to the point where I would actually purchase
Speaker 1: the film. And maybe if I weren't, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: willing to pirate it, I would just never I just
Speaker 1: never bother watching it. I have never priorate it an
Speaker 1: Adam Sandler film because I don't I don't need to,
Speaker 1: I don't need to indulge in that. I'm okay, I'm good. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I thought that this would be an interesting thing to
Speaker 1: go down, and really it was the Cannon printer story
Speaker 1: that really drew my attention. That's what sparked this whole
Speaker 1: episode idea. This morning, I saw that that news item
Speaker 1: and thought I should do an episode about DRM, what
Speaker 1: it's for and how it often falls short of what
Speaker 1: the goals are. Uh yeah, I hope you enjoyed this.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions on topics I should cover in
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: like Stadler did. The handle for the show is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Y. Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.