Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: text style from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette
Speaker 1: and I am an editor here at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, sitting across from me as usual as senior
Speaker 1: writer Jonathan Strickland. And please do pay attention to the
Speaker 1: men behind the curtain. Oh boy, we're in our new digs.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, our brand new studio has been completed. Yes,
Speaker 1: and uh, and now there's a curtain separating us from Jerry,
Speaker 1: so we can't see when she's you know, surfing Facebook
Speaker 1: or whatever. She can do whatever she likes, and we'll
Speaker 1: be back here in our own little room. In fact,
Speaker 1: she might not even be in there anymore. We don't know.
Speaker 1: All right, then well we should we should, we should
Speaker 1: go ahead and get started. Then, yes, let's do that. Actually,
Speaker 1: we are recording this um just before I am about
Speaker 1: to leave the office to go catch a flight, So
Speaker 1: if we talk quickly, that's why, because I need to
Speaker 1: go and get on a plane. But we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about dr M or digital rights management and exactly what
Speaker 1: it is and why some people are really against the
Speaker 1: whole idea in the first place. Um, But to really
Speaker 1: talk about DRM, we kind of have to step back
Speaker 1: and just talking about copy protection in general. Yes, because um, well,
Speaker 1: actually before we even really get into that, I just
Speaker 1: like to point something out, um, that digital rights management
Speaker 1: is supposed to be about who owns what essentially, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if you buy a program off the shelf,
Speaker 1: take it home and put it on your computer, the
Speaker 1: the people who make it basically want to ensure that
Speaker 1: they can't you know, that you can't make as many
Speaker 1: copies as you want to give them to all your friends.
Speaker 1: Thereby they only sold one copy of this software. Well,
Speaker 1: the thing is, though, there are a lot of other
Speaker 1: digital rights involved, uh, including yours. You have rights to
Speaker 1: that software. So it should be pointed out that copy
Speaker 1: protection is only one part of the digital rights spectrum.
Speaker 1: And you know, digital rights management sort of as a
Speaker 1: bad name simply because of that. And that's why people
Speaker 1: are so upset because they view it simply as copy protection.
Speaker 1: But we can we can get into that a little
Speaker 1: bit later. We should just go ahead and get into
Speaker 1: copy protection. Yeah, let's talk about copy protection, and we'll
Speaker 1: we'll work our way into why some people feel DRM
Speaker 1: is far too restrictive and that it goes well beyond
Speaker 1: copy protection to the point where it can actually ruin
Speaker 1: your your experience as a customer. But we'll sure, we'll
Speaker 1: really dive into that. So copy protection is pretty much
Speaker 1: self explanatory. It's a method of protecting a work from
Speaker 1: being copied illegally and distributed beyond the rights holders. Um
Speaker 1: uh scope right. So uh in the olden days, way
Speaker 1: way way way back, when a copy of protection really
Speaker 1: wasn't that important. And for instance, a book, if I
Speaker 1: were to public a really long book, it would be
Speaker 1: difficult for anyone else to make a copy of that
Speaker 1: book without going to great links and using a lot
Speaker 1: of time and effort to do so. Yes, as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, that's uh, that's a big reason why
Speaker 1: it wasn't an issue people that the publishers really just
Speaker 1: simply were not concerned that people were going to run
Speaker 1: out and copy these things by hand, and what are
Speaker 1: they going You would either have to write it down,
Speaker 1: longhand or you would have to create, you know, build
Speaker 1: up printing press and and copy it that way, or
Speaker 1: eventually you get to the point where you can mimiograph
Speaker 1: or xerox pages, but even then you're doing it page
Speaker 1: by page. It was such a laborious and uh an
Speaker 1: unrewarding task, especially if something went wrong in the middle
Speaker 1: of it. You don't have to stop and fix everything
Speaker 1: to continue. Um. It really wasn't an issue. You know,
Speaker 1: it's very few people were going to take that kind
Speaker 1: of time and effort to copy someone else's work. That's right.
Speaker 1: But now let's let's move ahead and go toward well,
Speaker 1: you know, we we could even talk about things like
Speaker 1: the cassette hate business and how that was a big issue,
Speaker 1: as as was VHS. UM. Anything that allowed a customer
Speaker 1: to to put something that was uh published in one
Speaker 1: medium and then transferred to another medium was met with
Speaker 1: a great amount of resistance in the various entertainment industries.
Speaker 1: That's right. Um. As a matter of fact, if if
Speaker 1: you really think about it, it's the advent of electronic
Speaker 1: technology that would allow you to copy something that really
Speaker 1: made it an issue. There's there's a mention of it
Speaker 1: in the Constitution, I believe, a very very simple mention
Speaker 1: of copyright, and it's it's a very vague sense and
Speaker 1: the thing is they didn't have to worry about it.
Speaker 1: But then in the twentieth century, not only do you
Speaker 1: have things like cassette tapes and VCRs, you've got uh,
Speaker 1: photo copiers, you've got facsimile machines, and suddenly, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Congress is having to deal with a number of different
Speaker 1: pieces of legislation, uh, coming from different companies going hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, people are making lots and lots of
Speaker 1: copies of our work, and you know, hey, we did
Speaker 1: a lot of work on this thing. We don't want
Speaker 1: people just running off with it. So you know, you
Speaker 1: have to write some laws to protect that. But the
Speaker 1: thing is, even though there are laws in place, as
Speaker 1: someone has said to me on more than one occasion,
Speaker 1: it's only illegal if you get caught, right. So the
Speaker 1: thing is, you've got all this technology, but if you
Speaker 1: never get caught doing it, you can still duplicate it
Speaker 1: at will. Yeah. And on top of that, beside the
Speaker 1: fact that it had suddenly become easy to start making copies,
Speaker 1: or at least relatively easy to make copies of material
Speaker 1: that did not belong to you, uh, there's also the
Speaker 1: concept of fair use, which all which clouds things up considerably. Well,
Speaker 1: it's cloudy in and of itself. Right, fair use itself
Speaker 1: is not is not specifically defined. Is it is vague
Speaker 1: on purpose and it ends up being an issue that
Speaker 1: ends up that that's decided on a case by case basis.
Speaker 1: But in general, things that are considered fair use or
Speaker 1: if you are taking some material in order to comment
Speaker 1: upon it, to to provide some sort of insightful commentary
Speaker 1: that is outside the scope of the original material, then
Speaker 1: you could present some of that original material, although the
Speaker 1: definition of how much you can present is not Again,
Speaker 1: that's not really defined. So is it all right to
Speaker 1: to take a paragraph out of a previously published work
Speaker 1: and then comment on it? Maybe? What about twenty pages?
Speaker 1: Well maybe not. The problem is that it's not very
Speaker 1: well defined. If you if you took a line from
Speaker 1: a High Coup, that's a third of it essentially, Well
Speaker 1: no that but that is the point it really, It
Speaker 1: really does depend on how much of the material you're
Speaker 1: taking from it. If you're taking it from say the Odyssey,
Speaker 1: well that isn't in copyright, but it's something that size
Speaker 1: um and you're taking two pages of it, Well, that's
Speaker 1: all things considered, that's a pretty small amount of it.
Speaker 1: Another thing that is important to consider is how transformative
Speaker 1: it is well. And another issue of fair use is
Speaker 1: not just if you are transforming something or if you
Speaker 1: are commenting upon something. It's also the idea of being
Speaker 1: able to create a backup copy of something for your
Speaker 1: own use. Now, this is another part that comes into
Speaker 1: play with digital rights management in just a little bit.
Speaker 1: So the the idea here is that if you were
Speaker 1: to uh to purchase something like let's say you back
Speaker 1: in the seventies you bought a vinyl record and then
Speaker 1: you know, in the eighties you've got some cassettes and
Speaker 1: you think, oh, you know what, I'm gonna make a
Speaker 1: copy of that vinyl record on cassette for my own
Speaker 1: use to archives. So if anything does happen to that record,
Speaker 1: I still have the music. I don't have to go
Speaker 1: and purchase it again. That's okay, Okay, you can do that.
Speaker 1: You can actually make a backup copy of something in
Speaker 1: order to if the only purposes, so that you can
Speaker 1: have it in case something happens to the original. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't go and distribute it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not supposed You're not supposed to do something like
Speaker 1: transfer that record to cassette tape and then start selling
Speaker 1: those cassette tapes out of the trunk of your car. Um,
Speaker 1: that would not be covered under fair use, and you
Speaker 1: could be prosecuted for a copyright violation under those rules.
Speaker 1: But the digital rights management manages to circumvent the whole
Speaker 1: notion of fair use. So let's let's kind of sort
Speaker 1: a segue into digital rights management now. Before when we're
Speaker 1: talking about cassettes and tapes and that kind of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: there's still a level of effort that you needed to
Speaker 1: put forth in order to really make a copy. When
Speaker 1: we get into the digital realm, that effort is reduced dramatically.
Speaker 1: In some cases, all you have to do is click
Speaker 1: a couple of buttons on your computer and you've just
Speaker 1: made a copy of a file. And that's all you
Speaker 1: needed to do. Uh, there's no effort really there. And
Speaker 1: because you're not taking a physical uh format, you're not
Speaker 1: taking like a record or a disc or whatever. You're
Speaker 1: just taking a digital file. It doesn't even feel like
Speaker 1: stealing because you're not not taking a physical object. You're
Speaker 1: not you know, you can't you can't compare it to
Speaker 1: say shoplifting because if I go into a music store
Speaker 1: and I shoplift and I steal a CD, not only
Speaker 1: have I taken something that doesn't belong to me and
Speaker 1: I haven't paid for it, but the shopkeeper can no
Speaker 1: longer sell that individual CD. Clearly right, because it's not
Speaker 1: no longer in the shops possession. For the shopkeeper keeper
Speaker 1: has uh spent the money on buying that item, but
Speaker 1: will not be compensated for that because it is no
Speaker 1: longer in the shopkeepers possession. Right now, with digital copies,
Speaker 1: you can sell a digital copy copy rather without any
Speaker 1: sort of physical medium at all. So if I were
Speaker 1: to copy something, Let's say that Chris is Uh Chris's
Speaker 1: band has got their album out in a digital format,
Speaker 1: and I decide I want to listen to that, but
Speaker 1: I also decide that I don't want to pay for it,
Speaker 1: and I go and I copy that digital format. Well,
Speaker 1: you could argue, well, you know, but Chris, Chris didn't
Speaker 1: lose anything. He can still sell that digital copy to
Speaker 1: whomever wants it. It's not like I took the only
Speaker 1: instance of that I made a copy of it. However,
Speaker 1: I have denied him that that sale, So there is
Speaker 1: still an element of theft here. Now, this is what
Speaker 1: kind of pushed various entertainment industry companies into backing the
Speaker 1: whole idea of digital rights management. They wanted a way
Speaker 1: to control their product so that people could not easily
Speaker 1: make copies and distribute them, and beyond that, they even
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of control how you experience that particular product, right,
Speaker 1: and a copy protection was the very first version of
Speaker 1: digital rights management because it was, in essence, the the
Speaker 1: root of what they wanted to accomplish by by doing that. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: the thing is, um, there have been a variety of
Speaker 1: different ways of doing a copy protection. Uh. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to mention one of Jonathan's favorite words. Um. Some
Speaker 1: of the earliest that I encountered was, you know, I
Speaker 1: would buy a copy of a program from my Amiga
Speaker 1: and I would you know, load it on on the
Speaker 1: computer and it would say you need to insert your dongle.
Speaker 1: And this was a little piece of hardware that plugged
Speaker 1: into one of the ports on the side of the machine.
Speaker 1: And if you didn't have the dongle attached to the
Speaker 1: side of the machine and the software could not detect
Speaker 1: it was there, Basically, the program would not run a
Speaker 1: very effective piece of copy protection, I'd say, but kind
Speaker 1: of been practical if you happen to lose that little
Speaker 1: dongle right right, or if something were to happen to
Speaker 1: the port, for example, exactly if if the port goes dead,
Speaker 1: then then you have to have your computer fixed before
Speaker 1: you can run that programming. Right. And then you start thinking, well,
Speaker 1: now you've created a copy protection that is dependent upon
Speaker 1: a couple of different factors, some of which are beyond
Speaker 1: my control necessary possibly beyond my control at any rate. Um,
Speaker 1: but I've paid money to access this. So this is
Speaker 1: the key to the people who opposed Digital rights management.
Speaker 1: That's that's the key to their argument is that DRM,
Speaker 1: the copy protection element of DRM, really hurts the the
Speaker 1: legitimate consumer more than it hurts the prospective pirate. And
Speaker 1: the idea that, you know, the person who actually buys
Speaker 1: the product ends up having his or her experience impacted
Speaker 1: by this DRM, and the people who want to steal
Speaker 1: the content will find a way to steal it no
Speaker 1: matter what kind of block you put there. Um. Really,
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of the block being there, you could argue,
Speaker 1: is not to to prevent someone from stealing, but to
Speaker 1: provide the legal basis to pursue that person in court
Speaker 1: once they do find a way to get around it.
Speaker 1: You have a point, Yeah, it's kind of it's it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting because when you think about it, drm is
Speaker 1: it's like, Um, it's like you put a a lock
Speaker 1: on your door, but you put a lock that's not
Speaker 1: impossible to It's not impossible to pick that lock, right, Um.
Speaker 1: And the reason you put the lock on the door
Speaker 1: is not in order to make sure no one can
Speaker 1: ever get in. It's to make sure that anyone who
Speaker 1: does get in who doesn't have a key can be prosecuted.
Speaker 1: And and that's kind of uh. But then you're also
Speaker 1: saying that anyone who legitimately has a reason to come
Speaker 1: into the house always has to have that key with
Speaker 1: them because the door is never going to be unlocked.
Speaker 1: So if that person loses the key, that's kind of tough.
Speaker 1: They're gonna have to go and buy another key. Uh.
Speaker 1: Kind of a roundabout way of getting at this. But
Speaker 1: another another early version of copy protection would require that
Speaker 1: you have, uh. The idea being that if you purchase
Speaker 1: a game, for example of a computer game. Uh, the
Speaker 1: idea of if you actually legitimately purchase it, you would
Speaker 1: have the game, and you would have whatever documentation came
Speaker 1: with the game. Yes, So a lot of these games
Speaker 1: would have a section where they would ask you a
Speaker 1: question that would be answered within the documentation. Yes, turn
Speaker 1: two page seventeen and tell us what the third word
Speaker 1: is in the second paragraph. And I even had some
Speaker 1: of these manuals printed on dark blue paper, the idea
Speaker 1: of course being that you would not be able to
Speaker 1: uh photocopy it. It would all just come out as
Speaker 1: a black sheet if you tried to photocopy these UM
Speaker 1: these pages. Now, people got around that too, because there's
Speaker 1: only so many questions you would be able to create
Speaker 1: to for this copy protection. It's not like the entire
Speaker 1: manual would be in the game UM copy protection, So
Speaker 1: once people figured out what the questions were, they would
Speaker 1: just circulate that, so you would still be able to
Speaker 1: get around the game UM. There are also other physical
Speaker 1: forms of copy protection where uh by physically changing the
Speaker 1: disc and this is back in the five and a
Speaker 1: quarter inch floppy desk days. By physically changing that disk,
Speaker 1: you could make it hard to make a copy Like that,
Speaker 1: that function would not be available, but you could get
Speaker 1: around that too, if you knew how. And that's really
Speaker 1: another issue with the The whole DRM is just the
Speaker 1: idea that if you really want to get around DRM,
Speaker 1: you can find a way to get around it. So
Speaker 1: really the only people who get affected are the average
Speaker 1: consumers who don't know better. Yeah, the manual version that
Speaker 1: you were speaking of just a moment ago is the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that would discourage probably the casual uh
Speaker 1: software duplicator. You know, um Steve down the street. He
Speaker 1: wants to to, uh make a copy for his buddy.
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, man, well you know I can last
Speaker 1: name is in jobs or was ni act. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to pick something of the Bob. I usually say Bob,
Speaker 1: but it just makes me think of Microsoft Bob. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's gonna get his emails just to mention of
Speaker 1: Microsoft Bob. Anyhow, we should do a podcast on that.
Speaker 1: Um it'll be like two minutes long. Um anyhow, Now,
Speaker 1: the uh, the whole thing is that that's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that would discourage probably the casual, the more
Speaker 1: casual UM person from duplicating the software. But it eventually
Speaker 1: involved to the point where it actually had a layer
Speaker 1: of software encryption on it and of course people were
Speaker 1: cracking that. As Jonathan said, you know, people really wanted
Speaker 1: to get around it. They could do that. Um, that's
Speaker 1: what we did our podcast on usenet. The wearer's channels
Speaker 1: are basically, uh, software that has been cracked, whether the
Speaker 1: copy protection has been removed or disabled on it. Um.
Speaker 1: And uh you know that that's a little bit different
Speaker 1: because once that's disabled, you can actually just generally use it.
Speaker 1: Of course, sometimes disabling the copy protection will damage the
Speaker 1: software in the process. UM. More modern efforts have gone
Speaker 1: to using the software key. Like if you, for example,
Speaker 1: bought a copy of Microsoft Windows, it's got um I
Speaker 1: think a sixteen digit or is it longer than that?
Speaker 1: Now it's longer than that now, Uh, like an encryption
Speaker 1: key that comes along with it. Once you plug that
Speaker 1: in and the software is registered online, no one else
Speaker 1: is going to be able to use that key on
Speaker 1: another computer. So you know, if you say, bought a
Speaker 1: copy of Windows, you use the key and you gave
Speaker 1: it to a friend down the street, Um, he or
Speaker 1: she is going to have to find another legitimate t
Speaker 1: which is generated by an algorithm. So if you just
Speaker 1: make up letters and numbers, it's not gonna work. Probably
Speaker 1: not gonna work. Well, the odds of it working are
Speaker 1: at least astronomical, at least immediately. Yeah, I spent sixteen
Speaker 1: hours trying to anyway. Um So, but that that actually
Speaker 1: comes into uh into conflict with another right that is
Speaker 1: legitimately yours, which is the right of first sale. Right.
Speaker 1: You know, the right of first sale says that if
Speaker 1: you purchase something, you have the right to sell that again,
Speaker 1: uh further down the road, because that property is yours.
Speaker 1: You have purchased it from someone, but it belongs to you,
Speaker 1: so then you can dispose of it as you see fit.
Speaker 1: So for example, if you buy a car and you've
Speaker 1: paid for the car, the car is completely paid off,
Speaker 1: it's well within your rights to sell that car to
Speaker 1: whomever you like. You or game stores right use video
Speaker 1: game stores another good example. So problem about d r
Speaker 1: M is that it can get it can interfere with
Speaker 1: your right to sell something that you've purchased. For example,
Speaker 1: if I purchase a an MP three from from some
Speaker 1: store that has DRM attached to that MP three, how
Speaker 1: do I sell Let's let's say that I no longer
Speaker 1: like that song and I want to try and recapture
Speaker 1: some of the money I spent on that song. I
Speaker 1: would like to sell that song to my buddy who
Speaker 1: really likes that one and hasn't purchased it yet, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, you know what, I'll sell it for
Speaker 1: fifty cents. I bought it for a dollar, even though
Speaker 1: there's no real depreciation in digital content the way there
Speaker 1: is in physical content. But I can't really do that,
Speaker 1: and I can see why it doesn't make sense from
Speaker 1: in a digital perspective. And the main reason for that
Speaker 1: is again, digitally, we can make copies of stuff, So
Speaker 1: I can make a copy of a song that I own,
Speaker 1: sell the copy, I still have the original and I'm
Speaker 1: making money, and I can undercut the the legitimate copyright holder.
Speaker 1: So if Amazon on, for example, is selling a song
Speaker 1: at at a dollar twenty nine, and I buy a
Speaker 1: purchase copy that song, or I buy that song for
Speaker 1: a dollar twenty nine, but I start selling it for
Speaker 1: fifty cents, you know, it doesn't take long for me
Speaker 1: to recapture my costs and that I'm undercutting Amazon, and
Speaker 1: then Amazon is not making money off that song. And
Speaker 1: you can see where you can see where the foundation
Speaker 1: is for DRM for the copy protection element of DRM
Speaker 1: right now. The problem is that the implementation of DRM
Speaker 1: sometimes goes a little too far. Did you want to
Speaker 1: talk about Sony specifically? I do, But I was going
Speaker 1: to mention one other thing that's missing from this transaction
Speaker 1: going on that you were mentioning. Sure, and that's trust.
Speaker 1: Let's say Jonathan wants to sell his MP three to me,
Speaker 1: and I'm willing to pay him the fifty cents for it,
Speaker 1: and we're going to do everything completely above board. Jonathan says,
Speaker 1: I don't want to listen to this MP three anymore.
Speaker 1: As soon as I send you the copy, I'm deleting
Speaker 1: it from my computer. Technically, that would be essentially like
Speaker 1: selling me a copy of a used book. He no
Speaker 1: longer has that book. He's sold it to me, and
Speaker 1: I've given him whatever he wants for it, and that
Speaker 1: would be the right for sale. What what the producers
Speaker 1: here are doing, the publishers of music or movies or
Speaker 1: what software whatever? Um, they don't trust us to do that.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm sure in a lot of cases
Speaker 1: that probably is well founded. UM, Because honestly, Jonathan could say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm tired of this MP three here, Chris,
Speaker 1: you can have it for fifty cents, and I pay
Speaker 1: him fifty cents, he sends me a copy of it,
Speaker 1: and what if he doesn't deleted from his machine, then
Speaker 1: we're doing exactly what they're afraid that we're doing. Now
Speaker 1: we have duplicated the program and he has charged any
Speaker 1: money for it, So he is making money off of
Speaker 1: something that was somebody else's and he kept his original copy.
Speaker 1: So they don't They don't trust people. And like I said,
Speaker 1: some people are going to do that, some people are not.
Speaker 1: So there there's an element of trust here. They don't
Speaker 1: trust people to do this, which is why we're still
Speaker 1: relying on copy protection. But as you pointed out, some people,
Speaker 1: like Sony did a few years ago, have taken it
Speaker 1: to an extreme right. Why why don't you tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about what Sony did? Well? UH, Basically,
Speaker 1: back in I guess around two thousand five or so,
Speaker 1: Sony BMG Music Entertainment UH sold some different UH music
Speaker 1: CDs by a few different artists, UM and UH. As
Speaker 1: soon as you put the CD in a computer, what
Speaker 1: it would do is be to install what's called a
Speaker 1: root kit on the computer. And basically it's a It
Speaker 1: was a piece of software that was running underneath the surface.
Speaker 1: It's not like you said, it said, Hey, hold on
Speaker 1: a second, I'm installing a program on your machine. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't know was being installed. You wouldn't know it was
Speaker 1: running the average person speaking. I mean, obviously someone discovered it.
Speaker 1: But what was going on was they were installing this
Speaker 1: root kid in there, and the point of it was
Speaker 1: to uh manage copy protection. They wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: that you weren't going to duplicate that CD and give
Speaker 1: it to, you know, the music to someone else. The
Speaker 1: problem is the root kit provide quite a bit of
Speaker 1: access to computers and uh and basically was a back
Speaker 1: door to hackers getting access to your system. And again,
Speaker 1: the average person is not going to know that software
Speaker 1: is on there, and they got caught. Yea, So Sony,
Speaker 1: what what Sony did was went well beyond just ensuring
Speaker 1: that this music wasn't going to be distributed illegally. What
Speaker 1: Sony did was allowed for a remote access to your machine. Um.
Speaker 1: And the root of all of this the root kit,
Speaker 1: But the root of it all was that Sony did
Speaker 1: not trust its customers. And the other thing that that
Speaker 1: gets people upset is not just that that these companies
Speaker 1: aren't trusting their their customers, but that um that it's
Speaker 1: a it's a relatively small percentage of people among all
Speaker 1: customers who actually engage in illegal behavior, but everyone gets
Speaker 1: affected by it, that's right, So every one is being
Speaker 1: punished for the the behavior of a small percentage of users.
Speaker 1: And digital rights management can go beyond just preventing you
Speaker 1: from making copies. For example, um, for video games or
Speaker 1: computer games, there might be protection there where you can
Speaker 1: install that game on a limited number of systems before
Speaker 1: it will not let you install it again. Well, again
Speaker 1: we're getting to the point of this this. You know
Speaker 1: they're limiting how you can use this this uh this product.
Speaker 1: And again you can kind of understand why. You know,
Speaker 1: they don't want you to go and install it on
Speaker 1: all of your friends computers so that everyone has a
Speaker 1: copy of the game without buying it. But on the
Speaker 1: flip side, if you are someone who updates his or
Speaker 1: a computer on a regular basis, before long, you can
Speaker 1: no longer play that game even though you purchased it.
Speaker 1: Um Like, if you got rid of those computers, then
Speaker 1: you that's it. That game is useless to you. You
Speaker 1: cannot install it on your current system. And so this
Speaker 1: this opens up lots and lots of wars for people
Speaker 1: to come in and say that DRM is really not fair.
Speaker 1: Um I mentioned before the idea of fair use and
Speaker 1: making a backup copy. Here's another big example of where
Speaker 1: DRM has got people upset. So there's the the digital
Speaker 1: see see if I get this right's d m c A,
Speaker 1: Digital Management Copyright Act Digital Millennium Millennium Copyright Act. Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you. I knew I was going to mess up
Speaker 1: the m the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was past. Yes,
Speaker 1: I remember the year. I just can't remember what the
Speaker 1: darn thing is called. Um So d m c A.
Speaker 1: The the whole idea of this was to provide companies
Speaker 1: the level of protection they wanted, so that if anyone
Speaker 1: were to try and circumvent UH copyright protection, they could
Speaker 1: be punished two extreme extents. I don't think that's unfair
Speaker 1: to say that they could, because I think you could
Speaker 1: be uh fined up to a hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per incident of copyright infringement, right, so, which for
Speaker 1: the average person is going to be pretty uh pretty severe. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: hundred for anyone. I don't care who you are. Bill
Speaker 1: Gates would not say, like a hundred fifty ah, that's
Speaker 1: a lot of money. So even if you can afford it,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that you want to know. But at
Speaker 1: any rate, So one of the things about DRM is
Speaker 1: that while it's still legal for you to create a
Speaker 1: backup copy of whatever it is you've purchased in order
Speaker 1: for you to to have it in case something happens
Speaker 1: to the original, it is not legal for you to
Speaker 1: circumvent any kind of digital rights management right copyright protection. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, if you purchase a DVD, and even
Speaker 1: if you have the the technology to make a copy
Speaker 1: of that DVD, you can't make legally a backup copy
Speaker 1: of that device because it would require you to circumvent
Speaker 1: the d R m R. So your fair use rights
Speaker 1: are trumped by the right of the copyright holder. UM.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's illegal to even create a device that
Speaker 1: can circumvent the DRM right. It's it's against the law.
Speaker 1: So you even if you tried to create a code
Speaker 1: or whatever in order for you to make your legitimate
Speaker 1: backup file, UM, just making that code, even if you've
Speaker 1: never run the code, even if you've never actually used
Speaker 1: it to break DRM. Just creating it is against the law. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Real Networks, the company Real Networks sort of ran
Speaker 1: into that problem with Real DVD, which was its DVD
Speaker 1: copying software. And basically they've said, sure, you'd like to
Speaker 1: make copies to run on your portable media players that
Speaker 1: you know, like, for example, an iPad they didn't specifically
Speaker 1: mention that, or uh, an iPhone or an Android powered device.
Speaker 1: You'd like to make a copy of your movies, Sure,
Speaker 1: we have software for that will help you do that,
Speaker 1: and then you can make a backup copy or you
Speaker 1: can watch copies of the stuff you bought. And uh,
Speaker 1: Hollywood essentially brought suit against Real Networks and said, uh no,
Speaker 1: this violates the d m c A, and the courts
Speaker 1: essentially upheld that agreed with them, and there is no
Speaker 1: Real DVD for sale. Um. But you know, it looks
Speaker 1: pretty promising as far as as those programs go. But
Speaker 1: you know, essentially the level of trust would have been
Speaker 1: the issue there. You know, I've had trusted people to
Speaker 1: do that. And now that there's that legislation. UM. It's
Speaker 1: not just here in the United States either, Canada's Bill
Speaker 1: C thirty two. UM, basically has included that same provision
Speaker 1: that you if you are trying to circumvent copyright protection
Speaker 1: in order to make your legitimate backup copy, that you
Speaker 1: may not do that. So as long as they don't
Speaker 1: put copyright protection on their products, then you can make
Speaker 1: a backup copy. But no one's going to not but
Speaker 1: copyright protection on their products, so you're kind of it's
Speaker 1: almost like your right to make a backup copy doesn't
Speaker 1: exist at all. Might as well be it's effectively you
Speaker 1: can't make that backup copy legally. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: I should. We should wrap this up pretty soon here,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you know, I wanted to ask you if
Speaker 1: you remembered another name from our copy protection past. Do
Speaker 1: you remember a Place for Sure? No, I do not.
Speaker 1: Microsoft had was was selling music for a while, and
Speaker 1: uh use the Place for Sure format, And um, the
Speaker 1: Place for Sure format was sort of like Apple's uh
Speaker 1: you know it's It had a layer of information encoded
Speaker 1: into the file that said, you know, oh, yes, you
Speaker 1: are indeed Jonathan Strickland the person that bought this file.
Speaker 1: Listen to it as many times as you like. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: that was fine until Microsoft decided to eliminate the service,
Speaker 1: and then there was no longer anything to validate that DRM.
Speaker 1: So anybody who bought files with the place for sure
Speaker 1: DRM embedded in it. When Microsoft decided to abandon that
Speaker 1: line of revenue, those people, you know, they said, Microsoft said,
Speaker 1: you only have a certain amount of time to back
Speaker 1: these up, and then you could still only listen to
Speaker 1: them in limited circumstances. And once, you know, after that
Speaker 1: those machines die, that's it. You won't be able to
Speaker 1: access those files anymore. And that's not the that's not
Speaker 1: the same. Only one that's ever done that, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: who had the same problem. And well, i'll close on this.
Speaker 1: I'll mention one other example, the one that I think
Speaker 1: is just absolutely insane is UBI Soft with their their
Speaker 1: software where the only way you could play the game,
Speaker 1: and it was a single person shooter. Um, so you're
Speaker 1: playing by yourself on your computer. The only way you
Speaker 1: could play is if your computer was also hooked up
Speaker 1: to the Internet to connect to their DRM servers to
Speaker 1: to make sure that the copy of the game you
Speaker 1: were playing was valid, which meant that if you lost
Speaker 1: your Internet connection for any reason, you could not play
Speaker 1: the game, even though it was not a multiplayer game.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an online game. The only reason you have
Speaker 1: to be online was just to make sure that you
Speaker 1: hadn't copied the game exactly, and that I think shows
Speaker 1: the true that's probably not even the furthest extent. We're
Speaker 1: gonna see DRM go too. And I'm not even saying
Speaker 1: that all DRM is bad. I'm just saying that the
Speaker 1: implementations that we've seen so far have been shortsighted and
Speaker 1: again punish the average customer. They're not the pirate, the draconian.
Speaker 1: Draconian isn't a good word for it. Yeah, it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, they want to get paid, and that's okay.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just that they do restrict people who
Speaker 1: are legitimately using uh the whatever it is for their
Speaker 1: you know, they're illegal within their legal rights. That's true. Again,
Speaker 1: it's all about rights and what rights you have as
Speaker 1: a consumer as well. And you have the right to
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