[p2p-research] DRM standards

[Michel Bauwens]

Thank you Henrik for your very cogent analysis.

I hope you don't mind that I use your quotes for an entry on Open DRM?

Michel


On Dec 26, 2007 1:31 AM, Henrik Ingo <henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi> wrote:

> On Dec 24, 2007 8:11 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > any commentary on this:
> >
> > http://www.xrml.org/about.asp
> > http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Digital_Rights_Language
> >
> > just wondering how drm related 'open standards' should be judged?
>
> I think the following short rule of thumb is a good start: For various
> "ethics related" reasons one may be opposed to all DRM on principle.
> On the other hand, if someone is going to use DRM, it is clearly
> better that they'd use an open standard - then at least there is a
> chance that the DRM is not a reason to make the content locked into a
> proprietary one-vendor/one-platform solution. (Richard Stallman would
> disagree with this opinion, saying that DRM is always a form of
> oppression and producing a good system of oppression is actually worse
> than a bad system.)
>
>
> In practice even open standards DRM will always have to rely on
> something being kept secret from the end user / consumer and therefore
> the opennes is of questionable value to the end user, who's role is
> restricted to being just a consumer.
>
> Typically an open source content player is not a possibility, or at
> least some library file providing the particular decryption functions
> would have to be closed source. This because even if the DRM system
> would be based on an open standard, at least some cryptographic keys
> have to be hidden from the user. Other alternatives are to hide the
> decryption component in some hardware, like a smartcard or the
> infamous TPM chip on a motherboard. Even so, something is restricted
> from the end user, this is just another place to hide it. In addition
> to hiding the decryption function, a proper DRM also wants to protect
> the path from decryption to output device (so that you couldn't copy
> the content anywhere within that path). This is why DVDs will play
> with lower resolution on Windows Vista unless you have a new monitor
> that will give the proper responses in this game.
>
> From this discussion it is possible to argue that by traditional
> cryptographical standards "good" DRM is actually an impossible problem
> to solve. While good cryptography always relies on the protocol being
> public and only a key being secret, the problem DRM tries to solve
> necessarily leads to solutions that by cryptographical standards would
> be considered ugly hacks. Hardware based solutions are slightly better
> in this regard, since extracting the secret from a hardware chip
> really would be practically impossible. Nevertheless from a
> cryptographical point of view DRM is like eating the cake (giving user
> content) and trying to keep it too (not giving user content).
>
> So in practice an open DRM system will always be like "doing the wrong
> thing the right way".
>
> henrik
>
> --
> email: henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi
> tel:   +358-40-5697354
> www:   www.avoinelama.fi/~hingo <http://www.avoinelama.fi/%7Ehingo>
> book:  www.openlife.cc
>



-- 
The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
alternatives.

Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p

Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU

KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by
http://www.ws-network.com/04_team.htm
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20071226/b21e011e/attachment.html