Copy protection

Overview

Copy protection, also known as Digital Rights Management (DRM), is a term applied to any technique used to prevent unauthorized copying of any work in any medium which would otherwise be relatively easy to copy. It is most commonly applied to digital media such as CDs and DVDs, but is also used in some proprietary file formats to prevent access to the work on unauthorized machines. It may aso be applied to measures such as "watermarking" of digital images, which does not prevent copying but makes the image unusable for resale purposes.

Content protection is only slightly different from "copy protection" in that it also prevents unauthorized access to the work in question, preventing the work from being played even if one has already obtained a complete and accurate copy.

Copy protection is almost never applied to traditional/analog media such as books, paintings, or vinyl records, partly because these media are already laborious to copy and expensive to reproduce in a form which appears similar to the original, and partly because analog copy-protection is difficult to implement. The chief use of copy-protection in the analog world is printed money, certificates of authenticity, bank checks, credit cards, and other such items (is there a word or phrase which encompasses all those?).

Copy protection is controversial because (1) the techniques most commonly used are imprecise and tend to have effects far beyond their intent, (2) the most precise techniques require a centralized authority to excercise control over certain aspects of the user's computer, which many people are unwilling to cede, and (3) the same companies which are trying to enact and enforce excessive copy protection measures are usually the same ones taking draconian measures to punish anyone found to be doing unauthorized copying; the taint from these latter actions has rubbed off on the former.

Related Pages

• media piracy
• intellectual property
• A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection

Alternatives

• Free Legal Downloads for $6/month: a model for subsidized music distribution

Links

• DigitalConsumer.org: "Protecting fair-use rights in the digital world"
• Electronic Frontier Foundation: "Defending Freedom in the Digital World"
• An Introduction to Copyfighting: some more recent copy-protection history
• Standards vs. DRM
• Trusted Computing FAQ: "Trusted Computing" is a much more comprehensive implementation of DRM than anything seen so far, with some very worrisome possible consequences.

Discussion

• 2006-12-26 Looking for a Win/Win Solution to the War Between "Premium Content" and Digital Freedom
  • cites A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
• 2006-10-18 Davy Jones' lawsuit (Adapted from Software Trespassing by David Deutsch)
• 2006-07-06 Readers answer the Bully Software Alliance And Microsoft flat out lies about proof of software legality, by James E. Gaskin
• 2006-06-26 Business Software Alliance: Outright liars or just truth-challenged? by James E. Gaskin
• 2006-06 The Software Protection Racket part 1 and part 2 by James E. Gaskin
• 2006-01-23 DRM is a complete lie: article by Charlie Demerjian in The Inquirer
• 2005-09-22 And they call this an information society: blog post with interesting reactions
• Copy Protection Robs The Future by Dan Bricklin
• p2pnet talks to Michael Geist

News

• 2007-02-01 Holland mulls creation of P2P paradise in which DRM would be illegal and all artists would be paid by distribution of an internet access tax – not unlike the scheme which placed a tax on "blank music CDs" to compensate for supposedly lost sales from music-copying, which could be evaluated a lot better if there were any transparency at all in the distribution system; as it is, we have no idea who is getting paid how much for what. Holland's scheme is not inherently flawed, but definitely needs to prevent this from happening again in their implementation (as well as addressing several other issues).
• 2006-03-21 France moves forward with law challenging Apple (slashdot): under the proposed law, "it would no longer be illegal to crack (copy protection) ... if it is to enable to the conversion from one format to another."
• 2006-03-06 Oh Boy – The Audio Broadcast Flag Licensing Act of 2006
• 2006-02-24 Early HDTV adopters screwed by HD-disc rules (slashdot)
• 2006-02-23 Yahoo exec: Labels should sell music without DRM ymusicblog slashdot
• 2006-02-16 RIAA Says Ripping CDs to Your iPod is NOT Fair Use
• 2006-02-13 The Great HDCP Fiasco: HDCP-encrypted content (e.g. Blu-ray) will only work on pre-built machines from certain manufacturers, because free software projects won't be able to afford the license
• 2005-11-01 Sony DRM Hacks Your PC
• For eventual article on music piracy / file sharing / whatever you want to call it:
  • CRIA's Own Study Counters P2P Claims by Michael Geist (slashdot)
  • RIAA Chan case dismissal
  • The Recording Industry is Trying to Kill the Goose That Lays the Golden Egg

Notes

• DVD "region encoding" may be against the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade article 2.2