Microsoft patents a DRM scheme
SOFTWARE IMPERIALIST Microsoft has been awarded a patent for a distributed DRM system that works over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.
Patent number 7,594,275 is entitled, "Digital rights management system" and uses encrypted public and private keys as the licensing mechanism.
DRM is about as popular with online music stores as Scottish PM Gordon Brown is amongst his constituents. But Microsoft seems to think that there might be life in the old dog yet - DRM not Brown.
If the Volish DRM works as it says on the tin, that might mean that we could see P2P networks reemerge as viable, albeit protected, content sources.
The patent was filed in 2003 when DRM was hated but had not been dead and buried.
Since then the music industry cartel lost any sympathy it might have had with its heavy handed policing of 'pirates'. However it did eventually back proper online music sales and things started to get better.
Now DRM only really exists in the movie industry, which is fighting the same battle that the music industry did and losing it in exactly the same way.
However this patent is interesting because it is only a matter of time before the entertainment industry will finally realise that P2P is the only real way to distribute.
It will want the P2P networks to provide some assurances that the material will not be copied and Microsoft's DRM could be a useful tool.
This system actually uses the P2P network as a way of making sure that the downside of DRM, the licence server, actually works.
Instead of an unreliable expensive central server, the system uses a distributed public licensing infrastructure for its digital rights management systems.
You get a public key and a private key to provide customers with the right to decrypt the content they access over the P2P network.
The downside to the whole Volish plan is that it remains software that operates over a network. Therefore it is only a matter of time before someone works out how to break it. µ
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MS are so in touch with customer needs! consumers are crying out for DRM and any emergence of such will prompt a massive voluntary intake of it.
just ask the itunes operators.
anybody got a glass hammer i can borrow?
and the report that it was actually broken before this article was even written will be in 3....2....1..... Ok so I was a little off be we all know it's coming. Seriously does anyone else remember the absolutely perfect unbreakable CD DRM the music industry came up with in the mid 90's, you know the one where all you had to do to get around it was hold down shift when you put the CD in the drive. I know everyone remembers the horrible SecuROM DRM EA had been using until recently which required online activation but was hacked for every game inside of a day or maybe when Valve released Half-life 2 with required activation via Steam which got hacked inside of a week.
The simple fact is DRM is made by a couple thousand fairly talented people working for dozens of companies worldwide and DRM is broken by several million extremely talented people working on behalf of everyone worldwide. In otherwords not only are DRM makers outnumber but they are generally outclassed too and it's been proven more then once that DRM is more of a hindrance to legitimate customers then pirates so it's probably doing their products more harm then good especially when it results in lawsuits such as SecuROM did with EA.
So how is this application of public key encryption super special enough to warrant an intellectual monopoly (patent) on something that the technology was all but explicitly designed to do?
This is yet more patent trash for the lawyers to foist on everyone, on behalf of a litigious industry that people hate, brought about by a company everyone loves to hate.
Oh God when will CEO and there peers of LARGE Coperations learn ?
Is it possible that people that become CEO's of these Company's such as MS, HP and all the rest are really that out of touch ? Surely some of them must have kids and or grand children that are old enough to make them see the light.
I just dont understand, maybe it is the OLD talk mentality or something but it is FAR FAR easier to work with your fans and supporters ( those who spend there HARD earned Cash) then too try to Force them to Bend and submit to your ways.
Instead of this I see it being a lot more likely that there will soon be a Spotify type app for movies.
Once bandwidth has increased to the point that streaming movies to others is a negligible amount then this will happen. (Spotify, if you didn't know is part p2p and part centralised.)
DRM seems to indicate something thats been paid for. I'f im paying for something I dont want to have to rely on other people wanting to share said resources. Also if i'm paying for something I dont want to eat up my bandwitdth having to share it.
"Not Again ?
Oh God when will CEO and there peers of LARGE Corporations learn ?
Is it possible that people that become CEO's of these Company's such as MS, HP and all the rest are really that out of touch ? Surely some of them must have kids and or grand children that are old enough to make them see the light.
I just dont understand, maybe it is the OLD talk mentality or something but it is FAR FAR easier to work with your fans and supporters ( those who spend there HARD earned Cash) then too try to Force them to Bend and submit to your ways."
Your right on. They did a study on CEO's and found that 60% were psychopaths. Not the killing type but persons that were totally out of touch with feelings of any sort towards human beings. That is why they make it to the top. Shutting down businesses or massive layoffs mean nothing to them because the only thing that matters is the bottom line, money. I'm not knocking them, because our system the way it is has a need for psychopaths. It takes a special kind of person to be disconnected with the rest of the world.
Right on, Uncle. Dr. Robert Hare is one of the (or perhaps, the) foremost authority on psychopaths, and that is exactly what he found out; corporate leaders show a disproportionately high prevalence of psychopathy.
But I am not so sure we need these people pulling the strings in corporations. I think the soulless ruthlessness of the "corporation" as an identity is now outdated. The bad PR resulting from ruthless attacks on citizens and other companies is turning more and more people "off" of dealing with companies (like Microsoft), and "on" to dealing with companies (like Canonical, Novell, RedHat, Mozilla), who embrace a cooperative, collaborative, open business model (and open source products). To run companies like this, you need people skills and you need to care about and inter-depend on others and your customers (so no psychopaths need apply).