Copy Controls Go Mobile: New System Will Protect Digital Content on Wireless Devices

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,114571,tk,dn020204X,00.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.pcworld.com/news/article...n020204X,00.asp</a><br /><br /></div>"An industry group is launching a new system for protecting digital music, video, and software from illegal file sharing over mobile devices. The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) unveiled its newest Digital Rights Management (DRM) system on Monday. The OMA, based in La Jolla, California, also will unveil a licensing body, the Content Management License Administrator (CMLA), which will be led by Nokia, Intel, Panasonic, and Samsung Electronics, a spokesperson for Nokia says."<br /><br />What do you think? Good thing or a bad thing? I personally think that if it means we'll see more mainstream content, and it doesn't interfere with us watching/listening to our own content, it's a good thing.

[szamot]

The more corrupt the society the more laws are necessary. I guess we must be pretty corrupt, or so the industry thinks.

[tsb_hcy]

I don't want anything that's encrypted. Why would we have more content with this? We already have anything we want on our mobile devices.

[HTK]

My "Terminator2: Extreme Edition" DVD comes with a windows media 9 hi-res version of the movie, and it is protected, I bought it at Universal and I found out that I cant see the hi-res version here in Brazil, the standard dvd I already knew, but about the hi-res protection I didn´t ( the box says nothing about it ), so I had to use a proxy with high anonimity located at USA to download the 'permission' to see the movie.
This problem affects only non-us users.

The other problem is that the content is encrypted, so the computer besides rendering the video, also needs to first decrypt the content.
And believe me, a 1920x1080 movie is hard enough to be rendered without the encryption. Its a waste of processing power, that results in a bunch of dropped frames on the vast majority of systems.
This problems affects ALL users.

Pocket PC is kind of universal, is not something that you want sitting on top of your tv all the time, insted you want to take it everywhere you go, so the first problem I had can be a problem here.

And the most concerning problem is that pocket pcs already struggle to play a simple movie, imagine how it will be to play a encrypted movie.

[jasondearyou]

hmm..

[hamishmacdonald]

This iteration of DRM and any other will fail because of the fundamental business mistake it underscores.

I write for a company called The Strategic Coach (http://www.strategiccoach.com) that produces materials and conducts workshops for entrepreneurs. The president, Dan, has some great ideas about this stuff. He refers to companies like these as being "status industries": they've had their heyday of innovation, and it's long-gone. Now their focus is on protecting themselves and suing others, rather than continuing to create new value.

It's a losing game, because no customer is interested in corporate profits or jumping through hoops of added complexity. When they resort to such status-protecting measures as lawsuits and digital trickery, the company is no longer speaking the customer's language, and it's only a matter of time until someone else comes along with a better, more customer-friendly and customer-valuable offering.

Maybe Apple has it with this micropayment music store idea, but I still think there's something else, a completely new process for transferring intellectual property while still respecting the artist and distributor, that remains to be seen.

[Mark_Venture]

If the industry can balance fair use with copy protection, I'm for it, but in the past they have proven either 1. they can't do that, or 2. they wont do it.

back in the DOS days, it was very common to buy software that was copy protected, could be installed only so many times, could not be backed up/restored due to way it wrote a file to your hard drive, etc. It made the software a pain to use and did nothing to stop piracy or drop prices.

What ever the reason, software companies started to move away from this, and copy protection vanished from most software (ok thousand dollar titles, like autocad for example, still employed some type of copy protection, usually a hardware key, but sometimes software based)

Now in this time of peer-to-peer file swapping and high speed internet, piracy is a good scape goat for people not buying product, when it could really be due to slow economy, getting let go from high paying job and taking anything you can get to survive so not having the same disposable income, or in the case of the music industry, going from buying an album with 9 or 10 GOOD songs, you buy a CD with only 1 or 2 good songs and the other 7 or 8 are horrible so you just don't feel right about spending that much money for what you are getting.

Not that I condone piracy or stealing. I KNOW that its wrong, and any time I hear about co-workers, friends, or even family using Kazaa, Morpheous (did I spell that right??) or the other swapping programs, I tell them DONT. Go out and buy it if you want it. If you can't afford it, save for it, or use your money on the necessities.

I like listening to music. My current mood determines what I want to listen to... '80s rock, metal, new age, jazz, classical, RAP, R&B, etc... (I have a vast CD collection containing many hundreds of CDs. Besides the many I've purchased over the last 15 years, my brother has worked in radio for many years and will give me left over promo CDs, the ones they couldn't give all away while it was still on the charts)

For 17 months, work had me traveling the country on a project. I got home only about a weekend or so a month, and I could not take my all my CDs with me on the road. So I bought a Creative Labs Nomad Zen (20gig, biggest at the time) MP3 player. I ripped most of my CDs to MP3 and dropped them on the player. Way better. Smaller, lighter, less to keep track of while in rental cars, hotels, airplanes and airports. Today, with more and more audio CDs being copy protected, I could not do that as easily, if at all.

When I buy a CD, I want to listen to it where I am at the time, be it walking down the street, sitting in the office, on an airplane, in a hotel room, etc... With copy protection, I have to buy and carry a CD player and all the CDs in addition to my laptop, iPAQ, mini hard drives, etc... Um. not always convient. So why should I buy the CDs? Besides, I'm single so its not like I buy one CD and more than one person listens to it at the same time.

Microsoft almost has software copy protection right with their Product Activation. (Oh my, did I say that???). If it allowed for one or two more times of installing before you have to call them, and allow for greater machine changes before you have to re-activate. But at least they are on the right track of gaining the balance between fair use and copy protection.

But on the other hand, this only helps drive revenue for them. When they should really start looking at what are the MAJOR differences between their new and old products... Why should uses spend their hard earned money to buy the newest, latest, greatest? say between Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003? What would make me run out and spend $200, $300 or MORE to upgrade? Using ALL three at work, Office 2000 is just fine, does what I need, and gets the job done. Why should I, or my company, spend over $300 to upgrade to Office 2k3? Hey my parents still use Office 97 and it does a great job too. So its not piracy that makes them loose revenue from me.

However, I have not read too much in depth about their DRM in Windows Media format they are starting to push. How easy is it to back up what you've purchased? copy to MP3 players, make your own "greatest hits" cds, etc? These will determine if people use it, or shy away.

In the days of no copy protection on CDs, MP3s, software, etc, it will be difficult to get consumers to accept copy protection on those things in the future.

We accept copy protection on DVD (CSS encryption, Macrovision encoding, etc) and VHS (Macrovision) because they were there from the BEGINNING. They didn't push them on us later.

YIKES... THIS IS WAY TOO LONG.. I'll stop now. :oops: