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Here's an odd twist that might give new life to the dying horse of music digital-right management. Microsoft has just been awarded a U.S. patent for a distributed DRM system -- it works over peer-to-peer networks -- which uses encrypted public and private keys as the licensing mechanism. This is significant because, while centralized music stores like Apple's iTunes have forsaken DRM, the Microsoft patent would enable peer-to-peer networks to reemerge as viable, albeit protected, content sources. The patent, number 7,594,275, is entitled simply, "Digital rights management system." Granted today (Sept. 22), it was filed in October, 2003, which undercuts...

The 'Creative' Technology Behind The AP's News Registry from the magic-beans dept The Associated Press' attempt to DRM the news is a bad idea for a variety of reasons, but its claims for the news registry's capabilities seem pretty misguided, once you examine the technology behind it (the "magic DRM beans"). Ed Felten dug into the details of the registry's microformat, hNews, which the AP announced a few weeks earlier, and here's where it gets really interesting: the hNews rights field is based on the Creative Commons Rights Expression Language (ccREL). If the AP thinks it'll be able to build...

Shuffle's new hardware DRM taxes 3rd-party vendors Apple's new iPod Shuffle has added a new layer of hardware DRM, possibly preventing third-party companies from reverse-engineering the Shuffle technology in order to build headphones. Electronic Frontier and iLounge have discovered an Apple authentication chip DRM (Digital Right Management) requirement that will mean third-party headphone makers will have to pay fees for the authentication chip and design headphones with the chip included. The authentication chip provides a legal means to prevent headphone makers from reverse-engineering the Shuffle output to create a set of headphones that work with the new iPod. Apple could...

I was pitched headfirst into the world of e-books in 2002 when I took a job with Palm Digital Media. The company, originally called Peanut Press, was founded in 1998 with a simple plan: publish books in electronic form. As it turns out, that simple plan leads directly into a technological, economic, and political hornet's nest. But thanks to some good initial decisions (more on those later), little Peanut Press did pretty well for itself in those first few years, eventually having a legitimate claim to its self-declared title of "the world's largest e-book store." Unfortunately, despite starting the company...

Apple Inc. is dropping the digital copyright locks from most of the songs it sells through iTunes, a move that could prove to be a death blow for the music industry's attempts to control how consumers buy and listen to music. With the revolutionary iPod and the iTunes music store, Apple rewrote the rulebook for the music industry as labels struggled to adjust to the new digital reality of file-sharing and copyright violations brought about by the Internet. Today, Apple is the largest retailer of music in the U.S. with more than five billion songs sold and many will see...

In this opening salvo, I will reprise the technical terms and history of DRM and thereafter I will try to keep you abreast of the issues for computer users in general and free software in particular. Hopefully, I will in fact be chronicling the death throes of DRM. “The Skibbereen Eagle has it’s eye on the Czar”. Thus did a small, obscure Irish newspaper in West Cork in 1857 advise the Czar of all the Russias about his China policy. I like that. I like to think of the Czar, deliberating late into the night on high affairs of state...

Excerpt - If you like to download the latest episodes of “Heroes” or other NBC shows from BitTorrent, maybe you shouldn’t buy a Microsoft Zune to watch them on. A future update of the software for Microsoft’s portable media player may well include a feature that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it. ~ snip ~

Remember a few years back when Microsoft launched a new type of DRM under the name "PlaysForSure"? The idea was to create a standard DRM that a bunch of different online music download stores could use, and which makers of digital music devices could build for. Except... like any DRM, it had its problems. And, like any DRM, its real purpose was to take away features, not add them, making all of the content hindered by it less valuable. Yet, because Microsoft was behind it, many people assumed that at least Microsoft would keep supporting it. Well, you've now learned...

February 20, 2008 Hacker breaks link between iTunes and the iPod Software letting iTunes users copy music and video to mobile phones has been released by the hacker known as DVD Jon Jonathan Richards A notorious Norwegian hacker known as DVD Jon is preparing for another run-in with the music industry after he released software that lets iPod owners copy music and videos bought from iTunes and play it on other devices. The program allows people to drag and drop songs from iTunes into a folder on their desktop, which in turn copies the files to other devices such as...

DVD Jon aims to smash digital Tower of Babel By John Leyden The Register - Technology News - Tuesday, February 19 01:24 pm doubleTwist, the firm founded by scourge of DRM manufacturers Jon Lech Johansen (AKA DVD Jon) last March, has released software designed to allow users to share digital media files - including copy protected content - across devices. doubleTwist desktop allows users to "share and sync digital media without worrying about codecs and bitrates". The Windows utility will allow users to play a video made on a Nokia smartphone on an iPod or Sony PSP, for example. The...

One of the Big Four labels is apparently unhappy with its return on investment when it comes to funding industry trade groups such as the IFPI and RIAA. British label EMI, which was recently purchased by a private equity fund, is reportedly considering a significant cut to the amount of money it provides the trade groups on an annual basis. According to figures seen by Reuters, each of the Big Four contributes approximately $132.3 million to fund the operations of the IFPI, RIAA, and other national recording industry trade groups. That money is used in part to fund the industry's...

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has taken up a new battle against pirates, but this one is different than previous legal pursuits. The UK-based organization acts as the worldwide arm for the music recording industry, but as widely reported, it apparently forgot to renew its .com top-level domain in time before it got snatched up by one of its top targets, The Pirate Bay. While the IFPI still retains control of ifpi.org, ifpi.com now points to a Pirate Bay page that reads: "International Federation of Pirates Interests." The two sides are now preparing for a fight over the...

Jesper Johansson--a former senior program manager for security policy at Microsoft who moved to Amazon in September last year--wrote in his blog on Monday that he may drop Windows Media Center for LinuxMCE, a free open-source add-on to the Kubuntu desktop operating system, because problems caused by Microsoft's digital-rights management (DRM) software have proven so difficult to fix. After Johansson's 5-year-old child complained that cable network Comcast's On Demand video system was not working with Windows Media Center, Johansson wrote, he attempted to resolve the problem. "Upon inspecting the problem I found that the video would turn on, the screen...

SEATTLE — Microsoft Corp. is once again on the defensive against hackers after the launch of a new program that gives average PC users tools to unlock copy-protected digital music and movies. The latest version of the FairUse4M program, which can crack Microsoft's digital rights management system for Windows Media audio and video files, was published online late Friday. In the past year, Microsoft plugged holes exploited by two earlier versions of the program and filed a federal lawsuit against its anonymous authors. Microsoft dropped the lawsuit after failing to identify them. The third version of FairUse4M has a simple...

San Francisco (IDGNS) - Under a licensing agreement in its final stages, consumers may get the right to make several legal copies of HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc movies they've purchased, a concession by the movie industry that may quell criticism that DRM (digital rights management) technologies are too restrictive. The agreement, if supported by movie studios and film companies, could allow a consumer to make a backup copy in case their original disc is damaged and another copy for their home media server, said Michael Ayers, a representative of an industry group that licenses the AACS (Advanced Access Content System)...

What do Vista, Flash, RealPlayer, and iTunes have in common? According to Media Rights Technologies (MRT), all of them are infringing products under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and MRT has just sent cease-and-desist letters to Microsoft, Adobe, Real, and Apple. "Together these four companies are responsible for 98 percent of the media players in the marketplace; CNN, NPR, Clear Channel, MySpace, Yahoo, and YouTube all use these infringing devices to distribute copyrighted works," said MRT CEO Hank Risan in a statement. "We will hold the responsible parties accountable. The time of suing John Doe is over." Media Rights Technologies...

There are a few things lawmakers have decided really ought to be handled with the "care and oversight" that only the government can provide: e.g., tax collection, radioactive materials, biohazards, guns, and CDs. CDs? No, I'm not talking about financial Certificates of Deposit, though that might make more sense. I'm talking about Compact Discs. New "pawn shop" laws are springing up across the United States that will make selling your used CDs at the local record shop something akin to getting arrested. No, you won't spend any time in jail, but you'll certainly feel like a criminal once the local...

Excerpt - The folks at Digg.com have let the social news genie out of the bottle, and now they can't control it. Since the HD-DVD encryption code was discovered and published, readers at Digg have been repeatedly submitting stories with the 16 digit hex code in the titles and bodies. Just as quickly as these posts crawl up the Digg charts, admins seem to be deleting them. Just search Google for 09 F9 and you'll find the key. Will AACS send a Cease and Desist to InfoWorld because I posted the text "09 F9"? If so, we might as well...

Yesterday, Apple sent out short notices to their iTunes partners who provide the music content to the iTunes store. The notices let partners know that they would soon be able to offer DRM-free music and DRM-free music videos to customers through iTunes. Many of you have reached out to iTunes to find out how you can make your songs available higher quality and DRM-free. Starting next month, iTunes will begin offering higher-quality, DRM-free music and DRM-free music videos to all customers. The new unrestricted format appears to be open to any publisher who is interested. Apple and EMI first announced...

April 06, 2007 (IDG News Service) -- Following digital music pioneer Apple Inc.'s lead, Microsoft Corp. said it will soon sell digital music online without digital rights management (DRM) protection. Microsoft's apparent change of heart on selling DRM-free music came in response to Apple's deal earlier in the week to sell unprotected content from recording company EMI Group PLC. The company previously claimed that DRM was necessary for current and emerging digital media business models. "The EMI announcement on Monday was not exclusive to Apple," said Katy Asher, a Microsoft spokeswoman on the Zune team, in an e-mail to the...

EMI recently announced it would offer DRM-Free tracks on Itunes for a 30 cent premium. This means people can copy the songs freely. But, does this really change anything from a legal perspective? It is still illegal to make copies of music.

EMI Group PLC on Monday announced a deal that will allow computer company Apple Inc. to sell the record company's songs online without copy protection software. The agreement means that customers of Apple's iTunes store will soon be able to play downloaded songs by the Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Coldplay and other top-selling artists without the copying restrictions once imposed by their label. EMI said almost all of its catalog, excluding music by The Beatles, is included in the deal. Singles and albums free from copy-protection software and with a higher sound quality will be offered as a premium product,...

LONDON (AP) - Record company EMI Group PLC said Sunday it planned to unveil "an exciting new digital offering" with computer company Apple Inc. (AAPL), raising expectations that The Beatles' music catalog is about to be made available through Apple's iTunes online music store. EMI said it would hold a news conference Monday at its London headquarters with its chief executive, Eric Nicoli, and Apple boss Steve Jobs "and a special live performance." The company gave no further details. EMI has been The Beatles' record label since the early 1960s. The Beatles have so far been the most prominent holdout...

NEW YORK--The discussions at a music conference here Tuesday started with an all-around bashing of Apple CEO Steve Jobs before moving to the plethora of issues plaguing the music industry.... CD sales fell 23 percent worldwide between 2000 and 2006. Legal sales of digital songs aren't making up the difference either. Last year saw a 131 percent jump in digital sales, but overall the industry still saw about a 4 percent decline in revenue. That has the industry pointing fingers at a number of things they believe caused the decline. At the opening of the conference, some of the panel...

The music industry is intensifying its fight against unauthorized music downloading by college-age students, as new information shows a dramatic increase in the number of songs exchanged through file-sharing networks. The Recording Industry Assn. of America trade group today announced plans to file five times as many lawsuits against individuals this year as it did when it initially began suing people in September 2003. It sent 400 letters to universities offering deals for students the RIAA has determined are downloading unauthorized copies of songs. The deal allows students to settle before a lawsuit is filed and avoid a court record....

Today, Reps. Rich Boucher (D-Va.) and John Dolittle (R-Calif.) introduced what they call the "Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship" (or FAIR USE) Act they say will make it easier for digital media consumers to use the content they buy....

Two new classes of devices threaten to make the Home Theater PC obsolete. Has the HTPC party ended before it even began, or will competing devices be crippled over fears of copyright infringement? The Evolving HTPC Home Theater PCs (HTPCs) were poised to be the next must-have toy for technophiles. The idea was to have a single component to store and play your entire digital library of music, movies, and photos. The concept was nothing new. For several years, computers have been edging out TVs, stereos, and DVD players as the entertainment appliance of choice for college students confined to...

A recent poll conducted by Jupiter Research of European music firms reveals that DRM isn't exactly universally popular, not even in these bastions of all that is unholy and restricted. In the poll, 54% of executives thought DRM systems were too restrictive, and 62% believe dropping DRM would boost the "take-up" of digital music. That number varied dramatically based on who was being asked, with only 48% of record label execs thinking DRM would boost download sales, but 58% believing so at major labels, and outside the labels the executives seemed much wiser to the ways of the consumer, with...

Windows Vista includes an array of "features" that you don't want. These features will make your computer less reliable and less secure. They'll make your computer less stable and run slower. They will cause technical support problems. They may even require you to upgrade some of your peripheral hardware and existing software. And these features won't do anything useful. In fact, they're working against you. They're digital rights management (DRM) features built into Vista at the behest of the entertainment industry. And you don't get to refuse them. The details are pretty geeky, but basically Microsoft has reworked a lot...

A senior Yahoo chief has spoken out in favour of Apple CEO Steve Jobs' call for major labels to abandon digital rights technology (DRM). Dave Goldberg, head of Yahoo Music, says that tracks sold through his service in MP3 format sell much faster than rights-protected tunes. Silicon Valley Watcher reports that Goldberg believes DRM is confusing for consumers, also that the company has experimented by making music available free of DRM, and tracks sold in this way see more sales. Goldberg is also heavily critical of the DRM system Microsoft licenses for a fee, saying it "doesn't work half the...

Digital rights management (DRM) is an out-and-out disaster both as a concept and as an always changing technology. Most technologists have always believed this and apparently now Steve Jobs is saying it publicly. See related story. He is begging the music industry to give up on all the DRM initiatives while subtly predicting they may spell its doom. He is dead right. The negative attitude over DRM is best expressed in the Wikipedia entry for DRM, "Technologies to give content providers control over redistribution and access to material. Critics of these technologies use an alternate expansion, 'Digital Restrictions Management'."

OSLO, Norway - Norway's Consumer Council applauded signs of willingness from Apple Inc. to open its iTunes music store to players other than its iPod, but said Wednesday the company was skirting key issues and passing responsibility to record companies. Norway is leading a European campaign to force Apple to make its iTunes online store compatible with rivals' digital music players. This month, Norway's consumer regulator declared the lack of interoperability illegal, and gave Apple until Oct. 1 to change it or face legal action and possible fines.

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs on Tuesday called on the four major record companies to start selling songs online without copy protection software to thwart piracy known as digital rights management (DRM). Jobs said there appeared to be no benefit for the record companies in continuing to sell more than 90 percent of their music without DRM on compact discs, while selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system."If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new...

Now that Viacom has successfully ordered YouTube to remove 100,000 clips from its television shows, one big question hangs in the air. Could the popular video-sharing site survive an onslaught by old media? After months of failed negotiations, New York City-based media conglomerate Viacom ordered YouTube to remove its content from the site Friday. The company complied, and as of Tuesday most if not all of the offending clips were no longer viewable on YouTube (see Viacom to YouTube: Yank Videos) Viacom defends its actions. “YouTube is selling advertising in competition with us, using our own content,” said Michael Fricklas,...

A Romanian-born programmer claims to have developed code that can bypass the Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology in Windows Vista. Writing in his blog, Alex Ionescu said that for over a year, he's been working on a method of getting around Vista's signed driver requirements and that he's recently succeeded. As you might know, Vista requires that all drivers be digitally signed so that they can be properly authenticated to the OS. The 64-bit version of Vista requires what Microsoft calls Kernel Mode Code Signing (KMCS) in order to load kernel-mode drivers. Vista also includes a technology called Protect Media...

The copy protection technology used by Blu-ray discs has been cracked by the same hacker who broke the DRM technology of rival HD DVD discs last month. The coder known as muslix64 used much the same plain text attack in both cases. By reading a key held in memory by a player playing a HD DVD disc he was able to decrypt the movie been played and render it as an MPEG 2 file. The latest Blu-ray hack was performed by muslix64 using a media file provided by Janvitos, through the video resource site Doom9, and applied to a Blu-ray...

Court threatens download search The ruling could have implications for other internet companies An Australian court has upheld a ruling against a website operator that provided a search engine through which users could illegally access MP3 files.The Federal Court in Canberra backed a previous copyright ruling involving Australian web firm mp3s4free.net. By providing links to websites which enabled illegal downloads, mp3s4free had effectively authorized copyright infringement, the court said. The ruling could have implications for search engine websites such as Google. Legal action If Google's search engine links to material which infringes on copyright and this material was accessed...

Microsoft convened a small group of bloggers today at their Redmond headquarters to discuss the upcoming Mix Conference in Las Vegas. Highlights of the day included: The receipt of a Zune as a gift (the third I’ve received from Microsoft - I now have all three colors) Seeing the look on Gates’ face when he walked into the room and every single one of us had a Mac open on the desk in front of us - Niall Kennedy had also set up a makeshift wifi network using an Airport An hour-long anything goes Q&A session with Gates One of...

The wraps came off high-definition DVD players at this year's annual Consumer Electronics Show, offering the final component to replicate the movie theater experience at home. And while a fierce DVD format war likely will delay the mass adoption of such devices, digital video is here to stay - the Consumer Electronics Association trade group estimates 25 million U.S. homes will have a high-def TV set by year's end. But big, expensive flat-panel sets aside, this year's gadget show offered plenty of smaller screens for video... Yahoo Inc., DirecTV, Starz Entertainment Group and Sony were also among the companies getting...

Microsoft has answered claims that its Zune player may violate the international Creative Commons license, which states that copy protection cannot be applied to files where it does not already exist. If true, this would make Microsoft liable for any changes that might be made to relevant songs during wireless transfers between Zune players, since the handheld gadget imposes DRM on some of the music sent from one Zune to another, according to Electronista. "We don't actually 'wrap all songs up in DRM:' Zune to Zune Sharing doesn't change the DRM on a song, and it doesn't impose DRM restrictions...

It was only a matter of time. YouTube and MySpace are being accused of copyright infringement by one of the biggest entertainment companies in North America, Universal Music. CEO Doug Morris pointed out how YouTube and MySpace users illegally post music videos and other content from Universal artists. “We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars,” Morris told investors Wednesday. According to Associated Press, Universal’s talks with YouTube have faltered and a copyright infringement suit will be filed against the San Mateo-based company if no agreement is reached. Discussions with MySpace, owned...

A U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) official has joined the debate surrounding Apple’s proprietary digital music technology by criticizing European antitrust activities, but groups attacking Apple are defending their actions. Speaking in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Thomas Barnett, assistant attorney general at the DOJ’s antitrust division, warned that forcing companies to reveal their intellectual property stifles innovation. He used Apple as an example, in a nod to growing discontent in Europe regarding the way that music purchased from iTunes is tied to the iPod. Architects of complaints against Apple in Europe say he’s got it wrong. “We’re not attacking intellectual...

LOS ANGELES - Universal Music, home to artists such as U2, The Killers and Audioslave, will make its catalog of recordings and music videos available for free on an ad-supported Web site launching later this year, the site's operator said Tuesday. The two-year deal calls for New York-based SpiralFrog.com to split advertising revenue with the recording company, said Lance Ford, chief marketing and sales officer for SpiralFrog. Users can download an unlimited number of songs or music videos if they register at the site. The tracks cannot be burned to a CD, but users will be able to transfer music...

If the broad rewrite of US telecommunications laws (the Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006) that we have been reporting on for the past several days makes it to the Senate floor, it will include the broadcast flag. Despite objections voiced by Sen. John Sununu (R-NH), the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has left both the audio and video broadcast flags unmolested. If the bill makes it to the full Senate, it will therefore contain the broadcast flags. However, individual senators would still be able to offer amendments to the legislation that would remove the...

You may have bought and paid for Windows XP. But Microsoft decides whether or not you can use it. If your XP software is up-to-date and online, it negotiates its validity with Microsoft servers every day. Nothing personal. Just part of Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM) system protecting Redmond's property... checking to see if your Windows software (and heaven only knows what else) is perfectly valid. Evoking memories of RealNetworks efforts to protect themselves from their loyal customers, innocent Microsoft officials explained to the discoverer, Lauren Weinstein, that this constant DRM enforcer is obviously not a constant DRM enforcer. Instead,...

>b?If Apple doesn't make its songs playable on all music devices by June 21, it faces fines that would then be followed by court action. LONDON — Apple Computer Inc. and its iTunes shop in Norway have until June 21 to change the terms of conditions for the download of files, having been found to have broken local consumer protection law in a number of ways. If Apple does not make its songs playable on all music devices by June 21, it faces fines which would then be followed by court action. And Apple is facing similar moves in other...

Is DRM just a consumer rights issue effecting your record collection? A UK board is treating it as such. But it's much more important than that. Before Gutenberg, copyists, using pen and ink, duplicated written political dialogue laboriously. Only the wealthy and the church could afford to employ copyists, and during this period the paucity of communications limited the exercise of democracy to small groups. The advent of Gutenberg's press made the mass distribution of written political dialogue possible. People vote based on what they hear and read, and the improvement in communications brought by the press made egalitarian mass...

The All Party Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG) in the UK has just released its report [PDF] on its study of DRM. The purpose of the study was to figure out to what degree protection is needed for both copyright holders and consumers. I think you'll be surprised at their conclusions. So will Sony and imitators. One recommendation is this: A recommendation that OFCOM publish guidance to make it clear that companies distributing Technical Protection Measures systems in the UK would, if they have features such as those in Sony-BMG’s MediaMax and XCP systems, run a significant risk of being prosecuted...

MPs in digital downloads warning Portable music players are proving enormously popular Consumers should be told exactly what they can and cannot do with songs and films they buy online, says an influential group of MPs in the UK.The All Party Parliamentary Internet Group looked at how copy protection systems restrict the way digital movies and music can be enjoyed. Labels on digital content should spell out how easy it is to move from gadget to gadget, said the report. It also called for an inquiry into the pricing schemes of online music stores. Price point A public inquiry...

Stallman-headed group's increasing politicization leaves a sour taste When Richard Stallman created the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985, it was organized around a radical idea: Software should be free, not just as in free of charge, but free as in the concept of liberty. During the next 20 years that idea turned out to be not just radical, but surprisingly practical. Beginning with Stallman's Emacs text editor, to the various Gnu utilities, the Linux kernel, and beyond, free software has proved to be an enduring success. Much of the credit for that can be given to Stallman himself. Through...