Political Penguin

Yet another one of those topics I’ve been planning to write on, hadn’t, but have now been spurred on by a bit of news from the BBC.
OK, for those who don’t know, DRM is Digital Rights Management. A little acronym that can pass so easily as to be unnoticed by most people but which has serious and fundamental implications for society on a whole.
So what is it? Well, a sort of super duper copyright protection system. These aren’t new, they’ve been around at least a far as I know since VHS videos had been out a few years. Basically we’re trying to stop people copying stuff here, which I’ll profess to not having too much of a problem with in general.
There’s a whole lot of arguments out there for which the classic is that music companies can’t invest in bands or artists if they’re not making profit for which people who copy media are undermining that. Mind you, music companies investing in artists/bands has brought us to the homogenous commercial pop group culture so perhaps denying them of money wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing afterall.
A bit of history now. Up until pretty recently as in the last ten years, consumption of media (I’m going to stick to music as an example for now) has been pretty much tied to some form of mechanical device relaying a storage system into sound. From wax cylinders to vinyl to 8 track to tape to CD that’s been the process. However the advent of digital media has fundamentally changed this process. Yes, there’s still some form of storage, however it’s relationship to the player device often means it is an integral part, not a removeable item as in the past.
Removable storage meant that copy protection was often a difficult case if nearly impossible. However, the first principles of copy protection came primarily on VHS whereby the media being played was in effect scrambled and could only be unscrambled by the actually player, thus tying the two together meaning it was very difficult, although not impossible to copy the outgoing media.
Spin on a few years and this principal was refined into what became a little bit of a scandal for Sony. Now a lot of companies had been working on Digital Rights Management for years but Sony were the first to widely implement it, or at least the first to get caught implementing it. To explain this one is quite simple. Sony put a system on the CD’s they sold that installed itself in a similar way to a rootkit on Windows based computers that prevented music files being copied to the hard drive. They did this without telling anyone and inadvertently opened up security holes through which viruses and spyware could infect computers. Not a good commercial move really when you think about it.
However, unlike Media like previously VHS and currently DVD where systems of encryption were the main issue, DRM opens up a whole different field of restrictions on the use of information because whereas before, the aim was to stop the duplication of media on a storage device, our increasingly digital age means that the storage device is often the player as well.
A little bit about my personal practices. I like music when I’m out and about, either a walk down the town or on the bus, I like to have some music to listen too. My music device is my mobile phone. It has the capacity to store MP3 files which I could listen to but probably due to my own laziness I really can’t be bothered and prefer to just listen to the radio. Before I had my current mobile, I listened to the radio on a Sony Walkman circa about 1989 and only changed because it was one less thing to carry and easier to recharge than having half a dozen batteries in my pocket.
The case however remains, that if I so wished I could legally rip some of my CD’s to MP3 format, upload them to my phone and play them to my hearts content. Ah, no bugger, sorry, forgot, actually, although it’s a common practice, legally speaking the UK is the only country in the EU which doesn’t guarantee an individuals right to copy personal media into another format for ones own use although let’s be honest, I don’t think anyone has ever been convicted of it and even the industry through the BPI are arguing for this to be allowed because it’s just simply a stupid law. So I could do this if I wanted without fear of getting banged up or coming into contact with some dodgy technology that isn’t going to allow me to do this. Oh, and for the really smart arses out there, yes, the MP3 format is also a copyrighted system for which you legally require a license to encode stuff into it.
Let’s move on to iPods for a moment. Well, you already know that I don’t own one and here’s the reason why. Apart from them being completely over-priced for what they are (it’s easy enough to get an MP3 player for half the price at the same spec) they also have some interesting features to them primarily around music downloaded from the iTunes online store.
This music is packed with DRM that means it only plays on iPods so if say you get sick of your iPod and decide to buy one made by Creative or a competitor, sorry, all that music you payed for won’t work (unless you illegally crack it of course, which is possible with various tools).
It does raise a fundamental freedom issue though. We know that over time storage has changed, but with it came demand for systems to transfer say vinyl to CD, ask Bob Piper with his usb turntable. It’s a process that with a small cost of equipment can quite happily be undertaken by even the most unskilled of people, technically speaking, and therefore is pretty much accessible to all. Now however, we are approaching the world of complete digital storage, the only difference being the format of the system of which MP3 is pretty much king at the moment. If we are talking purely in terms of MP3 and discounting the licensing of that format, the issue falls squarely at the door of DRM to control the distribution of information.
We’ve touched on the issue of iPod, Microsoft came out with the Zune music player recently that is even more restrictive but that’s just music for which the debate on DRM has been knocking about the media for a while. Where it’s really happening and not anywhere near as noticable is on the computer that you’re probably looking at right now (unless you’re a Linux user of course, but even that’s likely to change).
Back to the BBC article linked at the top, issues over DRM in the new Microsoft Vista operating system. This is one primarily around video playback and a timely reminder to anyone thinking of getting this new operating system that there’s a hell of a lot running in the background that you don’t know about.
Here’s an example. Probably anyone who is reading this will have done this at some point in their life. Needed to get a document to someone, typed it up on Word, attached it to an e-mail and sent it across for it to be opened at the other end. Office 2007 due to come out soon can stop this. The author can define DRM to restrict it from being printed, amended and a whole raft of other things. It’s a bloody Word document for Christ’s sake why the hell would you want to do that? Have we got to a point of relentless paranoia and pure bloody minded selfishness as to not allow someone to do something with a Labour Party Branch calling notice?
That’s me being pedantic but the point is that innovation, transfer of ideas, development, all these things flurish in an environment of openness, they are killed off by restrictions and to give one last example in which even if you do abandon Microsoft Windows you’ll still have cause for concern. DRM technology is starting to be hardwired into the actual bits inside computers. It’s not just about the software anymore. This means it’s quite possible for CD/DVD drives to only work with certain ‘authorised’ media sources, same goes for USB memory sticks and I’d hazard a guess that someone somewhere is working on hard drives that irrespective of how they are formatted, allow for the denial of certain actions, like say a DRM music CD being copied onto it. This poses the question about consumer choice and freedoms. Is only allowing a file to be used on a certain system, a certain device or by a certain programme restrictive?
Well, yes, there’s been some good noises coming out of the EU on this one, especially where office documents are concerned. It’s being talked about adopting the ODF (open documet format) as a standard throughout the EU, which one would assume will bugger up Microsoft Office as they’ve decided not to support it. Yes, for all the anti-EU lot out there, another case of them protecting British consumers because even I’m sad to admit it that where IT is concerned, our Government haven’t got a clue. Not that any other party has either.
It’s easy to talk in terms of freedom on the hot topics like any bit of legislation coming out of the Home Office, but we, as electors in a Democracy can do something about that in theory. These processes are being determined by those who we have no power over apart from the often vaunted choice to not buy their products, but if all the products carry the same denials then where is there left to go?
It’s quite possible that someone of my generation has gone through the golden age of freedom in terms of technology. The late 80′s and most of the 90′s allowed for so much possibility that I think even myself naively believed that it would continue. However I’m not so sure anymore, and although someone of my techie ability may be able to defer these infringements on freedom for longer than most, there is a limit to what’s possible. Afterall, no one can knock up a processor or a motherboard in their shed.