Legalities of DVD Copying - Intro to DRM

Introduction
Digital rights management, as its name implies, applies only to digital media. Digital media have gained in popularity over analog media both because of technical advantages associated with their production, reproduction, and manipulation, and also because they are sometimes of higher perceptual quality than their analog counterparts. Since the advent of personal computers, digital media files have become easy to copy an unlimited number of times without any degradation in the quality of subsequent copies. Many analog media lose quality with each copy generation, and often even during normal use. The popularity of the Internet and file sharing tools have made the distribution of copyrighted digital media files simple.

The availability of multiple perfect copies of copyrighted materials is perceived by much of the media industry as a threat to its viability and profitability, particularly within the music and movie industries. Digital media publishers typically have business models that rely on their ability to collect a fee for each copy made of a digital work, and sometimes even for each performance of said work. DRM was created by and/or designed for digital media publishers as a means to allow them to control any duplication and dissemination of their content.

Although technical control measures on the reproduction and use of application software have been common since the 1980s, the term DRM usually refers to the increasing use of similar measures for artistic works/content. Beyond the existing legal restrictions which copyright law imposes on the owner of the physical copy of a work, most DRM schemes can and do enforce additional restrictions at the sole discretion of the media distributor (which may or may not be the same entity as the copyright holder).

DRM vendors and publishers coined the term digital rights management to refer to the types of technical measures discussed here. Because the "rights"—actually, technical capabilities — that a content owner grants are not the same as the legal rights of a content consumer, DRM critics point out that the phrase "digital rights management" is a misnomer and the term digital restrictions management is a more accurate characterization of the functionality of DRM systems.
DRM is an extension of Mandatory Access Control (as opposed to Discretionary access control) wherein a central policy set by an administrator is enforced by a computer system. The well-studied theoretical problems of Mandatory Access Control apply equally to DRM. DRM is vulnerable to an additional class of attacks due to its need to be run on tamper-resistant hardware (DRM systems that do not run on tamper-resistant hardware cannot ever be theoretically secure since digital content can be copied on a hardware level).

Legal enforcement of DRM

DRM controls are sometimes proposed to be enforced through so-called trusted computing. However, trusted computing creates the prospect of a computer system which cannot be trusted by its owner, but rather its behavior can be remotely manipulated at any time, regardless of the legal merits of such manipulation. Most opponents have little faith that the courts or legislatures will be able to limit such manipulation to only that which is legally permitted.

Several laws relating to DRM have been proposed or enacted in various jurisdictions (State, Federal, non-US). Some of them would require all computer systems to have mechanisms controlling the use of digital media. (See Professor Edward Felten's freedom-to-tinker Web site for information and pointers to the current debate on these matters).

An early example of a DRM system is the Content Scrambling System (CSS) employed by the DVD Forum on movie DVD disks. The data on the DVD is encrypted so that it can only be decoded and viewed using an encryption key, which the DVD Consortium kept secret. In order to gain access to the key, a DVD player manufacturer was required to sign a license agreement with the DVD Consortium which restricted them from including certain desirable features in their players, such as a digital output which could be used to extract a high-quality digital copy of the movie. Since the only market hardware capable of decoding the movie was controlled by the DVD Consortium, they hoped to be able to impose whatever restrictions they chose on the playback of such movies. See also DIVX for a more restrictive and less commercially successful variant of this scheme which is no longer marketed. That name is also used (DivX), in ironic tribute to the defunct disk "protection" scheme, for an implementation of the MPEG-4 video compression protocol.

To date, all DRM systems have failed to meet the challenge of protecting the rights of the copyright owner while also respecting the rights of the purchaser of a copy. None have succeeded in preventing criminal copyright infringement by organized, unlicensed, commercial pirates.

Flaws of some well known systems include:

Physical protection: Utilizes separate hardware to ensure protection. Examples include hardware dongles that had to be attached to the computer prior to using the content, and USB and smart card devices working in a similar fashion. Physical protection methods consistently failed in consumer markets due to compatibility problems and extra level of complexity in content use; however, they did enjoy limited success with enterprise software.

DIVX: Required a phone line, inhibiting mobile use. To take a work for which unlimited plays had been purchased (called DIVX Silver) to a friend's home, it was necessary to carry a 14 kg (30 lb) DVD player as well as the light and compact disc; or to telephone the DIVX service and have the player of the friend transferred to the account of the purchaser of the work, and then call again to have it switched back. The system prevented certain legal uses such as the creation of compilations, by the purchaser. The system also prevented the sale or lending of purchased works, by recording the account information of the original purchaser on the DIVX Silver disk. Under copyright law, the owner of a legally-obtained copy of a work may create compilations, or re-sell the copy in the secondary (used goods) market. By using these technical measures, the DIVX system was able to thwart the buyer's right of first sale and other fair use rights. DIVX is a form of physical protection of the content (see above).

CSS: It restricts fair use and first purchaser rights, such as the creation of compilations or full quality reproductions for the use of children or in cars. It also prevents the user from playing CSS-encrypted DVDs on any computer platform (although this restriction can be easily circumvented). Recently, with the advent of DeCSS and cryptographic analysis of the CSS algorithm have demonstrated flaws in this system which can be exploited to allow users to recover some of their fair-use rights. Full quality digital copies can now be easily made, making fair use by normal consumers easier. Although it has been argued that programs like DeCSS make copyright infringement easier, this system has never been effective in preventing illegal mass copying of DVDs by criminal gangs, even before the system was found to be flawed. CSS is an example of certificate-based encryption.
Product activation: Invalidates or severely restricts a product's functionality until the product is registered with a publisher by means of a special identification (activation) code. The process often uses information about the specific configuration of the hardware on which the software runs, hashing it with the identification number specific to the product's license. Microsoft was the first company to utilize this method in its Microsoft Reader product. Activation was later used with Windows XP and then with Office XP. Ultimately, workarounds which bypassed the product activation system have been developed. In 2003, Intuit's use of a flawed product activation scheme angered thousands of customers who were denied legitimate use of the product, resulting in a formal apology by Intuit and discontinuation of the use of the mechanism.

Digital watermarking: Allows hidden data, such as a unique disc ID, to be placed on the media. Then, the name and address of the purchaser would be taken at the location of sale, and entered into a database along with the unique media ID. This does not prevent copying, but it ensures that any copies made of the media will bear the same hidden information—so if the content appeared on (for example) P2P networks, the ID number could be easily extracted and the purchaser prosecuted.

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