Keurig's Coffee DRM Already Cracked By Competitors; Will There Be A Lawsuit?

from the wait-and-see... dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, maker of the infamous Keurig single cup coffee makers, and its plan to DRM its next generation coffee pods. The original pods were going off patent, and competition was rising. So, of course, the solution is to come up with something new... and lock it down to make it less useful for consumers. When that story went viral, Team Keurig tried to spin the story, claiming the DRM would provide "interactive-enabled benefits" and would improve users' safety. Of course, when the system finally started showing up a couple months ago, people quickly realized it had nothing to do with safety, and the "interactive-enabled benefits" seemed to consist mainly of being able to distinguish a carafe-sized pod from a single cup-sized pod. Oh yeah, and to block out competing pods so that Keurig pods can be priced artificially high. Interactive! Enabled! Benefits!

Except... as RomanOnARiver alerts us, it appears that Keurig competitors have already figured out ways to crack the DRM. TreeHouse Foods very quickly announced that it would be able to break the DRM. Meanwhile, Mother Parkers' RealCup has just announced that its pods are compatible with Keurig's DRM. It's a little unclear from the press release if Mother Parkers cracked the DRM or came to a deal with Green Mountain, though it sure sounds like it was internal work:

"We are very pleased that our focus on innovation, quality, and freedom of choice has led to new technology that will produce authentic tasting coffee and tea products in all K-Cup type single-serve brewers, both old and new styles," said Bill VandenBygaart, Vice President of Business Development for Mother Parkers. "Standard size capsule brews, as well as larger carafe and multi-serve formats, will soon be available for independent brands of single-serve capsules. Consumers will be the ultimate winners by having the best tasting coffees and teas available."

TreeHouse had already sued Green Mountain over the new DRM, but the bigger question is if Green Mountain would try to stop anyone from reverse engineering and cracking the new DRM. That would present an interesting legal fight...

Filed Under: coffee, drm, keurig, pods, realcup
Companies: green mountaint roasters, keurig, mother parkers, treehouse foods

GOG Looking To Extend It's DRM-Free Message To Movies/TV

from the about-time dept

If you like PC games, chances are you already know all about GOG, or Good Old Games. The GOG website has done more to extend the life of gently-aged games by building a platform for old games that will work on new machines while having one singular principal dominate their products: there shall be no DRM. Digital Rights Managment seems like it's always existed and has equally never worked, what with cracks, hacks and other methods for getting around games that employ DRM being available almost immediately after games get released. It's a losing strategy. GOG, on the other hand, has made their insistence on DRM-free games a winning strategy for themselves, for customers, and even for once-apprehensive publishers. DRM certainly hasn't disappeared from the gaming industry, but GOG's working experiment has gone a long way to reduce its use.

And now, GOG wants to bring that same principal to television shows and movies.

They're starting small, launching with a handful of independent documentaries for $5.99 a piece in hopes of eventually branching out to studio films and television shows. The folks at GOG are pushing hard on the "DRM-free" angle here too, promising that nothing they sell will be saddled with the copyright restrictions you might get while buying a TV show on iTunes or Amazon.

"Most of [the studios we spoke to] admit that DRM does not protect anything, all protections are cracked on the day of the release of the movie or even before and that there is no DRM that can protect a movie against piracy," said a GOG representative in an e-mail to Kotaku. "The whole industry knows DRM is just smoke and mirrors and it does not work, so why not abandon it?"

Why not indeed? Though streaming is becoming a dominant method for viewing content, there still must be a market for the ownership of movies and television shows. DRM from the likes of the current marketplaces serves no end except to annoy actual customers, while pirated versions of pretty much everything already exist for those not willing to do right by content producers. What GOG did for games certainly seems like it should work for movies and TV shows: remove the annoyance and provide a clean and slick market for DRM-free show/movie content. As they said, they're starting small, but if this is successful we might finally start to see a landslide of a perception-change when it comes to DRM.

Interestingly, it seems that talks for a wider catalog are proceeding more successfully than I might have expected.

"These are very smart people and they see that the anti-piracy measure does not work at all," said a GOG rep in an e-mail. "We realize that the movie industry is much older than the gaming industry and it moves slower, with caution. As such, we'll get started with some real examples to show that it works–hence our first batch of 20 documentaries."

What also interests me is how the documentaries for this pilot program are all focused on gaming and internet culture, arguably attractive to a demographic that might be most knowledgeable about piracy and perhaps more willing than the general population to pirate content. If they can be successful there, I'd argue the rest of the general public ought to be a cinch. Get on board with this, studios. Someone is trying to save you from yourselves.

Filed Under: documentaries, drm, drm free, entertainment, movies, reasonable prices, tv
Companies: gog, good old games

DRM Performs Another Miracle, Turns Purchased Childrens Books Into Nothing At All

from the the-magic-of-technology,-in-Biblical-terms dept

An anonymous Techdirt reader sends in the now-unsurprising news that another publisher and its DRM are declaring customers' purchased e-goods null and void. This time it's Scholastic, publisher of many youth and teen titles, as well as the long-running host of numerous parental wallet-emptying book fairs.

According to Scholastic's 2012 press release, Storia (the DRMed ebook collection currently affected) allowed students and teachers to purchase ebooks and share them with up to 10 family members/students via its proprietary app. (The app is the DRM. Scholastic purchases don't work outside of it. To quote its now-vanished FAQs page: "Storia eBooks are designed with unique learning features and enrichments that make them readable only while using the Storia eReading app.") It also included enhanced content to encourage readers to dig deeper into unfamiliar subjects and allow teachers to connect with downloaded books via Smartboards and other computers. All in all, not a terrible product and one that comes from a particularly trusted name in academic publishing.

That's all coming to an end now. Scholastic has placed this notice on its website.

On September 1st, Scholastic is switching to what it calls a "streaming model." Readers and educators will have access to 2,000 titles, but they will no longer be allowed to own any of them. In fact, without an internet connection, they'll be unable to read them at all, a "feature" purchased ebooks didn't have. Instead, teachers and parents will pay a flat yearly fee to access these titles. Because of this switch, the license aspect of ebooks (something that's always present in digital goods) becomes explicit, rather than lurking in the background waiting to deny someone the privilege of selling or transferring an item they purchased (which Scholastic already prevented with its proprietary software).

At least Scholastic is being upfront about what's happening to people's purchases.

The switch to streaming means that eBooks you've previously purchased may soon no longer be accessible.

That's the bad news. You don't own what you buy, not if it's a license rather than a sale. See also: numerous other examples.

But Scholastic is at least trying to mitigate the damage. Some purchases will stay active in users' accounts if customers follow this one simple trick. (Sorry.)

You may be able to continue using your eBooks by making sure to open them on a bookshelf at least once by October 15.

Unfortunately, there's that troublesome word "may" stuck right in the middle of the damage control. Scholastic's site offers no odds on which books will still work and which purchased items will simply vanish. This is likely due to further licensing agreements behind the scenes -- those between Scholastic and authors/other publishers. (Scholastic handles book fair distribution for high-powered franchises like Harry Potter and Goosebumps.) Chances are, the bigger the title, the greater the likelihood of this maneuver not working. Just as Netflix streaming is 90% stuff no one wants to watch, a switch to an unlimited access streaming service will likely result in a.) the disappearance of titles whose upstream publishers are asking for increased licensing fees or b.) the increased upstream licensing fees pricing Scholastic out of many schools/parents' budgets.

But Scholastic is going further than most companies in the same position would, and doing it proactively (rather than waiting for the angry wisdom of the crowd to shame them into acting like they care).

Upon your request, we will refund the cost of all Storia eBooks you've purchased. Call Customer Service at 1-855-STORIA1 by August 1, 2015.

This in itself sets Scholastic ahead of many others who have simply issued the universal "licensing is out of our hands" shrug and pulled the plug on customers' purchases. So, kudos are in order for Scholastic (especially considering customers have more than a year to obtain their refunds), even if this switch to streaming sounds like it will benefit Scholastic more than its customers. A better decision would have been to keep both options. Educators -- which is who this new streaming service seems to be aimed at -- could take the subscription route while parents and kids could have kept their purchases (and potentially purchased even more ebooks). This one-size-fits-all approach takes books away from paying customers. A refund is nice, but having the right to keep your purchased items is even better.

[Postscript: One rep for Scholastic doesn't seem very interested in the public being made aware of this change outside of the splash page that now greets people looking to purchase Storia ebooks. Nate Hoffelder of the Digital Reader was approached by Kyle Good, Scholastic's Corporate Communications SVP, and asked why he wasn't going to remove his post on Storia after issuing a correction an earlier error. Good seems to believe this correction negated everything about Hoffelder's post (something Hoffelder admittedly stated before digging deeper into Storia's pivot to streaming) and asked in shocked Twitter tones why he hadn't.

This is Internet 101. Posts don't come down because of errors. Errors are corrected and acknowledged, but posts aren't simply removed because someone with a financial interest in the subject matter at hand thinks mistakes should result in disappearances. Storia's switch to streaming isn't completely terrible but it's certainly not a win for all of its customers. Ebooks you can only read with a solid internet connection border on useless. It may make sense in the educational market where the connection is almost guaranteed, but those outside of this system are simply losing their purchases. A refund helps, but it completely negate the damage.)

Filed Under: copyright, drm, ebooks, license, own
Companies: scholastic

Skullgirls Creator Combats Piracy With Humor And By Being Awesome

from the doing-it-right dept

We've long made the argument that one way to combat piracy is to connect with fans and treat them well. In other words, being awesome will generate enough good will from fans that actually want a producer's product such that piracy no longer becomes a major concern, because fans will want to buy. It's funny how much of a reputation some folks have built off of this concept, from Joss Whedon to Wil Wheaton to Louis CK. Those examples aside, nobody said combating piracy by being awesome was easy, so it's still a good idea to highlight instances of people and companies doing it right.

Enter Skullgirls, a fighting game with an irreverent sense of humor and style, both in terms of its gameplay and the method by which it deals with people pirating their game. For instance, if you pirate Skullgirls and progress far enough through the game, you'll get this message.

Should you be unable to see the screen shot, a popup window comes up that reads: "What is the square root of a fish? Now I'm sad." This message only appears to players who have pirated the game. The player can then simply click out of the popup. Or, if you're Dan Hibiki, a.k.a. @SaikyoChamp on Twitter, you can tweet at the Skullgirls developer, Lab Zero Games, and ask them what's up with the message, which is exactly what he did. The official Skullgirls Twitter account tweeted back at him suggesting that he buy the game instead of pirating it.

Now, that'd be a pretty level-headed response from a game developer on its own, but when Lab Zero Games then went on to hold an awesome conversation with their pirate-on-a-hook, the concept of being awesome got elevated a few notches. Some highlights include:

//@Skullgirls ... I'm sorry. I kinda did a trybeforeyoubuy thing. I already bought it on PS3 and I'm planning on buying it for Steam, soon.

— Dan Hibiki (@SaikyoChamp) July 8, 2014

@SaikyoChamp It’s all good, man. Well... I mean, it isn’t really, but I get it. Just try to do the right thing eventually.

— Skullgirls (@Skullgirls) July 8, 2014

As a result of not flying off the handle, even though it is understandably frustrating to see people pirating your work, there are a ton of people favoriting and retweeting the entire exchange. In other words, Lab Zero Games builds up a ton of goodwill, Skullgirls gets some viral publicity, and nobody has to spend gobs of money on lawyers. That's some next-level awesome.

Filed Under: drm, humor, piracy, skullgirls

Keurig Begins Demonstrating Its Coffee DRM System; As Expected, It Has Nothing To Do With 'Safety'

from the it-has-to-do-with-expired-patents dept

Back in March, we told you about how the famed makers of the Keurig single-cup coffee brewing "pod" contraption was about to launch a new version with DRM. A competitor, Treehouse Foods, was taking Keurig makers Green Mountain Coffee Roasters to court over this attempt to block them out of the market. To say that post got a lot of attention would be a bit of an understatement. Green Mountain tried to hit back by claiming that the new DRM was about adding "interactive-enabled benefits" and safety to the single-cup coffee space. Because, you know, it was so unsafe before. And, besides, who doesn't want more "interactive-enabled benefits" with their first cup of java in the morning?

Keurig has now started demonstrating the new system, and it's exactly what everyone feared: a DRM system to make coffee pods more expensive and to keep out competitors' refills.

When the Keurig employee tried to use an old-model pod, one without a new ink marker on the foil top, the brewer wouldn’t run. "Oops!" read a message on the touchscreen display, explaining that the machine only works with specially designed pods and directing the user to a Keurig website and helpline. The employee wouldn’t elaborate on how it worked, except to say that the ink is proprietary and inspired by counterfeiting technology used by the US Mint. Ian Tinkler, Keurig’s vice president of brewer engineering, went into a bit more detail, explaining that an infrared light shines on the ink marking and registers the wavelength of the light reflected back.

What about those promised interactive-enabled benefits? As far as I can tell, they appear to be the following:

With its new machine, Keurig is combining its two main product lines, the single-cup brewer and the carafe-brewing Vue.... The anti-counterfeiting system doubles as a way to distinguish between carafe-size pods and regular ones. If the sensor detects the green dot that marks carafe cups, it brews a large pot. If it detects the ring of black symbols on the standard pod, it brews a smaller cup. If it doesn’t detect a Keurig-approved marking at all, it tells you "oops!"

Yes, the "interactive-enabled benefits" will apparently maybe kinda save you from having to push a button or flip a switch between "cup" and "carafe." Of course, it could do that same thing without a bogus code designed to block out competitor refills and just compete on the quality of its coffee. But, who wants to do that?

Of course, that story at the Verge also reveals why Keurig/Green Mountain Roasters is really doing all of this:

In September 2012 key patents on its K-Cups expired

*Ding* *Ding* *Ding*. We have a winner. None of this has anything to do with safety or benefits. It has to do with doing anything possible to avoid competing in the marketplace. There are lots of ways to play in a market and compete. One is to try to add more value than your competitors. Another is to try to block your competitors by taking away value. I never understand companies that seek to do the latter, but that's what Keurig has decided to do.

Filed Under: coffee, coffee drm, coffee pods, competition, drm, keurig, patents, single cup
Companies: green mountain coffee roasters, keurig, treehouse foods

Accepting Amazon's DRM Makes It Impossible To Challenge Its Monopoly

from the from-one-monopoly-to-another dept

Amazon was the target of some well-deserved criticism this past week for making the anti-customer move of suspending sales of books published by Hachette, reportedly as a hardball tactic in its ongoing negotiations over ebook revenue splits. In an excellent article, Mathew Ingram connects this with other recent bad behavior by Internet giants leveraging their monopolies. Others have made the connection between this move and a similar one in 2010, when Amazon pulled Macmillan books off its digital shelves.

That dispute took place a little over four years ago, and ended with Amazon giving in and issuing a statement that people found a bit strange. Here's a quote:

We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.

"Monopoly" was a funny choice of words there. The author John Scalzi, whose piece decrying Amazon’s actions at the time is still very much worth reading, memorably took issue:

And not only a forum comment, but a mystifyingly silly one: the bit in the comment about Amazon having no choice but to back down in the fight because “Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles” was roundly mocked by authors, some of whom immediately started agitating against Amazon’s “monopoly” of the Kindle, or noted how terrible it was that Nabisco had a “monopoly” on Oreos.

Monopoly, of course, is economically the correct term. Publishers of books that are restricted by copyright have a set of exclusive rights granted to them by law. Their monopoly looks distinct from Amazon's near-monopoly bookseller position, though, because it's one agreed to in public policy. In a sense it is also more absolute, and less vulnerable to challenge, because it's a legal monopoly, and not just a market monopoly.

To the extent Amazon has a monopoly on selling paper books, then, it could be challenged not just by legal action (such as antitrust investigation) but by other businesses competing. There would be some extreme logistical difficulties, and disparities created by economies of scale that might be impossible to overcome, but in principle other businesses are able to compete for Amazon's market position on physical books.

Copyright behaves differently: when it comes to Macmillan or Hachette's books, nobody may undercut prices by making production more efficient, or design prettier covers, or edit the text into a more compelling presentation. Where that's a good thing, it's because we've reached it by public policy. We've granted copyright holders an inviolable (if limited) legal monopoly because we as a society like the results.¹

A very real danger, though, is if Amazon can take the challengeable market monopoly it has put together, and ratchet it into an unchallengeable legal monopoly. That is exactly what DRM does.

By putting DRM on its digital products—ebooks and audio books—Amazon gets the legal backing of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention restrictions on its products. This isn't for the advancement of public policy goals, either; Amazon gets to create the private law it wants to be enforced. Thanks to DRM, Kindle users are no longer free to take their business elsewhere—if you want a Kindle book, you must purchase it from Amazon.

Fortunately Kindle software can, for now, read other non-restricted formats. But the functionality is limited, and not guaranteed to stick around. And it's a one-way street: other software and hardware may not read ebooks in the Kindle format. Customers who amass a Kindle library will find no compatible non-Amazon reader. The fact that individual users can usually circumvent the DRM, too, doesn't help businesses trying to compete in that space.

Amazon has a lot of fans, and they tend to ascribe its rise as a bookseller for its aggressively pro-customer stance. If it drops that stance, even major fans would probably agree that it no longer deserves the throne. Unfortunately, DRM takes the conditional monopoly that customers like (you get to be the largest bookseller so long as you're good to your customers) and replaces it with an unconditional one (you once achieved monopoly and that is now permanent).

Last week's sketchy move against Hachette looks like a willingness to throw its customers under a bus in the name of better business deals. If publishers continue to insist on DRM, and if customers continue to allow it, we lose our ability to object.

1. Of course, that is only as true as copyright policy reflects the will of the public, which it doesn’t, but it’s something to aspire to.

Republished from parker higgins dot net

Filed Under: books, disputes, drm, monopoly
Companies: amazon, hachette

Destructive DRM Strikes Again: Creative Professionals Blocked From Using Adobe Products For Days

from the defective-by-design dept

Last week, if you were a creative professional who relied on Adobe's products, you may have discovered that you were totally screwed over by Adobe's DRM, which made it impossible for lots of people to use the apps they were paying for. Considering how many designers rely on Adobe apps, this basically shut down an awful lot of creative work late last week. MacUser (the link above) has pretty comprehensive coverage of how far reaching the problems were. It initially appeared to be that Adobe's Creative Cloud offering was down, but the impact went much further, blocking even people who had installed desktop apps. This was true even though Adobe insisted that the DRM in those apps only needed to check in with a server once a month.

The biggest problems, though, were faced by users who couldn’t launch apps. Along with many others, Stefan Goodchild wondered: “Can @Adobe explain why all my Creative Cloud apps are all disabled when their login system has an outage? What about when I’m on a deadline?”

Their confusion was understandable: Adobe had categorically assured users and journalists, when replacing Creative Suite with Creative Cloud in May 2013, that apps only needed to check in with the server every 30 days, telling MacUser in a written reply that products would continue to work for 99 days in the absence of a server connection.

The @AdobeCare account seemed to have been given the same information, telling user Robert Lewis at 18:13 on Thursday: “Your apps should launch without checking w/ server.” But Lewis was far from being alone in finding this simply wasn’t the case. “Since I can’t sign in, it won’t let me use my photoshop right now,” complained photographer Linda Watson Nkosi, among many similar tweets.

The MacUser article also noted that Adobe avoided providing workarounds (even as there were a few), insisting that there was nothing that could be done. This was either out of ignorance, or standard corporate fear of revealing basic workarounds to dodgy DRM. Adobe eventually (after more than 24 hours) got things working again and posted a rather weak apology.

Of course, this kind of mishap was exactly what many people feared would happen when Adobe ditched basic software licenses to go with a forced "cloud" setup, whose main benefit (to Adobe) was that it acted as DRM.

This all took place just a few weeks after the official day against DRM and Mozilla's decision to accept DRM in Firefox. Many people still don't seem to realize just how destructive and dangerous DRM can be, but perhaps last week's events will get a few more folks in the design community to recognize the serious problem.

Filed Under: cloud, creative cloud, designers, drm, online service, reliability
Companies: adobe

And Here We Go: Mozilla Felt Pressured Into Adopting DRM In HTML5

from the a-broken-system dept

We've written a few times about the unfortunate decision by the W3C to adopt DRM in HTML5 in an effort to keep Hollywood happy. While Tim Berners-Lee and others at W3C have tried to defend their reasons for doing so, they're all based on the faulty premise that somehow the internet needs Hollywood more than Hollywood needs the internet. The reverse is true, but Hollywood has convinced too many people of its own importance to the internet. Because of that -- along with the agreed-upon fact that today's plugin/extension system is a complete disaster from technological and security standpoints -- the W3C, pressured by a bunch of big companies, agreed to put DRM into the next generation of HTML (and don't buy their argument that it's not actually DRM -- the only purpose that Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) serves is to enable DRM).

Today there's a lot of discussion because Mozilla, makers of the popular (and open source) Firefox browser, have posted two separate blog posts about how they feel forced to adopt this DRM even though they hate basically everything about it. Mozilla's argument is not crazy. They're worried that by not adopting these standards, while all other browsers do, people will just shift to those other browsers. And beyond just losing market share, Mozilla has a point in noting that the way other browsers implement EME will be less secure than the way that Mozilla is doing it.

We have designed an implementation of the W3C EME specification that satisfies the requirements of the content industry while attempting to give users as much control and transparency as possible. Due to the architecture of the W3C EME specification we are forced to utilize a proprietary closed-source CDM as well. Mozilla selected Adobe to supply this CDM for Firefox because Adobe has contracts with major content providers that will allow Firefox to play restricted content via the Adobe CDM.

Firefox does not load this module directly. Instead, we wrap it into an open-source sandbox. In our implementation, the CDM will have no access to the user's hard drive or the network. Instead, the sandbox will provide the CDM only with communication mechanism with Firefox for receiving encrypted data and for displaying the results.

Traditionally, to implement node-locking DRM systems collect identifiable information about the user's device and will refuse to play back the content if the content or the CDM are moved to a different device.

By contrast, in Firefox the sandbox prohibits the CDM from fingerprinting the user's device. Instead, the CDM asks the sandbox to supply a per-device unique identifier. This sandbox-generated unique identifier allows the CDM to bind content to a single device as the content industry insists on, but it does so without revealing additional information about the user or the user's device. In addition, we vary this unique identifier per site (each site is presented a different device identifier) to make it more difficult to track users across sites with this identifier.

Mozilla is also making it opt-in -- so that everyone will have the choice to choose whether or not to activate the DRM implementation. Also, kudos to Mozilla for not taking the W3C path of pretending that EME isn't DRM. Mozilla is quite upfront that this is DRM and that they're uncomfortable with this. As Andreas Gal says:

we would much prefer a world and a Web without DRM...

But, Mozilla feels that users "need it to access content they want." Mitchell Baker similarly notes:

The new version of DRM uses the acronyms “EME” and “CDM.” At Mozilla we think this new implementation contains the same deep flaws as the old system. It doesn’t strike the correct balance between protecting individual people and protecting digital content. The content providers require that a key part of the system be closed source, something that goes against Mozilla’s fundamental approach.

Unfortunately, it appears that even though this is the case, Mozilla still believes that the internet needs Hollywood's locked up content more than Hollywood needs to adapt to the internet. That's too bad. Cory Doctorow has a very detailed discussion of why he thinks Mozilla made a mistake, while acknowledging all of the reasons why they did what they did. More importantly, he lists a number of additional things that Mozilla should do to improve the situation. I'll summarize those four things, because I agree wholeheartedly:

1. Protect security researchers: Thanks to the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA, any security research into Adobe's DRM may be a form of infringement. As Cory notes, Mozilla should demand that Adobe issue a covenant not to sue security researchers or developers who find vulnerabilities.
2. Educate users: Teach everyone (including Hollywood, but mainly the public) why DRM is dangerous and harms security and privacy online. Personally, I'd add that Mozilla could also teach people why DRM is simply not necessary.
3. Research and publish the case for DRM: This goes back to the question of who really needs it. Hollywood thinks they do, but I don't think that's really true. As Cory says, Mozilla should look at the actual data to see if there truly is a use case for DRM.
4. Formulate and articulate a DRM policy: Basically don't make these kinds of decisions ad hoc -- but have a clear policy on how and when decisions like this get made.

For years, the music industry insisted it needed DRM, and folks like Apple catered to them -- and that actually just helped Apple have more power over the music industry. Finally, the music industry shed DRM and it had almost no impact. Today, the book industry has the same issue, demanding DRM... and basically handing market power to Amazon in providing that DRM. It's amazing that Hollywood still insists it needs DRM. It does not. Unfortunately, it by agreeing to implement DRM here, it means it will take much longer for Hollywood to learn this lesson.

Filed Under: drm, eme, firefox, hollywood, html5
Companies: mozilla

Publisher 'DRMs' Physical Legal Textbook About 'Property,' Undermines Property And First Sale Concepts

from the because-that's-what-publishers-do dept

We've talked in the past about just how badly certain industries would love to expand the restrictions created by DRM onto physical goods. And that's because, unlike what copyright system defenders like to claim, DRM allows companies to put restrictions on content that go way beyond what kind of restrictions can be placed on physical goods. For example: the right to resell something. In the copyright space, we've long had the first sale doctrine, which makes it possible for you to resell a physical book you own, without having to first get permission from the copyright holder. Of course, first sale has long been under attack, especially by academic publishers who absolutely hate the idea of a resale market. That's because they are monopoly providers -- professors assign the textbooks, and students need to buy them, leading to ridiculously inflated prices. Of course, what publishers still don't seem to grasp is that a healthy used market actually increases the value of the primary market, since buyers are more comfortable knowing they can at least make back some of the money at the other end.

But, the attack on first sale continues. Somewhat ironically, the next front in this battle is coming from the publisher Aspen, which publishes a very popular (in law schools) casebook on Property. It has started informing professors that with its next version, students will be required to give the book back at the end of the semester, and that the book cannot be resold. In "exchange" for this, it will grant students "lifetime" access to a digital version.

Law professor James Grimmelmann has explained what's going on here: Aspen is trying to do away with first sale rights. Basically, relying on a terrible appeals court ruling in Vernor v. Autodesk (which the Supreme Court refused to hear on appeal), Aspen is seeking to claim that you're merely licensing the textbook, rather than buying it:

The obvious goal is to dry up the used book market by draining the supply of used copies. But as Josh points out, it seems unlikely that every student will return the physical book. Rather, reading between the lines, Aspen may argue that the physical book is “licensed” rather than “sold” under the reasoning of cases like Vernor v. Autodesk. The result would be that first sale (the right of the owner of a book, or a DVD, or any other copy of a copyrighted work to resell it freely) would never attach, since the students wouldn’t be “owners” of their physical copies. If Stan Second-Year sells his copy of the new Dukeminier to Fran First-Year, he’d be a copyright infringer in the eyes of Aspen. So too might be Half.com or Barnes and Noble, if they participated in the transaction. Just to make sure that students know they’re only borrowing Aspen’s books and “agree” to those terms, it appears, students will have to purchase Connected Casebook access through Aspen’s website or a participating campus bookstore.

Grimmelmann goes on to point out that not only will this undermine the important and useful concept of first sale (and the resulting used market in these works), it will "result in the destruction of knowledge" in that it's likely that Aspen will simply destroy these books, rather than set up any sort of resale market itself. As for the claim that "well, at least they have 'lifetime' access to a digital version," Grimmelmann points out that given that such access is dependent on Aspen continuing to provide such access, the lifetime guarantee is not much of a guarantee at all.

Aspen promises “lifetime access” to the electronic versions, but we know from sad experience that gerbils have better life expectancy than DRM platforms.

He has also set up a Change.org petition, trying to get Aspen to reconsider its decision to ban the resale of textbooks, and basically "DRM" their physical books, wiping out first sale. Just the very fact that Aspen is undermining basic concepts of property on its "Property" casebook seems troubling enough -- but it shows how desperate publishers are these days to undermine basic concepts of property to prop up obsolete business models, built entirely on the basis of monopolistic pricing.

Filed Under: books, casebooks, copyright, drm, first sale, law schools, resale rights, text books

How DRM Makes Us All Less Safe

from the you're-in-danger-thanks-to-bad-copyright-laws dept

May 6th is the official Day Against DRM. I'm a bit late writing anything about it, but I wanted to highlight this great post by Parker Higgins about an aspect of DRM that is rarely discussed: how DRM makes us less safe. We've talked a lot lately about how the NSA and its surveillance efforts have made us all less safe, but that's also true for DRM.

DRM on its own is bad, but DRM backed by the force of law is even worse. Legitimate, useful, and otherwise lawful speech falls by the wayside in the name of enforcing DRM—and one area hit the hardest is security research.

Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is the U.S. law that prohibits circumventing "technical measures," even if the purpose of that circumvention is otherwise lawful. The law contains exceptions for encryption research and security testing, but the exceptions are narrow and don’t help researchers and testers in most real-world circumstances. It's risky and expensive to find the limits of those safe harbors.

As a result, we've seen chilling effects on research about media and devices that contain DRM. Over the years, we've collected dozens of examples of the DMCA chilling free expression and scientific research. That makes the community less likely to identify and fix threats to our infrastructure and devices before they can be exploited.

That post also reminds us of Cory Doctorow's powerful speech about how DRM is the first battle in the war on general computing. The point there is that, effectively, DRM is based on the faulty belief that we can take a key aspect of computing out of computing, and that, inherently weakens security as well. Part of this is the nature of DRM, in that it's a form of weak security -- in that it's intended purpose is to stop you from doing something you might want to do. But that only serves to open up vulnerabilities (sometimes lots of them), by forcing your computer to (1) do something in secret (otherwise it wouldn't be able to stop you) and (2) to try to stop a computer from doing basic computing. And that combination makes it quite dangerous -- as we've seen a few times in the past.

DRM serves a business purpose for the companies who insist on it, but it does nothing valuable for the end user and, worse, it makes their computers less safe.

Filed Under: computing, drm, security