Anyway… In the example there was no intent of distributing the copyrighted material. However, there was distribution/download of software/information which enabled the private activities… So that’s one way for others to know about it.

and how, pray tell, does anyone know that you have done these things unless you share with others either information on how to do them, or the cracked material itself?

A lot of things are illegal but unenforcable within the privacy of the home.

No, that would actually make sense. If I download or write software that lets my DVD player ignore region codes or unskippable ads I’ve committed a federal crime; it makes no difference that I have no intention of distributing copies to others.

Well, it’s not much of a solution, since as I’ve pointed out, it cannot be applied to just anything. E.g. plain ASCII text that is widely published. It doesn’t seem to be particularly robust, especially if you can compare a few differently marked works from independent sources. And this is one of the reasons it’s not caught on yet — remember SDMI? More robustness, meanwhile, tends to impair the fidelity of the copy. And there is a danger of falsification, if third parties learn how to add marks (e.g. imagine if all the pirated movies had watermarks that led back to Jack Valenti’s credit card) which could really harm innocent people if too much weight is afforded to the marks. There is a similar danger of false positives; finding watermarks where in fact it doesn’t exist. And it might harm makers of devices and software if the overall mark system puts a computational demand on user’s systems (this will depend a lot on how it is designed). It’s a bit of a privacy concern; if I use copyrighted materials to make a scathing but anonymous parody or criticism, the desire for anonymity should really be respected and not made so vulnerable.

There is also the increased enforcement problem that I’ve discussed earlier. By analogy, speeding laws are generally tolerable to people when they’re enforced on the worst offenders, and where enforcement only occurs sometimes, in some places. This lets most people speed to a degree, without too much risk, and we do want to speed, even though we acknowledge that there are good reasons why it’s illegal. If every deviation above the speed limit was ticketed, no matter how trivial, people would not stand for it, and speed limits might very well be raised or the practice of increased enforcement prohibited. The copyright quid pro quo is in part based on the assumption that enforcement is going to be pretty spotty. As it is enforced more (e.g. against two people sharing files with one another via Napster, where it was not enforce when they shared tapes by hand) a backlash will build up that could severely diminish copyright to make up for the increased enforcement so that the overall level of risk stayed within tolerable levels. I think we’re already seeing this starting. Certainly so many people didn’t care about copyright laws this much in the past; now I see a lot of unhappiness about them. Depending on what our goals are vis-a-vis copyright generally, we might find it desirable to only have limited enforcement potential.

The main problem though, is that it is a camel’s nose. Watermarking is not a very good thing on its own due to all those vulnerabilities. So there is an incredible desire on the part of proponents to make the watermarks artificially solid through legal and technological means. Making it illegal to remove or alter marks would harm users’ rights, particularly given that the marks are so fragile to begin with that this could preclude any number of ordinary uses. And if technology is introduced which is crippled such that it will detect marks and refuse to carry out orders that happen to harm the mark, or which tend to reproduce the mark and thus constantly reduce fidelity, this is really no good either.

Frankly, I don’t see anything good out of the marks, and I see a lot of risk that something worse than the marks alone will happen if we’re lax about this. So I think we should presume against watermarking just to be safe.

Anyway, that’s what I can think of off the top of my head. Given some time to seriously think about watermarking specifically, I imagine I could think of more problems with it. Of course, I’d enjoy seeing what others have thought of.

1. Lost Sales: Companies seek to make a profit. Few people mention that the insane quest for a “perfect” DRM technology means lost sales. Why not sell a product based on an open standard so that you can make money now, rather than delay, delay, and delay yet again because the DRM technology is not ready for prime-time. Companies are slitting their own throats trying to implement an unworkable technology.

2. Public Domain: Patents and copyrights expire. Yet I have not seen any reference to how a DRM technology will recognize this expiration and release the content into the public domain.

3. Liability: DRM technologies actually TRANSFER significant liability from the content vendor to the content user. “LIABILITY” in this context means the $$costs and time of the content user in keeping their computer: operational and secure. Computers are complex and when a vendor, such as Sony installs a defective product your ability to fix it is compromised. First, trying to identify the offending vendor can be very complicated. Even if the vendor is identified they will initially say the problem is not theirs, that it must be the fault of another incompatible program. Even if they acknowledge the fault, they may not help you fix your computer.

4. Interoperability: What happens when you have a large number of DRM technologies deployed on your computer based on propriety code and making stealth changes to the computer’s operating system. The outcome is obvious; you will have an unreliable and probably unusable computer.

5. Dirty Tricks: What is to stop a content vendor from using their DRM technology to disable your ability to use a competitor’s content?

Uh, no… it only becomes a federal case when the results of your “tinkering” with encrypted content show up on kazaa or usenet.

44 posts in this thread and no one has yet dared address my example of watermakred images. This is a defacto implimentation of DRM, it does not prevent you from viewing content (even illegally shared content) nor does it prevent you from “remixing” the work into other works. It’s even less of an inconvenience than the now antiquated Macrovision protection applied to Hollywood’s VHS publications – its only impediment is in the way it degrades the visual properties of the image, and so in that regard is arguably more of a liability to the publisher (who will lose sales) than to the viewer. This type of DRM can be applied to any audio/visual material, cannot be readily removed even if the (properly designed) algorithm is completely free and open, and is reasonably robust. So how does this undermine anyone’s “rights?”

First, – I’m not trying to redefine “DRM”. I’ve been working with this area both technically an politically in 4 years now and one of the primary conclussions I can draw is that “DRM” HAS NO definition. Everybody is talking about it (mostly rightholders, politicians and CEO og companies selling it), but none of them actually knows what technology they are talking about. Mostly it’s just a big bunch of wishful thinking akin to wanting perpetual motion machines.
Everybodys talking about DRM. Nobody knows what it is…. so primarily DRM is an intent. Not a technology.

Your attitude to DRM is very naive. From reading the above it seems that you think that just because someone has coined the acronym “DRM” to mean “Digital Rights Management”, then it must be about rights. That’s like arguing that since it’s called a “sea lion”, then it must be a kind of Lion.

I see you came bearing plenty of straw. I said nothing of the sort. In fact, if you will look over the dozens of posts I have made here on the subject you will see I never said anything of the sort. In fact, examples used in this very thread prove the immense pollen count to your charge: the newsgroups are full of posts made my cliques of people posting who knows what in public spaces. They are publishing works that are, most likely, illegal to publish or, at the very least, republish – for if they were not illegal in some manner there would be no reason to encrypt them. These traders have devised mechanisms for “inviting” new members and for distributing encryption keys among those members, and if you break their trust you will be once again cut off from that channel – this meets, in every way, the very definitition of DRM. Not just “my” definition but even yours, as you have so often pointed out DRM could lend Hollywood this exact same control over their own works through their own channels.

This is not a difficult concept: DRM stands for three words, and each of those words have specific meanings. Put them together and they still have that same meaning – digital rights management. You may argue that means “managing” you out of some of your imaginary rights, and that’s fine… but it doesn’t change the definition any more than throwing “static” in front of the word redefines electricity.

>You’re wrong. Because any technology that can prevent
unauthorized hollywood consumers from watching movies they have not paid for
can also prevent neighbors and snoops and governments from accessing media
which the owner doesn’t want accessed even while allowing others
“in the know” to do so.

It’s not false, just beside the point.

We know what we want: to protect our private documents without being
restricted in use of published ones. The relevant question is whether
what we want is possible.

The answer is yes. For instance, I use the GNU Privacy Guard (gnupg),
a free software package for public key encryption, to keep certain
files and emails private. The GNU Privacy Guard can be used for
privacy, but it can’t do DRM. That is why it is ok.

Poptones addressed a different question, actually the converse of the
relevant question. Instead of “Can technology protect our privacy
without restricting us?” he asked “Can technology restrict us without
protecting our privacy?” That’s like asking “Can we make pollution
without having an industrial society?” or “Can we threaten individual
freedom without enforcing laws?” The response is, “Ha ha, but now
let’s get back to the point.”

We should refuse to be drawn into stretching the term “DRM” to cover
facilities for privacy. These functionalities are different. CSS
does DRM, and the GNU Privacy Guard provides privacy. They may both
use encryption, but they use it in different ways.

We should also refuse to give even half-praise to any kind of DRM,
even if it is less bad than others. The view stated in Lessig’s
explanation in this page makes logical sense, but when we express it,
we must take care that each individual sentence comes across only as
weaker condemnation, and never say anything that could sound like
praise.