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September 20, 2006
A saner DRM scheme: marrying the media device and the cellphone
Why doesn't anybody like DRM?
Innovations in media distribution are matched at every step by "innovations" in DRM, short for Digital Rights Management or Digital Restrictions Management, depending on whom you ask. These innovations, sometimes implemented using dangerous methods, consist of ever more draconian restrictions on how a piece of media may be consumed and shared. The media industry continues to be wilfully blind towards how broadly unpopular these restrictions are.
In addition to being rooted in a mentality that treats customers as criminals, DRM schemes are unpopular because of how unnatural they feel compared to earlier forms of media. The purchase of a videotape legally confers rights on consumers to do with it as they pleased--make copies, lend it out to friends or resell it. On the other hand, with most DRM schemes today, media distributors set limits on how customers may consume digital media. These restrictions leave customers entirely beholden to media distributors well after the original purchase transaction has concluded. The de facto effect of these encumbrances is that consumers now license digital media from distributors, like commercial software, rather than purchase it outright. This purchase-but-not-quite leaves some customers feeling cheated out of their money.
Media distributors no doubt feel threatened by how the ease of reproduction of digital media directly hits at the foundation of their earlier business models. It is hard to argue from a legal standpoint that DRM should be eliminated entirely. It is not hard to see, however, that the slew of outrageous DRM restrictions from the entertainment industry stems from a sense of denial and disorientation in a world in which new media has changed the rules of the game. Many DRM schemes today are tied to an actual digital media artifact: a digital audio file, DVD or digital video download. An artifact may be played only until a certain date or only a certain number of times. Other DRM schemes tie media to the device that plays them. This kind of scheme makes it hard to share an artifact illicitly, but also gets in the way of customers who legitimately want to play an artifact on multiple devices they own.
It would be logical and consistent with earlier forms of media consumption to tie digital rights to a person rather than to an artifact or device. The rights to play an artifact are conferred on the owner of the artifact, and are fundamentally separate from the artifact itself and its medium of consumption. Any sane DRM scheme that won't end up imposing inordinate restrictions on its consumers must adhere to this principle.
One possible DRM scheme that fits the bill might be based on biometric data. Every media player might have a fingerprint reader to validate someone's identity before they play an artifact. Such a scheme would be terribly complicated because such biometric information would have to be programmed ahead of time into an artifact or a media player. Moreover, not everybody is going to be thrilled about handing fundamental, impossible-to-change biometric information like fingerprints or eyeball scans over to media distributors or media player manufacturers; the risk of a leak and subsequent abuse is simply too high. Ignoring the complications though, from the customer's point of view, this scheme would get a lot more right than Microsoft decreeing that a video may only be played thrice. For inspiration on how a similar, less complicated DRM scheme might work, we need look no further than everyone's humble companion: the cellphone.
A cellphone's SIM card effectively acts as a lightweight proxy for its owner's identity. Media players could be designed to accept a DRIM card, the digital rights equivalent of a SIM card. Much like SIM cards store their owner's contacts, DRIM cards stores rights pertaining to media artifacts. Media artifacts may reside separately on a media player's storage device but won't play unless there is a right for that artifact in the device's DRIM card. Rights on a DRIM would be truly offline. Unlike a SIM, a DRIM should not be required to contact the media distributor in any way before a media artifact is played. Rights stored on the DRIM should be mere tokens, which can be transferred as required.
It is easy to see how this system would be less infuriating than existing DRM schemes. You could play your media artifacts on any device you own by using your DRIM card in them. You could make as many copies of a media artifact as you want for backup purposes because no copying restrictions are 'baked into' the artifact. You could lend the artifact to a friend by copying it over to their device and then beaming its rights from your DRIM to thers, like some phones let you send your contacts to others via SMS. You could limit the term of the loan by specifying that such a rights transfer expire after some time. If you wish to resell a media artifact instead, you could have the new owner copy it from your device; they could then pay you to beam them a non-expiring rights transfer.
With its similarities to cellphones and SIM cards, mobile carriers surely have the know-how to implement a DRIM scheme to share media among mobile phones. With the growing buzz around mobile media, mobile payments and other mobile applications, mobile carriers might want think of how they can enter the value chain in this lucrative market. If mobile and media player manufacturers collaborate on a DRIM standard, we will be closer to a world where the power equation between a media distributor and a customer achieves some more balance. There is already a way; now all that's missing is the will.
Posted by Vishy at September 20, 2006 10:55 PM