Re: DRM for Vorbis

Ryan Sage wrote:
> I realize that the idea of DRM contradicts with the philosophies of many Ogg
> Vorbis developers and users; however I believe it would be in the best
> interests of Vorbis to have an open, independent DRM solution.

Hm. I wonder what interest of Vorbis that could be - isn't the point of
Digital Rights reMoval to issue a license together with a broken (i.e.
encrypted) audio file that both gives the player a key to decrypt the
audio and instructions on how often, where, and in what way the song may
be played? Who does that help, the artists who already sold their rights
on their music (that means, the artist has no influence anymore and
depends on the sincerity of his publisher and the distribution chain to
get a more or less fair share of the profit) or the end user, who gets
impaired by the restrictions? No, the only one, who wins in any case, is
the publisher. Existing laws already criminalize users, who are forced
to tamper with the "protection" (e.g. after a harddisk crash when the
licenses get lost), or want to exert their rights of fair use. DRM is
one big annoyance. It hurts the artists, because it's his name the users
see when they become frustrated about the restrictions, without
providing him any significant advantages. It's obvious why users get
hurt - every loss of civil liberties is a Very Bad Thing[tm].

To make longs stories shorter, DRM in Vorbis would mean throwing away
all the ethical and political reasons why the Ogg project exists in the
first place. Read http://www.xiph.org/about.html and understand why DRM
is exactly what Xiph wants to prevent by creating open, free,
non-patented technology. It's not necessary to literally kiss the music
industry's arse by making Vorbis a tool for those who lobby against
civil rights and complain about the Internet and "pirates" (not talking
about those who steal music and then sell it, which are the only ones I
agree that should be fought) while being utterly unadaptable and
constantly doing The Wrong Things.

I appreciate your wish to be "open" and "independent", but I really
doubt that you can achieve your goals without being as closed and
obscure as possible. If I understand this correctly, you'd need
something like public/private key encryption, with the private key on
the player side - and for this kind of encryption to work, the private
key must be secret. In addition to that, it's up to the player to
actually heed the license (which might contain a part of the private
key, too) issued to the buyer of a song. While every kind of copy
prevention can be defeated, you'd be making it trivial for the attacker
to defeat your system by being open. To implement the Bad Thing, you
have to do the Wrong Thing. And where to put the encryption/DRM layer?
Between Ogg and Vorbis, breaking the standard? Above Ogg/create your own
format that isn't supported by anyone? (Just look at Liquid Audio, the
DRMed AAC - afaik, those guys are more or less out of business; for a
reason.) How would you prevent someone from "abusing" your open
implementation to create a tool that takes an encrypted .ogg and fixes
it?

A little anecdote: During the last 10 months, I spent approximately 350
EUR (~US$340) on CDs - an amount of money that was actually a bit more
than I could afford ( ;P ). Without exception, I bought that music
because I found MP3 versions of that great music on Audiogalaxy
(successfully shut down by the RIAA) or got MP3s and Vorbis files from
friends. I like to pay for music, to have it on CD in perfect quality
and to support the artists no matter how small their share is (that's
what they have to fight for, not me). Even those insane prices didn't
prevent me from spending the money. I'd have spent the same amount of
money if a CD would cost less, I just would've bought more albums. Now,
I wonder, WHY can't the music industry be happy with that, in spite of
me throwing money at them? Easy - because they had no control on what I
bought. I didn't buy the music they spent millions on to have it
marketed. It's all about control. Instead of just caring for attractive
products at reasonable prices, they want control. They like to see
themselves as the brave and selfless warriors that support the artists,
who create the product they sell. The reality is different - it's just
an industry like any other. Their ability to pretend otherwise makes
them kinda dangerous; they CAN be convincing, making politicians pass
really bad laws.

What we need is strong competition from the public domain, to create an
environment that exerts control on *all* participant - to make decent
behavior natural, by providing superior, free alternatives. DRM in
Vorbis, if possible at all, would be very counterproductive.


Moritz
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