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Interview with Fred von Lohmann

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The last 100 years have been
a story of resistance on

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on the part of incumbents,
largely entertainment companies,

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in their response
to new technologies.

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You've seen literally since
the turn of the 20C

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with the creating of the player piano,
over and over again,

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 new technologies creating
new media opportunities.

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That disrupt existing
businesses being resisted

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very powerfully by
those incumbents.

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So you can start with the player piano,
which was really the Napster of 1906.

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It really made life very difficult
for music industry - sheet music.

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Songwriters who sold sheet
music largely to the public.

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After that of course
there was the LP record

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also part of that same story,
and then broadcast radio

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which was also met with a
great deal of consternation

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by the songwriters and music
publishers of the day.

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Cable tv in the 70s was
viewed as a pirate medium,

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all the tv networks felt
that taking their content

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and putting it on cable
that ran to ppl's houses

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was piracy pure and simple.
Huge amount of litigation around that.

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The VCR, another
famous example,

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when it was first introduced
by sony in mid 70s

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there were law suits immediately
brought by the movie studios

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who felt that who said that the VCR
was to the american movie industry

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what the Boston Strangler
was to the woman alone.

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And than after that, of course
we have seen additional examples:

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The first mp3 player
by diamond Rio,

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so the initial company -long before ipod-
they were met with law suit,

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digital audio tape recorders,
they where introduced

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late 80s, early 90s,
also sued initially.

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And of course most recently
peer to peer filesharing software

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many law suits filed there.

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The new XM radio recordable
tape satellite,

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that technology has
also been sued. 

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So really we see a
litany of resistance

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resistance is the hallmark
of the incumbent

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media industries response
to new technology.

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~Ironically, it's those
new technologies

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which ultimately have enriched
those new industry.

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Take the VCR for a good
example, the technology 

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which was called the boston
strangler for the movie industry,

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turned out to be their biggest
money maker in history.

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And throughout the 80, 90s
and to this day home video

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 -  the market unlocked by the VCR -

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has become the biggest source of
revenue for the whole business.

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Well the legislative process in
the US surrounding copyright law

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has had one recurring problem

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and that is that the laws tend to
be made by lobbyists for lobbyists.

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And so the question is
who can pay the lobbyists

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 and lawyers to bush congress year
in year out for new copyright laws.

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Well, for the most part those
lobbyists have been employed

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by the entertainment industries
 - they're the one who have money

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and interest to push in 
washington for copyright laws.

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So no surprise that laws get passed
are ones written by lobbyists

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and in the interests of major
media companies of the day.

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To the extent there's
been resistance

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- the resistance has
really been in the form

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of lobbyists hired by
the technology sector.

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And that's a good thing for innovation
and in the long run for consumers,

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but it's obviously not a perfect
solution because technology companies,

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their interests aren't always
precisely aligned with consumers

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So over the past 15 years of we've
seen lots of legislations,

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some of which has been passed, all of
which has pushed for more copyright,

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longer term, more protections,
very few exceptions,

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the ratchet has been
a one way ratchet.

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So another example
of legislation

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which has been part of a one way
ratchet for more copyright

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has been the digital
millenium copyright act.

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Which basically
gave copyright owners

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the ability to put technical
restrictions on their works, 

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what many people call DRM.
And if they've done so,

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they get to dictate the terms

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on which you're allowed
to use the work.

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DRM faces some
fundamental problems.

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It's never going to work at
stopping digital copying.

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The basic problem was
laid out in a paper

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that's come to be
known as the Darknet

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written by 4 senior MS
security engineers 2002

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and they started
from a few premises

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DRM is always gonna
be broken by someone

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there's no DRM system
that's proof

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against the efforts of a
PHD in computer science

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and that's never
going to be

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we've seen that
time and time again

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DRM systems are
introduced and broken

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when it comes to media content,
like popular movies

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there always be a
motivation to break it

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it's not to say that we can't use DRM
to protect your medical records

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or your family photo albums,

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perhaps there's a of lack of motivation
for anyone to try to break that

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but when talking about
the latest Spiderman movie

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there's no shortage of
motivation around the world

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for smart computer hackers
to try to crack the DRM.

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And so far and for the
foreseeable future

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that's going to continue to
mean these systems get broken.

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It's impossible to build
a foolproof system

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and all the computer security
experts agree on that.

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Second premise of the
Darknet argument is that

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once a copy has been taken out
of its secure envelope

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once some hacker has broken
it, at that point

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those copies will be made available
through other channels

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we have today the ability
to make copies

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and distribute copies
inexpensively

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since Napster if one copy
leaks out on the internet

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very rapidly it's
available to everyone.

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The thing to keep in mind is when
the person downloads the movie

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from a torrent site or from Limewire
or some other P2P network,

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or if the person gets a copy from
a friend on a blank CD or DVD,

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there's no need for that
person to break the DRM,

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the DRM is gone, only the
first person in the chain

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needs to be able to break
the DRM and once one person

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has extracted the content
from the "secure" envelope,

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from that point forward the
content is freely accessible

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for anyone who's able to run a filesharing
tool, make a copy on a hard drive

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and of course many millions of
ppl are in that position.

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So as long as we live in that
environment, an environment

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where DRM can be broken
by someone somewhere

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and a world where all of us
are connected by channels

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that allow us to make and
distribute copies inexpensively,

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DRM is really in a
hopeless quandary.

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There is no way DRM is ever
going to make progress

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against the ability to make
unauthorised digital copies.

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It's simply a tool that's ill-suited
to that particular purpose,

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and we've seen this time and
time again, if we look at DVDs,

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obviously DVD encryption
was broken,

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all the movies that were released
on DVD are now widely available

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 through unauthorised
sources on the internet;

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the same is then true of CD copy protection,
that has been an utter failure

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at stopping the distribution
of unauthorised music

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even the new Blue Ray
and HDDVD formats

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their DRM has been utterly
compromised as well,

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literally every movie that's
released in these formats

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is going up on unauthorised
bittorrent sites on a daily basis.

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So it seems quite clear that
DRM is never going to stop

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or even impede
unauthorised copying.

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In fact the MS engineers
went one step further

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and said not only does
it not do any good

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but it actually harms
copyright owners

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because DRM ends up making
the legitimate product,

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the authorised product, less attractive
than the authorised product,

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because for the consumer that goes
out and buys the DRM-encrypted copies,

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actually lays out the
money to purchase it,

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they find that the copy they
purchased is less useful...