Interview with Fred von Lohmann
The last 100 years have been a story of resistance on
on the part of incumbents, largely entertainment companies,
in their response to new technologies.
You've seen literally since the turn of the 20C
with the creating of the player piano, over and over again,
new technologies creating new media opportunities.
That disrupt existing businesses being resisted
very powerfully by those incumbents.
So you can start with the player piano, which was really the Napster of 1906.
It really made life very difficult for music industry - sheet music.
Songwriters who sold sheet music largely to the public.
After that of course there was the LP record
also part of that same story, and then broadcast radio
which was also met with a great deal of consternation
by the songwriters and music publishers of the day.
Cable tv in the 70s was viewed as a pirate medium,
all the tv networks felt that taking their content
and putting it on cable that ran to ppl's houses
was piracy pure and simple. Huge amount of litigation around that.
The VCR, another famous example,
when it was first introduced by sony in mid 70s
there were law suits immediately brought by the movie studios
who felt that who said that the VCR was to the american movie industry
what the Boston Strangler was to the woman alone.
And than after that, of course we have seen additional examples:
The first mp3 player by diamond Rio,
so the initial company -long before ipod- they were met with law suit,
digital audio tape recorders, they where introduced
late 80s, early 90s, also sued initially.
And of course most recently peer to peer filesharing software
many law suits filed there.
The new XM radio recordable tape satellite,
that technology has also been sued.
So really we see a litany of resistance
resistance is the hallmark of the incumbent
media industries response to new technology.
~Ironically, it's those new technologies
which ultimately have enriched those new industry.
Take the VCR for a good example, the technology
which was called the boston strangler for the movie industry,
turned out to be their biggest money maker in history.
And throughout the 80, 90s and to this day home video
- the market unlocked by the VCR -
has become the biggest source of revenue for the whole business.
Well the legislative process in the US surrounding copyright law
has had one recurring problem
and that is that the laws tend to be made by lobbyists for lobbyists.
And so the question is who can pay the lobbyists
and lawyers to bush congress year in year out for new copyright laws.
Well, for the most part those lobbyists have been employed
by the entertainment industries - they're the one who have money
and interest to push in washington for copyright laws.
So no surprise that laws get passed are ones written by lobbyists
and in the interests of major media companies of the day.
To the extent there's been resistance
- the resistance has really been in the form
of lobbyists hired by the technology sector.
And that's a good thing for innovation and in the long run for consumers,
but it's obviously not a perfect solution because technology companies,
their interests aren't always precisely aligned with consumers
So over the past 15 years of we've seen lots of legislations,
some of which has been passed, all of which has pushed for more copyright,
longer term, more protections, very few exceptions,
the ratchet has been a one way ratchet.
So another example of legislation
which has been part of a one way ratchet for more copyright
has been the digital millenium copyright act.
Which basically gave copyright owners
the ability to put technical restrictions on their works,
what many people call DRM. And if they've done so,
they get to dictate the terms
on which you're allowed to use the work.
DRM faces some fundamental problems.
It's never going to work at stopping digital copying.
The basic problem was laid out in a paper
that's come to be known as the Darknet
written by 4 senior MS security engineers 2002
and they started from a few premises
DRM is always gonna be broken by someone
there's no DRM system that's proof
against the efforts of a PHD in computer science
and that's never going to be
we've seen that time and time again
DRM systems are introduced and broken
when it comes to media content, like popular movies
there always be a motivation to break it
it's not to say that we can't use DRM to protect your medical records
or your family photo albums,
perhaps there's a of lack of motivation for anyone to try to break that
but when talking about the latest Spiderman movie
there's no shortage of motivation around the world
for smart computer hackers to try to crack the DRM.
And so far and for the foreseeable future
that's going to continue to mean these systems get broken.
It's impossible to build a foolproof system
and all the computer security experts agree on that.
Second premise of the Darknet argument is that
once a copy has been taken out of its secure envelope
once some hacker has broken it, at that point
those copies will be made available through other channels
we have today the ability to make copies
and distribute copies inexpensively
since Napster if one copy leaks out on the internet
very rapidly it's available to everyone.
The thing to keep in mind is when the person downloads the movie
from a torrent site or from Limewire or some other P2P network,
or if the person gets a copy from a friend on a blank CD or DVD,
there's no need for that person to break the DRM,
the DRM is gone, only the first person in the chain
needs to be able to break the DRM and once one person
has extracted the content from the "secure" envelope,
from that point forward the content is freely accessible
for anyone who's able to run a filesharing tool, make a copy on a hard drive
and of course many millions of ppl are in that position.
So as long as we live in that environment, an environment
where DRM can be broken by someone somewhere
and a world where all of us are connected by channels
that allow us to make and distribute copies inexpensively,
DRM is really in a hopeless quandary.
There is no way DRM is ever going to make progress
against the ability to make unauthorised digital copies.
It's simply a tool that's ill-suited to that particular purpose,
and we've seen this time and time again, if we look at DVDs,
obviously DVD encryption was broken,
all the movies that were released on DVD are now widely available
through unauthorised sources on the internet;
the same is then true of CD copy protection, that has been an utter failure
at stopping the distribution of unauthorised music
even the new Blue Ray and HDDVD formats
their DRM has been utterly compromised as well,
literally every movie that's released in these formats
is going up on unauthorised bittorrent sites on a daily basis.
So it seems quite clear that DRM is never going to stop
or even impede unauthorised copying.
In fact the MS engineers went one step further
and said not only does it not do any good
but it actually harms copyright owners
because DRM ends up making the legitimate product,
the authorised product, less attractive than the authorised product,
because for the consumer that goes out and buys the DRM-encrypted copies,
actually lays out the money to purchase it,
they find that the copy they purchased is less useful...