Re: Alternatives to DRM?

On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org> wrote:
> On 4/22/2013 8:00 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:
>> DReaM is covered in footnote 198 of
>> http://wendy.seltzer.is/writing/seltzer-anticircumvention.pdf (PDF
>> page 46; journal page 956):
>> "This is the flaw in the purportedly “open source” model behind Sun’s
>> DReAM platform. Even if anyone can build an implementation of the
>> specification, it would win “authorization” to play protected content
>> only after proving its un-modifiability by others as a prerequisite to
>> obtaining permission.
>
> I don't see a basis for the assertion that it would win "authorization" to
> play protected content only after proving its un-modifiability. That might
> be true today, but where content owners are willing to compromise has
> changed over the years and could change again.

I wrote in my previous email:
"DRM is premised on the user being untrusted. If a user-built
implementation of the client side of a DRM scheme was allowed to
receive and render content, it would amount to trusting the user,
which would contradict the premise of DRM."

So compromise here would mean the kind of compromise where content
owners give up on DRM. Compromising to give up DRM would be very
welcome in my view, but I think logic doesn't support the notion that
there's a middle-ground compromise available that'd allow
user-modifiable client-side DRM implementations that content owners
would target without this amounting to giving up on DRM. I sure hope
that the management of the W3C does not base its opinions on this
topic on wishful thinking.

Of course, it could be that the wishes of content providers don't
follow logic, but still I think we shouldn't expect logically
contradictory outcomes to emerge and save the day. If someone shows a
successful deployment of a logical contradiction, that would be
interesting. (In this case, it would be interesting if someone showed
the Big Six of Hollywood agreeing to target movies to a
user-modifiable CDM while still refusing to target movies to the Open
Web platform without a CDM.)

>>   Developers writing such code would be unable to
>> comply with the downstream “freedom to modify” condition of the Free
>> Software Foundation GPL. Cf. Gerard Fernando, Tom Jacobs & Vishy
>> Swaminathan, PROJECT DREAM, AN ARCHITECTURAL OVERVIEW (2005),
>> http://www.openmediacommons.org/collateral/DReaM-Overview.pdf."
>
> I'm not a legal expert, but I concede that my superficial understanding is
> that DReaM is incompatible with GPL3; although not with other open source
> licenses.

If a DRM scheme is incompatible with GPLv3, it's a pretty strong hint
that it's incompatible with some important things typically associated
with Open Source other than mere source disclosure, such as
royalty-freeness and the disclosed source actually being useful to a
downstream recipient.

--
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Tuesday, 23 April 2013 09:00:43 UTC