Re: Forwarded Invite to Discussion of EME at the European Parliament, Oct. 15, 11:00-13:00

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 8:26 AM, Alastair Campbell <alastc@gmail.com> wrote:

> Henri Sivonen  wrote:
>
> Well, it's known that the major studios require DRM. The exact line of
>>  thought behind the requirement is less clear, since they don't need to
>> explain themselves. Do you have knowledge of studio thinking that
>> links streaming DRM and their business model?
>
>
> Nothing first hand. From UK places (being vague), my impression is that
> DRM is a general requirement from content creators. (Not just big studios,
> but standard TV production.)
>
> I would speculate that it is not particularly well understood by the
> people requiring it, but because the big studios require it everyone else
> feels they should.
> It is probably the sort of thing that gets cut and paste from one contract
> to the next.
>
> I wonder whether they even differentiate between files and streaming?
>
> The problem maybe that someone raises the point, and in a room of studio
> execs and lawyers, they simply say: no, DRM is required.
>

I don't have first-hand experience of studio contracts, but from talking
with people who do I believe that the requirements are actually very well
defined, including concrete definitions of the required level-of-difficulty
(tools, time, expertise) to compromise the DRM in various ways. People do
think through the various kinds of compromise - those that can be
redistributed easily, those that cannot, those that could be applied online
vs those that require download of special tools etc. etc. So, all the
blithe statements that "all DRM can be cracked" are well-understood by the
studios and DRM implementors in far more detail than by most of those
making them, as far as I can tell.

Also note that an individual copying content at a rate of one-hour-per-hour
real time on a compromised device it not the only kind of compromise, or
even the more important one. Automated, scalable, attacks are also of
concern.

Many of the requirements are codified in the robustness rules associated
with the DRM, which essentially represent a superset of the requirements
from various content providers. At least some of these are public and
easily discoverable (try "X robustness rules" in Google for values of X
equal to well-known DRM systems).

...Mark



>
> -Alastair
>