New attack on digital piracy

[anonymous at openpgp.net]

Coalition pushes storage-based copy-prevention

BY DAWN C. CHMIELEWSKI
Mercury News 

Hollywood has teamed up with some of the biggest players in computer storage technology to build a copy-prevention scheme into every hard drive and memory card -- opening a new front in the war against online piracy.

If widely adopted, the technology would make it more difficult for consumers to duplicate copyrighted files such as music and movies without the permission of the companies that own the rights. Hard drives and memory cards are used to store information on everything from personal computers and MP3 music players to digital cameras and palm-size organizers.

Hollywood and the companies designing the anti-copying technology bill it as a revolutionary way to combat piracy. The entertainment industry has been fighting on many fronts, asking the courts to shut down online music-swapping services such as Napster and halt the distribution of software that allows bootleggers to make pristine copies of DVD movies.

But critics say this latest effort, led by an IBM researcher at the company's Almaden Valley campus in San Jose, will prevent users from making even routine copies, such as backups, of files they legally have a right to copy.

``I think it's disgraceful,'' said Richard M. Stallman, a leader in the free software movement and author of ``The Hackers Dictionary.'' ``Everyone's rights are being trampled for the sake of these companies.''

The brainchild of `4C'

The technology is the brainchild of IBM, Intel, Toshiba and Matsushita -- a group of leading hardware makers collectively known as the ``4C.'' The rights-protection technology, dubbed Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM), uses a combination of encryption and scrambling to prevent unauthorized copying. It is currently awaiting approval from a national standards body that sets rules for new features offered on storage devices like hard drives.

CPRM is one of a series of copy-protection technologies designed to thwart the wholesale duplication of copyrighted materials that file-swapping services like Napster make possible. Watermarking is another approach being developed by other firms. That technology places hidden bits of digital code on a song, so labels and artists can track illicit copies. 

IBM researcher Jeffrey Lotspiech, who developed the latest copy-protection technology, said each piece of blank media -- say, a flash memory card or an IBM Microdrive -- comes with a unique serial number.

When a consumer buys the rights to make an authorized copy of, for example, the Barenaked Ladies' latest CD, the rights-protection software uses the serial number on the blank media to create a unique ``key'' that only an authorized player can unlock.

``It uses the media -- the dumb media -- as the source of the key information that allows the two of them to come up with a common key -- the recorder to make the recording and the player to play it in the future,'' said Lotspiech.

It's resistant to hacking because of the sheer number of key combinations that could be created -- ``greater than the number of protons in the universe,'' Lotspiech said in an IBM research publication describing the the technology.

CPRM would do nothing to stop Napster's 37 million users from giving away music to any stranger who asks. But new tracks released with this protection would be worthless.

Microdrives

Lotspiech said IBM plans to use the technology in its popular Microdrives -- stamp-sized hard drives now used to store photographs in digital cameras and music on digital players. And SanDisk has also expressed interest in using it for its flash memory, commonly used to store information in MP3 players and digital cameras.

The first products could begin appearing by next summer.

It's one of several copy-protection schemes designed to meet the criteria set by the recording industry-sponsored Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), a group established to create a standard for online music distribution.

``So far, content companies have been reluctant to deliver their content in digital form out of fear that piracy would further increase,'' said Leonardo Chiariglione, SDMI's executive director. ``But if there is a way of protecting their content, then content companies will put all of their content out. And that would benefit all consumers.''

The Motion Picture Association of America sees broader applications for the technology. If it's effective at thwarting piracy, it could speed direct digital distribution of movies -- either over the Internet or through digital TV set-top boxes. The movie industry has been reluctant to widely distribute its work because of the fear of Napsterization of films.

``What we have with copy-once content protection technology is the ability to go beyond just a pay-per-view business model to go to a pay-per-copy business model,'' said Brad Hunt, the MPAA's chief technical officer.

In order for Internet delivery to occur, Hunt said the copy-protection technology would have to extend to the computer hard drive -- a proposal that other technologists find chilling.

``We've been keeping an eye on technologies that are designed to remove capabilities from the people who buy the machines -- particularly when it's removing a capability not for the benefit of the buyer .Ê.Ê.Ê but for the benefit of some third party, like a movie company,'' said John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based organization that advocates free speech online.

Gilmore said copyright laws were never meant to extend a movie studio's reach into a consumer's hard drive.

Contact Dawn Chmielewski at dchmielewski at sjmercury.com or (714) 669-9913.