DRM will not be legislated

[AARG! Anonymous]

David Wagner wrote:
> Anonymous  wrote:
> > Legislation of DRM is not in the cards, [...]
>
> Care to support this claim?  (the Hollings bill and the DMCA requirement
> for Macrovision in every VCR come to mind as evidence to the contrary)

The line you quoted was the summary from a message which described
the detailed reasoning that supported the claim.  To reiterate and lay
out the points explicitly:

 - Legislating DRM would be extremely expensive in the current environment
   as it would require phasing out all computers presently in use.
   This provides a huge practical burden and barrier for any legislation
   along these lines.

 - Some have opposed voluntary DRM because they believe that it would
   reduce the barrier above.  Once DRM systems are voluntarily installed
   in a substantial number of systems, it would be a relatively small
   step to mandate them in all systems.

 - But this is false reasoning; if DRM is so successful as to be present
   in a substantial number of systems, it is not necessary to legislate
   it.

 - Further, even if it is legislated, that will not stop piracy.  No
   practical DRM system will prevent people from running arbitrary
   3rd party software (despite absurd arguments by fanatics that the
   government seeks to remove Turing complete computing capabilities
   from the population).

 - Neither the content nor technology companies have incentive to support
   legislation, as they still must convince people that paying for
   content is superior to pirating it.  Legislating DRM will not help
   them in this battle, as piracy will still be an alternative.

 - What would help them legislatively is some kind of enforced
   watermarking technology, so that the initial "ripping" of content is
   impossible (this also requires closing the analog hole).  Only by
   intervening at this first step can they hope to break the piracy
   chain, and this is the real purpose of the Hollings bill.  See also
   the recent work by the BPDG.  But this is not DRM in the sense we
   are discussing it here.

Those were the points made earlier in support of the summary statement
quoted above.  As far as the Hollings bill in particular, the most notable
aspect of it was the tremendous opposition from virtually every sector of
the economy.  The Hollings bill was not just a failure, it was a massive,
DOA, stinking heap of failure which had not even the slightest chance
of success.  If anything, the failure of the Hollings bill fully supports
the thesis that legislation of DRM is not going to happen.

As for Macrovision, this is an example of "watermarking" technology and
as mentioned above, it does make sense to legislate along these lines
(although it is questionable whether it can work in the long run -
Macrovision defeaters are widely available).  It represents an attempt
to close the analog hole.

The point is that this is not a simple-minded or unreflective analysis.
We are looking specifically at the kind of DRM enabled by the TCPA.
This means the ability to run content viewing software that imposes DRM
rules which might limit the number of views, or require pay per view,
or require data to be deleted if it is copied elsewhere, etc.  The point
of TCPA and Palladium is for the remote content provider to be assured
that the software it is talking to across the net is a trusted piece of
software which will enforce the rules.

It is this kind of DRM to which the analysis above is directed.  This DRM
does not prevent piracy using any of the techniques available today, or
via exploiting bugs and flaws in future technology.  It does not and can
not prevent people from running file sharing programs and making pirated
content available on the Internet (at least without crippling computers
to the point where necessary business functionality is lost, which would
mean sending the country into a deep depression and making it an obsolete
competitor on world markets, i.e. it won't happen).  This kind of DRM
can nevertheless succeed on a voluntary basis by providing good quality
for good value, in conjunction with technological and legal attacks on
P2P systems such as are in their infancy now.

All of these arguments have been made in the past few weeks on this list.
Hopefully reiterating them in one place will be helpful to those who
have overlooked them in the past.