Consumer backlash against DRM could fire

DIGITAL RIGHTS STRATEGIES: Technology execs point fingers at content owners

By Paul Sweeting -- Video Business, 9/19/2007

SEPT. 19 | NEW YORK—The reason consumers hate digital rights management isn’t due to the technology itself but to how copyright owners have used it, DRM providers said at the Digital Rights Strategies conference here this week.

“Most deployments of DRM today have flown in the face of consumer behavior,” said Talal Shamoon, CEO of InterTrust, a leading provider of DRM and forensic tracking solutions.

In his opening presentation, Shamoon offered a laundry list of DRM’s current shortcomings, including:

• it obstructs what people (legitimately) want to do;
• it tries to defeat the advance of technology (digital copies, networking, online socializing);
• the security is inevitably easy to defeat or is misapplied;
• it’s used to protect monolithic vertical [interests] instead of enabling new business models.

Shamoon was not alone in pointing the finger at content owners.

“To some extent, DRM deployments have been done backwards: They started with the DRM and then tried to force consumers into certain usage models,” said Brian Lakamp, president of Fluxe, a start-up working to develop a neutral platform where consumers’ content could reside independent of particular DRM systems.

A former Sony Pictures executive, Lakamp contrasted recent DRM deployments to the development of DVD.

“DVD was an exception,” he said. “There, we started with a usage model—you can play any disc in any player—and then designed a DRM to support that model.”

Even that deployment wasn’t perfect, however, according to some critics.

“I think there is a role for DVD burning,” said Scott Smyers, VP of network and systems architecture for Sony Electronics. “My kids have a lot of DVDs that they play in the car, and after a few trips, they’re often unplayable. So I rip and burn them to protect the originals,” an illegal act that the CSS copy-protection system on DVDs was designed to prevent.

“You can’t deny that consumers want to protect their investment,” Smyers said.

Even Jim Helman, chief technology officer of studio-chartered research lab Movielabs, acknowledged that CSS gets in the way of reasonable consumer applications.

“As hardware costs come down, more and more people are going to want something like a Kaleidescape, once it doesn’t cost $10,000,” he said. “In fact, if I were in the hardware business, that would be my next product: a ripper that stored my DVD collection and could stream it around the house.”

The DVD Copy Control Assn., which administers the CSS license, sued Kaleidescape three years ago for breach of contract. A California state court rejected the claim earlier this year, but that ruling is under appeal.

The DVD-CCA also is considering an amendment to the CSS license that would bar Kaleidescape from continuing to sell its home media servers.

Although content owners were scarce at the conference, Motion Picture Assn. of America executive VP Fritz Attaway acknowledged that current DRM systems are imperfect.

“DRM technology right now is not yet sophisticated enough. There is a problem in the area of fair use,” said.

But Attaway stressed that the studios have little choice but to use the technology available.

“Are you saying the studios should not release any content until the technology is there to allow consumers to do everything they want with it?” he asked at one point. “If we took that approach, I’m not sure we would have launched the DVD yet.”

Surprisingly, given the generally favorable press the company enjoys in the mainstream media, Apple Inc., was criticized at the show for helping to give DRM a bad name.

“Apple is using encryption to try to do what Ma Bell used to do with the phone network—wall people in,” InterTrust’s Shamoon said. “It frustrates consumers and ultimately feeds piracy.”

Worse, according to Lakamp, Apple’s successful use of a proprietary DRM system for iTunes has become the paradigm other operators are seeking to emulate.

“The technology is actually there already for interoperability” among DRM systems, Lakamp said. “The problem is that everyone who has the power to enable that model, from content owners, to CE, to IT, to network operators and wireless, has looked at what Apple did and is chasing its taillights trying to create a proprietary relationship with consumers.”

The result, Movielabs’ Helman said, could be a severe consumer backlash.

“We see a huge risk of a bad consumer experience from the inability to move content among devices,” he said. “The engine is not yet on fire, and the impact won’t be quite as bad as a plane crash, but there is definitely a huge risk out there.”