Truth about – Digital Rights Management
Long ago Digital content was sold in digital media, then came the Internet. And then came “the piracy”! Digital content was distributed illegally, which is BTW totally different from “Sharing”. And then came DRM with an intention to whoop piracy’s ass, but eventually got carried away.
In a vague description DRM is a technique used by the sellers, dealing with digital content to control / limit the content even after the customer has paid hard earned cash for it. It mainly puts a sense that customers are taken for helpless goofy ducks!
It’s implemented both software and hardware perspective. For eg music, ebooks, movies, set top boxes, media centers preciously everywhere.
DRM uses high level cryptographic algorithms which usually uses public key cryptography. Each company has it’s own way of generating the “master key” which is corresponded to the customer through servers. The numbers generated are random in nature and thus hard to tweak. On top of that the algorithms are combination of different math based, usually the numeric based algorithms. Some of the examples are
– Symmetric Key cryptography
– Elliptic Curve Cryptography
– Digital signature Algorithm
– One Key Message Authentication code
– Encrypt Control word etc
These algorithms are so called hack-proof ones.( Exceptional to a few hack-creed, but then these people are either ethical or work for the company, unlike the infamous “ANONYMOUS”.)
The implementation in the hardware goes another level higher. The components like the set top box card slot, the receiver or the media player have inbuilt DRM which ask for the signatures. This DRM is implemented onto their firmwares as well.
COMCAST one of the leading broadcast service comes with a DRM card slot.
Intel, the leading PC maker desperate to get in Media center has come up with Intel Insider, which’s totally DRM. On leaking of it’s master keys, it has now chickened out to impose a law on to penalize such an individual. How Brave!
Microsoft came with all the Windows 8 certified hardware to be secure-boot. An approach to make it impossible to install Linux/GNU. You can never stop Linux Gates! It also holds proprietary for Play-Ready which’s a DRM deployment.
Sony PSP with official firmware works only with expensive PSP CDs. However thanks for Homebrew game community making it possible to play so many games.
Some of you chumps might be thinking “oh, this is fair enough”.
Here’s few butt-stinging DRM virtues for you boys and girls.
– Folks are restricted to listen to music for a limited number of times even when you’ve purchased the track. Fair-play comes up with this stupid idea.
– Movies or music can’t be stored or copied or shared. You can’t store copies of Harlod and kumar anymore. Disney, Sony etc support this mental cause.
– Ebooks can’t be ported to devices, even when you’ve paid for it. Amazon’s DRM holds credit for this lame concept.
– VIDEO GAMES COME WITH LIMITED NUMBER OF INSTALLATIONS. YA HAVE TO STOP THIS, MAN! Kickass game developers like Blizzard are moving to this strategy. That day is not far where you gottu pay for every COD mission. 😦
Currently there’re many Laws protecting the DRM. But sane folks are protesting against it from being implemented everywhere. Organization like Defective by Design (DBD), Electronic Frontier Foundation etc across the world are fighting to stop this mean machine.
DRM are kinda Corkblockers. There’re other ways to fight piracy.
However since DRM is not widespread and fully implemented everywhere folks around are still breathing free.
Plus it’s not that they’re impossible to hack. Game CD’s have been cracked within 2 hours of release, but it’s just that there’s just too many over-complications for the legit user. Hence he thinks “Why pay for some shit, when you can get it for free”.
Myself having worked on DRM, I think the technology should benefit the humanity in lieu get commercialize. There’re serious problems to be solved. Let’s not solve problems, which actually aren’t.
BasementWorks.tk believes “Technology is meant for all”! How about you?
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