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Dead DRM and the DCMAby George Ziemann -- July 26, 2008 Yahoo is pulling the plug on its DRM server at the end of September. As a result, they are now encouraging their customers to make backups which circumvent and remove the DRM, an activity which is clearly prohibited by the DMCA. So all the good little boys and girls who were foolish enough to have paid for DRM-infested tracks now have to break the law to keep what they thought they already owned. I'm going to spare us all the "inconvenienced customer" tales of woe, because I told y'all not to buy this crap in the first place and that's what arsTechnica is doing (who told you the same thing), along with the reiteration that this was always a bad idea, still is a bad idea, and always will be a bad idea. They did a very good job covering those facets. No need to duplicate effort. Go read their column. I'd like to take the "evil genius" perspective, which I think the RIAA is actually incapable of because, well, it would require smart people, for one thing. It would also require having had the long-range vision to foresee, and plan for, the inability of vendors to make money selling music with DRM. Unlike file-sharing, there is actually a law against bypassing "access controls." I'm pretty sure about this, because I sat through a Copyright Office DMCA rulemaking hearing at UCLA in 2003, concerning the right of libraries and security experts to do such a thing. The Internet Archive got an exemption to save Tetris, but the Average Joe did not win approval to bypass DRM. The RIAA was there to make sure of that. When DRM first appeared, the DMCA was already in place. The RIAA's Hilary Rosen responded to this potential eventuality (dead DRM or bypassing it anyway) by telling us that the RIAA would never sue individuals. That was a ridiculous idea, we were told. The RIAA goes after corporate infringers, not music fans. They fired Rosen and almost immediately started suing college kids and dead grandmas. I only bothered to go through all of that because the next part is going to sound like a little crazy, but only if you don't know they crossed that line years ago.
"It's a Trap!"As stated earlier, there's no actual law identifying the not-for-profit exchange of copyrighted material as copyright infringement. The RIAA is desperately seeking an interpretation of the law that justifies their legal position but they simply haven't found one yet. The DMCA is a different thing. The RIAA flings DMCA take-down notices (at YouTube, for instance) like they were Mardi Gras beads. Purportedly, every song file has a unique "hash code" or something like that, which allows the RIAA to determine the origin of the file. The example that I hear most often is that they can trace songs back to the original Napster. Personally, I think this is bullshit, but let's not allow that to interfere with the story. Fast forward a few months and a song shows up on Limewire that the RIAA identifies as originally coming from Yahoo. They're gonna grab the IP address at the same time. Without even knowing who the IP address belongs to, they'll be able to narrow it down to a geographical general location. Search the Yahoo customer base and pull out the handful that are within the general location. Then look for who "bought" that particular song from Yahoo. The curly-haired guy from "Numbers" could nail this down during a commercial break. They wouldn't even need to ask the ISP to cough up an identity -- just verify whether or not it belongs to who they think it does. Presto, change-o, Mr. Paying Customer is now a pirate captain. Icing on the cake -- They've already got his credit card number, too. This will make it so much easier to pay the settlement, doncha think? Eye patch and parrot sold separately. Followup -- July 30 Yahoo has indicated that they will simply refund the purchase price to everyone who bought music from them. This does not change the scenario described above. |
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To
quote the great Admiral Akbar...