• Tag Archives DRM
  • Analog: The Last Defense Against DRM

    With the recent iPhone 7 announcement, Apple confirmed what had already been widely speculated: that the new smartphone won’t have a traditional, analog headphone jack. Instead, the only ways to connect the phone to an external headset or speaker will be via Bluetooth, through the phone’s AirPlay feature, or through Apple’s proprietary Lightning port.

    Apple’s motivations for abandoning the analog jack are opaque, but likely benign. Apple is obsessed with simple, clean design, and this move lets the company remove one more piece of clutter from the phone’s body. The decision may also have been a part of the move to a water-resistant iPhone. And certainly, many people choose a wireless listening experience.

    But removing the port will change how a substantial portion of iPhone owners listen to audio content—namely, by simply plugging in a set of headphones. By switching from an analog signal to a digital one, Apple has potentially given itself more control than ever over what people can do with music or other audio content on an iPhone. We hope that Apple isn’t unwittingly opening the door to new pressures to take advantage of that power.

    When you plug an audio cable into a smartphone, it just works. It doesn’t matter whether the headphones were made by the same manufacturer as the phone. It doesn’t even matter what you’re trying to do with the audio signal—it works whether the cable is going into a speaker, a mixing board, or a recording device.

    The Lightning port works differently. Manufacturers must apply and pay a licensing fee to create a Lightning-compatible device. When rumors were circulating about an iPhone 7 with no headphone jack, our colleague Cory Doctorow predicted that big content companies would try to take advantage of that control: “Right now, an insistence on DRM would simply invite the people who wanted to bypass it for legal reasons to use that 3.5mm headphone jack to get at it. Once that jack is gone, there’s no legal way to get around the DRM.”

    In other words, if it’s impossible to connect a speaker or other audio device to an iPhone without Apple software governing it, then major media companies might pressure Apple to place limits on how Apple’s customers can use their content. Because U.S. law protects digital rights management (DRM) technologies, it may be illegal to circumvent any potential restrictions, even if you’re doing it for completely lawful purposes. There would certainly be a precedent: big content companies infamously pressured Apple to incorporate DRM in its iTunes service.

    iTunes DRM is a thing of the past now—and fortunately, most DRM for audio downloads has gone with it. But some major media companies are still eager to find ways to control how we use their content. In the current debate over the FCC’s proposal to unlock TV set-top boxes, TV and film producers have insisted that they should be able to decide which devices can receive video. Can we believe the content industry will leave audio alone if outputs become entirely digital?

    The good news is that the new iPhone will come with a Lightning dongle that will provide a standard 3.5 mm analog port. What’s not clear is whether iOS or specific apps will be able to disable the dongle—if so, history suggests that Hollywood and other major media industries will be eager to take advantage of that capability. It’s also unclear whether the iPhone’s software will be able to disable access to the 3.5 mm port for other third-party devices that use it, such as credit card terminals or blood pressure readers.

    To its credit, Apple has been adamant it won’t use the new design to restrict your listening experience. But therein lies the problem: you shouldn’t have to depend on a manufacturer’s permission to use its hardware however you like (or, for that matter, to build your own peripherals and accessories for it). What you can do with your hardware should be determined by the limits of the technology itself, not its manufacturers’ policy decisions.

    Ultimately, this story isn’t about Apple, or any other company’s design decisions. It’s about theDigital Millennium Copyright Act’s protection for DRM. Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it illegal to bypass DRM or give others the means of doing so. 1201 gives technology manufacturers the power to cast clouds of legal uncertainty over common uses of their products. It gives content owners and other powerful entities an unfair weapon against innovation by others. It’s a law that needs fixing.

    Source: Analog: The Last Defense Against DRM | Electronic Frontier Foundation


  • DRM: You have the right to know what you’re buying!

    Today, the EFF and a coalition of organizations and individuals asked the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to explore fair labeling rules that would require retailers to warn you when the products you buy come locked down by DRM (“Digital Rights Management” or “Digital Restrictions Management”).

    These digital locks train your computerized devices to disobey you when you ask them to do things the manufacturer didn’t specifically authorize — even when those things are perfectly legal. Companies that put digital locks on their products — ebook, games and music publishers, video companies, companies that make hardware from printers to TVs to cat litter trays — insist that DRM benefits their customers, by allowing the companies to offer products at a lower price by taking away some of the value — you can “rent” an ebook or a movie, or get a printer at a price that only makes sense if you also have to buy expensive replacement ink.

    We don’t buy it. We think that the evidence is that customers don’t much care for DRM (when was the last time you woke up and said, “Gosh, I wish there was a way I could do less with my games?”). Studies agree.

    The FTC is in charge of making sure that Americans don’t get ripped off when they buy things. We’ve written the Commission a letter, drafted and signed by a diverse coalition of public interest groups, publishers, and rightholders, calling on the agency to instruct retailers to inform potential customers of the restrictions on the products they’re selling. In a separate letter, we detail the stories of 20 EFF supporters who unwittingly purchased DRM-encumbered products and later found themselves unable to enjoy their purchases (a travel guide that required a live internet connection to unlock, making it unreadable on holiday), or locked into an abusive relationship with their vendors (a cat litter box that only worked if resupplied with expensive perfume), or even had other equipment they owned rendered permanently inoperable by the DRM in a new purchase (for example, a game that “bricked” a customer’s DVD-R drive)

    Now the FTC has been equipped with evidence that there are real harms, and that rightsholders are willing to have fair labeling practices, the FTC should act. And if the DRM companies are so sure that their customers love their products, why would they object?

    EFF is currently suing the US government to invalidate Section 1201 of the DMCA, a law that has been used to threaten research into the security risks of DRM and inhibit the development of products and tools that break digital locks — again, even if the purpose is otherwise legal (like letting you read your books on an alternate reader, or put a different brand of perfume in your cat litter box). Until we win our lawsuit, people who buy DRM-locked products are unlikely to be rescued from their lock-in by add-ons that restore functionality to their property. That makes labeling especially urgent: it’s bad enough to be stuck with product that is defective by design, but far worse if those defects can’t be fixed without risking legal retaliation.

    For the full letter to the FTC about labeling:
    https://www.eff.org/document/eff-letter-ftc-re-drm-labeling

    For the full letter to the FTC with the stories of people who’ve been harmed by DRM they weren’t informed of:
    https://www.eff.org/files/2016/08/06/eff_request_for_investigation_re_labeling_drm-limited_products.pdf

    Source: DRM: You have the right to know what you’re buying! | Electronic Frontier Foundation