{"id":13476,"date":"2016-09-09T13:21:58","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T13:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/?p=13476"},"modified":"2023-10-02T14:18:04","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T18:18:04","slug":"analog-the-last-defense-against-drm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2016\/09\/09\/analog-the-last-defense-against-drm\/","title":{"rendered":"Analog: The Last Defense Against DRM"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the recent iPhone 7 announcement, Apple confirmed what had already been widely speculated<\/a>: that the new smartphone won\u2019t have a traditional, analog headphone jack<\/a>. Instead, the only ways to connect the phone to an external headset or speaker will be via Bluetooth, through the phone\u2019s AirPlay<\/a> feature, or through Apple\u2019s proprietary Lightning port<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Apple\u2019s 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\u2019s body. The decision may also have been a part of the move to a water-resistant iPhone<\/a>. And certainly, many people choose a wireless listening experience.<\/p>\n

But removing the port will change how a substantial portion of iPhone owners listen to audio content\u2014namely, 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\u2019t unwittingly opening the door to new pressures to take advantage of that power<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When you plug an audio cable into a smartphone, it just works. It doesn\u2019t matter whether the headphones were made by the same manufacturer as the phone. It doesn\u2019t even matter what you\u2019re trying to do<\/i> with the audio signal\u2014it works whether the cable is going into a speaker, a mixing board, or a recording device.<\/p>\n

The Lightning port works differently. Manufacturers must apply<\/a> and pay a licensing fee<\/a> 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<\/a>: \u201cRight 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, if it\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019re doing it for completely lawful purposes. There would certainly be a precedent: big content companies infamously pressured Apple<\/a> to incorporate DRM in its iTunes service.<\/p>\n

iTunes DRM is a thing of the past now\u2014and fortunately, most DRM for audio downloads has gone with it. But some major media companies are still eager to find ways<\/a> to control how we use their content. In the current debate over the FCC\u2019s 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<\/a>. Can we believe the content industry will leave audio alone if outputs become entirely digital?<\/p>\n

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\u2019s not clear is whether iOS or specific apps will be able to disable the dongle\u2014if so, history suggests that Hollywood and other major media industries will be eager to take advantage of that capability<\/a>. It\u2019s also unclear whether the iPhone\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

To its credit, Apple has been adamant it won\u2019t use the new design to restrict your listening experience<\/a>. But therein lies the problem: you shouldn\u2019t have to depend on a manufacturer\u2019s 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\u2019 policy decisions.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, this story isn\u2019t about Apple, or any other company\u2019s design decisions. It\u2019s about theDigital Millennium Copyright Act\u2019s protection for DRM<\/a>. 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\u2019s a law that needs fixing.<\/p>\n

Source: Analog: The Last Defense Against DRM | Electronic Frontier Foundation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the recent iPhone 7 announcement, Apple confirmed what had already been widely speculated: that the new smartphone won\u2019t 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\u2019s AirPlay feature, or through Apple\u2019s proprietary Lightning port. Apple\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2014namely, 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\u2019t unwittingly opening the door to new pressures to take advantage of that power. When you plug an audio cable into a smartphone, it just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2069,545,609,917],"class_list":["post-13476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-politics","tag-analog","tag-dcma","tag-drm","tag-iphone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31962,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13476\/revisions\/31962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}