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[IP] Google Video DRM: Why is Hollywood more important than users?



Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob Frankston <Bob2-19-0501@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: February 14, 2006 12:43:36 PM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx, ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [IP] Google Video DRM: Why is Hollywood more important than users?
There are too many different issues that find a home in DRM rather than seeing it as a threat.
As an FYI Cory Doctorow is talking about DRM today at Harvard http:// hcs.harvard.edu/cory.html
The irony is that some in Hollywood wonder why we get so excited about this -- after all, it's just about entertainment. But the real damage is in how much of our technology is throttled down to their constraints.
We see this in the LCDs. A computer LCD can be casually used as a TV screen but instead we must have purpose-built screens just for TV so we end up with 1080 lines instead of 1200 lines -- the latter being better at accommodating text. I can buy the 1920x1200 displays and now 2500x1600 but I can't use them thanks to DRM.
Need I point out the damage done by DRM goes far beyond this Google's efforts?
People keep complaining about the plethora of remote controls and asking why someone doesn't solve the problem.
But there is no problem -- we know that if we had simple video streams and device with open interfaces (such as XMLRPC) then we could write software to manage the streams and control the devices. Standards would follow after we've had experience but the big the advantage of the digital protocols is that we can learn by doing without having to pre-specify all of the details.
The Set Top Box is designed to prevent any of this from being feasible. The only interface is an open loop IR control. There's no excuse for thirty years of hostile relationships between the STB and the TV. For that matter why do we have the TV anymore -- one reason is that the CableCos (and the Telcos turned CableCos) want to pretend that there are channels and the TV grid so they can use it as a reason to control availability. Even the cablecard provides too much flexibility and will die. Closely related is locking HDTV to specific resolutions rather than, as in Divx (the compression technique, not the old Circuit City DRM with it’s need to call home to verify authority – even after Circuit City had shut down “home”).
The consumer electronics industry still sees itself as part of the entertainment industry (Tellywood) rather than seeing a far larger opportunity. After all, they used to make record players and radios. Devices such as cassette recorders didn’t get the same respect.
They are helping the DRM effort by maintaining all of their oSS (Oh- So-Special) analog wires and connections rather than using a simple common medium. The closest they came was IEEE-1394 that retained old ideas like the need for QoS. QoS is a way of locking in past priorities rather than letting the users determine the priorities. IEEE-1394 also built in the assumption that electronic components were infinitely expensive so it has tight timing constraints (isochronicity) to avoid the need for buffering.
These design issues are not there for DRM per se but they do reinforce the notion that the "product" is well-defined and it's just a matter of delivering it. Making it simple to interconnect is seen as a threat to the control of those who are delivering the content.
A simple example of this problem is seen in the CDFS (CD File System) Drivers in Windows 95. They didn't process the audio as a digital stream -- that's one reason it was so hard to install CD drives. You had to run separate analog wires. The digital version was slipped streamed into production but people still think you need the separate analog path.
The consumer electronics industry could be the source of very powerful technologies creating all sorts of opportunities but instead they see the PC industry as a major threat and try to lock down devices to explicitly [IANAL so I’ll add “and with malice and aforethought” as a phrase I heard on TV] (especially in the case of the cellular carriers) prevent the devices from being useable to create abundance (http://www.frankston.com/?name=AchievingConnectivity).
Some of this is self-inflicted as in Sony’s attempt to keep people form redefining the PSP. Sony is an example of the dilemma that the industry faces since it is also a content provider and wants to protect the content. Of course, as I’ve noted in the past it is viewed as just “content”. How long will Sonly continue to view its customers as a threat?
Were it not for DRM the users would be able to push back on the consumer electronics industry to create more extensible devices. We would provide opportunities for all sorts of new creativity and new value.
Instead I get asked by a Congressperson “how will the artists get paid” even if few do now. We get the corporatists trying to lock in more control so that Mickey is assured as the only source of creativity. It’s a bipartisan issue.
It’s a mirror of the 1950’s fears of hyper-automation. If we allow people to automate then there would be no jobs. Opportunity is to be viewed with fear because it changes the rules.
DRM is an attempt to prevent opportunity and disruptive change. It’s another attempt to frustrate the first amendment.
It’s the same battle as over whether telecom is in industry or simply a violation of anti-trust.
Maybe this is reflected in the evolution of Microsoft from a company that provided opportunities for developers since they were just providing tools to a company trying to define the users’ experiences.
The battle is framed in preserving the familiar. We must shift the discussion to help people see the value of opportunity and our ability to survive opportunity because much of what is created is problematic. But without opportunity we are just mining the past.
I’ve already written too much here but seeing other posts brings up the issue of medical information. It’s still framed as how the hospitals should manage it – I see little about how we can control and manage the information. Perhaps the problem is that we have a generation that doesn’t understand that very idea that we can create our own solutions outside the central authority – both the libcons and those who want to do us good have to come to terms with this. 



-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Farber [mailto:dave@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 10:05
To: ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [IP] Google Video DRM: Why is Hollywood more important than users? 







-------- Original Message --------

Subject: Google Video DRM: Why is Hollywood more important than users?

Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 09:54:29 -0500

From: Richard Forno <rforno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

To: Blaster <rforno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

CC: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>



Google Video DRM: Why is Hollywood more important than users?

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/14/google_video_drm_why.html
With the introduction of its new copy-restriction video service, Google has 

diverged from its corporate ethos. For the first time in the company's

history, it has released a product that is designed to fill the needs of

someone other than Google's users.
Google Video is a new video-search and video-sales tool, through which users
can download videos that have been uploaded by their creators or by others 

who have the rights to them, either because the videos are in the public

domain, or because they are used in a way that satisfies the "fair use"

defense in US copyright law.



Part of the Google Video offering is a store that sells videos. Some of
these are delivered in a locked format of Google's devising that restricts
how Google's users can play and use the videos they buy. This Digital Rights
Management system (DRM) is like many of those used by Google's competitors
in that it doesn't attempt to model any copyright system in the world, but
rather reflects a one-sided vision of how copyright should work and imposes 

that unilaterally on Google's customers.
Here's how the Google Video DRM works: when you download a restricted video
from Google, it locks that video to your account and software player. Every
time you want to play the video, your player has to communicate with Google
to determine whether you are currently permitted to play it; if the player 

doesn't get the answer it's looking for, it won't play the video. The
specifics of how this works aren't available -- Google hasn't published any
details of how the security is implemented, committing the cardinal sin of 

"security through obscurity."



The video is encrypted (scrambled), which means that it is unlawful for
competitors of Google (or free/open source software authors) to make their
own players for the video, even if they can figure out how to decrypt it.
Other DRM vendors, like Apple, have threatened to sue competitors for making 

players that can play their proprietary file-formats.



Why Has Google Done This?
The question is, why has Google done this? There's no Google customer who
woke up this morning looking for a way to do less with her video. There's no
Google customer who lacked access to this video if he wanted it (here's a 

tip: enter the name of a show or movie into Google and add the word
"torrent" to the search, and within seconds Google will have delivered to 

you a link through which you can download practically everything in the
Google DRM catalog, for free, without DRM -- although it may be illegal for 

the person you get it from to send it to you).
That's not to say that there's nothing problematic about getting your video 

through Google this way. But the problems of the inability of the

entertainment industry to adapt to the Internet are the entertainment
industry's problems, not Google's. Google's really good at adapting to the
Internet -- that's why it's capitalized at $100 billion while the whole of 

Hollywood only turns over $60 billion a year.



But once Google starts brokering the relationship between Hollywood and
their audience, this becomes Google's problem too, which means that all the 

absurd, business-punishing avenues pursued by Hollywood are now Google's

business, as well.
It appears that the main reason Google got involved in DRM was to compete
with Microsoft and Yahoo, both of whom have created online video stores with
movies and shows from major entertainment companies. These companies demand
that their works be locked away in wrappers that restrict users in ways that 

have nothing to do with copyright law and so if you want a license from
them, you've got to play ball, even though no customer wants this. You can't
exactly put your offerings online under a banner that says, "Now with fewer 

features!"



This Time, Google's Users Don't Come First

This isn't the first time Google's had a major industry demand that it
design a product in a way that didn't put Google's users front and center. 

As documented in John Battelle's excellent book The Search, there was a
strong push on Google in the early days to adopt graphic advertising banners
for the site. All of Google's competitors were doing it, making a fortune at 

it, and no one wanted to advertise via text-ads even though its users

clearly found them them less invasive than graphic banners.
But Google hewed to a brilliant and successful strategy of never putting a 

supplier's need above its searchers' needs. This, more than Google's

controversial "Don't be evil" motto is the true force driving its most
successful offerings. Google refused to graphic ads and only accepted ads
from suppliers who shared its view of how to deliver a quality service to 

its users.



Abandoning this is a terrible idea and one that's exacerbated by design
decisions in Google's DRM technology. The outcome is a Google service that 

opens the company and its users to unprecedented new risk.



Google DRM and Copyright

Google's DRM has the potential to drastically re-shape the contours of
copyright law, turning a few entertainment companies' wishful thinking about 

the way that copyright would work if they were running the show into de

facto laws.



Some examples of user-rights that Google Video DRM takes away:
* Under US copyright law, once you buy a video, you acquire a number of
rights to it, including the right to re-sell it, loan it to a friend, donate
it to your kid's school and so on. But with Google Video DRM, none of this 

is possible: your video is locked to your account and player.
* Educators, archivists, academics, parodists and others have the right 

to excerpt, copy, archive and use any video in their work, under the US
doctrine of fair use. However, Google's DRM tool stops them from doing this, 

and Google's video can't be played on anyone else's tool.
When I questioned Google Video's Peter Chane about this, he said that Google 

DRM is "user-friendly" -- but none of the user rights embodied in the US

copyright law are accommodated by Google's DRM. Google's view of
"user-friendly" only encompasses the design of the user-interface, not the 

rights that users enjoy under the law.



Revocation and Changing the Deal
Google DRM player can be "revoked" -- field updated without user permission
or intervention. This isn't the standard in media players -- for example, 

iTunes requires that you explicitly grant permission to the application
before it updates. Where auto-update prevails, the possibility for abuse is 

dramatic -- for example, a magistrate once tried to get ReplayTV to

field-update the units it had sold to monitor its customers' use of the
device as part of a dispute about the legality of one of its features. The 

idea was that the spyware would be implemented to gather the information
required for the trial. The owners of ReplayTVs were the potential victims 

there, having products they'd purchased crippled after the fact (a judge
overturned the magistrate's idea before it could be implemented, but other
companies, such as AOL, have been forced to field-update their software to 

court order).
Google DRM auto-updating raises the possibility that some day the same thing
might happen to them -- either because Google was ordered by a court to do
so, or because one of Google's customers responds to news of Google's DRM
being defeated (Chane and other DRM manufacturers universally acknowledge
that all DRMs will eventually be subverted by their attackers) with a demand
to "update" the software in a way that changes what few rights Google does 

give you when you buy your movies from them.
Google won't comment on whether they've entered into any arrangements with 

their suppliers that would require them to do this, and there lies the

problem. Your ongoing enjoyment of the property you buy from Google is
dependent on their ongoing relationship with their suppliers. If you buy a
Warner Brothers DVD from Tower Records, it doesn't affect you in the least
if Tower and Warners have an ugly dispute. You've bought it, it's yours. But 

with Google DRM, auto-update means that it's never really yours. Third
parties always have the possibility of taking away the rights you bought, 

after you bought them.



Alternative Players
DRM systems are protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a
1998 law that makes it illegal to break them. That means that where a DRM is 

in place, no competitor can reverse-engineer your player and make a

compatible one -- something that is otherwise lawful.
DVDs were the first widely-released DRM media. The effect of DRM on DVDs was
to deprive DVD owners of the fruits of an open market in players. In the ten 

years that DVDs have been in the marketplace, no new features have been
introduced for the platform, robbing us of the dividends on our investment 

in DVDs. By contrast, DRM-free CDs ushered in the era of the MP3, home
karaoke, time-shifting, media servers, iPods, mashups, MP3 CDs and all the 

rest of the value that has accumulated in our music collections, the

dividend paid on our investment in the CD format.
But even DVDs are less restrictive than Google DRM. DVD players can at least
be manufactured by anyone willing to enter into a restrictive contract with 

DVD-CCA, a licensing body that controls the keys and patents for DVDs.
Google has no licensing program at all, and no publicly disclosed plans for
developing such a program. In other words, your Google movies only play on 

Google's player, and no one but Google gets to make a Google player.
This is particularly worrisome in the case of the Google DRM system because
it requires that you have a live Internet connection to Google every time
you want to play a movie. That means that every time you watch a Google DRM
movie, they get a record of your viewing. What's more, if you're not on the 

Internet, or if Google's servers are unreachable, you can't watch your
movies. Google competitors aren't anywhere near this onerous with their DRM
-- Netflix doesn't know when you watch a DVD; even Microsoft doesn't gather 

this much information on your video-watching habits. TiVo erases all

personal information before aggregating its viewer stats.



And if Google goes bankrupt (stranger things have happened -- just ask

anyone who ever bought and loved a Commodore computer), that's it, game
over. No authentication server to approve your video viewing, no alternative
player that skips the authorization step, and no legal way to make such a 

player. (Google says that it's working on a version with offline viewing

capability, but this isn't present in the current version of its DRM)



That said, it's a near certainty that alternative Google players will be
developed -- though the legality of these players is unclear. Nevertheless, 

just as with DVDs and iTunes, players like VLC and converters like DVD

X-Copy will surely emerge for Google DRM. Will Google sue the people who

make these players?



The company won't say. They do say that they prefer to use their
field-update capability to break the compatibility with these players, but
one wonders whether this will be much better, from a user-centric point of 

view. After all, if you buy or download a tool that lets you enjoy your
lawfully acquired movies in a lawful way, what business does Google have in 

reaching into your computer to take that away from you?



What Else Could Google Have Done?
Has it come to this? Has Google gone from being a company where the customer
always comes first to a company where "what else could we have done?" is the 

order of business?
Of course, there are lots of things Google could have done. It could have
digitized all the movies and shows that are presently in its store with DRM
and simply indexed them with links to buy them on Amazon, just as it's done 

with millions of books through its astonishing and wonderful Google Book

Search program.



It could have concentrated on indexing only videos that are found in the
wild on the Internet, and selling only videos that come from rightsholders
who don't want to shaft Google's customers -- repeat the strategy it pursued
when it stuck to its text-ad guns and refused to go with graphic banners. 



It could have delivered tools that you use, in your home, to index your
personal video collection -- a Google toolbar for the media in your living 

room.
It could have done all or none of this. But by choosing to copy the mistakes
of its competitors, Google has put its destiny in the hands of an industry
where treating customers like criminals is the order of the day -- these are 

the companies that search cinema-goers and make them leave their

cameraphones with the usher, after all.
These companies don't want Google to succeed at DRM. That would give Google
too much bargaining power in licensing agreements (see how much power Apple
has accumulated through the penetration of its lock-in DRM suite -- iTunes, 

iPods and iTunes music -- the music industry's attempts to change their

licensing terms with Apple have been laughed out of the Cupertino

board-rooms). The entertainment companies prefer consortia of battling

companies that can't come out with a coherent bargaining position.
Take DVD Blu-Ray and DVD-HD: there we have two technology consortia warring
to deliver the worst product they think they can sell. The format with the
most restrictions has been promised the sweetest licensing deal for content.
Blu-Ray recently announced that it would add region coding (locking DVDs to 

playback on players bought in the same country as the disc) to its final
specification -- after years of insisting that region coding just frustrated 

honest users.
Google DRM doesn't come from a fragile consortium, so it isn't supposed to 

be a winner: it's supposed to be a strategic tool to weaken the power of
Yahoo and Microsoft's DRM (also not supposed to be winners). The ultimate
trajectory for DRM is in consortia like Coral, where all the losers in the
DRM format-wars have been gathered together by the entertainment companies, 

who've promised them preferential treatment if they'll help overturn the

Macrovisions, Microsofts and Apples of the DRM market.



There's no way Google can win the DRM wars. The end-game for the
entertainment companies is to use the sweet lure of content to turn Google
from an unmanageable giant into a biddable servant, dependent on long- term
good relations with its licensors to preserve its customers' investment in 

its video.
The only way Google can win this game is not to play at all. The only way
Google can win is to return to its customer-comes-first ethic and refuse any
business-arrangement that subverts its customers' interests to serve some 

other industry's wishes.







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