Cory Doctorow talks about DRM on the Nature Podcast

[mocelet]

I am sure that everyone here knows of Cory Doctorow, and that most will have heard of the science journal Nature. Well, Nature do a podcast and have a "Podium" segment where someone talks for a couple of minutes on a subject. Last week it was Cory Doctorow's turn, and he spoke on the futility of DRM.

Audio here, and transcript here. Podium is the last segment, so scroll on to the end if you don't want to listen to/read the rest of the podcast.

I particularly like the concluding comment:

Businesses that rely on restricting copying have pitched their tents on the side of an active volcano. Governments should be urging them to evacuate to safer territory, not deploying mad, ineffectual laws to stop the lava flow.

[HarryT]

Mr. Doctorow is well known to hold extreme views on the subject, and certainly doesn't represent the mainstream view. I wouldn't personally place too much credence on what he says.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Mr. Doctorow is well known to hold extreme views on the subject, and certainly doesn't represent the mainstream view. I wouldn't personally place too much credence on what he says.

Really? You think you could find a majority of electronic material customers who say 'yeah, that DRM is a really good idea, can I have more'? I am pretty sure that is the extreme view. For normal people, not the out of date or scaredy-pants types in charge of companies, that is. That has nothing to do with our 'mainstream' view.

[HarryT]

I was referring to the mainstream view of authors and the publishing industry. The typical end user naturally has a somewhat biased view of these things. It's in his interest to be able to easily download content without paying for it, although I'd like to think that most people are sufficiently honest that they don't do so.

[Trenien]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I was referring to the mainstream view of authors and the publishing industry. The typical end user naturally has a somewhat biased view of these things.

That's an interesting point of view. However it does assume that authors and publishing industries's view on such matters are completely fair and unbiaised, whereas the "end users" as a whole do not.

It's in his interest to be able to easily download content without paying for it, although I'd like to think that most people are sufficiently honest that they don't do so.

I've seen you state similar things in that other threads that's becoming quite long. I tend to agree with what others have answered you there: that's wishful thinking from someone who appears to lean on the pro-DRM side.

[Trenien]

Ok, I just listened to Doctorow's piece.

By the way, the link to the audio file is wrong, it's here

Harryt, have you listened/read it? It's nothing to do with Doctorow's views on copyright. What he states here is simply what any half-competent mathematician/cryptographer will tell you: Fundamentally DRM can't work!

That's why DCMA and the like exist. If DRM could work, governments wouldn't have been lobbied into passing such laws.

[mocelet]

Originally Posted by Trenien

By the way, the link to the audio file is wrong, it's here

Thanks for spotting that - I fixed the top post.

I hadn't thought about DRM in the way described in the piece. That is, that in a traditional crypto attack you have three people, sender, receiver and attacker. But in the DRM situation, the receiver and attacker are the same person, so the attacker has access to the key and the cleartext (as the receiver). Consequently DRM relies on hiding the key, but leaving it available when needed. Hence laws are required to "prevent" the attacker opening the key storage box.