Free Like A Puppy!

(Don't you just love open source headlines? Original here)

The subject of todays column is digital rights management. What it means, where it is coming from, why it is coming and how it will affect you. first a factual bit, then a ranty bit, gradually degenerating into a conclusion which will hopefully be inciteful yet strange. If you skip down to the bottom, I won't hold it against you. (Heck, I probably won't even know)

What are Digital Rights?

Oooh. I spotted yet another subtext! You see, it is actual "managing your rights digitally" - but I like it this way better.

What it is supposed to be is using technology to make sure that people only do what they are supposed to do. This means, for example, that if you make a web-page and it is DRM protected, then no one else will be able to steal that webpages design and use it themselves.

That's the aim of it, at least. To stop people copying stuff without permission - and contrawise to make sure that people with permission CAN copy stuff. You can extend this to the ability to view, transmit, sell, finagle or any other verb.

If it can be done to a digital object by some people, but not others, then DRM can enforce it.

A 'digital right' is more complicated. The right to anonymity for example. The right to own your own identity... I guess those things come under this heading too.

Where is it coming from?

Well, it's been thought about since the very earliest days of virtuality (at least) - if two people try to pick up a cube, which one gets it? Can they both get it? What happens if they do?

PONDS also had to consider this sort of thing, to enforce rules in some game arenas, but not in others - and to authenticate to everyone else that the other players WERE playing by the rules. (Uh, you may be able to find some old PONDS design documents in my columns archives)

But where is the current push coming from? The big media companies want it because they can't make as much money on films online as they would like to when everyone will just copy them.

Why is it coming?

They want it to shut down divx and mp3. Microsoft wants it so that it can sell new hardware and software. The current populus? There's some background rumbling (you stole my website! My quote! That bit of my map! My skin!) but in general people are happy to just stick their stuff up there and let it go to everyone - until they start trying to make money from it.

Even then, some people LIKE you to copy and throw aorund their stuff - they don't make money off of (their news, their comics) directly - in fact the bandwidth costs them money - but they make the money off the merchandising, which is sold based upon brand recognition.

It's all about making digital stuff the same as physical stuff.

How will it affect you?

Well, you can just ignore it. But then you won't be able to play the latest games, get the latest media - perhaps not even talk to your friends. Unless you make your computer 'trustworthy' you won't be able to do very much with it.

Or you can go along fighting. Until all of this goes into hardware, and even then, you will be able to get around it - continually updating to fight the security. But you will be on the wrong side of the law and it will get riskier all the time.

Or you can give in completely. And say hello to overpriced advertising and goodbye to your ability to put your movies onto discs to show them to your friends. Possibly even goodbye to your ability to show YOUR movies, the ones YOU create, to friends - because the chances that the publisher side of the security gets opened up to you without paying a small fortune are slim.

Some more buzzwords

Trustworthy computing - does your computer trust you? Do you trust it?

Palladium + DMCA = Illegal to take the cover off of your machine

Right now your computer is YOURS. They want to change that, to make it THEIRS - and make it illegal for you to change it back.

And, as my ranty bit will show - who could blame them?

A Metaphor

Right now you are free. Free like a puppy. You can do whatever you like. In practice, you mostly go walkies around the internet - fetch home a few sticks and play some games with all your puppy friends.

You are also free to build the largest spaceship ever designed by man and fly it to the moon - or to take a deadly bacteria and kill every puppy on earth. It may be difficult to do these things - but you can try.

And this is the problem. You see, while all the puppies are mostly well behaved - no one minds a few puppies doing outrageous things (After all, you can catch a few) or even a tendancy for a lot of puppies to do slightly naughty things. (The people looking after the puppies do, after all, enjoy looking after puppies - and want them to have fun.)

So - let's talk about the scum that cheat in computer games.

Puppy Revolt!

This one puppy was very clever. He wrote a program that would make walls transparent, and fire at things in games. His friend wrote programs to look at the screen and actually play the game based upon what it saw. That puppy should have won some kind of prize for being so clever.

They then gave these toys to the large mass of the puppies - who immediately used them to get inside the house and le tthem tear apart the furniture.

Another puppy, horrified by these acts - made an automatic puppy-prod. It'd spot these programs at work, and give shocks to the puppies using them. The puppies soon got used to the existence of such prods.

Ok, enough damn puppies

Punkbuster, csguard et al are DRM. They are malware, designed to stop you from excercising your freedom. And the horrible knock-on effect of this is that you idiots are getting used to its existence. Those who must cheat no matter what are finding ways around it - and those who just go with the flow are learning to accept that such things are the norm.

Dammit people - because you cheat, you cause DRM - and DRM is going to take away your ability to share files (for example) The ultimate aim of palladium is to prevent you from running anything that was not written by its maker.

If you want to stay even vaguely free - then stop abusing that freedom. A little rebellion is fine and healthy - but too many are too willing to abuse it. And this is leading people to the (entirely valid) conclusion that most internet users are amoral thieves.

And this will result in you all losing more than you even thought you had.

Think it won't happen? Think ANY new online game is going to be released without cheat protection?

What about the war?

Ok, yes. In the long run - hackers will always win. The hardware is sat in your home and you can do whatever you want. NO security can be perfect.

But that's not important. You are not the one guy who will work out how to fix his motherboard to run anything in twenty years time. In ten years time, you will have given up. The percentage of abusers will be tiny, and they will be under legal threat.

You cannot hope that those people will continue to risk their own safety to free you. You are worse than cattle - you are an incontinent puppy who brings them risk by yapping happily whenever they feed you such a treat. For all they care, you can rot.

A conclusion?

I said it best at the top. If you want to remain able to run around and share your jokes in ten years time, then you will have to stop destroying stuff now.

Sadly, if you are one of those puppies, I expect I either went totally over your head or offended you. Perhaps this whole article only exists to bring a wry smile to the lips of those who realise what is happening.

The "l33t d00dz" who love to "tr4d3 MP3 and pr0n!" are going to be the cause of their own demise - through the medium of first person shooters.

Good luck to the punkbuster team getting jobs in microsoft security enforcement, when the time comes.

I wonder if they truly believe that their programs are wholly beneficial?