Diagram from Microsoft's peer-to-peer DRM patent. (Click picture to enlarge, and to see four more diagrams/flowcharts.)
Posted on 09/23/2009 11:01:58 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Here's an odd twist that might give new life to the dying horse of music digital-right management. Microsoft has just been awarded a U.S. patent for a distributed DRM system -- it works over peer-to-peer networks -- which uses encrypted public and private keys as the licensing mechanism. This is significant because, while centralized music stores like Apple's iTunes have forsaken DRM, the Microsoft patent would enable peer-to-peer networks to reemerge as viable, albeit protected, content sources.
The patent, number 7,594,275, is entitled simply, "Digital rights management system." Granted today (Sept. 22), it was filed in October, 2003, which undercuts the implication in my introduction, about why anyone would bother at this late date.
In 2003, when Microsoft's patent application was filed, the whole "Web wants to be free" versus "evil corporations with their DRM" argument was in full flower. That debate hasn't been resolved -- if you ask me, there's still no justification for people stealing songs.
However, it has been rendered moot, in a paradoxical manner. On the one hand, the RIAA's aggressive legal pursuit of song-downloading grandmas squandered the precious little sympathy the record companies might have had. But at the same time, the marketplace essentially moved beyond DRM. Consumers became more sophisticated, and most slowly became inured to the idea they should pay for their music. The turning point came when Apple's iTunes and Amazon pulled back from DRM.
So sure, there's still music theft, and not just in China (there, it's called the market). But DRM is now more properly spoken of in reference to movies and DVDs, where copyright protection will remain in place until Hollywood's last gasp.
In this context, one would think that Microsoft's new patent might be irrelevant. However, it's not, because of its interesting peer-to-peer angle. Indeed, one can foresee a time when peer-to-peer networks reemerge from their current sub-rosa position and become popular, brand, public-facing methods of distributing content.
When they do, Microsoft may be positioned to reap some serious royalties.
Here's how Microsoft describes the peer-to-peer distributed angle, in the "background" section of the patent:
"In a conventional DRM system, license acquisition requests are processed by a centralized license server. This makes the centralized license server heavy-loaded, complex, and expensive to run and maintain, and makes it a weak link in the DRM system. For example, failure of the centralized license server may disrupt normal DRM services. Additionally, small content providers, such as a peer in a peer-to-peer network, may not be able to afford the cost of providing and/or utilizing the services of the centralized license server.Peer-to-peer networks have emerged as a popular way to share large amounts of data, such as by peers downloading songs that are referenced as being available for download through a peer-to-peer website. Most peer-to-peer networks, however, do not have digital rights management or access control. Consequently, peer-to-peer networks can be liable for contributing to the infringement of the copyright in works that are referenced as being available for download by the peer-to-peer networks.
Accordingly, there is a continuing need for a distributed public licensing infrastructure for digital rights management systems."
The Microsoft patent uses partial licenses, consisting of both a public and a private key, to provide customers with the right to decrypt the content they access over the peer-to-peer network. Or, as they put it more formally in the patent: "Partial licenses are combinable to form a formal license that may be utilized to output the content."
Here's a flowchart from the patent, showing how the whole shebang works:
Diagram from Microsoft's peer-to-peer DRM patent. (Click picture to enlarge, and to see four more diagrams/flowcharts.) |
In closing, the one big thing which strikes me -- and I should note that I'm not a lawyer; I just play one on my blog -- is that, like many patents, this one doesn't seem to be much of a stretch beyond prior art. (My argument on that score would be the notations about key sharing, key redistribution, and asymmetric encryption contained in the "reference" section of the patent. No matter; this is the same deal as with thousands of other patents. We all know the deal with the backlogged and short on examiners USPTO. Namely, you're gonna get your patent, and then you defend it in court later on if you have to.
The second leg of this observation is that Microsoft's lawyer have their eye on the broad-claims prize, and the possible revenue-producing future of this patent, in its very last paragraph. To wit:
"Although the invention has been described in language specific to structural features and/or methodological acts, it is to be understood that the invention defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to the specific features or acts described. Rather, the specific features and acts are disclosed as exemplary forms of implementing the claimed invention."
If healthcare is supposed to be free, why not music and video?
Linux keeps looking better all the time.
LOL! Good point.
I’ve found it works for me—with fewer issues than Windows gives me.
BFL
I hate DRM...
you can boil that all down to “when it became possible to legally download an unmutilated song MP3 for under a buck, most people found it no longer worth the effort to plot and scheme ways of doing so illegally (lesson in there for the Democrats anywhere??)
It seems to me the cited concept must've been referring to no justification for stealing Indians' spirits by taking pictures of them.
A recording of a song that deprives no one of revenue is akin to a picture of a cloud, and should not be considered a $250,000.00 "per unauthorized copy" offense. Can more than one picture of a given cloud be made? Is the cloud removed from the sky when such happens? Do the children of a professional cloud photographer go with one less crumb from their loaves of bread because someone has a picture of the same cloud as that of which their parent sold a copy to the Mellon Gallery?
Think of all the money Michelangelo's progeny are missing out as nearly every European artist worth his salt made unauthorized paintings, sketches, models and snapshots of Mick's statue of David, the man after God's own heart. Yeah, right!
People who use these specious analogies of "inconvenienced electron patterns" to tangible real property are opportunistically bullying way beyond the original intent of copyright lawmakers. Those skewed rights they presently enjoy need to be set aright via Congress. Aren't we Taxed Enough Already and all that?
We paid a professional photographer to take pictures of our wedding. Thereafter, he wanted (and got) a price for each copy of his pictures we wanted. Though we paid him for his work he (and the government, apparently) considers himself the owner of those wedding pictures. I would be "breaking the law' if I made my own copy of what I reasonably might consider to be "our wedding" and our paid-for, work-for-hire pictures. Now, there's definitely something screwy and rotten in other places than Denmark about this, but it is the way special interests have seen to lobby our copyright law to work, which is common to its screwiness for copyrights on such things as songs and videos.
We used to buy a copy so we could play it on anything we had at home, or we could even lend it to a friend. Nowadays, you may play your "licensed copy" on one machine at home, but you could spend years in prison putting on another device that plays audio or video (in only your own home), just because of the way copyright law has been whacked!
It seems to me copyright law has been skewed and is out of whack since the DMCA, Bono and Clinton. But, laws were meant to be changed, so let's see it happen, representatives!
HF
Either that, or you might say that once they found companies willing to do business with them at equitable terms for a reasonable price, they ponied up with their money.
I sort of think about 7 conflicting things on this subject.
The song isn't really "stolen" because the owner still has it; is it OK to take it on that basis alone? No. But it's something other than theft.
Do the labels have a right to fight unauthorized file sharing? Beyond generous fair use terms and allowing for format changing and other uses that have become established, sure, but that isn't what they've been trying to do.
What kind of protection would be best for the consumer and the market? Well, in almost any field, anything has to be better than government involvement, so it seems like the answer should be technical measures taken by the publishers. So it would seem like the current implementation of DRM would be the one I would find most palatable. Except for one thing. The honest customers' interests are paramount. If one single customer is inconvenienced or loses rights they would have had in the days of cassettes or the label ends up with any data about any individual customer, the system is unacceptable.
So while I technically agree that sharing songs is undesirable, the industry needs to be taught to treat their customers needs as more important than their own, like any other business. If they do that I predict there will no longer be a lot of unpaid sharing.
Exactly.
A tangent to this issue is the valuation of lost revenue. I believe this has always been presumed to be 100%. That is to say, every download is a lost sale.
But any beginning economics student can tell you that price affects demand. A free item will always have higher market demand than one that is not free. Therefore, the actual lost sales are necessarily less than the number of downloads.
It wouldn't take much to conduct a study to determine the actual ratio either.
Given my understanding of historical theories of lawsuit awards, which is minimal at best, the MOST I would EVER award a label would be treble damages based on the ratio discovered by the hypothetical study. This $15,000 per song crap is insane and only serves to further alienate people from our legal system AND music labels.
Award treble damages of $3.00 per download -- with the burden of proof where it belongs, on the plaintiff, to prove actual downloads, then add a $500 punitive award and put a court-ordered monitor on their computer for a year.
Talk about the 500 pound elephant in the room. I just love how they continually skate past this obvious fact and no one ever calls them on it. Software publishers make the same claim, even for $4000-$5000 packages. The concept that someone might want to try out their software before buying, or practice at home so they can get a job using the software, or keep their skills current after losing their job, or that someone needs the program two hours a year and finds the purchase of a 24/7/365 license inequitble, is apparently too difficult for these guys. I think anyone who makes the assumption you described is either stupid or crooked, or in some cases both.
Oops, meant to say “5000 pound” elephant. The 500 pound one is the one under your Dad’s chair at the dinner table. You know, the one that keeps lifting him 2 or 3 inches up off his chair.
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