Fred von Lohmann - Media Industry Resistance to Change and DRM

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Von Lohmann chronicles the legal actions which have met new media technologies for more than a century, demonstrating that neither current conflicts, nor the extreme language, are unprecedented. He goes on to outline how the lawmaking process in the United States structurally provides incumbent industry players with an advantage. Lastly he challenges the notion that Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems will provide an antidote to the copyright owners' woes.

This interview was recorded for Steal This Film II. The project tries to bring new people into the leagues of those now prepared to think 'after intellectual property', and think creatively about the future of distribution, production and creativity. This is a film that has no single author. It makers encourage its 'theft', downloading, distribution and screening, and have made the entire film and its footage available for download in HDV format, on their website and on Pirate Bay.

Interview with Fred von Lohmann

The last 100 years have been a story of resistance on

on the part of incumbents, largely entertainment companies,

in their response to new technologies.

You've seen literally since the turn of the 20C

with the creating of the player piano, over and over again,

new technologies creating new media opportunities.

That disrupt existing businesses being resisted

very powerfully by those incumbents.

So you can start with the player piano, which was really the Napster of 1906.

It really made life very difficult for music industry - sheet music.

Songwriters who sold sheet music largely to the public.

After that of course there was the LP record

also part of that same story, and then broadcast radio

which was also met with a great deal of consternation

by the songwriters and music publishers of the day.

Cable tv in the 70s was viewed as a pirate medium,

all the tv networks felt that taking their content

and putting it on cable that ran to ppl's houses

was piracy pure and simple. Huge amount of litigation around that.

The VCR, another famous example,

when it was first introduced by sony in mid 70s

there were law suits immediately brought by the movie studios

who felt that who said that the VCR was to the american movie industry

what the Boston Strangler was to the woman alone.

And than after that, of course we have seen additional examples:

The first mp3 player by diamond Rio,

so the initial company -long before ipod- they were met with law suit,

digital audio tape recorders, they where introduced

late 80s, early 90s, also sued initially.

And of course most recently peer to peer filesharing software

many law suits filed there.

The new XM radio recordable tape satellite,

that technology has also been sued.

So really we see a litany of resistance

resistance is the hallmark of the incumbent

media industries response to new technology.

~Ironically, it's those new technologies

which ultimately have enriched those new industry.

Take the VCR for a good example, the technology

which was called the boston strangler for the movie industry,

turned out to be their biggest money maker in history.

And throughout the 80, 90s and to this day home video

- the market unlocked by the VCR -

has become the biggest source of revenue for the whole business.

Well the legislative process in the US surrounding copyright law

has had one recurring problem

and that is that the laws tend to be made by lobbyists for lobbyists.

And so the question is who can pay the lobbyists

and lawyers to bush congress year in year out for new copyright laws.

Well, for the most part those lobbyists have been employed

by the entertainment industries - they're the one who have money

and interest to push in washington for copyright laws.

So no surprise that laws get passed are ones written by lobbyists

and in the interests of major media companies of the day.

To the extent there's been resistance

- the resistance has really been in the form

of lobbyists hired by the technology sector.

And that's a good thing for innovation and in the long run for consumers,

but it's obviously not a perfect solution because technology companies,

their interests aren't always precisely aligned with consumers

So over the past 15 years of we've seen lots of legislations,

some of which has been passed, all of which has pushed for more copyright,

longer term, more protections, very few exceptions,

the ratchet has been a one way ratchet.

So another example of legislation

which has been part of a one way ratchet for more copyright

has been the digital millenium copyright act.

Which basically gave copyright owners

the ability to put technical restrictions on their works,

what many people call DRM. And if they've done so,

they get to dictate the terms

on which you're allowed to use the work.

DRM faces some fundamental problems.

It's never going to work at stopping digital copying.

The basic problem was laid out in a paper

that's come to be known as the Darknet

written by 4 senior MS security engineers 2002

and they started from a few premises

DRM is always gonna be broken by someone

there's no DRM system that's proof

against the efforts of a PHD in computer science

and that's never going to be

we've seen that time and time again

DRM systems are introduced and broken

when it comes to media content, like popular movies

there always be a motivation to break it

it's not to say that we can't use DRM to protect your medical records

or your family photo albums,

perhaps there's a of lack of motivation for anyone to try to break that

but when talking about the latest Spiderman movie

there's no shortage of motivation around the world

for smart computer hackers to try to crack the DRM.

And so far and for the foreseeable future

that's going to continue to mean these systems get broken.

It's impossible to build a foolproof system

and all the computer security experts agree on that.

Second premise of the Darknet argument is that

once a copy has been taken out of its secure envelope

once some hacker has broken it, at that point

those copies will be made available through other channels

we have today the ability to make copies

and distribute copies inexpensively

since Napster if one copy leaks out on the internet

very rapidly it's available to everyone.

The thing to keep in mind is when the person downloads the movie

from a torrent site or from Limewire or some other P2P network,

or if the person gets a copy from a friend on a blank CD or DVD,

there's no need for that person to break the DRM,

the DRM is gone, only the first person in the chain

needs to be able to break the DRM and once one person

has extracted the content from the "secure" envelope,

from that point forward the content is freely accessible

for anyone who's able to run a filesharing tool, make a copy on a hard drive

and of course many millions of ppl are in that position.

So as long as we live in that environment, an environment

where DRM can be broken by someone somewhere

and a world where all of us are connected by channels

that allow us to make and distribute copies inexpensively,

DRM is really in a hopeless quandary.

There is no way DRM is ever going to make progress

against the ability to make unauthorised digital copies.

It's simply a tool that's ill-suited to that particular purpose,

and we've seen this time and time again, if we look at DVDs,

obviously DVD encryption was broken,

all the movies that were released on DVD are now widely available

through unauthorised sources on the internet;

the same is then true of CD copy protection, that has been an utter failure

at stopping the distribution of unauthorised music

even the new Blue Ray and HDDVD formats

their DRM has been utterly compromised as well,

literally every movie that's released in these formats

is going up on unauthorised bittorrent sites on a daily basis.

So it seems quite clear that DRM is never going to stop

or even impede unauthorised copying.

In fact the MS engineers went one step further

and said not only does it not do any good

but it actually harms copyright owners

because DRM ends up making the legitimate product,

the authorised product, less attractive than the authorised product,

because for the consumer that goes out and buys the DRM-encrypted copies,

actually lays out the money to purchase it,

they find that the copy they purchased is less useful...

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