[wos] DRM quotes [signed]

Wed Jan 12 01:55:19 CET 2005

For the upcoming DRM conference
http://digital-rights-management.de/

I edited my collection of quotes from technologist saying that DRM 
can't work. If you know of similar statements not yet included I'd be 
happy to add them to the collection. Until tomorrow noon I can still 
get them into the conference print-outs. 

You can pick up a PDF version here:
http://privatkopie.net/files/DRM-quotes.pdf

thanks & best
Volker

What the Technologists are Saying:
DRM is Ineffective, Impossible, Stupid, Futile, Snake Oil, a Non-
Starter

(DRM Quotes from 1996 to 2004)
collected by Volker Grassmuck

If the people who know what they are talking about are saying that 
why is all that public, research and industry effort still being put 
into DRM? Once you reach the realization that DRM isn't going to 
solve our problems, then you begin to embrace the alternatives.

(You know of similar statements like the following by technologists, 
cryptographers, or DRM designers? Please let me know at vgrass at rz.hu-
berlin.de. Thank you.)

„ It's a polite fiction. ... Lawyers and technologists continue to 
sell this snake oil of control, whether it's from the court and the 
police [RIAA legal jihad], or whether it's coming from technology 
[DRM]. ... When I was 14, I told girls I loved them to sleep with 
them too. It was a fiction. Steve Jobs just leaves a little money on 
the table. We see Jobs and Gates making promises to the content 
industry that they have no intention of keeping. It's the promise you 
make to move forward. The content owner wants to hear it. If we're 
honest we'd say to the content owners, ‚we're not going to succeed 
from what we can tell. ...‘ But we don't say it. We'll say what we 
need to say to get it. ...
	Once you reach the realization that it isn't going to solve our 
problems, then you begin to embrace the alternatives."
	(„Why wireless will end 'piracy' and doom DRM and TCPA - Interview 
with Jim Griffin" ( former director of Geffen's technology group, now 
CEO of Cherry Lane Digital), by Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 
11/02/2004, http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35498.html)

„We said [to the record companies]: None of this technology that 
you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know 
the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital 
content." 
	(Steve Jobs: The Rolling Stone Interview, December 03, 2003, 
http://www.rollingstone.com/features/featuregen.asp?pid=2529)

„They [rights holders] also recognized that those approaches would be 
ineffective unless the law itself provided enhanced protection for 
those processes and systems."
	„The development of the Internet has ... created significant 
challenges to any distribution model which depends on scarcity. ... 
The financial and skill barriers to making content available globally 
have simply fallen away.... The application of technology to this 
problem, if it is to be effective, must therefore in some way 
reestablish a point of scarcity on behalf of the rights holder. 
However, this raises a fundamental paradox, ... – that ... the 
business of publishers lies in providing access rather than in 
preventing it. ... Nevertheless, unless copyright is to be abandoned 
as a mechanism for trading in intellectual property entirely, it will 
be essential to find an answer to this paradox."
	(WIPO Report: Current Developments in the Field of Digital Rights 
Management, prepared by Jeffrey P. Cunard, Keith Hill, and Chris 
Barlas, 1. August 2003, 
http://www.wipo.int/documents/en/meetings/2003/sccr/pdf/sccr_10_2.pdf)

„It's baffling to me that the content industries don't look at the 
experience of the software industry in the 80's, when copy protection 
on software was widely tried, and just as widely rejected by 
consumers." 
	(Tim O'Reilly interview: Digital Rights Management is a Non-starter, 
Stage4, 27/07/03, http://stage4.co.uk/full_story.php?newsID=272)

„We conclude that given the current and foreseeable state of 
technology the content protection features of DRM are not effective 
at combating piracy." 
	(Stuart Haber, Bill Horne, Joe Pato, Tomas Sander, Robert Endre 
Tarjan (Trusted Systems Laboratory, HP Laboratories Cambridge),  If 
Piracy is the Problem, Is DRM the Answer? HPL-2003-110, Mai 27 th, 
2003, http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2003/HPL-2003-110.pdf)

„We see no technical impediments to the darknet becoming increasingly 
efficient. ... We believe it probable that there will be a few more 
rounds of technical innovations. ... Finally, consumers themselves 
are likely to rebel against ‚footing the bill‘ for these ineffective 
content protection systems. ... increased security (e.g. stronger DRM 
systems) may act as a disincentive to legal commerce. ... In short, 
if you are competing with the darknet, you must compete on the 
darknet's own terms: that is convenience and low cost rather than 
additional security."
	(Peter Biddle, Paul England, Marcus Peinado und Bryan Willman 
(cryptology experts, Microsoft Corporation), „The Darknet and the 
Future of Content Distribution", 2002 ACM Workshop on Digital Rights 
Management, November 18, 2002, Washington DC, 
http://crypto.stanford.edu/DRM2002/darknet5.doc)

„My personal opinion (not speaking for IBM) is that DRM is stupid, 
because it can never be effective, and it takes away existing rights 
of the consumer."
	(David Safford (cryptology expert, IBM Research), „Clarifying 
Misinformation on TCPA", October, 2002, 
http://www.research.ibm.com/gsal/tcpa/tcpa_rebuttal.pdf)

„Wir können nicht weiter vertrauen, dass die Technik von den 
Konsumenten fair benutzt wird." 
	(Intel-Vizepräsident Don Whiteside, nach Sven Scheffler, Schluss mit 
Raubkopien, Sonntags Zeitung, 22. September 2002, S. 143)

"Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be 
made not wet." 
	(Bruce Schneier, The Futility of Digital Copy Prevention, in: Crypto-
Gram Newsletter, Mai 15, 2001, http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-
0105.html#3)

„Why should self-interested companies be permitted to shift the 
balance of fundamental liberties, risking free expression, free 
markets, scientific progress, consumer rights, societal stability, 
and the end of physical and informational want? Because somebody 
might be able to steal a song? That seems a rather flimsy excuse."
	(John Gilmore, What's Wrong With Copy Protection, 16 February 2001, 
http://www.toad.com/gnu/whatswrong.html)

"By treating Napster as the copyright antichrist, the industry is 
simply insuring that the vector of Internet technological development 
will move rapidly toward a lawsuit-proof, free-for-all distributed 
network of file-sharing -- the very outcome the owners of 
intellectual property wish to avoid. How stupid can you get? ... The 
good news is that the brain-dead, colossally wasteful, artistically 
homogenizing old order of the recording industry is committing 
collective, time-delayed suicide in court."
	(Scott Rosenberg, Why the music industry has nothing to celebrate. 
Napster's shutdown will only cause a thousand alternatives to bloom, 
Salon Magazine, July 27, 2000, 
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/rose/2000/07/27/napster_shutdown/print.h
tml)

„Dieselben technischen Mittel, die die globale Nutzung der Netze 
ermöglichen, werden auch die globale Kontrolle dieser Netze 
ermöglichen." 
	(Reinhold Kreile (director of GEMA), in: GEMA News, 157, 1998, S. 
6.)

„Trusted systems presume that the consumer is dishonest." 
	(Mark J. Stefik (Xerox PARC), Letting loose the light: igniting 
commerce in 
electronic publication. In: Stefik, M., ed. Internet Dreams: 
Archetypes, Myths, 
and Metaphors, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996 -- no online anymore.)

„The answer to the machine is in the machine." 
	(Charles Clark, The copyright environment for the publisher in the 
digital 
world (General Counsel, International Publishers Copyright Council & 
Copyright 
Representative, Federation of European Publishers), held at Joint 
ICSU-UNESCO 
International Conference on Electronic Publishing in Science, UNESCO, 
Paris, 
19-23 February 1996, 
http://www.icsu.org/5_abouticsu/CDSI_web/EPS1/clark.htm & 
„The answer to the machine is in the machine ", in The Future of 
Copyright in a 
Digital Environment, Bernt Hugenholtz (ed.), Kluwer, 1996, p. 139-
146)

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Date: on 12 January 2005 at 00:52:26 GMT
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