Virtually Unbreakable

 “We apply our BrainTrust™ proprietary video encryption to your movies before we upload them to our servers. If someone ever was able to gain access to your content, the files would be useless and unplayable, because they are stored in a scrambled, encrypted format. Once downloaded to the user’s hard drive, the files are still encrypted and only readable via the MOD Machine Player by a legitimate owner. We are not aware of a better DRM scheme than ours. Where Windows Media DRM is easily crackable, and doesn’t run on Macs, BrainTrust™ works great on Windows 8, Vista, Windows XP and Mac, and is virtually uncrackable.”

Virtually uncrackable? Well, since they load the file from a Python script, it’s easy to make a copy of the “decrypted” file before it’s reverted. Having done so, I was curious to see the encryption scheme. By comparing the binary files, I discovered the “proprietary video encryption” algorithm: for the first 15kB, each 1kB block has its initial bytes xor’d with the string “RANDOM_STRING”. That’s the “scrambled, encrypted format” that leaves these files “useless and unplayable”.

Asher Langton – Google+

I fail to understand how reasonable knowledgable people can think that there’s some way of delivering information to a person without actually “Delivering the Information”! If you’re providing me with the video/music/text, in whatever format, in whatever encryption, and then you provide me with a key and/or player program, you ARE PROVIDING ME WITH THAT DATA!

The “security” around my content can be broke, it will be broke and there’s no way in hell that anything built under this logic is unbreakable. Because you’re not trying to keep the information safe from me, you’re just trying to control how i can access it. So you’re forced to surrender a way of rendering it “readable” but then you try to control when or how i can read it. Does any of this seem any logic to anyone?

“Hey, here’s my encrypted book, and here’s a key for decrypting it, but be advised you may only read it at daytime.”

What will stop me from reading it at night? Even if the letters in the decryption key or book were only visible at daytime due to some magic ink, why couldn’t i just make a copy of it at daytime and read it at night? If this kind of reasoning and problem thinking seems ridiculous to you, congratulations, you’re a giant step ahead than the entire Media Industry executives, worldwide. (( And some software executives as well. Specially the Gaming executives… ))

Everyone that has given this two minutes of serious thinking will tell you that the only way to curb piracy is to offer a good service and value for money. Or simply abandon the current line of business and try to make your revenue in other related service line such as Support or Merchandising. It strikes me as unbelievable stupid that this kind of “unbreakable security” myth lives on and is relied upon.

Piracy and the four currencies

” The problem with most piracy debates is that the only “cost” they discuss is money-dollars.  So, the problem is framed somewhat like this:

“Buying the game from us costs money-dollars.  Pirating it costs zero money-dollars.  Therefore, most people will pirate the game if they have the choice and we must do everything we can to physically stop them.”

The familiar Money-dollar ($M)  This is wrong because there are at least four currencies involved here, not just one (money-dollars).

I propose the following:

  • ($M) Money-dollars

  • ($T) Time-dollars

  • ($P) Pain-in-the-butt-dollars

  • ($I) Integrity-dollars”

Lars Doucet

Can we somehow get the linked essay delivered to all the games, music and movies Executives?

Thinking Outside the Box Office

“But that’s not even the interesting part. The movie goes out to theaters, DVD, and high-definition cable TV – all on the same day. […]

WIRED: Why did you decide to release Bubble in all formats at once?

SODERBERGH: Name any big-title movie that’s come out in the last four years. It has been available in all formats on the day of release. It’s called piracy. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, Ocean’s Eleven, and Ocean’s Twelve – I saw them on Canal Street on opening day. Simultaneous release is already here. We’re just trying to gain control over it.”

Wired

My God man, Sanity! When will this end?!

The Piracy Threshold

“Give us convenient content at a reasonable price, and we’ll buy it. Sell the stuff without DRM, for a few dollars. Make it available to everyone, worldwide, at the same time. Then take the massive, unending pile of money, forever.

Or keep doing what you’re doing, and enjoy your ceaseless war of attrition, ever-rising tide of negative public opinion, and eventual forced irrelevance. And get fucked.”

Matt Gemmell

You should really the full article. Nothing that hasn’t been said endlessly but it’s a good summary of the subject. And the “piracy threshold” chart is also interesting as a tool for further business approaches to the subject.

The most strange think that i can’t understand is: if there are endless stories about how “easy and convenient and just” made people pay for their content, why is that some media executives never get to find it? Is the Internet Browser on their computers riddled with DRM to prevent them from ever reaching sane conclusions?

Dedicated to the Anti-Comments crowd

Megaupload made a LOT of money distributing content which they did not hold the copyrights for. Which means, THEY made money, the authors and publishers and illustrators and musicians – DID NOT.

You’re also wrong about the ownership of ideas. True, one person cannot ‘own’ an idea, but he does own the rights for the manifestation of that idea. If you wrote a book – even if it’s the same old story – it’s still something you’ve created for other people to enjoy… if you want to do it for free, it’s your choice! But the world should not FORCE you to do so. That’s why there are copyright laws – we are going to see a whole lot less quality content because of two very big movements:

from Pachino on a comment on Paulo Coelho’s blog

My reply&comment:

You’re missing the point there. Yes, megaupload made money of allowing the download of “free” works. You’re absolutely right on that. And yes, no one paid the authors. Yet why didn’t the authors, publishers & producers got in on megaupload model of business? They could perfectly well have said: “here’s our works, sell them as a part of a cheap 20$ for 25GB of download up to 3 months, no DRM. Pay us the percentage of income.” or even just the percentage of the advertising business.

That would be a simple deal. The consumer knows he’s doing a “legit” business, paying the persons he respects and admires, megaupload would get paid by providing the interface, and the sheer convenience of the whole thing would make people join the idea and spend their money there.

I prefer ten thousand times to pay for my content and get it all nice and clean and properly tagged, with a nice pdf booklet or stuff and to go somewhere “nasty”, full of popups and strange hacks, and never having certainty of what i’m downloading.

But you know what i don’t like? being treated like a criminal moron. Having to spend 10 minutes reading FBI warnings, about me pirating the movie i just bought, or watching unstoppable & unskippable trailers. Or waiting 2 years for the movie that i want to see becomes available in my “geographical dvd” area. Or paying over 25$ for the recording of a music performed by a maestro, orchestra and composer dead over decades&centuries ago. Or not even having the “privilege” to get those works because the editor, publisher or distributor couldn’t care less.

You know what else i don’t like? That if i develop a new combustion engine, or a new cancer vaccine or a new pain killer, or even a new kind of prosthetic material, i get to have the “monopoly” of those “idea fixations” for exactly 20 years. no more. And i have to pay for them in every country in the world. And if it is health related, i will probably spend half of those 20 years doing mandatory safety tests. And somehow, this other guy that “recycles” a impossible love story into book or films, a little folk tune in to a techno music gets to have his life plus 70 years. I’m sorry can you somehow explain to me what possible benefit can came to society from that aberration?

And now you say, “well it’s our god given right! to the ownership of our creations!” Well, sorry, it’s not. The intellectual property laws were enabled and created by the Society, to promote the general development of arts and science because that would in turn benefit the Society. The purpose of the intellectual property laws is not to pamper rock stars or authors or even geeky engineers and chemists, but to benefit the society! That is its ultimate goal. The way how it is done, is a reflection of the ways available on their time.

And here we are, somewhere on the fifth/sixth millennium of human civilization, provided with the most magnificent tool of creativity and information distribution since the Gutenberg’s Press or the alphabet and writing, and there’s some ten thousand schmucks (all of the antiquated publishers and some silly artists) trying to stop the movement and development of rest of the seven billion of us. How do you guess that’s going to end?

My thoughts on S.O.P.A.

“When you’ve eaten an orange, you have to go back to the shop to buy another. In that case, it makes sense to pay on the spot. With an object of art, you’re not buying paper, ink, paintbrush, canvas or musical notes, but the idea born out of a combination of those products.

‘Pirating’ can act as an introduction to an artist’s work. If you like his or her idea, then you will want to have it in your house; a good idea doesn’t need protection.

The rest is either greed or ignorance”

Paulo Coelho

Artists are (usually) not the main problem here, the intermediaries are. They are the ones afraid of losing the power and revenue that comes of mediating between artists & idealists and the world.

The sad part is that they could change as well and get the best spot on the new land grab, but they are just too dumb to see it. So they will wither away, mourned only by the sounds of an angry crowd armed with pitchforks.

The story of Fernforest and Petro Dale

“However, the attempt to ban cars caused Petro Dale to wake up to the threat of railways. They realized that even though much more commerce took place with cars and roads, and even though railways were becoming increasingly irrelevant, they would remain a potential regressive threat. In the past Petro Dale had sought to do business with the incumbent food network distributors, suggesting ways of taking the mass market food produce and distributing it to new franchises like mobile food trucks and fast food restaurants. They were spurned. Now they realized that trying to work with Fernforest was not just futile but  harmful.”

asymco

How the internet displaced/will displace the old media distributors/publishers, in a nice metaphor story. The funny bit is even if the current MPAA, RIAA and their associates management personnel read it, they wouldn’t understand it.

The next SOPA

“The MPAA studios hate us. They hate us with region locks and unskippable screens and encryption and criminalization of fair use. They see us as stupid eyeballs with wallets, and they are entitled to a constant stream of our money. They despise us, and they certainly don’t respect us.”

Marco Arment

The future of albums

“While what the album contains will change, I think the concept of the album will live on for some time. The entire current music catalog is based on albums, and the change necessary to move to a different unit of music—other than the song—will take some time.”

Kirk McElhearn – Macworld

Interesting. I agree with most of what the author says. An Album is just a name, it’s contents has changed throughout history but i find it hard to believe that the vast majority of the audio lovers would resign to purchasing individual musics stripped of any context or surrounding.

On a side note, i dream of a day where your hi-fi stereo system picks its music from a household central NAS while an upgraded iTunes app supplies the artwork, lyrics and any other extras that might have come with the album to your iPad/iPhone/other device so that you can have the same experience of a current album now. Sometimes reading through the lyrics, the authors message and just handling those images while listening to the music is what makes the album special.