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a DVD jukebox -- go and eat their lunch! Steve Jobs isn\'t going to do it: he\'s off at the D conference telling studio execs not to release hi-def movies until they\'re sure no one will make a hi-def DVD burner that works with a PC. 

Maybe they won\'t buy into his BS, but they\'re also not much interested in what you have to sell. At the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group meetings where the Broadcast Flag was hammered out, the studios\' position was, \"We\'ll take anyone\'s DRM except Microsoft\'s and Philips\'.\" When I met with UK broadcast wonks about the European version of the Broadcast Flag underway at the Digital Video Broadcasters\' forum, they told me, \"Well, it\'s different in Europe: mostly they\'re worried that some American company like Microsoft will get their claws into European television.\" 

American film studios didn\'t want the Japanese electronics companies to get a piece of the movie pie, so they fought the VCR. Today, everyone who makes movies agrees that they don\'t want to let you guys get between them and their customers. 

Sony didn\'t get permission. Neither should you. Go build the record player that can play everyone\'s records. 

Because if you don\'t do it, someone else will. 
 
 
$$$$ 
 
The DRM Sausage Factory 
 
(Originally published as \"A Behind-The-Scenes Look At How DRM Becomes Law,\" InformationWeek, July 11, 2007) 
  
Otto von Bismarck quipped, \"Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.\" I\'ve seen sausages made. I\'ve seen laws made. Both pale in comparison to the process by which anti-copying technology agreements are made.

This technology, usually called \"Digital Rights Management\" (DRM) proposes to make your computer worse at copying some of the files on its hard-drive or on other media. Since all computer operations involve copying, this is a daunting task -- as security expert Bruce Schneier has said, \"Making bits harder to copy is like making water that\'s less wet.\"

At root, DRMs are technologies that treat the owner of a computer or other device as an attacker, someone against whom the system must be armored. Like the electrical meter on the side of your house, a DRM is a technology that you possess, but that you are never supposed to be able to manipulate or modify. Unlike the your meter, though, a DRM that is defeated in one place is defeated in all places, nearly simultaneously. That is to say, once someone takes the DRM off a song or movie or ebook, that freed collection of bits can be sent to anyone else, anywhere the network reaches, in an eyeblink. DRM crackers need cunning: those who receive the fruits of their labor need only know how to download files from the Internet.

Why manufacture a device that attacks its owner? A priori, one would assume that such a device would cost more to make than a friendlier one, and that customers would prefer not to buy devices that treat them as presumptive criminals. DRM technologies limit more than copying: they limit ranges of uses, such as viewing a movie in a different country, copying a song to a different manufacturer\'s player, or even pausing a movie for too long. Surely, this stuff hurts sales: who goes into a store and asks, \"Do you have any music that\'s locked to just one company\'s player? I\'m in the market for some lock-in.\"

So why do manufacturers do it? As with many strange behaviors, there\'s a carrot at play here, and a stick.

The carrot is the entertainment industries\' promise of access to their copyrighted works. Add DRM to your iPhone and we\'ll supply music for it. Add DRM to your TiVo and we\'ll let you plug it into our satellite receivers. Add DRM to your Zune and we\'ll let you retail our music in your Zune store.

The stick is the entertainment industries\' threat of lawsuits for companies that don\'t comply. In the last century, entertainment companies fought over the creation of records, radios, jukeboxes, cable TV,
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