Digital rights management redux
By Charles Miller

When I wrote last week’s column on the subject of DRM I said it was the “fourth and final” in the series. Questions I received indicate that a little more is left to be said on the subject of digital rights management, though.

As a computer technician, one of the complaints I hear on a regular basis is that copy-protection schemes and software licensing are a costly inconvenience for legitimate users but are of little concern to illegitimate users. Bill Gates admitted this when stating that DRM causes problems for paying consumers.

Many, many times over the years I have seen the following situations repeated. A client who really wants to do the right thing dutifully pays several hundred dollars for a software program, installs it, and proceeds to use it. One day, without warning, when he starts to use the program a message pops up saying something to the effect that “This program needs to be re-authenticated. Please phone customer support to validate your purchase.” Then the program shuts down.

What has occurred is that some event has triggered the validation process for the software, and it must now be registered with the manufacturer again. This can occur when changes are made to the computer, such as a new hard disk or new video card. It can also be triggered after the passing of a certain number of days since the program was installed.

It is inconvenient to be required to call the company to reauthorize software you already registered. Many stories are told by people whose laptops shut down while they were on a plane, in the Australian outback, or nowhere near the phone or an internet connection, and thus they were unable to use the software they paid good money for.

The ironic thing about this is that in most cases the users who are using pirated software are never inconvenienced by this kind of thing because the bootleg software they are using has had the authentication routines removed from it by some hacker. The only users who have to put up with this nuisance and re-authenticate their software are those who paid to buy it legally.

A similar situation can happen to your music collection. One fellow I know copied hundreds of music CDs onto his computer over a period of years. Every one of the disks was legal, and over the years some got lost, given away, or whatever. My friend was unconcerned because he had the music on his computer and backed up as well. All was well until one day when his computer told him he could not play music again until he jumped through hoops to prove he had a legal right to his music. Ironically, had he bought bootleg music disks rather than legal ones he probably would never have had to go through any of that.

These are the biggest complaints about the present state of DRM, and I am not alone in seeing something wrong with this picture. The software and entertainment industries need to develop an effective DRM strategy that is able to protect their intellectual property by minimizing its illegal use and make sure that the DRM does not inconvenience users who paid for legitimate copies.

So far, the industry has yet to come up with a digital rights management scheme that fulfills these requirements. Until they do, piracy is going to continue to be prevalent.

Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 044-415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.
 


 


.