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The Register's Andrew Orlowski reports that IBM's spin doctors are scurrying "to disarm public outrage at the proposed inclusion of CPRM copy control mechanisms into hard disks." Orlowski's latest piece on the issue nicely deconstructs arguments and obfuscations that will be used to attempt to bamboozle the consumer public into accepting this affront to their privacy, fair use rights, and intelligence. For an example of how the industry intends to manage the spin, check out this article by John Lehmann-Haupt in IBM Research's house magazine, "Think!" entitled, aptly, "Chained Melodies." Not one to be around the bush, Lehmann-Haupt gets right to the point in his opening paragraph: "The ability to replicate and transmit digital audio files with absolute fidelity is revolutionizing the distribution of music. At the same time, however, it's creating a major headache for the music industry." And that, in a nutshell, is what this hard drive copy protection farrago is about. Lehmann-Haupt quotes Alan Bell, director of digital media standards and commercialization at IBM's Almaden research center commenting: "It is of paramount importance to the music industry that it acquire the means to offer the consumer an equally convenient, yet legitimate, alternative to Napster-style services through online retail outlets, but with full copy protection... Without the technology to ensure compensation to creators and distributors, there will be little motivation to continue to produce new music." I beg to differ. I don't dispute that a new business model for the recording industry will be necessary, but what this hard drive copy protection scheme is really in aid of it is restoring the top-down, command and control stranglehold that the Big Five recording conglomerates had over the distribution of music prior to digital compression and the Napster era. Not only that, but even worse, it will impose a massive degree of new hassle, crippled functionality, and inconvenience on computer users doing completely legitimate and legal functions with their machines, no matter how rosy a gloss IBM's spin doctors try to put on it. The argument being presented in Mr. Lehmann-Haupt's article sounds a lot like the old "what's good for General Motors is good for America" bromide from the 1960s. The article notes that "IBM — in conjunction with Intel, Matsushita and Toshiba (collectively known as the "4C") — has devised a new protection scheme based on encryption, called Copy Protection for Prerecorded Media (CPPM). When authorized by the copyright owner, the same basic technology may also be used in "secure" versions of portable MP3 players." The article goes on to explain in layman's terms how the copy protection protocol works, and brags about how the complex encryption it incorporates will prove a formidable obstacle to would-be hackers. It is up to consumers to prevent the music, movie, and high-tech industry cartels from getting away with this this misbegotten plan. A letter sent by Applelinks reader Josef Schneider to the 4C alliance which owns and advocates for CPRM copy prevention states:
I'm not usually a boycott enthusiast, but in this case it maybe the only thing that will work. The T.13 technical committee of NCTIS, the ANSI-blessed standards body next meets again in February, and is expected to approve that CPRM extensions become part of the ATA specification, which, according to an unnamed IBM spokesperson, means that copyright protection will start being built into every industry-standard hard disk by next summer, with every drive being branded with a unique identifier during manufacture. Unless we stop it. To view the the CPRM proposals at first hand, download this file:
For lots of Slashdot commentary on this issue, visit:
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