Sun’s open source DRM
Posted on July 13, 2006
Tom Jacobs, a/the director of engineering at sun labs has talked up Sun’s open source DRM as a possible saviour to France’s DRM woes. Now, I’m not going to go into how stupid open source DRM is as an idea here, as others have already done so:
In DRM you only have a sender and an attacker, who is also the recipient. DRM relies on the attacker/recipient only gaining access to the cleartext while their machine is in the grips of non-user-accessible code that restricts what they can do with the cleartext (in particular, DRM seeks to ensure that the cleartext can’t be saved back to the drive while still in the clear).
If you have an open source DRM “client” or “player,” then how can it keep users from modifying it to allow the saving and manipulation of the conditionally rendered cleartexts?
There has never, ever been a DRM implementation that was intended to be user-modifiable. There can’t be. It’s like trying to make “dry water” or “hot ice.” DRM is supposed to keep users from manipulating their players. Open source is supposed to encourage users to manipulate and modify their players. They are utterly incompatible.
But what I am going to ask is about the single reason he provided as to how DRM could be useful (outside of paranoid entertainment industry execs):
Having a content rights system that allows a doctor in ER to securely review your electronic health record is essential.
How can this not be just done with regular crypto? Why must DRM be involved? What is the doctor going to do with your records that DRM could prevent (you know, if it was possible).
» Filed Under DRM, open source
Comments
Leave a Reply