Gamers, EFF Speak Out Against DRM 203
Last month, we discussed news that the FTC would be examining DRM to see if it needs regulation. They set up a town hall meeting for late March, and part of that effort involved requesting comments from potential panelists and the general public. Ars Technica reports that responses to the request have been overwhelmingly against DRM, and primarily from gamers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation also took the opportunity to speak out strongly against DRM, saying flat out that "DRM does not prevent piracy," and suggesting that its intended purpose is "giving some industry leaders unprecedented power to influence the pace and nature of innovation and upsetting the traditional balance between the interests of copyright owners and the interests of the public." Their full public comments (PDF) describe several past legal situations supporting that point, such as Sony's fight against mod chips, Blizzard's DMCA lawsuit against an alternative to battle.net, and Sony's XCP rootkit.
Hearing this, RockStar announced their new game (Score:3, Funny)
DRM Killer, available later this fall featuring SecureROM.
Re:RIGHT battle! (Score:4, Funny)
Encryption is unbreakable. DRM is not because per definition you have the decryption key even if it's hidden very well. I'm quite sure I've seen SkyTV broadcast captures so I'm not sure what point you were trying to make, maybe there's no hack to decrypt the live broadcast but the content gets around anyway. Amazon and iTunes is dropping DRM, CSS is broken, AACS is pretty much broken, BD+ still has cramps but is dying so from where I'm sitting it looks like most entertainment has no effective DRM and no practical way to put that cat back in the bag - if DVD was good then Blu-Ray must be good enough for the next century. Software and consoles get a lot uglier but unbreakable is hardly the first word that comes to mind. Ultimately, that's why TPB is so popular and why we're having this case, right? Because DRM does not work, otherwise there wouldn't be anything to share on TPB.