E@zyVG’s Vichar::World Connected

So, how can you protect yourself from this “pact of evil”?

1. First of all — ignore the hardware and software using DRM techniques to restrict the rights of the user. Do not purchase music, movies and other content secured by DRM mechanisms. Instead, use alternative services recommended by the Defective By Design campaign — these are the tools and services DRM-free.
2. Secondly — talk, talk and once again, talk — make your family, friends, co-workers aware of the dangers connected with the use of DRM in the products. This is the best way to educate people what DRM really is and why they should care. Nobody wants to be restricted. When people become aware of the restrictions, they will not buy the products that restrict them. Simple enough

OK, and what if we have already legally purchased some content (like multimedia or text document) secured by some kind of DRM? Do not worry. Most of them has been broken a long time ago. For example, in order to play an CSS-encrypted DVD under GNU/Linux, you can use almost any player like VLC, MPlayer or Xine with libdvdcss2 enabled (this is a non-licenced library used to decrypt DVDs encrypted with CSS). If you posses music in AAC format (e.g. purchased at iTunes), you can easily convert them to a friendly format using JHymn without losing quality. The story repeats with each and every new introduced DRM technology, like encrypted PDFs, Windows Media, or recently HD-DVD (see the muslix64 post on BackupDVD) and BluRay.

Breaking the DRM restrictions is hard but always possible, due to the fact that all DRM mechanisms need to use symmetric encryption in order to work. This kind of encryption requires the keys to be hidden either in the hardware or software — in both ways it’s possible to access them by the hacker, analyze and find the way to decrypt the data streams. If you are interested in the details of DRM hacking, read the lecture of Cory Doctorow for Microsoft Research about the nonsense of DRM.

Is it legal? ………………….. >the right question is< ………………………. DO I CARE!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.