Several new articles help explain the dangers to digital libraries
of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies, the integration of DRM
technologies into the Windows and Macintosh operating systems, the new
hardware DRM technologies, and how hardware and software and operating
systems creators may incorporate restrictions even though no law
requires them to do so.
These articles do not mention libraries,
of course, but their relevance to libraries should be clear to anyone
who deals with long term preservation and access issues.
Cory
Doctorow’s article (Apple
to add Trusted Computing to the new kernel?,
BoingBoing, July 31, 2005) about the forthcoming Intel-based
MacOS X operating system gives a quick, down-and-dirty, angry-user’s
view of how changes in hardware can affect usability of digital
information. Cory says,
The point of Trusted
Computing is to make it hard … to open a document in a player other
than the one that wrote it in the first place, unless the application
vendor authorizes it. It’s like a blender that will only chop the food
that Cuisinart says you’re allowed to chop. It’s like a car that will
only take the brand of gas that Ford will let you fill it with. It’s
like a web-site that you can only load in the browser that the author
intended it to be seen in.What this means is that “open
formats” is no longer meaningful. An application can write documents in
“open formats” but use Trusted Computing to prevent competing
applications from reading them. Apple may never implement this in their
own apps … but Trusted Computing in the kernel is like a rifle on the
mantelpiece: if it’s present in act one, it’ll go off by act three.
Cory, who has used Macs since 1979 and even has a Mac tattooed on
his right bicep, says he won’t use Macs ever again if this all happens.
Why? “My data is my life, and I won’t keep it in a strongbox that
someone else has the keys for.” Libraries take note.
This isn’t a Mac-only problem, of course. Microsoft is working
diligently to incorporate DRM technologies deep in the Windows operating
system and is doing so in a way that will leverage future hardware
lock-downs as well. Seth Schoen, an expert on “trusted computing” at the
Electronic Frontier Foundation,
attended this year’s Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC)
and has written a four-part series of updates on Microsoft’s security
and lock-ware strategy for Windows. The articles are thorough and clear,
though a bit technical for the non-techie.
I recommend starting with The Dangers of
Device Authentication for its coverage of how emulation, a key
digital library preservation strategy, may be eliminated by
next-generation OS/hardware lock-downs, and for its notes on privacy
problems of DRM.
Then try Microsoft Sells
Out the Public on CGMS-A, which explains how and why the
“entertainment companies are pursuing an astonishingly effective
campaign to persuade technology firms to stop making and selling lawful
recording devices.” Schoen echoes some of what Cory says about open
formats. He notes that the scope of Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA) is “expressly limited by the so-called “no mandate” clause, which
establishes that technologies that deal with unencrypted, open standard
media formats are not restricted by the DMCA. These technologies are
unregulated even if the entertainment industries dislike them and even
if they do not obey those industries’ preferences for restricting
users.”
Protected Media
Path, Component Revocation, Windows Driver Lock-down explains how
Microsoft will have control over software created by others if software
vendors want their software to run on Windows. (I’d like to see a
library require an operating system vendor to submit its code to the
library for authentication before we purchase it. Can anyone say “open
source”?)
Microsoft
Trusted Computing Updates is the first article and gives the context
for the others.
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