TI...DRM..OMA
Dave's 2 cents on . . . digital rights management
You have the right to a ''0'' and a ''1.'' Possession of certain combinations of 1s and 0s may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to digital rights management. If you desire such management and can't afford it, software will be provided for you.
I think we have become used the idea of rights as almost always being something an individual has that must be protected. In day-to-day life, we normally think that the purchaser, and not the supplier, must be protected. The principal concern is that duplication of information has never been as accurate or as easy.
Can we expect that someday a television sitcom will include a topic about digital rights management? It seems likely. It might go something like this: The main male character has finally convinced his wife that all their home entertainment equipment is antiquated and in need of an upgrade. This upgrade would include a new entertainment server and provide the highest level of entertainment suitable for his fondest love, actually his second fondest love right after the tech equipment he was about to purchase. He eventually connects the system, delayed by a few wrong turns that were corrected by peeling the plastic off of manuals and reading the appropriate pages.
Our main character then demonstrates how he could play music and movies on virtually every electronic appliance in his house, including his microwave oven and sprinkler system. His wife is unexpectedly impressed. Now he goes out of town, and you know this can't be good. His wife is ready to watch her favorite sitcom on the new bedroom wide-screen TV. She points the remote control at the monitor and presses all the logical buttons.
The monitor begins to display that the appropriate digital rights aren't available for this activity. Buttons are then pushed again, but the results are the same. How dare he restrict these rights while he had been able to watch whatever he wanted? Our main character returns home finding equipment looking a lot like the equipment he had recently purchased sitting on the lawn under a ''For Sale'' sign. He tries to enter his castle, but his key doesn't work and a voice from behind the door announces that the key he is using doesn't have the appropriate digital rights to enter.
Did we ever have ''analog rights''? We may have, but I'm not sure we were actually told about it. Maybe analog rights just weren't that important because copying analog just resulted in lower-quality analog. I wonder what level of copy fidelity is enough to make the creators uncomfortable. Is it only recognizable copy? Is it only a copy that you would have been willing to pay for, but not pay the asking price? I understand the Internet and digital communications will be more valuable if digital content and its value can be maintained. Preventing unintended use of personal information should also be a high priority. Several special interest groups and commercial entities are working hard to develop digital rights management software for the masses.
A good example of a digital rights management effort—focused on mobile devices—is the DRM specification defined by the Open Media Alliance, called OMA DRM. The OMA develops specifications for interoperability of portable digital media applications. The OMA DRM isn't a complete DRM, but is an interoperability framework that supports multiple DRM systems. Another group working on security and rights management for devices that can store and distribute digital media is the Trusted Computer Group (TCG). The TCG's work broadens the scope to all devices, not just mobile devices. The goal of both the OMA and TCG is to develop open standards that promote interoperability to protect digital media ownership rights and privacy while enabling digital transmission and storage.
For my two cents, digital rights management is important because it adds digital content to our activities. It needs to be unobtrusive and not require calls to a support center. Maybe the content providers could just not put their content in a digital format. That may solve some of the problems. But I think they want to take advantage of this media.
Dave Freeman is an analog applications engineer at Texas Instruments, based in Dallas, TX.
Portable Design May, 2004
