Informative Speech
I have to give an informative speech tomorrow for COMM 250. This is what I'm planning on presenting. I'll be ad-libbing some transitions, but this is the core stuff. Any suggestions - on information to include (Psyton and Crainte) or how to address a large group of people that will have no idea what I'm talking about - would be greatly appreciated.
I) DRM
A) DRM is an acronym for digital rights management and refers to all the technologies associated with policies to control access to software, music, movies, or other digital data.
B) The purpose of DRM is to control what the end user can and cannot do with a given piece of software or media. A company can include a license agreement with its products, but the end user checking the “I agree” button during a software install hardly means they read, understood, or are willing to comply with the virtual contract they just signed. I’m willing to bet not a single person in this room has ever read the full license agreement for anything they’ve ever installed. Regardless, it’s the smart thing for a company to do from a legal standpoint.
II) DMCA
A) A company can say all these things, and you can enter into a contract that you didn’t read and still be held accountable for violating it, but there are no clear laws that state what a breech of your software license agreement really means. This is where the DMCA comes in. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act passed and signed into law in 1998 and makes it illegal to circumvent any form of technological protection. It also outlaws the designing or distribution of tools or means to circumvent said protection and the unauthorized copying of a copyrighted work.
III) Who benefits?
A) With the current state of technology and media forms available to us, it’s never been easier to steal things. DRM and the DMCA were meant to protect recording artists, the music and movie industries, and software companies. How well this is working and the need for such protection is very much a hot button amongst computer enthusiasts and industry professionals worldwide.
IV) Forms of protection.
A) Regardless of the need or how much it’s accomplishing, however, DRM is taking new shapes and forms every day. The content scrambling system, implemented almost a decade ago, was one of the first forms of DRM. It did exactly what it sounds like. That’s right; it used a 40-bit encryption algorithm to make unauthorized players display a bunch of noise instead of the desired content. eBooks can now be designed by publishers to allow the user to only view, copy, or print a certain amount of pages per an arbitrary unit of time. Milder forms of protection include digital watermarking and product activation. More intense methods require certain programs to have a physical piece of hardware that comes packaged with the software be connected to the computer to operate. However, every form of DRM can, and has, been cracked, hacked, reverse engineered or otherwise broken in some manner. Cryptographer Bruce Schneier said on his website, “Against the average user, anything works; there’s no need for complex security software. Against the skilled attacker, on the other hand, nothing works.” This seems to be very true given the history of various protection methods.
V) How does this affect you?
A) Since we’re all law abiding citizens and would never dream of downloading or copying something we weren’t allowed to DRM means little to us. CSS technically violates fair use laws, but it’s seldom used anymore. The really important thing to take away from all this is just that fact that DRM is out there. The X-Box, X-Box 360, most DVD players, some cell phones, PlayStation2s and their memory cards, Sony Memory Sticks, the iPod and a number of other MP3 players - both hardware and software - support DRM. If it can play some form of digital media it more than likely has or will have DRM support in the near future. For fear of losing points I’m not going to tell you how much I hate DRM, but I want you to all be aware that it’s out there and that some forms may or may not violate your rights. Next time you’re out to buy media or a media player ask the salesman what kind of DRM related things you should know about it. Will you be able to play unsigned MP3s on your new MP3 player? Will you be able to watch out of region DVDs on your new DVD player? Can you make a copy of this CD so you can have one in your room and one in your car? DRMwatch.com is one of the best resources for finding out what supports what and what’s changing.
Surprisingly, I had accidentally written about a 15 minute speech when this only needed to be 4 - 6.5 minutes. I've spent most of the evening trying to cut stuff out while still making sense and not skipping anything crucial.
I) DRM
A) DRM is an acronym for digital rights management and refers to all the technologies associated with policies to control access to software, music, movies, or other digital data.
B) The purpose of DRM is to control what the end user can and cannot do with a given piece of software or media. A company can include a license agreement with its products, but the end user checking the “I agree” button during a software install hardly means they read, understood, or are willing to comply with the virtual contract they just signed. I’m willing to bet not a single person in this room has ever read the full license agreement for anything they’ve ever installed. Regardless, it’s the smart thing for a company to do from a legal standpoint.
II) DMCA
A) A company can say all these things, and you can enter into a contract that you didn’t read and still be held accountable for violating it, but there are no clear laws that state what a breech of your software license agreement really means. This is where the DMCA comes in. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act passed and signed into law in 1998 and makes it illegal to circumvent any form of technological protection. It also outlaws the designing or distribution of tools or means to circumvent said protection and the unauthorized copying of a copyrighted work.
III) Who benefits?
A) With the current state of technology and media forms available to us, it’s never been easier to steal things. DRM and the DMCA were meant to protect recording artists, the music and movie industries, and software companies. How well this is working and the need for such protection is very much a hot button amongst computer enthusiasts and industry professionals worldwide.
IV) Forms of protection.
A) Regardless of the need or how much it’s accomplishing, however, DRM is taking new shapes and forms every day. The content scrambling system, implemented almost a decade ago, was one of the first forms of DRM. It did exactly what it sounds like. That’s right; it used a 40-bit encryption algorithm to make unauthorized players display a bunch of noise instead of the desired content. eBooks can now be designed by publishers to allow the user to only view, copy, or print a certain amount of pages per an arbitrary unit of time. Milder forms of protection include digital watermarking and product activation. More intense methods require certain programs to have a physical piece of hardware that comes packaged with the software be connected to the computer to operate. However, every form of DRM can, and has, been cracked, hacked, reverse engineered or otherwise broken in some manner. Cryptographer Bruce Schneier said on his website, “Against the average user, anything works; there’s no need for complex security software. Against the skilled attacker, on the other hand, nothing works.” This seems to be very true given the history of various protection methods.
V) How does this affect you?
A) Since we’re all law abiding citizens and would never dream of downloading or copying something we weren’t allowed to DRM means little to us. CSS technically violates fair use laws, but it’s seldom used anymore. The really important thing to take away from all this is just that fact that DRM is out there. The X-Box, X-Box 360, most DVD players, some cell phones, PlayStation2s and their memory cards, Sony Memory Sticks, the iPod and a number of other MP3 players - both hardware and software - support DRM. If it can play some form of digital media it more than likely has or will have DRM support in the near future. For fear of losing points I’m not going to tell you how much I hate DRM, but I want you to all be aware that it’s out there and that some forms may or may not violate your rights. Next time you’re out to buy media or a media player ask the salesman what kind of DRM related things you should know about it. Will you be able to play unsigned MP3s on your new MP3 player? Will you be able to watch out of region DVDs on your new DVD player? Can you make a copy of this CD so you can have one in your room and one in your car? DRMwatch.com is one of the best resources for finding out what supports what and what’s changing.
Surprisingly, I had accidentally written about a 15 minute speech when this only needed to be 4 - 6.5 minutes. I've spent most of the evening trying to cut stuff out while still making sense and not skipping anything crucial.