Strategies and Tactics in the Battle Over Digital IP

Randall Davis

MIT Computer Science and AI Lab

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Outline

• The Digital Dilemma in hindsight– Origins of the problem

– The role of culture and sociology

– Business models

• Looking Forward– Trusted computing and the possible

irrelevance of copyright

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Origins of the Problem

• Technology advanced• digital information effect on

reproduction

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Origins of the Problem

• Technology advanced• digital information effect on

reproduction• networks effect on distribution

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Origins of the Problem

• Technology advanced• digital information effect on

reproduction• networks effect on distribution• the Web effect on publication

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Origins of the Problem

• Technology advanced• digital information effect on

reproduction• networks effect on distribution• the Web effect on publication

Erosion of the natural barriers to infringement

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Origins of the Problem

• Technology advanced• digital information effect on

reproduction• networks effect on distribution• the Web effect on publication

Erosion of the natural barriers to infringement

The problem is fundamental.

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Origins of the Problem

• The technology became a part of everyday life– IP became increasingly concerned with private

behavior

– The RIAA lawsuits

• Culture matters

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Culture Matters

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Culture Matters

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New Business Models

• Music as the test case

• The idea is beginning to sink in– "We could be 100 percent correct morally and legally

that it is wrong to trade copyrighted files, but from a business standpoint it doesn't matter," said Larry Kenswil, president of the eLabs division of Universal. "We need to construct legal alternatives.” (NYT 7/1/02)

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New Business Models

• Difficulties remain– Everyone tells us to get a new business model

but no one has told us what it is," said Doug Morris, the chairman of Universal. (NYT 7/1/02)

– "The hardest thing for the music industry to wrap its head around is how do we compete against free, even though you know intuitively that free isn't what's supposed to be happening," said Ted Cohen, vice president for new media at EMI. (NYT 7/1/02)

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Competing Against Free

• Five answers

etc.1

2

3Selling songs for 99 cents online gives the labels about the same profit they make per track on a CD, industry executives said. (NYT 7/1/02)

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Competing Against Free

4

5 Reconceptualize the product: Madonna, and porn, to the rescue

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Looking Forward

• Can we negotiate a pathway between the claims of copyright owners and the values associated with open computers and open computer networks?

• Almost surely not, if

– code is replaced by code

– economics outweighs policy

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The New Element

• Trusted Computing – aka Palladium/TCG/NGSCB/Longhorn

• The fundamental difficulty: open systems– open hardware, open software

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Open Systems

Sound Source

Sound Card

Speakers

Your Computer

Sound Card Driver

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Open Systems

Sound Card

Speakers

Your Computer

Sound Card Driver

Another Driver

Sound Source

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Open Systems

Sound Card

Speakers

Your Computer

Sound Card Driver

Another Driver

Sound Source

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Trusted Computing

• Solution?– Don’t allow that

• Control software and hardware– tamper-resistant crypto module (“Fritz chip”)

– secure memory in cpu, secure kernel in OS and applications, secure storage

– “Remote attestation”: a secure signal that the hardware & software are in a known state

– Result: state of machine is exposed, verifiable

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Trusted Computing and IP

• Server will download only to clients able to to provide (cryptographically protected) proof of approved hardware and software

• The end of content piracy

• The fundamental technology for DRM

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Trusted Computing and IP

• “Approved hw & sw” will mean what the vendors supplied, as they supplied it– incapable of making unencumbered copies (of

course)

– unchanged (of course)• I’ve surrendered control over the machine

– someone else determines what it can’t do– someone else determines what it can/will do on my

machine» software with a revocation list

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Trusted Computing and IP

• TC as currently configured protects against the user– and the user is paying for that

• literally: hw & sw• switching costs

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Pressures for Implementation

• Original guess: secure shopping

• Current reality: Convergence in your living room - the media center.

• Current reality: Documents, email

• Current reality: Software DRMDRM’s not just for documents any more– The rise of software as a service– (With the same problems as information as a service.)

• Will you be able to buy a computer without it?

– Intel, Microsoft, ...

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It’s Likely to Happen

• The forces behind it are enormous– media, software, control of information

• The opposition is (as usual) ill-defined and disorganized

• The costs of not doing it are quantifiable and melodramatic

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But...

• I don’t have to use TC at all.

• I can use only applications with benevolent DRM policies

• But, but: – if Windows™ and Word™ and PowerPoint™…

– if your bank and local government adopt it...

– if reverse engineering is inhibited...

– if innovation is retarded…

– Most people can’t deal with OSs now...

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The Important Questions

• Costs and Benefits– What if the networked computer was not safe

for digital information?

– Who said that business model had to be safe?

– Cost-shifting

– The substitution of contract law for IP law

– The substitution of code for code– Power shift

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The Important Questions

• Costs and Benefits– Private decisions about information policy

– Disappearing documents?

– Censorship, revocable publication?

– Forced upgrades?

– Securely encumbered data?

– Inhibiting interoperability?

– Inhibiting competition?

– Will PCs suffer the fate of the DAT?

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Digital Audio Tape Player

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Bottom Line

• No guarantee TC will happen.– But the pressures for implementation are there

– Work is going ahead

• TC/DRM will open new possibilities and new markets

• No guarantee TC will produce adverse effects– But the possibility is clearly there

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Bottom Line

• The result might be the obsolescence/irrelevance of copyright, IP

• All this to make the world safe for media and documents?

• Copyright and the networked computer

• Information access and the trusted computer