Again about DRM

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Warning -- This Product Contains DRM

Shouldn't a vendor be required to inform customers that a product they're about to buy contains technology designed to disable it? Currently in the U.S., the only laws pertaining to Digital Rights Management (DRM) prohibit attempts to tamper with it. No constraints or responsibilities are placed on copyright holders for making sure their DRM doesn't unfairly deprive legitimate customers of their rights. In other words, in the DRM world, customers have no rights.

Some readers think it's time the books were balanced a little bit. In our recent discussions about some of the all-time worst examples of anti-piracy technology gone bad, one reader pointed out that in many such instances, the nature or even the existence of the DRM was concealed by the vendor. "In each case subterfuge was used to get the customer to buy/use the product," the reader wrote. "To my mind there should be a DRM labeling law. I have the right to know pre-purchase that DRM is used on a CD, what kind it is, how it limits my use of the product, and whether -- absent the CD usage, of course -- I can remove the rootkit and how difficult it is to do."

Such a warning label, the reader suggested, might read something like "This CD utilizes the DRM Method called 'YouCanDoSquat' which may limit your intended use of this product. Ask your retailer for a detailed information sheet on the YouCanDoSquat DRM method or visit YouCanDoSquat.com." Surely no vendor would object to making available the basic information about what its DRM does and how it will treat the information it collects through it.

Well, maybe a few would object. But there are some good reasons to think now would be a good time to push for something like this. After all, 2007 has been a year in which DRM has largely been in retreat. In the music business, the movement toward DRMless downloads that began with the April announcement of EMI's agreement to provide DRM-free tunes on iTunes appears to be gaining an irresistible momentum. And, while much further back on the learning curve, the developers of the rival Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats for HD movies have seen all their costly DRM schemes cracked even before they are put to use. Even the DRM stalwarts of the software industry have pulled back a bit, with Microsoft's recent announcement that it will modify the harshest forms of Vista's "reduced functionality" mode and Adobe's decision earlier this year not to require corporate customers for Acrobat to implement a license tracking scheme.

But just because copy protection has always proven to be unpopular and ineffective doesn't mean that it's going to go away. After all, DRM itself is now a big industry, and one that is busy looking to tie up some new markets. Macrovision, for example, is involved in several acquisitions to expand its reach, including its proposed purchase of TV Guide. (Which leads me to wonder -- if you circumvent the DRM on a TV show listing, is it as much a copyright violation as circumventing the DRM on the show itself?) And there's always a standards committee somewhere looking for things it can put locks on, such as the group that wants USB cables to perform a DRM check.

No doubt there are any number of anti-piracy ideas in the pipeline somewhere that will make the Sony rootkit look tame by comparison. But if the reader's idea for DRM warning labels were to take hold, many of the vendors who might be considering such schemes would probably think twice. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- the primary law that says you aren't allowed to mess with the vendor's DRM -- vendors face no legal obligation to avoid using their copy protection to mess with your rights. They don't even need to tell you that it's there, much less tell you what it does.

Isn't it time that changed? We'll need to discuss some of the ways it might be done, but we can change it if we want. Instead of vendors and the politicians who serve them telling us not to touch the DRM, we need to send them a warning of our own -- those companies that use DRM do so at their peril.

Apple fixes more QuickTime media flaws

Apple patched several bugs in QuickTime on Thursday, including a three-week-old streaming media vulnerability for which exploit code has been in circulation since the end of November.

At least one security researcher took Apple to task for its slow response and lack of information before Thursday. "In classic Apple style, security researchers have been shouting the warning about this, and Apple has sat quietly, leaving many people wondering when an update might be available," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle. "[Then] without any advance notification, we have an update [this afternoon]. There will undoubtedly be some people working late this week to not only catch up from the big Microsoft 'Patch Tuesday' release, but now also to update Apple QuickTime."

Unveiled Thursday afternoon, QuickTime 7.3.1 patches problems in how the program handles three types of media content. The most anticipated fix, however, plugged the Real-Time Streaming Protocol hole first disclosed November 23 by Polish researcher Krystian Kloskowski.

Although the proof-of-concept exploits released by Kloskowski and another researcher who used the alias InTeL fingered only QuickTime running on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista as vulnerable, within days other analysts confirmed that the Mac QuickTime was also buggy. By Nov. 29, Symantec Corp. was warning clients that Mac exploit code had been published, raising the stakes even higher.

Apple Thursday also patched other media-related vulnerabilities, including a buffer overflow bug in the QuickTime movie file format and an unspecified number of flaws in QuickTime's handling of Flash files. To fix the Flash vulnerabilities, Apple disabled QuickTime's media handler for all Flash content "except for a limited number of existing QuickTime movies that are known to be safe," according to a security advisory the company posted.

The Flash strategy was almost identical to the tack Apple took with Java a month ago when it last patched QuickTime. Then, Apple essentially gave up on Java; rather than patch QuickTime yet again, it simply killed most of its Java-handling skills.

Exploits against any of the vulnerabilities patched Thursday could result in what Apple calls "arbitrary code execution," meaning an attacker can inject malware or hijack the system. Apple does not rank its software mistakes, but other vendors, such as Microsoft Corp., usually label such vulnerabilities as critical.

Existing copies of QuickTime can be updated to 7.3.1 using Mac OS X's built-in Software Update feature, while Windows XP and Vista users can either download the patched version from the Apple Web site or use the Windows-only update tool.

Thursday's update marks the seventh security revision to QuickTime this year. Including the newest flaws, Apple has patched at least 34 vulnerabilities in the player since January 1.