DRM vs TM [LWN.net]

DRM vs TM

Posted Feb 10, 2007 20:03 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806)
In reply to: DRM vs TM by man_ls
Parent article: Bitfrost: the OLPC security model

TC is now such a broad concept that it's nearly useless. The wikipedia page does make it sound like both Bitfrost and drectory permissions would fall under the TC umbrella. But so would AppArmor. And hardware virtualization extensions. That doesn't mean they have anything in common with each other.

We can at least agree that FairPlay, CSS, and Microsoft's incompatible flavor du jour are examples of DRM, yes? defectivebydesign says that Tivoization is a form of DRM. And Hasp HL claims to be DRM. Bitfrost's ultimate behavior is basically the same as these technologies and has only the most superficial resemblance to directory permissions. That's why I really don't think it's a stretch to consider it DRM.

Maybe you could point me to an authoritative definition of DRM? The definition at the top of the Wikipedia entry clearly includes Bitfrost but, alas, I'd hardly call it authoritative.

Perhaps the media is subverting the meaning of DRM like it did with hacker? At this point, though, I'm afraid the cat's pretty far out of the bag.

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DRM vs TM

Posted Feb 10, 2007 23:01 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

I would say that Trusted Computing is a well defined concept, or at least it was until vendors started marketing it. OTOH DRM was always snake oil, and still is today. Maybe that is why authoritative definitions are hard to find. Look at this one (in PDF):

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a system to protect high-value digital assets and control the distribution and usage of those digital assets.

It comes from an academic paper, but the "high value" part is not very objective: DRM can also be used for low-value garbage.

As to the examples you cite: Tivoization is a form of DRM only because it is used to protect digital content (digitized TV in this case). The article in Dr Dobb's Journal talks about protection of content and restriction of document distribution.

Even if the press and the general public misuse the term, that is IMHO no excuse for spreading bad usage. DRM protects content by whatever means, even if it's just a remotely controlled daemon setting directory permissions. After all, Adobe's protected PDF's rely on something like a bit set on a file.