In 2013, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the industry body that oversees the development of Web standards, took the controversial decision to develop a system for integrating DRM into browsers. The Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) would offer a way for content producers to encrypt and protect audio and video content from within their plugin-free HTML-and-JavaScript applications.
EME is not itself a DRM system. Rather, it is a specification that allows JavaScript applications to interact with DRM modules to handle things like encryption keys and decrypting the protected data. Microsoft, Google, and Adobe all have DRM modules that comply with the spec.
Virtual reality and augmented reality are catching on, and the fashion industry has taken notice. Many of today’s fashion brands are seeing their work being used in this disruptive technology. But, this has caused trademark issues for both fashion companies that want to protect their brands and fashion technology companies that want to bring those brands into the virtual reality world. Moira Lion and Jeff Greene, with the Intellectual Property Group at Fenwick & West, recently sat down with IPWatchdog to discuss how to approach VR innovations as they develop brand protection.
Recently, eSports have exploded in popularity to the point that college conferences, such as the Big 10, are now fielding eSports teams. Patented technologies and partnerships in the eSports field have been developed to take advantage of this boom as well. However, there are problems with enforcing IP rights, both because the patents could be potentially held as ineligible subject matter and the ownership rights for the IP are difficult to determine.
Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), a mechanism by which HTML5 video providers can discover and enable DRM providers offered by a browser, has taken the next step on its contentious road to standardization. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the standards body that oversees most Web-related specifications, has moved the EME specification to the Proposed Recommendation stage.
The next and final stage is for the W3C’s Advisory Committee to review the proposal. If it passes review, the proposal will be blessed as a full W3C Recommendation.
Ever since W3C decided to start working on a DRM proposal, there have been complaints from those who oppose DRM on principle. The work has continued regardless, with W3C director and HTML inventor Tim Berners-Lee arguing that—given that DRM is already extant and, at least for video, unlikely to disappear any time soon—it’s better for DRM-protected content to be a part of the Web ecosystem than to be separate from it.
Can digital rights management technology stop the unauthorized spread of copyrighted content? Ten years ago this month, four engineers argued that it can’t, forever changing how the world thinks about piracy. Their paper, “The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution” (available as a .doc here) was presented at a security conference in Washington, DC, on November 18, 2002.
By itself, the paper’s clever and provocative argument likely would have earned it a broad readership. But the really remarkable thing about the paper is who wrote it: four engineers at Microsoft whose work many expected to be at the foundation of Microsoft’s future DRM schemes. The paper’s lead author told Ars that the paper’s pessimistic view of Hollywood’s beloved copy protection schemes almost got him fired. But ten years later, its predictions have proved impressively accurate.
Ubisoft is pushing back against reports that the DRM used in Assassin’s Creed: Origins is eating up significant CPU cycles and causing performance problems for many people playing the PC version of the game.
The explosive accusation comes from noted game cracker Voksi, who tells TorrentFreak that an analysis of Origins‘ binaries shows the game adds a protection method called VMProtect on top of well-known (and now easily cracked) Denuvo DRM. As the VMProtect webpage explains, its software protects crucial game code from cracking via mutation (i.e., obfuscating code with “garbage” commands and misdirected jumps) and virtualization (i.e., running the code in a self-contained “non-standard” virtual machine that is harder to analyze and modify).
Voksi alleges that Origins uses VMProtect’s virtualization protection, which “tank[s] the game’s performance by 30-40%, demanding that people have a more expensive CPU to play the game properly, only because of the DRM. It’s anti-consumer and a disgusting move.” In a Reddit thread, Voksi further detailed how breakpoint debugging of the code showed VMProtect’s code being “called non-stop” in the game’s core control loop.
In a new development in an important scraping dispute, LinkedIn appealed the lower court’s decision to grant a preliminary injunction compelling LinkedIn to disable any technical measures it had employed to block the defendant’s data scraping activities. LinkedIn’s brief was filed on October 3, 2017. In it, LinkedIn asserts that the relevant issue is whether the lower court “erred as matter of law by holding—contrary to the CFAA’s unambiguous text and Circuit precedent—that LinkedIn could not invoke the CFAA after LinkedIn revoked hiQ’s access to its servers by sending a particularized cease-and-desist letter and imposing technical measures to block hiQ’s data-scraping bots.”
We will be watching the developments in this case closely.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the industry body that oversees development of many Web-related technologies, is again considering the development of a specification enabling DRM-protected media in HTML content. And the group working on Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) is running up against a deadline: the group’s charter expires at the end of April. W3C working groups can only publish specifications with an active charter. So if W3C wants to publish a DRM specification, either the EME proposal must be published as a standard before the end of April or the group’s charter must be extended.
Last year, the working group asked for such an extension, but the Advisory Committee could not come to any consensus on whether to grant it. W3C director and inventor of the Web Tim Berners-Lee last week voiced his support for the EME plan, but the future of EME and the working group’s efforts are currently in limbo. Many of the arguments being made today mirror those made in 2013 when the working group first set about developing EME. And in light of this pending decision, we’re resurfacing the op-ed below (from May 2013) that outlines the supporting view.
Given the growth of efficient infringement, Google can operate in an open innovation way, applying open source principles to patented technologies from outside of the company as well as from those inside the company and partners… If it were not for efficient infringement it would be impossible for one company to be involved in as many different areas of endeavor as Google/Alphabet have attempted. The only feasible way for them to hunt for the next revenue stream seems to be to scatter-shot innovation by going in numerous different directions without any real focus. Of course, that requires them to ignore the rights of others and pretend we live in an open source world without any patent rights. Ironically, it is this disparate and uncoordinated approach to innovating that is also preventing Google from developing any kind of mastery outside of their core search competency and revenue generating model.
How valuable is a digital rights management (DRM) piracy protection scheme after it has been cracked? The obvious answer is “not at all,” an answer that seems to have been confirmed by the removal of Denuvo protection from two popular games, both of which saw that DRM scheme fail earlier this year.
