A nicer DRM? IEEE thinks its possible

The dissonance between locking up digital content and giving users the control they want has always been central to the DRM debate, but now the standards group IEEE thinks it can appease both sides with a new method.

IEEE has formed a working group to investigate what engineer Paul Sweazey calls “digital personal property,” Ars Technica reports. DPP would work a lot like physical media in the sense that you can’t access content yourself once someone else possesses it. Users could lend, sell or back up digital media without authenticating at a central server, but it would still include a small amount of protection that prevents the original user from accessing the content once it’s given away.

Ars describes a system with two components: First is an encrypted file called a title folder, which is essentially the music, movie or e-book in question. Second, and crucial to DPP, is the playkey, a sort of authentication that resides on the user’s computer, hidden behind a “tamper-protected circuit.” The gist is that users could pass the title folder around to whoever they wanted, and provide a link to the playkey, which the other user could then activate on his own device. Once activated, the file would be disabled on the original device.

Copy protection is inherent, as users would carefully guard who they share with in order to maintain control over the playkey. For users, the advantage is being able to pass files back and forth an infinite number of times, never needing to rely on some external server for authentication. This would allow for backing up files as well. IEEE’s working group, dubbed P1817, convenes for the first time next month.

I like the concept as far as simple backups and swapping goes, but the implementation needs to be extremely simple. As soon as the process of playkey sharing becomes techincal, the user is better off pirating content, and we’re back to square one. I look forward to seeing what IEEE comes up with.